Southern Roundup Part 3

Well finally I am getting around to showing you more pictures of the Southern Roundup.  Here we go.

 This is about as good as it gets.  Greeat food, Good Friends and dancing.  That is Tim and Robin cutting a rug

 The weather was not always as good as last year but I for one welcomed the rain to cool me down

 Here we are again at Hunts Oyster Bar.  There is always a line here but you can take your beer outside while you wait for your table.  It doesn't take too long.

 Here is Gary looking at Staci and thinking "I don't care, I'm having oysters" lol

 Here is some of the food that we enjoyed.  Boy was it good.

 Staci, Robin, Cindy and I went for lunch at Dusty's after shopping all morning for Robin's Alligator Chef.  (We didn't find one)

 Every part of Dusty's is covered in dollar bills.

 These were the jalapeno oysters that I had for lunch.  They were delish

 One of the bar regulars explaining the wildlife to me.

 Turtles and koi in the lake behind Dusty's.

 Our beautiful Amanda (Arich)

A beautiful sunset.  On to part 4

Sorry, I cheated

Yes I admit it, I cheated.  As a member of the AllRecipes Allstar/Brand Ambassador program, we were asked to hold a party for Halloween.  My hubby and I are 60/70 somethings, and the kids and grandkids are hundreds of miles away.  We live in a very rural area and, in the twelve years that we have lived here, have never had one child come to our door on Halloween and say "trick or treat".  So in order to fulfill this part of the program, I had to cheat.  Luckily, it was a way to also complete another part of my life which is volunteering.  Today, at our local Elks Lodge, we had our annual kids Halloween Party.  I went to it camera in hand to record this day which was so much fun for all the kids involved. It is also a very, very, safe way for the kids to enjoy this day.  A great time was had by all.  Here are some of the pictures that I took.

Thesee are some of the treats that volunteers brought for the kids to enjoy.  Fabulous cakes and cookies.  The Elks also provided candy which was donated by members and other treats donated by various businesses in town. 

My favorite part though was looking at all the little kids dressed up to enjoy the party.  The volunteers set up different games, ring toss, miniature golf and others to provide entertainment for them and there were prizes given out for the best costumes.  I bet you can figure out which one was my favorite.

A wonderful time was had by all, and we are now safely back in our homes until next year when we will do it all over again.  I wish you all a very Happy and Safe Halloween.


I am an Allrecipes Allstar Brand Ambassador(a voluntary position) and I’m not compensated for my work with Allrecipes.com. Products received from advertiser are only used for experienced-based reviews on AllRecipes.com - Thoughts from my Kitchen. The reviews, content and opinions expressed in this blog are purely the sole opinions of me, pelicangal aka Jan Elton 

Southern Roundup 2012 (part 2)

So part 2 begins with a continuation of the actual Southern Roundup.  2 people that you did not get to see in part 1 are Julie (jnb) and Colleen, Amanda's mom, so here they are

Here is a pic of Amanda, Tim and Sherri (her hubby is next to her but you cannot see him in this shot)

 

For those of you that follow GDerrs post you will be familiar with the famous, or infamous, Freak Flag.  In honor of that Robogramma (Robin) made one.  It is in the shape of a T shirt (that is a whole other story) and shows a paraglider in honor of last year's roundup.  Here it is.

 

Robin did a great job.  We all loved it.  Then the competition was on.  Who wanted the freak flag more.  Gary set the rules.  And the rules are:  There are no stinking rules.  YEAH.

One day a local restaurant had a lobster fest so we decided to go.  The restaurant is Schooners and it was a lot of fun.  Here is Robin

That is Staci, hitchin a ride.  (We had to park a long way away.
Well not sure how much this blog will hold so I am going for Part 3  See you soon.

Southern Roundup 2012

Sorry that I am a little late posting this but life got in the way.  Well once again we had a wonderful time in Panama City Beach for our second annual Southern Roundup.  I, obviously have to travel the furthest to get there but it was a good trip.  I left on Thursday afternoon from Crescent City, CA and arrived in PC at about 8:30 am on Friday morning.  Gary and his beautiful wife Claire got up at 3 a.m. to drive from Georgia to pick me up.  They were waiting for me when I got there.  We couldn't get into the condo until 2 p.m. so we drove around for a while and then went to our favorite restaurant, Hunts Oyster Bar.  Gary and I love oysters so we had a few.

Here we are outside of the restaurant after our feast.

We got into the condo and then everyone else started to turn up.  CindyLepp decided that she was bringing a whole grocery store with us.  Guess she thought that we might have a hiurricane and we needed to stock up

We were too tired to go out that night so we stayed in the condo and had tacos, a few cocktails and a lot of laughs

The next morning I got up early and took a walk along the beach, it was absolutely gorgeous.

Here is a picture of the girls, Robogramma, CindyLepp, Staci and Claire Derr.

For the "actual" roundup we all met at Salty Sue's for lunch.

From left to right you will see GDerr, his wife Claire, CindyLepp, (unseen is JNB, and Amanda's mom Colleen) then Arich, her boyfriend Tim, Phil, (Sherri's hubby) Sherri, Staci and Robogramma.  We had a great time and great food.

These are just a few of the selections that we had for lunch.  If I showed them all we would be here for a month.  This will end part one of our Southern roundup.  Stayed tuned for part 2.

A Second Chance

As AllStars Brand Ambassadors, we are lucky enough to be asked to try out different products and give our opinions on them.  This month it is Al Fresco Chicken Sausage.  And Oh boy does that make me happy.  When we were first asked to try these products back in April, I was very sceptical as I could not envision how chicken sausage could take the place of pork.  I was proved very wrong and I am happy to say that we have been converted.  We use this product regularly in our house now.  I just wish that we could get the full product line, not just a few of the sausage flavors.  Here is what I made with the sausages this time around.

This is  the Garlic Chicken Sausage Vegetable Saute.  We really liked this except that we thought it would have benefited greatly from having a sauce.  I did have some left over spaghetti sauce in the fridge so I heated that up and for us, it seemed to improve the dish.

The second dish that I made was this

This is the Roasted Garlic Chicken Caesar Salad.  YUMMMM.  This was a great recipe and turning my favorite salad into a dinner meal by adding this sausage is a great idea. 
 I for one can't wait until we get some different flavors of this product in our stores.  Try it I think that you will like it.

I am an Allrecipes Allstar Brand Ambassador(a voluntary position) and I’m not compensated for my work with Allrecipes.com. Products received from advertiser are only used for experienced-based reviews on AllRecipes.com - Thoughts from my Kitchen. The reviews, content and opinions expressed in this blog are purely the sole opinions of me, pelicangal aka Jan Elton 

A little help in the Kitchen

Part of our assignment this month for the Brand Ambassador program was to make recipes using Progresso Recipe Starters.  This is a new product of sauces to help us put dinner on the table with a minimum of time spent in the kitchen.  I decided to make Progresso Easy Chicken Cacciatore because it is one of my hubby's favorite meals. Here is a photo

To make this I used the Progresso Recipe Starters Fire Roasted Tomato Sauce.  Hubby loved it.

The next recipe that I tried was Progresso Curry Chicken.  For this one I used Progresso Recipe Starters Creamy Roasted Garlic with Chicken Stock.

This one was not quite so successful.  I think that it definitely needed more spices than just curry powder, maybe some garam masala  would have rounded out the flavors.

Well back to the kitchen to try out some more flavors of this new sauce.  I still have Creamy Three Cheese, Creamy Portabella Mushroom, and Creamy Parmesan Basil to try.  I'll let you know how they turn out.

Disclosure:  The information and free Progresso Recipe Starters products were provided by Progresso through the AllRecipes Brand Ambassador Program