Trailer Trash Tuesday- Too Many Tomatoes

Let me introduce you to my fridge.  As you can see it is very small and I shove as many things in there as I can. What can I say? This is trailer living at it's finest.  Recently, the bottom shelf on the door decided it had had enough and bailed on me.  So, now I have even less space than normal in there.  Those shelves are expensive at $25 bucks a pop. Ouch.

We were really blessed this year as far as tomatoes are concerned.  My BIL gave us a bunch of tomato plants toward the beginning of the summer and they just took off.  We have big tomatoes, medium tomatoes and small grape tomatoes.  I'm told tomatoes don't normally do well in this area but we must have them in a prime spot.

I have too many for our family to eat on our own, but not enough to can.  Luckily, this last Saturday our church had Super Saturday.  It is a day where women can pick a craft or two or more and just spend the day working on it and enjoying the company of other women. They also have a lunch and I signed up to bring a salad and a dessert.

I made a regular salad with the grape tomatoes but felt like I needed to do something else.  So, I looked in my teeny fridge and saw what I had on hand.  I had mozzarella and tomatoes. I then remembered that the Pioneer Woman had posted a recipe called Caprese Salad. I headed over to the grocery store and picked up some basil. I had all the other ingredients on hand.

The planets aligned for the briefest of moments and soon I had this:

OMGoodness, this was amazing.  I even heard much raving about my Caprese Salad at the luncheon.

Unfortunately the planets went out of alignment for my dessert and it wasn't as great as it could have been. My cursed oven wasn't cooking fast enough and the pumpkin cake I made was taking forever.  So, I made some vanilla pudding and put whip cream on top of it.  The whip cream melted on the way to the luncheon and looked horrendous.  The cake did get done in time and although it wasn't pretty, it was tasty. Here is the link to what I made but with regular icing, so easy, as long as you don't have an RV oven.

I was happy to use up all the tomatoes, but I just went out yesterday to the garden and got all of these...

I think another Caprese Salad is on the menu, or maybe tomato soup. Decisions, decisions. All I know is there is no room in my fridge.

Peeing in the Rain -Nov 2009

This happened back in Nov. 2009 but my maggot and dog poo post reminded me of this.  Wow. Have we really been here this long...


Peeing in the Rain

No we aren't camping. We've been having some really high winds lately. So much so that they put out a warning for high winds. Well, the vent cover in our bathroom was whisked off in true Wizard of Oz style and I can only guess that since the wicked witch is already dead that some poor munchkin now has a vent cover firmly embedded in his or her skull.

So, as nature has to come calling eventually. I needed to pee. No sooner had this need come upon me as Mother Nature decided to join me. So, I peed in the rain, in my own bathroom. Well I couldn't just let the bathroom fill with water. I kept trying to get a hold of DH. (His battery was dead and he e-mailed me to tell me, unfortunately I only check it in the mornings, thanks for trying hon). No luck. Straight to voicemail.

I zipped up my raincoat, headed out into the now torrential downpour of rain. I searched in the dark for the handy dandy telescopic ladder. Success! Now how to work the dang thing? I got the ladder up after not too much of a hassle and headed up to conquer the beast. The roof was more slippery that a slip 'n slide covered in KY (no, I have not tried this). In true Macgyver fashion, I was armed with only a grey recyclable garbage sack. It was not quite big enough to just slide over the top, so I called A1 and had her raise the imaginary cover. I slid the garbage bag into position and then had her lower it. I thought I was in the clear. I carefully got back down. Remembering my Army training of maintaining 3 points of contact while descending the ladder. So far, so good. I attempted to retract the ladder but I was foiled and just set it down on it's side. I was tired from my adventure.

The wind was still blowing really hard and mocked me by pulling off my half-hearted attempt at a garbage sack vent cover. Of course it waited until I had already changed out of my drenched clothing and into dry clothes. So, I headed out again. This time armed with ammo from my sewing kit (a long cord of black elastic). Thank goodness for the person who invented elastic. I climbed the RV once again and secured that gosh darn garbage sack once and for all by laying it over the top and putting the elastic over the sides of the vent.

I was exhausted and ready to cry out of frustration. It is still holding as of this morning. Of course, it is holding about an inch of water too. But for now I can pee without being peed on by Mother Nature and that is a blessing indeed.

Here is a picture of me fixing the vent the correct way, a day after the event.

Dog Poo and Maggots

Yesterday was a dog poo and maggots sort of day, literally.  One of the joys of living in a 5th wheel is that we have to haul our own trash.  We have two garbage cans for trash and one for burnables.  Since it is the summertime there is currently a no burn ordinance in effect so more trash ends up in the non burnable cans.  I have been putting off taking out the trash in hopes that my DH would step up and take it, but no such luck. He was at work.  The garbage was getting way too full so I bit the bullet and decided to tackle it on my own.

I headed out and got the first bag out and loaded onto the back of the car.  No problem. The second one was a nightmare.  I attempted to lift the bag out and it starts to rip. So, then I rearranged it and tried again. It tore again.  Then as I was moving the trash to try to get more of the bag out of the can, maggots started falling everywhere.  As I was trying to avoid the maggots that were caused by the fins and guts of the shark and fish DH caught earlier in the week, I stepped in dog poo.  It was gross.  I don't have a dog, but our neighbors do. Suddenly, I hear the mad shrieks of my children inside.

I left the maggots and poo to see what the problem was.  Basically, someone touched someone else and they were mad.  I then told the kids that I was in the midst of a maggot and dog poo problem and could they please stop acting like monkeys for a bit.  I went out again and after dumping half the garbage out and rearranging it again, I still couldn't get the bag out.  So, I then got another garbage bag and emptied the trash out, all while avoiding the maggots.  I finally got it all loaded up, tied down and drove to the dump.

After paying the fee, I headed to my designated spot and pushed the garbage out with my foot.  It gave a satisfactory plop and I came home.

By the time I got home, DH had just gotten home from work.  Figures.