Spring Fling Lunch

My friend Carol is a real party-animal. Every year she and her husband host a Christmas party, and you never know what to expect. For the past couple of years she has also hosted a monthly lunch group from among our Relief Society sisters. If you are reading this and you aren't LDS, the Relief Society is the women's group of our church.

Last month we had a box social, and in order to bid on the decorated and delicious box lunches, she also had prepared a way for us to gain points through the month (do a service for someone was x amount of points, reading your scriptures got you some more--and so forth), plus winning at Bingo at the beginning of the luncheon gave us the opportunity to gain even more points.

Today's luncheon was a Mystery Lunch. She asked the participants to bring a dish (I brought corn) and it had to be in a covered container so no one could see what was brought (I should have been suspicious right then & there). When we got to her house, we were given a menu, pencil, and two toothpicks, and asked to make our selections for each course. The first course consisted of things like "small twigs," "large twigs," "medium napper," and other such nonsensical titles. The next course included some cereal titles like "Apple Jacks, Kix, Cheerios, Fruit Loops" and a couple other choices I can't remember. Course 3 was a choice of "Monkeychunks" or "Henny Penny Delight" (not the exact name but I can't remember the real name other than Henny Penny). Course 4 was a choice of things like "Snow White Delight, King's Ransom," and several others that again, I don't remember the title of.

We were ushered into the dining room, seated, and waited upon by my friend Karen's mission-bound son, Ray. He proceeded to bring out our eating utensils first. My choice of "medium napper" turned out to be a napkin. "Small twigs" were skewers, and "large twigs" were chopsticks. The other titles I don't remember, but they consisted of a fork, a knife, a spoon (and sometimes all three), a large wooden spoon, and tongs. Have you ever tried to eat carrot salad (aka Apple Jacks--don't ask me why that title translated out to carrot salad) with a napkin? I ate with my fingers and used my medium napper to wipe them when done.

Monkeychunks turned out to be spaghetti with my corn, and the Henny Penny dish was chicken alfredo. Now I could have asked for another utensil to eat with, using one of my toothpicks & a song as ransom, but being a stubborn sort at times, I used my toothpicks to get the alfredo noodles close enough to my mouth to slurp up. My "Kings Choice" dessert turned out to be some kind of raspberry cake thingy AND banana cream pie. I was too full to eat much with my toothpick, so I brought it home where I will either let my dh (dear husband) eat it, or eat it myself later on if he doesn't want it.

So if you need an idea for a fun lunch or dinner, here it is. Spring Fling, indeed! But it was a fun afternoon.

Drive-in to Grocery Store

I thought the other day as I visited our new Winco store which opened on April 14th, of how the land this store is on used to be a drive-in theater when we first moved here almost 23 years ago. The Renfro! Kind of a ratty place, but still cool to pile everyone into the car and go see a movie for super-cheap. We watched "Ghostbusters" at this drive-in. And other movies which I cannot remember now. Then it was closed a few years later, and all traces of a drive in theater were torn down, leaving an empty lot. We were told at the time that a new movie theater was going to be built there, but it ended up being built elsewhere. This land stood vacant for probably close to 20 years, I guess. Then one day a little more than a year ago, some bull-dozing activity began to take place.

We heard by our neighborhood newsletter that Winco was building a new store there. Now they already had one not too far from us, which was the original one in our town and had been there for close to 20 years. But it was smaller than other Winco's built here, and it was only a matter of time until it was updated. I guess they decided it would be easier to just build a whole new store than to try to remodel the old one.

Now it's open, and it is bigger and shiny and new. But I won't shop here without remembering the good ol' days, and our long-lost drive-in theater.