Happy Memorial Day

Hope you are having a wonderful Memorial Day weekend!

We celebrated the holiday on Sunday with a BBQ/Bash fest.

Will and I barbecued some incredible tri tip and these killer baby back ribs with a homemade cherry cola BBQ sauce. They were so good. I've never been much of a grill master, but since we have had the back yard cleaned up I like grilling our food a lot more. I like a charcoal grill for the flavor and my mom bought me a chimney starter so I don't have to use lighter fluid, which I hated using. I bought natural 'gourmet' charcoal and we tried some indirect grilling for the tri tip and it came out so delicious, all smoky and wonderful yet still cooked through enough for the well done meat lovers (only my mom was upset that we didn't burn it like I usually do - apparently she likes the charred part) And those ribs were so good. We tweaked the sauce recipe I found and it was so finger licking yummy, we had to restrain ourselves.

I made some potato salad and a BBQ pasta salad (I tried one like it at Fresh & Easy and thought I could make it even better, so I did. It had pasta and black beans and corn and other veggies in a BBQ sauce based dressing. It sounds weird but it was delicious, trust me!) and we made corn on the cob. Then we topped it off with my latest cupcake flavor, Hot Tamale (a cinnamon red hot candy cupcake with bits of hot tamale candy throughout with a vanilla buttercream. Yum) Oh my heck was it all good.

Then we played the new version of "Boom Blox" (our formerly favorite Wii game) "Boom Blox Bash Party". It was a smashing (forgive the pun) good time. It was such an awesome day with my family. I hope your holiday was just as good.

Here are some pictures (my brother was playing with my new camera) of the day.


Val and Will, just chillin'. Val wants to finish her book today. Isn't that a lovely holiday, just kicking back with a good book?


Will and The Graminator, playing Wii. Okay, The Graminator mostly watched, because she prefers Wii bowling.


Screenshot of the new "Boom Blox Blast Party." it was a blast (and isn't the picture cool? I love my new camera! And my brother loves my new camera! I think he took more pictures than I have.)


Apparently we wore the dogs out. They were pooped pooches. All that running in and out of the house, then begging for bits of BBQ. It's exhausting!


Capped off with a cupcake. What a sweet way to end a sweet day. I love inventing new flavors!

Okay, I know it's a holiday, but I have to finish work on my website. It goes into beta test the end of this week. I may select a few Loyal Readers to help me test the site, so watch your inbox. Have a great day!