FMM - A Little Danger Inside and Outside!

Jeff is half Italian, and because of that, he's always searching for the best spaghetti sauce recipe.  He likes mine (which is homemade but I cheat by adding a package of McCormick's spaghetti sauce seasoning - hey, it's simple and it tastes good), but he's also been interested in cooking more, so who am I to stop that?  He made a sauce on Sunday that came out really good - he used spicy Italian sausage, canned tomatoes, diced onion and garlic, and then added seasonings from the spice drawer.  He wanted to simmer it for several hours, but that's hard to do on our gas stove without having it bubble and pop all over everything.  I guess it takes someone who hasn't been cooking for decades to come up with this, uh...invention, to keep the simmer at the right level so the sauce didn't burn or bubble over:

Why yes, you are looking at three grill grates stacked on top of each other, with the pan of spaghetti sauce on top of that.  Genius?  Dangerous??  Probably a bit of both.

I walked in the kitchen and saw his contraption, and after I took the picture, I lifted the lid to see the sauce simmering beautifully.  Maybe he's onto something - but it's a good thing we don't have small children around who might bump the towering inferno he had going there.

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My mailbox contained an interesting envelope on Tuesday - it was addressed in a child's hand to Student, from Madeline.  Inside, I found a drawing of a fairy ballerina, along with a Spanish lesson:

I love this!  Madeline is our little neighbor across the street; I really don't interact with her except for a wave if we're outside, but this was too adorable.  Of course I had to write her back; we'll see if any more Spanish lessons are in my future.  Oh, and I signed my note with my name and also my "perro Paco" so I hope she knows I'm learning!

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We had one heck of a hailstorm come through on Sunday evening - this was one of the longest, and worst that I've experienced.  I took some pictures - it looked like white rocks and was really pretty, with all of the different shades of white:

 

Our poor plants - they survived the hard freezes of winter only to be pelted by hail in spring!  

The larger piece was bigger than a golf ball - they weren't all that size, but there were plenty of the big ones falling.

Sorry the pictures are a little fuzzy - the hail had stopped and I dashed outside to take some pictures, but the lightening and thunder was still going on, so I had to be quick and get back inside the house.  The hail shredded the trees and our plants - my bougainvillea is pretty beat up, and our patio ended up covered in little sticks and leaves from the trees: 

The next day, everywhere we walked outside was crunchy.

I have a roofer coming out to do an inspection later on this morning - some of my neighbors already have new roof signs in their yard, so I won't be surprised if ours has been damaged enough to need replacing, too.  It's always something...

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Have a great weekend!