Sunday Dinner, March 28, 2010

Looks like most of the storms are over, so I'll try to get this typed and posted just in case there are more storms on the way.

As you might surmise from my Sunday Dinner graphic, I'm cooking a pot of white beans and ham hocks for Sunday Dinner this week. White beans are also known as Great Northern beans to some of you.

I'm also going to make some macaroni and tomatoes and either HOMEMADE BUTTERMILK CORNBREAD or HOMEMADE PANBREAD to accompany the beans. I have plenty of garden green beans in the freezer, so I may also cook some green beans and ham to round out the meal.

So, a typical Southern home cooked meal for us this week for Sunday Dinner. What's for Sunday Dinner at your place this week? Share your plans/menu in the comments if you'd like to participate this week.As I mentioned earlier, we've been experiencing some Spring thunderstorms this evening. They were severe for a while but by the time they reached us they were mainly just loud with lots of lightning and rain, but not too intense.

Spring in Arkansas generally means waves of storms every few days, with a couple of days of beautiful sunny warm weather in between the storms that bring cooler weather for a day or so. This weather pattern usually persists until the heat of Summer takes hold for good, sometime in June in most years. However, we have storms and tornadoes year round, even in Winter. Some of our most violent and destructive tornadoes have occurred in Winter.

Spring continues to burst out all over here in Arkansas. All manner of trees, shrubs, Spring bulbs and flowers are blooming now, and the trees and shrubs are beginning to leaf out in earnest. Our daily high temps are ranging from the upper 50'sF to the upper 70'sF and our nightly low temps from the upper 30'sF through the 40'sF.

If we have several dry days, the local farmers are straining at the bit to get in the fields and prepare them for Spring planting. Our average last date of frost is April 15th, but sometimes they can get away with planting before that, and local gardeners have already planted early cool veggies such as radishes, lettuce, potatoes, onions, turnips and other greens, and even some cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower, though they may have to be covered if we have more freezing weather.JESSICA and Jason are officially back together. They spent a couple of days this past week moving Jason's belongings from his apartment in Jonesboro to Jessica's apartment here in Bay. Since they're combining households again, they had to make some decisions on what to keep and what to give away.

One of Jessica's friends that she graduated high school with had a house fire this week, and lost everything. Jessica and Jason gave Heather and her parents several things to help them start over, and I'm proud of them for their generosity.

I have to say, it never even occurred to me that Heather's family could use Jessica and Jason's extra stuff. I should be ashamed to admit that, I think, but it honestly never even crossed my mind.

Jessica, Jason and Emmy seem to be ecstatic to be back together as a family, and I'm praying they can make things work this time. Thanks to all of you who have been praying for them and keeping them in your thoughts, and please continue. They're going to need all the help they can get to make their relationship work.It's getting late and I still have lots to do before bedtime, so I'm going to wish everyone a blessed Sunday. May God meet all your needs and may you have enough to share.