Sariah's Corner of the World

We had our little 7 year old neighbor friend, Shaynee, spend the afternoon and evening with us while her parents went hunting. Shaynee is an only child and she loves coming over to our house because there is always something going on and someone to play with. That night the kids had a great time creating forts, being silly, and making a mess together: cutting and pasting, glittering and gluing for hours, making books and creating decorations to hang from the ceiling and windows. At one point Shaynee came giggling over to show me a long white string taped to her bum and a sign on her back that said "Kick me! I'm a mouse or a rat!!"

Since Shaynee was staying for dinner, I thought it would be festive to make a dinner-in-a-pumpkin meal. Years ago I made this dinner and I wasn't too impressed because it was very bland and tasteless. So this time I combined a bunch of recipes from the internet and added some of my own ingredients trying to spice it up a bit. It turned out pretty tasty! To the regular ingredients of hamburger, cream of chicken and rice I added: minced garlic, cayenne, diced celery, onions, kale and various hot peppers sauteed in butter. My picky kids ate it pretty well, though they didn't want the pumpkin flesh part added to their rice. Sometimes kids just don't know what they're missing! (The leftover cooked pumpkin was fed to the chickens- they don't like raw pumpkin, but they will gobble it up when it is cooked)