Handel's Messiah

It is finally here. After months of planning, and many hours of rehearsal, our performances are tonight and tomorrow. We filmed the above yesterday morning. 

EDIT: For anyone stumbling upon this in 2013, our website is at http://samessiah.com, where you can find all the information about our upcoming free performances the first weekend of December.

Menu for the week of 3/19

The strawberry crisp from Sunday night - quick, easy, and delicious!

I had a culinary success on Sunday. Spur of the moment, I decided to invite the extended family over for dinner. I made meatloaf, baked sweet potatoes and regular potatoes (which we ate topped with cottage cheese and pepper), and my brother-in-law made his delicious garlicky green beans. For dessert, I made strawberry crisp. Both the meatloaf and the strawberry crisp got rave reviews! Few things makes me so happy as people enjoying food that I have prepared. 

For this week, here is the menu plan - mostly taking it easy and trying to keep things clean:

Monday: beef fajitas 

Tuesday: ham and cheese roll-ups (sandwiches in a tortilla instead of bread)

Wednesday:  leftover baked potatoes and sweet potatoes, meatloaf (again! It was that good!), green beans

Thursday: taco soup OR taco salad (depends on whether I get lettuce and tomatoes in my produce box on Thursday)

Friday: homemade pepperoni and pineapple pizza (sauce and cheese are in the freezer and I intend to make extra crusts to freeze) and a green salad or crudités

Saturday: pulled pork sandwiches from the freezer

Sunday: pancakes

What are you eating this week? Head over to orgjunkie.com to Meal Planning Monday for more tips and menu ideas.

Ps and Qs of Classical Concert Etiquette

Imagine that you are the biggest name in violin performance. IN THE WORLD. Imagine that you have a concert scheduled for 7:30 pm, but at curtain time, hordes of people are still just barely arriving. As a courtesy to the venue, you agree to wait. You wait. You wait. Finally, at 7:50 pm, you zip onstage. Your collaborative pianist and his page-turner join you onstage, and after acknowledging the audience's applause, you are ready to begin.