New park and new veggie

I made it over to Solfisburg Park yesterday. It isn't much. Actually it is just three ball fields. When I played for Platt Electric in Aurora Boys Baseball, I played on Frett Field and when I was in high school I played on the other field (I don't know the name, but Aurora University now calls it their home field.).

This is the field that I played at in high school. I have a bunch of good memories playing on this field.


After stopping by Solfisburg, I stopped by a nearby grocery store that I hadn't been before.While in there, I walked through the produce section for quite awhile. I was trying to find something that I hadn't tried before that looked like something I would want to try. The interesting part to this trip was that everything in the store was in spanish. After enough strolling around, I picked up another cactus looking thing. I brought it home, checked out what it was and found it to be a leaf of aloe vera. Unfortunately, that is not something that is regularly edible. I was actually hoping to have an ailment to be able to use it, but unfortunately, I'm good right now. Oh well, at least I got to try out some of my spanish I have been studying. ( I take my final tomorrow for my class I have been taking this summer.)
On a side note, it baffled me to see people picking out green prickly pears by the bag full. I wanted so bad to ask them what they use them for. From my experience, they were not so good. I would be interested to see what they did with them.

Tonight for dinner, I prepared an interesting mix. Initially, I was going to just grill hot dogs and asparagus, but Melissa found a recipe for eggplant that looked pretty good. The recipe called for the eggplant to be sliced and topped with spaghetti sauce, mozzarella cheese, parmesan cheese, and basil. It was really good! I could have cooked it a little longer to make it a little more tender, but I thought it was pretty tasty.
I would definitely make these again!

61. Visit every park in Aurora

Tonight I had the girls while Melissa went out with friends from church. I took care of dinner, then went over to visit our neighbor Sharyn. I then thought it would be nice to go out for a jog. So, I strapped the girls into the stroller, put on my running shoes and headed out. There is a park that is about 3/4 of a mile away so I went out fast. (I know, not that far away, but the girls can't take too much in the stroller.) I headed over to Wilder Park. It is the front park just in front of the current Aurora Police Station. This is more of a grassy area than a park, but it was nice to walk around there. I found out that Wilder is the last name of the guy that donated a bunch of land to the city back in the 1800s. He build the first school and was a major businessman that helped to get the city of Aurora started. He was also a veteran from the War of 1812. Now that's the kind of information that I will really never need in my life! Here are a few pictures from the trip tonight:



Here the girls are in front of the Vietnam Memorial.


This is what Maddie's "Cheese" face looks like. You've gotta love it!

Wilder Park is absolutely nothing special, but it is a well kept park that serves as the front lawn of the Police station. 3 more parks to go. I'm hoping to get to all of them before the school year starts. 3 weeks left!

22. Eat 5 new fruits or vegetables and learn how to prepare them

I finally got to try something I have been interested in trying for awhile, the prickly pear cactus. A couple years ago, my eye caught them and I wondered what you would do with them and how you would eat them. I have been interested in trying them, but never knew what I would do with them if I bought one and took it home. Well, the other day I stopped by a spanish grocery store and surveyed the produce section. I picked up something labeled "tunas". I had no idea what it was, but it looked like something I might want to try. When I got home, I looked up "tunas" under google and all that came up were misspellings for tuna fish. A few pages in, I found tunas under spanish foods. It was listed as a prickly pear cactus. How convenient.
I looked up how to prepare prickly pear cactus and came up with this. I followed the directions and came up with these photos.

The beginning supplies needed:

First step is to cut off the ends:


After cutting off the ends, you make a slit across the outside and then just roll off the peel. It was pretty easy to do.
Here is the fruit after removing the peel.
I cut up the fruit into four pieces to make it easier to eat. The little black flecks you see in the picture are seeds. The website said that they were edible.
This picture shows what was left when I was done eating. Yep three full slices and a majority of the fourth piece. I went into it thinking I would eat the seeds, but my mouth wouldn't let me swallow the seeds as they were all pretty hard. I would compare them to the hardness of apple seeds. Not very edible.
I have to say, I was a little disappointed with this fruit. I was expecting something better tasting. I know it is a cactus fruit, how much taste would you expect. This tasted like a cucumber. I am glad that I now know what these are and how they taste, but overall, I am pretty sure I won't be grabbing for one of these again. There are many other tastier options out there.
Two more fruits or veggies to try!

22. Eat 5 new fruits or vegetables and learn how to prepare them

Today during my snack time, I decided it was time for me to try to figure out how to cut and eat a mango properly. I have tried it a couple of times before, but have had terrible results. All times before involved far too many juices covering my hands. I knew what I was doing was not the right thing, but I didn't really know what to do. I decided to go to the best place I knew to find out information on how to do stuff. I went to youtube.com. I searched "how to cut a mango properly" and came up with this link. After viewing it, I went and found a sharp knife and got to work.

Here's all I needed to complete this task. A cutting board would have worked just as well, but I needed the lip on the plate as there was quite a bit of juice.



Here's what it looked like after my first four slices. Two big slices and two smaller ones. It still seems to me that there is a lot of wasted fruit, but that is how everyone else does it. (after finishing, I explored the core and found that there really wasn't much lost, it just looks like a lot)

After slicing the fruit part away from the peel, this is what I have left. I was very happy with what I had left as it wasn't a huge mess. All previous attempts up to this point seemed to have more juice than fruit.
This was the final step. In previous attempts, I had mutilated the mango, this time it went just fine. There was a bit of extra juice, but I think for my first attempt with proper direction, I did pretty well.
I enjoyed it, but think that there are plenty of other fruits I would want to eat before the mango. Too much work for me.

8. Read a book about raising a godly daughter

I finally finished my book Raising Unselfish Children in a Self-Absorbed World. The book is by Jill Rigby. Melissa bought this book for me long ago as a birthday present. I have started and stopped reading it multiple times. So many times actually that in this last time, I started from the beginning as I had forgotten a lot of what it had said. Hopefully my memory will be much better after finishing the book.
It was a really good book. I told Melissa that she should read it now that I am done. It gives a ton of practical things to do while raising kids to show them that the world is not all about them. I really appreciated the stories that were in the book that shared how she, or other people she "knew", taught their kids to think of others rather than themselves. I think that is the ultimate goal I would want my kids to be at. Hopefully with what I have read, I can put it into practice.

81. See all of the Oscar winning best picture movies from my lifetime (back to 1981)

I'm done!
This goal took me awhile to complete. It was definitely not one that could be done in a day. I have had plenty of posts so far: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
I just finished watching Silence of the Lambs. After watching for a few minutes, I realized I had watched it before, but I had to watch it as I have watched each movie including ones I had seen before.
While I know it generated a lot of controversy in the discussions so far on this blog, but the movie wasn't as bad as people made it out to be. It did have some pretty scary parts. I will admit, I wasn't totally excited about taking Sammy outside after the movie, but I wasn't as freaked out as I had expected.
I'm glad this goal is done. I saw a bunch of movies that I am happy I got to see, but there were definitely some that I could care less if I ever hear about again in my life.
Another goal down!

22. Eat 5 new fruits or vegetables and learn how to prepare them

I made dinner tonight. I hadn't planned on it until today when I was at Jewel in the produce section and decided to look around to see if there was anything I should try out. I made it around to the portabella mushrooms and thought I would give them a try. I'm not sure if they qualify as a vegetable (probably not) but I think it fits close enough into this goal. I had never had them and thought it would be fun to put them on the grill and try out a Portabella Burger. I also grabbed some asparagus to throw on the grill. I rounded it out with some toasted bruschetta. I figured it was a complete meal. Check it out.
The bruschetta was good, the asparagus was good. The portabella mushroom burgers weren't so great. Melissa almost finished it, but with two bites left she said she was full. I on the other hand didn't make it that far. I did give them a fair shot, but I couldn't get over the weird texture. I've heard that they are very similar to eating real burgers, but anyone who has ever said that is totally wrong. It is nothing like that. It was a lot more chewy. I gave it a shot and now know how to properly oil and season a portabella mushroom. Here's my plate when I was done.
I gave it two tries. That was enough. At least now I can say that I've tried them.