Mom saves the day!

I am bringing dinner to some friends tonight. They are having medical issues and it's one less thing for them to have to worry about. I committed to doing this on Saturday. I said I'd do it Monday because it was short notice and it would be hard for the coordinator to get anyone else to do it.

That was fine until this morning. I woke up with a *horrific* lower backache. I have no idea why. So I have been hobbling around the house looking like Quasimodo and not too jazzed about cooking (or anything else, for that matter).

I pondered and pondered, but could not come up with a simple meal that my family and the other family would eat. Other family has a "meat and potatoes" man, so stir fry, tofu, salads, are not going to work.

I called my mom and she suggested a casserole that I LOVED when I was a kid -- and I'm not much of a casserole girl. So I pulled out the ground beef, mixed in some Onion Soup Mix, put it in a round casserole, and added a layer of onions, a layer of sliced potatoes, and a layer of thin-sliced carrots. Topped it off with tomato soup and it'll bake for an hour and a half or so this afternoon. I'm gonna do a loaf of Honey Oat Bread in the bread machine, and we're good to go. I will have my now customary green salad before the meal as well.

Thanks Mom!

And I was absent for the weekend due to a Saturday night fondue party in which I had, to put it delicately, a little too much red wine. Not pretty. You get my drift.

In other news, it appears that Jill Carroll, the freelance journalist in Iraq, is still alive, which is good news. More good news: Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt of ABC are at least stable in a hospital in Germany. But Kennedy and Kerry are threatening a filibuster in the Senate over the Alito confirmation. NOT good news, in my book. I can't say I'm thrilled with Sam, but I don't think the filibuster is the right tactic.

Somebody on CNN mentioned the 80s as the decade where talk radio got big and helped the then-foundering Republican Party to get its act together. The Democratic Party could sure use a shot in the arm of some kind. I don't think Howard Dean is doing them any favors, either. Bleh.