Many years ago, when my husband and I were newlyweds, my husband was in the army and we were stationed in Germany!  It was a marvelous experience for us and while we lived there, we made some wonderful friends.  We stayed in touch with them for awhile, but then somehow lost each other.  Luckily, one of my sons feels very strongly about keeping connections with people, so he searched online and got us back in contact with each other.  It has been wonderful to reconnect.  
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      One of the couples in our group owns a timeshare and they have been generous enough to invite us to stay with them in various timeshare resorts every year and a half or so !  In the past, we have stayed in Park City Utah and in Lake Tahoe California.  And, if you were wondering why the blog has been silent for the last week or so, it is because we were on another of these reunion trips and this time it was to the Sun Valley Resort area of Ketchum, ID! 
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     To be honest, I never really found out if there was a distinction between what was Ketchum and what was Sun Valley. They seemed to run together and when we asked locals, it still didn't become clear, so I tend to use both names interchangeably.  
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     Idaho is a beautiful state with so much to do!  There are mountains and trails for hiking and biking.  There are rivers and lakes for fishing.  In the winter, Sun Valley is a well known ski resort.  The town of Ketchum is adorable with all sorts of little shops and restaurants.  The people are friendly and what stood out to me about them is they all seem very fit!  There are bikes everywhere for sight-seeing and the cars are very good about sharing the road with bikes and walkers.  Let me give you a run down of what our week there looked like.

Food:
The wives in our group got together on a group chat before leaving on the trip and planned out the meals.  We prepared the food in the condo and only ate out for one dinner and for one breakfast the entire week.  That saved us a lot of money, plus, we could accommodate our tastes and preferences.  We didn't suffer from a lack of food!  We really had fun with it! Here is what our dinner menu looked like:

      A few other notes about the food:   We decided that we would all be on our own when it came to preparing breakfasts and lunches.  We each brought things like oatmeal, eggs, bread, muffins, bagels and we all shared, but fixed what we wanted each day.  It worked out just great.  
      Also, we generally make or bring treats to share for dessert, such as cookies and brownies.  There is never a reason to be hungry when we are together! 

     Of course, since this is a reunion for us, the thing that we loved doing the most was laughing, talking and reminiscing together! Each night we would pull out a game that we brought along and have some fun competition, often the men against the women in a game Sequence!  Here are games we enjoyed:

The Weather:
     Because Sun Valley is a well known ski resort, that is what most of the condos are set up for.  There are heaters and fireplaces, but no AC.  You simply need to open your windows in the summer to get a cool breeze.  for my husband and I, the weather that barely reached the 90s most of the week, the temperatures were perfect.  Afterall, we live in Phoenix, AZ.  But, for our friends who are from Wyoming and Georgia, they felt like it was way too hot!  They brought along fans to help keep themselves cooler.  Some days, walking around the town was a bit warm, even for us Arizonans! 
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     We loved our trip to Sun Valley/Ketchum!  It was so relaxing and so much fun!  The views were amazing and did I mention that there was a creek that ran right outside our bedroom deck?  Unfortunately there was road construction going on that drowned out the sound of the running water, but before and after the work shifts and on Sunday, it was beautiful!  Most of all, how can you beat being with really good company?  

     The other day I was hosting a little lunch with my grandson and his mom.  I was excited to make something delicious that my grandson would be able to eat all of.  He doesn't eat chemicals in his food, or processed sugars, so that meant I was making everything from scratch.  Plus, he is 2 1/2 years old, so there is that!  I debated and debated what to make, and finally, the evening before the lunch date, I decided on Hawaiian Haystacks!  Those things are delicious, the ingredients are all whole food and Logan would be able eat each element separately if he wanted to.  
      My version of Hawaiian Haystacks starts with rice and shredded chicken.  You top that with a gravy made from cream of chicken soup, or a white sauce version from scratch.  Then you add all sorts of toppings like tomatoes, green onions, bell peppers, pineapple, coconut...use your imagination!  Crunchy chow mien  noodles finish it all off.  (Logan couldn't eat those, I'd forgotten to read the ingredients on that package.)  But, my main problem was I didn't have any shredded chicken on hand and I knew I wouldn't have chicken that I could shred ready between breakfast and lunch in my crock pot!  But, guess what!  Instant Pot to the rescue!  In about 35 minutes, from start to finish, I was able to turn out some delicious shredded chicken to use in our Haystacks, and also enough to freeze for later! I'm sharing my recipe with you today. 

      This year in my garden, I had so many volunteer pumpkin plants come up!  The seeds were 2 years old, so I didn't think they would grow. I didn't bother finding all of them amidst my soil and doing anything about them.  I figured that any old seeds would simply become compost.  I planted squash in that plot.  But when plants began to sprout up, there were many more squash looking sprouts than I had planted!  I was afraid to thin too many because I didn't want to pull out the squash that I wanted to grow!  Unfortunately, that is what I did though.  I wrote a post about my pattypan squash that talks about this as well.  The outcome of this adventure was that I harvested a total of 3 or 4 pattypan squash and over 15 pumpkins! 
      Of course, the pumpkins are actually a blessing as well as a surprise and I have been putting them to good use.  My pumpkins aren't those little sugar pumpkins that they sell in the stores for pies, but I wasn't going to let these go to waste, so I have been processing them and using them and let me tell you, they taste really good!