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Lake Dinners 2013

Just like last year, we all picked up some days to make dinner for the fam while at the lake last week.  These are all great ideas if you need to feed a crowd (and have some leftovers).  

Saturday Mom & Dad treated us to pizza at Chicago Brothers Pizza Pub.  They didn't mess up my order this year so I was a happy camper and the pizza was delicious.  Although, I always seem to be the last one to finish my beer so as everyone walked out of the restaurant I grabbed Dad's arm and asked him to wait with me as I chugged the rest of my beer.  Classy.

Then we headed to the grocery store.  Heyyyyyyy lots of food!  They had a cute car for the grocery cart so Charlie was entertained.
yes, we brought our own bags and only had to use the one Jeff is holding

Sunday Mom & Dad enjoy tamales from a lady at their farmer's market sometimes so they thought it would be fun to bring a bunch along for dinner.  (They were 50¢ each!  That's a steal in case you were wondering.)  They ordered chicken, beef, pork, spinach, & corn.  And they were delicious.  
This meant I only had to worry about sides for my night of cooking (and heating up the tamales, which was very easy and I used the stacking in a pot with some water at the bottom approach).  The sides were spanish rice, bean salad, and fruit salad.  Everyone was suspicious of the bean salad and then it was a hit.  Bam.

Monday Mom made lasagna and Karen made some pasta without meat for me.  She put some red peppers and mushrooms with noodles and sauce.  Then she put together some salads and my aunt made some delicious homemade strawberry sherbet.

Tuesday My aunt and uncle had a grill night.  They brought hot dogs, brats, and kebobs from a local meat market/butcher shop.  They also heated up some beans (did you know you can just put the cans on the grill while you cook your meat?) and had cold pasta salad along with homemade ice cream.  
Hopefully you're getting the idea we ate very well.

Wednesday Jeff & Greta put together a hobo dinner night.  They chopped up a bunch of veggies like cabbage, zucchini, onion, red & green peppers, squash, frozen hash brown potato things we all picked what we wanted and how much.  I think they added beef patties or sausage too.  Then we added seasoning to our foil packets and closed it up for the grill.
Delicious.
Then Greta made her delicious peanut butter pie.  

Thursday Jeff & Greta were up again with stackable salads.  They had lettuce for the base and toppings like cheese, sour cream, kidney & black beans, pico de gallo, guacamole, lime & cilantro rice, tortilla chips, and chicken.  You could choose what you wanted and add it to your plate.  
Greta also made a lemon graham cracker dessert to go with dinner.
a small portion of the toppings 

Friday Mom & Dad treated us to dinner at Braxter's (apparently #3 restaurant at the lake ;) and right on the water).  
We were on the other side of the lake for dinner so the ride home Mom & Dad filled me in on how things used to be.  Since I don't remember a lot about our annual trips to the lake growing up I found it all very interesting.  
I really only remember the slide one of the places we stayed had on the dock and we went down over and over into the lake.

It all worked out perfectly for us!

p.s. dinners from last year

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  2. You forgot to mention that I was the perfect assistant with the tamales!

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