Dee Sanchez in her backyard

View of part of Dee’s backyard

One of many neat birdhouses in Dee’s yard

The initial day at the Balloon Fiesta parking lot where we will hang for 2 weeks, there came about 8-9 hardcore balloon folks in their Lazy Daze. They moved us this year. The previous location is being taken over by Prevost folks – something like 100 of them.  So where did they move us? Further west to the front corner near that big white tank (water?) and the dumpsters. We have the entire area in front of the volunteers. No more hassles with traffic. Its like we have our own private section.  Everyone seems delighted with our new spot.

And more are coming in

And more

a fraction of the group shows up for happy hour this night

We have 38 rigs coming in.  The show starts on Saturday… and the fun will continue.  I’m meeting all kinds of folks I’ve heard of but not met, some I’ve never heard of or met and a bunch I have met over the last year and its great to see everyone once again.

The food is typical – which means its exceptionally delicious!  An example… yesterday, I thawed out 2 lbs of dungeness crab to make a crab dip.  As I worked on this, it grew and grew and grew and I thought, egads Melinda, you’re not feeding an army.  So I tried to cut it in half, funny thing – I had no room in my fridge to store the half.  So I just made the whole thing.  I stored it in the groups ice cooler until happy hour.  Feeling like it was a major overkill of sharing, and I hadn’t even sampled it to know if it was good.  Happy hour starts… I pulled that big mixing bowl of crab dip out of the cooler, set it on the table….and like bees to honey – the dip disappeared before my eyes and not even half of the group was present. Wow!  I did finally sample it and realized I missed one ingredient – horseradish. No one seemed to mind. There was a ton of interesting and delicious foods presented for happy hour.  No way could I go eat dinner after this.

I bought a Sun Oven, had done the seasoning of it two days ago. So yesterday, as I was working on the dip – I offered it up to Frank and Cookie to make something if they wanted to. They pulled together a dump cake of sorts.  So I got it preheated – took about 35 minutes to get it to 350ºF, put the cake in and waited.  At the time they said it normally takes in a conventional oven, it wasn’t quite ready in the Sun Oven. So we left it in for another 10 minutes.  It was delicious!  So want to try something else now, but can’t decide with all the options.  The couple I learned about this last year, is coming in today. Can’t wait to quiz them.  I’m already loving my Sun Oven.