The Big Benford Show

Well, we’re in October and I’m not sure how much cooking I’ll be doing. Life gets pretty busy and even on Sundays, there isn’t a whole lotta time to cook. :/ I did find a good website for healthier cooking called Eat Better America and made the Chicken Pot Pie recipe from there last night. No pictures but goodness, it was YUMMY!!

Back to marching band - I have our contest times to post. Hopefully, you can make it to the UIL Region Marching Contest on October 17 and support the SPHS Tiger Band. We perform 3rd - warm up is at 4:20, with the performance at 5:00 pm. This contest will be at the RRISD Athletics Complex (The Palace). Hopefully, the rest of the marching schedule will be on the UIL Region 26 website soon. We just got the schedule in our emails yesterday….

Our final marching contest for the season will be the Sam Houston State University Marching Festival in Huntsville. We decided to go because there will be some great bands there and its format is much like UIL Area (prelims/finals). We are really trying to change the mindset of our band that it’s not over at UIL Region so on our “off years”, we’ll be participating on contests post-Region like this one. If you’re in the Huntsville area and can come support us (we’ll probably have a very small following with the distance from home being as it is), we’ll be performing in prelims on Saturday, October 24 at 5:15 (warm up at 4:30).

We did host and perform the CenTex Marching Showcase last weekend. It went well again and we got lots of positive feedback from the participants about the showcase. Had fun hanging out with the judges as well. Our rating was Superior and our percussion won a Outstanding Percussion award. Because we host the contest much like a UIL Region Marching Contest, we are able to perform as a full participant, not just exhibition. Good times!

I’ve been going to Whole Foods on Sundays to see my mom (and get a wonderful massage!!!) and while I’m there, I find something to inspire Sunday night dinner, which always leads to yummy leftovers for lunch later in the week (or freeze for later later). This particular Sunday, I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to make so I wandered Whole Foods (and the internet) for a “secret ingredient” that would inspire the recipe for dinner. My first thought was cioppino but once I looked up a recipe or two online, I decided it was too much for a spur of the moment meal. I still wanted the seafood so I decided on seafood spaghetti. Here’s how I made it:

I started by chopping and sauteing an onion and several cloves of garlic.

From there, I cleaned the shrimp, cut the hallibut into bite sized pieces and made sure my scallops were all nice and clean.

In extra virgin olive oil, I saute the seafood.

I added in some more flavorings, including white wine, red pepper flakes, Italian seasoning and of course, butter.

I had a beautiful heirloom tomato so I chopped it up and added it in for a bit of color and added flavor.

And here’s the final product over noodles and topped with fresh grated cheese.

If you try it, hope you enjoy it as much as I did!!
~C