Chicken Salad Veronique

It is almost the long Labor Day weekend. The weather finally gets better now. It will be cooler around 70F, sunny and dry. Have some friends in town to visit and we mostly will try kick back and relax. We might go to see the Wisconsin Highland Game this weekend as well. I volunteered for that event last year as a first aid provider and it was quite fun. Only two heat related problems as I could recall.

Last night, I tried to make a new dish, Chicken Salad Veronique. Roast the chicken with olive oil, salt and pepper. Once it is done and cool. Then toss the chicken with fresh green grapes, celery, tarragon leaves, mayonnaise, salt and pepper. It turned out very good and delicious!

Well, hope y'all have a nice long weekend!

Lunar Eclipse This Morning

I still feel tired after getting up at 4:30am this morning to watch the lunar eclipse. The sky was actually not very clear and the cloud covered the moon from time to time. But I did get a good 20-minute observation of the moon eclipse. It was kind of interesting experience. However, I am tired and yawning now.

Gree Bay Visit

Finally, it is a sunny weekend. Went to Green Bay to help friends' daughter moving back to college. She has several big boxes, luggage, TV, clothes and a refrigerator. Lots of heavy stuffs to carry from the parking lot and walked almost 2 blocks to her dorm, and up to 3 floors. Fortunately, it was a small size of the refrigerator so i could carry it all the way by myself. I don't think I need to go to gym tomorrow. Guess I should not let people know that I lift weight and quite strong. :)


On the way back to Milwaukee, we stopped by one of the grocery store, Larry's Piggly Wiggly. Somehow, the name of that chain store always makes me smile. :)

Red Cross Volunteer Work

It has been almost 7 years since I started to volunteer for the American Red Cross in Southeast Wisconsin. I am part of the FAST (First Aid Service Team). We provide the first aid service for lots of local festivals such as summerfest, Fiesta Italian, German Fest, Irish Fest, etc. We also work for most of the fund-raising walk/ride such as MS Walk, Miller Lite Ride For the Arts, or AIDS walk. Most of those activities happen on the weekends of the summer so I spend lots of my weekends in the festival ground in the Milwaukee lakefront.

I talked a little bit about my volunteer work in my old post, Me And Summerfest. It is really a great way to know more people and also contribute back to the community. Of course, it does not hurt that I can enjoy those festivals without paying the entrance fee after my shift. I really to learn more of the medical skills and get to practice them. Most of the time, all we got was just small bruise or band-aid condition. A little more exciting case would be drunk or heat problem. Personally, I really don't like to deal with the drunk victim. They often will puke all over you if you don't pay attention to the condition. Usually, the newbie is usually asked to deal with it. I think remember that a victim vomit on my sneakers during my first volunteer year. It was just too nasty so I had to throw that pair of sneakers away. Nowadays, I will always warn the new volunteer about that. It is also fun to work with EMT, Paramedics and Bell ambulance during those festivals.

Through the years, I got more trainings and became the CPR instructor as well. Now I can help train the newcomers to certify for the professional rescuer CPR/AED. It really makes the summer more interesting. Well, it looks like that I will have to work for Mexican Fest tonight. Hope that it stops raining so the festival can have decent crowd. Have a nice weekend!

Coconut Cake For Rainy Day

It is getting annoyed that we have heavy down pouring rain everyday. It has been very hot and wet recently. Today is the 5th day with the thunderstorm/rain and the temperature is around 85 degree. I almost think I am back to Florida. But it even did not rain continuously so many days back to my days in Florida.

Anyway, due to the rainy weather, I decided to make a cake and devote it to the blog friend, Jimmy. It is a coconut cake with vanilla pudding filling and vanilla-whip cream frosting. However, since Jimmy was actually living quite far away and a bunch of my friends stopped by coincidentally when the cake was done, a big piece was already gone before I could even take a picture. And the whole cake disappeared in less than one hour. Guess everybody must be pretty hungry and boring in this wet rainy day. Hope the rain stops soon.

Rush Hour 3

Okay, I admit that I have seen way too many movies this summer. However, it has been raining since yesterday noon so I could not go running outdoor as I planned to. Naturally, to see a movie would come as the best option in such a rainy day. It took a while to decide between "Stardust" and "Rush Hour 3". As usual, a comedy usually won.

"Rush Hour 3" is pretty much using the same formula as the previous two, that is, Chris Tucker's funny jokes plus Jackie Chan's ass-kicking actions. It has some funny moments and good action sequences, especially, the final Eiffel Tower fighting scenes. And the surprising cameo of Roman Polanski as a French cop is actually quite funny. However, it does show a little bit of getting old for this series of the movies. The storyline is just silly and sometimes does not even make sense. But as an entertaining summer movie, I will give it a thump up. At least, I think it is much better than the "Superbad", which I think it is really super bad. If you want a 2-hour of relaxed fun movie time, give "Rush Hour 3" a try.