Going in all directions

It has been a busy week. I've been working in the garden and weeded it again. I also picked a ton of currants. Since I don't really know what I'm going to do with them I put them in the freezer. I'm thinking jelly as long as I don't have to seal it with the wax and all that. What a pain. I need to go looking for some recipes.

Violet's birthday is tomorrow. Today she is at Tinkerbell's house so I made some last minute stops and came home to wrap her presents and make her card. I almost forgot about a cake! We ordered a bakery cake for her party, but it seems a shame to have to wait a week for a cake. So I bought a mix and frosting while I was out.

Tonight I'm going out to meet up with the cookie lady from our area. The one who runs the driving school and took forever to get Violet's dog in. That one. She also hasn't turned in any of her paperwork, including the money for the extra boxes of cookies from the Juliette cases. No money means no J-Bucks for Violet. Grrr. I sit on the product sales committee so when I found all this out I called cookie lady and offered to help get everything turned in. She claimed she had no idea they were waiting for anything at Council. Council claims they've been calling her. Whatever. I just want Violet to get her J-Bucks.

So I'm driving to cookie lady's house tonight and hopefully coming home with money, boxes of cookies, or information on which troops took the boxes for 51 boxes of cookies. The 51 boxes are my main concern, the missing paperwork on the rest of it is secondary (to me). Then next week I'm meeting with the director of product sales at Council before our regular committee meeting and giving her everything I can get tonight. I hope this will all be straightened out quickly.

For her birthday tomorrow Violet wants to go to Chuck E. Cheese. We'll get a bad pizza and she and Mr. Incredible will play a bunch of games. I do like Skee Ball. And she'll have cake and presents here. That sounds easy enough. Her party is next weekend. We've had too many problems trying to have her party on the holiday weekend. Too many friends are out of town or otherwise unavailable.

On the 4th a homeschool family we are good friends with invited us over for a cookout. That was one of my other stops, to get the missing ingredients for the barley and black bean salad I'm going to take.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

* 2 cups water
* 1 cup quick-cooking barley, uncooked
* 1 1/2 cups peeled, seeded, and diced cucumber
* 1 cup chopped tomato
* 1/2 cup minced fresh parsley
* 1 15-ounce can black beans, drained
* 1 clove garlic, minced
* 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
* 2 tablespoons olive oil
* 3/4 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper

Bring water to a boil in a medium saucepan; add barley. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 12 minutes or until liquid is absorbed. Remove from heat; let stand, covered, 5 minutes.

Combine barley, cucumber, and next 4 ingredients in a large bowl; toss well. Combine vinegar and remaining ingredients. Add to barley mixture, tossing to coat.

Except I'm using cherry tomatoes and adding frozen corn and green onions to it instead of fresh parsley and cucumber. So I guess that really isn't the recipe, is it?