Aaron Ewer

One thing that is a big treat for us at holidays is to buy a Honeybaked ham. There are several retail stores in the area and I don’t have to go out of my way very far to buy one.

I’ve enjoyed Honeybaked hams since a former colleague introduced me to them back in the early 1980’s. He threw a huge open house party and had a Honeybaked ham on the buffet table for everyone to serve themselves throughout the evening. By the end of the night that ham bone was picked clean. Forget about any leftovers - everyone loved that ham so much it was gone in hours.

This weekend being Labor Day I’ve been thinking about getting another Honeybaked ham although we have no plans to entertain. I think we’d just like to have it for ourselves so there is less need to cook over the holiday weekend. There will be plenty for sandwiches and even fried slices to serve as a sidemeat for breakfast.

The Honeybaked store has some great side items, like candied sweet potatoes and green bean casseroles. They even have great desserts, like pumpkin pie and carrot cake. I love the food at this store an I’ve pretty much just now talked myself into going to the Honeybaked store tomorrow on my way home from work.

One of the great things about autumn is the bounty of farm harvests and a lot of fall festivals. It must be incredibly satisfying to finally see the results of the tilling, the planting, the fertilizing and the weeding, and watering. and all the care and concern the farmers have spent on their crops.

A lot of farmers in this area grow corn and there has been a relatively new family attraction popping up all over the heartland with picking your own pumpkin, hayrides and now corn mazes.

A family in Virginia has been creating corn mazes since 1999 and each year they get a photo of it from the air so you can see the thought and effort that goes into designing and cutting these complicated mazes. Their farm is called Cows n Corn and if you live within driving distance you might want to mark your calendar for a visit to their working farm in virginia’s Fauquier County and take the kids through their maze - this year’s maze opens on Friday, August 29. If your kids are a little older, have them bring flashlights and go through the maze at night, then stick around for the campfire and hand dipped ice creams.

A story in today’s Chicago Tribune reports that Sonic will be entering the Chicagoland market this year with 4 new drive-in restaurants. That’s great news! What took them so long?

Sonic is headquartered in Oklahoma and is the country’s largest operator of drive-in restaurants, with over 3,000 drive-ins nationwide. SONIC enjoys the highest customer frequency rate in the quick-service restaurant industry.

In 1953, SONIC was founded by Troy Smith and was originally named Top Hat Drive-In, and the name was changed to SONIC in 1959. The prototype of the first SONIC Drive-In opened in Shawnee, Oklahoma and the unique use of curbside speakers to allow customers to place food orders without leaving their cars, was the basis for their slogan of “SONIC, Service with the Speed of Sound.”

They have a special offer of milkshakes for 99 cents - that makes it awfully hard to drive past one without stopping for a different milkshake flavor every day at a bargain price!

One of the best things about summer is that the cantalopes and watermelons are ripe and fresh. I never really knew how to pick a good one from the bins until a buddy showed me how to smell the butt of the melon. If you can smell something just a little sweet or fragrant, then it’s a good one.

Last night we went Krogering and they had a bin of cantalopes that looked pretty good. They are from somewhere in the U.S. but I don’t know where. I’m guessing Texas. I picked one that smelled good and when the wife cut into this morning I was proven right again. This was a great melon - perfectly ripe - not too hard and not yet mushie, and sweet as you could ever want.

Last weekend was a holiday for most people but I had to work all three days, so it wasn’t much of a holiday for me. I did donate to the veterans group selling poppies at the Kroger and I watched fireworks Sunday night courtesy of the lake’s water park, so I had a little bit of celebration. Didn’t get to take advantage of any of the Memorial Day sales at the stores - actually didn’t even get to read the newspaper to see what was on sale until yesterday.

So this weekend we’re going to go shopping and do all the honey-do list items that we can cram into two days. I’ve already checked the internet for discount coupons and my favorite site had some great deals. With the price of gas at $3.85 a gallon, we’re looking harder for ways to save money on other purchases and coupons are an easy way to save with just a little forethought.

We have to buy a baby gift for the new little nephew. Right off I found discount code promotions from Fisher Price, TikeTech, Safety 1st, Kiddopotamus, Evenflo and Kidsline and we’ll be giving that top priority on Saturday morning. The hospitals send new mothers home so quickly now that it is hardly worth ordering flowers for the mother, but I wanted to send something to my sister-in-law on the good chance that they will deliver the flowers this afternoon or at the latest tomorrow morning before she heads home with the baby.

We have to do a lot of yard work on Sunday - there’s little chance of rain and the weeds have taken over parts of the lawn. I’ll get some gardening and lawn care supplies and tackle those chores Sunday morning. If all goes well, I can be finished in time to throw some steaks on the grill and settle down for the NASCAR race in Dover with a couple of cold ones. Or, if the yard work takes too long, we’ll still have the steaks but we’ll cozy up on the couch to watch some movies to wind down.