After The Fact

Here's a couple of pictures from our Thanksgiving.

My turkey turned out quite well, if I say so myself!

Here's my plate. Turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, rolls, and shrimp/crab tomato aspic. (I'll give the recipe for the aspic next week.) Notice anything missing? (There's nothing green on the plate.)

I had made a 24 hour salad but since some potential guests ended up not coming we decided we had quite enough food. And since I forgot to make the salad the night before and actually made it Thanksgiving Day morning we decided to let the salad go for the whole 24 hours. (We had it tonight and it was very good.)

I had to include a couple of pictures of the baby, of course. She had eaten already and we were still getting our food ready so we had to occupy her some how. We set up the computer so she could see it, clicked on Hulu.com and turned on SpongeBob SquarePants.

It just cracks me up how mesmerized she was!
It's obvious that she loves SpongeBob.

Today Grampa babysat while Carli, my sister, and I went for a horseback ride. Roberta, the owner of the stable, took our picture for her blog. Click here to see.

I hope you all are enjoying the holiday weekend too.

Happy Thanksgiving

Have a great Thanksgiving! Try not to over eat. Ha Ha!!!!

How To Pack Groceries & Children

Just look how happy she is back there in the trunk with all the groceries.

Actually I didn't really drive home from the grocery store with her in the trunk! That is not recommended! She crawled in there at the store as I was unloading the cart and didn't want to get out. Another lady walking by suggested it was "picture perfect" and I thought of my blog, since news has been a little sparse around here lately.

And speaking of that, there probably won't be much to report on this week, what with the holiday coming up, cooking to be done, babysitting, etc.

Try and relax! (I know, I know. Sometimes that's easier said than done.)

Chiles Rellenos

This year my husband and I will mark our 30th anniversary. He's had this Sunset Mexican Cook Book longer. I couldn't even find a date on it for when it was published. Notice the pages are no longer bound. But I would never dream of throwing this book out because it has some great recipes.

When my husband was much younger and working the mean streets of Bakersfield he would occasionally stop in late nights to a Mexican restaurant on Baker Street where he would have a dinner of chiles rellenos. He learned from the Sunset book how to make the stuffed chiles and the puffy coating, and from the restaurant staff how they eat their rellenos. So this is how we do it now.

We start out with a can of whole green chiles, drained; a small block of Monterey Jack cheese, cut to about 1/2" X 1/2" slices, just shorter than the chiles; 3-4 eggs, separated; 1/4 t salt; 3 T flour + some for dusting; 1 T water; vegetable oil for frying. Flour tortillas, salsa, and chopped green cabbage and cilantro are for finishing.

Carefully place the cheese into the chiles.
Beat the egg whites to form stiff peaks.

Beat the yolks with the water, flour, and salt until thick and creamy.

Carefully fold the yolks into the whites.

Heat about 1 1/2" oil in a pan to medium heat. Sprinkle a little flour over the chiles to help the coating stick. Then carefully dip the stuffed chiles into the batter and gently slide into the heated oil.

Cook about two to three minutes each side, then drain on paper towels.

This is the part my husband learned from the restaurant staff. Chop green cabbage with cilantro.

Place a relleno on a warmed flour tortilla, sprinkle with the cabbage mixture and your favorite salsa.

Roll it into a burrito.Enjoy!

Sugar High

Sunday was the baby's second birthday. We decided to make cupcakes instead of a big cake. This isn't going to be a recipe because we used a box. We did end up making our own frosting, but it was a simple cream cheese frosting.

The baby was clean when we started, but as you can imagine, we let her "help" and she wasn't clean for long.

Mixing the batter.

Making sure it's good.
It is!
Here she is blowing on the cupcakes to help cool them so we can frost them.

Like I said, we made a simple cream cheese frosting and split the batch in two. One was colored with neon purple and the other with a neon green.

Helping with the clean up.
And here she is helping with the decorations.

Granpa Mario stopped by with a gift. He took a bunch of photos and here she is admiring one of them.

The finished cupcakes.
Since Granpa Mario was there we went ahead and sang Happy Birthday.

Granpa Mario had to leave then and we decided to go ahead and open presents, since it was still too early for dinner. Here she is looking into the bag he brought.

She got cool new boots and a sweatshirt from him.
From us she got two new books, some hair clips,
and a nice warm winter jacket for the chillier days.
Then we finally had the cupcakes.

Of course by this time she already had quite the sugar rush going so this was really the last thing she needed, but oh well, it was her birthday! And besides, she wasn't spending the night at our house (ha ha!).

All in all I'd say we had a very successful second birthday party for our baby!

The Start Of The Terrible Twos?

Today was the baby's second birthday and we made cupcakes for desert and my husband made chili relenos for dinner. I'll post the cupcake pictures tomorrow and the chili releno recipe the next day.

Happy Birthday, Baby Girl! We ♡ you!

Horseback Ride With Carli

Today was a very satisfying day for me.

It started out with both of my kids being off work. I took advantage of that to drag them out with me to the cross country jump area to drag some rail road ties around and make a new jump or two and maybe sturdy up a few of the jumps already there.

When we were done with that Carli said she wanted to go for a ride so we came back home, hitched up the trailer and brought Flora out to the stable. As soon as I pulled up I realized I forgot my tack room key. We called Wil to bring the key and about 20 minutes later he pulled up. It cost me a tank of gas for his truck.

Carli brought the little camera so we could record our adventure.

She was in charge of carrying the camera.

Maybe I should have taken control of the camera. Yikes!

Unfortunately the batteries in the camera ran out. Unfortunately they didn't run out before that unfortunate shot was taken. ☹

Next time I will take control of the camera.

Veteran's Day 2009

None For Me, Thank You

We almost ordered take-in the other day, and had a hard time deciding exactly where to order from and what to get.

We changed our minds after checking out this menu from a local Thai restaurant. (Click on the picture to enlarge.)

For the beef balls and fish balls, do they mean of the rocky mountain oyster type? Must be difficult to get off the fish... (80, 83, 85)

What exactly is "hand-pilled chicken breast"? Is it Prozac or Vicodin? Does the DEA know about this? (81)

When they say "sick flavored soup" are they targeting the 18-28 year old demographic? (82)

And what kind of balls: ping pong, baseball? (84)

We ended up eating leftovers.

Too Many Boys

It's about that time. Time to thin the flock, that is. The chickens are now about 4 months old, and some of the roosters have started crowing. They've also started asserting their dominance and are creating a pecking order, as it were.

I'm still having a hard time figuring out exactly which are the boys, but some are more obvious than others.

One of the two remaining Speckled Sussex. Not sure if this one is a boy or girl.
A Cuckoo Marans. Pretty sure this is a rooster. I think I'll name him "Stu".
Here's the other Speckled Sussex. She doesn't have much of a tail.
This is the Wheaton Marans rooster I got as an egg off of e-bay.

If I keep any of the roosters it will be him. This isn't the best photo of him, but he is pretty.

I've talked my husband into "taking care" of the roosters for me. After all he is an avid bird hunter and does all that stuff with the doves, quail, and ducks he manages to shoot. The only experience I have with processing an animal is from when I raised and sold rabbits a long time ago. That's a story I just haven't gotten around to telling yet, but eventually I will I suppose.

Here is a picture of my oldest hen. I can't even remember what breed she's supposed to be. I got her from the feed store as a chick. She used to lay brown eggs, but now she just hangs around eating and drinking and trying to stay out of the way of the younger chickens. She has a most unusual comb and I don't know if it's normal or if it is like this because it got injured or it just grew deformed like this.

Click on the pictures to enlarge and you may see what I'm talking about. It looks like it's a tube, with a hole going all the way through. Otherwise, if you don't look closely at her she just looks like a chicken with a cushion comb. Of course I haven't yet picked her up to examine it that closely.

I'll let you know how our first "Stu" goes. I may end up just selling the roosters for a few bucks, but I'm afraid around here that may mean an unkind fate, so I'll have to wait and see.