Texas – Page 7 – The Arcadian Experience

Good Day for a Black Wedding

December 10, 2011December 10, 2011Leave a comment

We just got in from a wedding where the bride and groom had a flair for the dramatic. There were echoes of tradition—there was a wedding party with girls on one side and boys on the other. But that’s about where tradition ends. There was a groom’s cookie and a bride’s cake made of cookies, no real cake.

The color theme was black and white, which makes for simple elegance. The decorations were very creative yet inexpensive, but somehow really cool and fitting for a winter wedding. There weren’t any fresh flowers. The bridesmaids carried purses.

The groom wore a white suit, black shirt and tie and black and white wingtips. All he needed was a white Fedora to have the “zoot suit.” The bridesmaids wore black and/or white dresses of various sorts, nothing screamed bridesmaid. The men wore black suits and ties.

And the bride said “to hell” with tradition and wore a black dress—no white here. She also wore Corral vintage inlay boots in black and white, of course. LOVE IT! ( I can relate, I wore a black and red flower print dress for my own wedding.)

I was very impressed with the innovative ways to use sticks and plow discs. Most of the decorations utilized something we have in abundant supply in Arcadia. Mesquite wood– painted black, silver, white and some with a touch of bling.

Mesquite branches used in creative ways.

Antlers, the common ones you find in the back pasture where the carcass is long since decayed, with a black wash on them to accentuate the crevasses. There were shot glasses. I poorly assumed that they were for shots, right? Nope. It’s for a shot of milk to go with your cookie. Jdubs did about 10 milk shooters and wanted to save the glasses for later. It was awesome. The antlers were really cool.

Focus on the awesomeness of this antler--painted silver with a black wash.

Pretty bride in black ... tired, fat lady in red.

The bride, in black, looking fresh as a flower and me (gawd, I need a vacation and a binge diet).

Jdubs wore his Rudolf tie – he insisted on wearing a tie like his daddy.

Head table with creative decorations of mesquite branches.

How many of us have a candelabra in the attic? Whip that bad boy out and spray paint it black and string some bling-- then BOOM.

This center piece really was the coolest. None of those typical arches with garland strung on it. No little white lights. Mesquite branches and bling.

The bride and groom exchanged vows in front of this arrangement. It was huge and beautiful. The photo doesn’t do it justice—it was about 10 feet tall and made of …. You guessed it, mesquite branches. There were crystals, beads and sparkles. It was not traditional, but really pretty, classy and most of all, creative.

Cheers to the Nichols!

Mexican Chocolate Cookies

December 9, 2011December 9, 20111 Comment

This is a gem of a cookie recipe. And the best part is that it’s a “light” recipe. I very first found this recipe in one of my Cooking Light magazines. Cayenne is the secret ingredient, which adds a great punch of complexity that you can’t place, but know it’s what makes it all work. I don’t know what it is, but chocolate and red pepper go so well together.

The key to making this a wonderfully scrumptious recipe is to use really good chocolate. It needs to be bittersweet with 60% cacao minimum. Good brands that are easily available are Ghirardelli, Lindt and Baker’s. Don’t forget to look in the “candy” aisle for the good chocolate.

If you can get to a luxury grocery store, like Central Market, you can find tons of good chocolate. Scharffenberger is the very best American chocolate (HSO). Valharona is overpriced and overrated (another HSO). (HSO=Hot Sports Opinion).

If chocolate is the star of the recipe, use the good stuff. Life is too short for crappy chocolate regardless. For other recipes with Scharffenberger see Chocolate Covered Strawberries.

Just remember mediocre chocolate = mediocre results.

Very respectable American Chocolate from San Francisco.

30-second intervals will keep you from scortching the chocolate.

This is perfectly melted chocolate. Look how shiny and smooth it is.

Cayenne is the perfect complement to chocolate.

You don’t want to pinch cayenne pepper with your fingers. The oils adhere to your skin and God forgive you if you accidentally rub your eye or nose (or any other precious body part with tender skin!). This is the dandiest trick to adding just the right amount of cayenne. Stick your knife into the spice bottle and get a dab on the tip of the knife and add to the dry ingredients. If you would rather use measuring spoons, it will be equivalent to about 1/8 of a tsp.

It’s hard to believe this recipe only has a ¼ stick of butter in it. Just for reference, traditional chocolate chip cookies have 1 cup of butter (4x the butter in this recipe). Believe me, the two greatest flavor-adding ingredients are butter and bacon grease.

I had my favorite sous chef in the kitchen today. I love cooking with my little boy. Hopefully he will know a few recipes by the time he’s 12 or 13 and can be responsible for cooking a meal a week (totally ripped this trick off from Dr. Jen.)

We drank a keg of this and I still love it. (It took us a few weeks to drink the keg, BTW)

It is Friday night, after all. And the best way to keep from eating all the dough is to drink a beer while you work. Beer and cookie dough is a no go.

Tasting the product. Always a good sign in an aspiring chef.

If the dough is good the cookie will be even better.

After 10 minutes in the oven, this is the outcome!

The cookies will have a slight crackling to them. This is perfect. When you break them open, the outer shell should be crispy.

Chocolate awesomeness! Crispy on the outside and chewy, moist greatness inside..

A little dusting of powdered sugar for a festive look … and voíla. Chocolate cookie awesomeness.

Mexican Chocolate Cookies

5 oz. bittersweet chocolate

3.4 oz. all-purpose flour (3/4 cup)

½ tsp ground cinnamon

¼ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

Dash of pepper

Dash of cayenne

1 ¼ c. sugar

¼ c. butter, softened

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Put chocolate in glass bowl and microwave in 30-second intervals, stirring in between, until just melted. Set aside to cool.

Weigh or measure the flour and put in a small bowl. Add cinnamon, baking powder, salt, pepper and cayenne. Give all the dry ingredients a stir.

In a separate (and larger bowl), beat the [soft] butter and sugar. Add the egg and vanilla and continue to beat until just combined. Add the cooled chocolate. Beat for a few more seconds, then add the dry ingredients by stirring it in until just mixed. Use a tablespoon or scoop to drop uniform dollops of dough on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for about 10 minutes, until cookies are just set. When cooked, remove from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Makes 32ish cookies.

Enjoy, Y’all.

Shopping Small

December 7, 2011Leave a comment

This is why I love to shop in my small hometown stores…

1. I can have lunch with my mom for $10 (for both of us).

2. I can pick out my own Christmas presents at the store and they will hold it for my dad, wrap it, then send him the bill.

3. I can pick out Christmas presents on my lunch break and come back later and they are wrapped and ready to go under the tree.

4. I can tell the Jewelers what my mom wants at a party and they will order it the next day and wrap it before I pick it up on Wednesday.

Feeding the Critters

December 5, 2011December 6, 2011Leave a comment

My parents were out of town for a few days at a conference, so we had to take care of “the critters.” Today we woke up to snow and hit the high temperature for the day before noon. It was a wet snow that mostly melted by the afternoon, perfect for snowball fights and snowman building. The ground was too warm for it to stick, but it should be interesting tomorrow.

It wasn't as cold as it looks. Pretty all the same.

My husband went this morning to check on things and feed. I took the afternoon shift.

On my way out to the ranch I saw this pretty oak tree. (this was a southern-facing tree, so no snow).

Oak trees are awesome. I think this one is a post oak. Can't be sure and I wasn't going to find out for sure in my fancy pretty boots.

When I drove up, two of the four horses greeted me. The sun was going down, the wind was blowing and it was starting to get really cold.

Sugar and Bucky. I've always been partial to red roans.

They had to get a closer look …

Bucky (aka McCool) had to see for himself.

Then Sugar had to go and stick her nose in it.

Before anything can happen, I had to change my boots. Pretty, fashion boots to working-hard-rubber boots.

Taking Kelly's advice ... changed my boots before tromping around in wet manure.

My husband said he ran out of feed after the morning rounds. Before I went to the ranch I stopped and got a couple bags of feed (this was when Kelly, at the feed story, passed on friendly advice to change boots. check.). Once I opened the saddle house (aka the tack room) to get the cat food, I found, hmmm curiously, three more bags of feed.

The barn cats are almost feral. Most can be persuaded into a little petting, but a few are very skittish around people except for my dad. He can woo almost any animal into trusting him.

Barn cats are awesome critters. The keep the mice and snakes away.

Although this fluffy Tom cat crawled on top of the saddle house and stared down at me.

Snake-killing Tom Cat says: "I'm not coming down and you can't make me."

The weaning calves were looking for a bite to eat too. They saw me and starting coming briskly to the barn. I gave them an extra dab since the cold was coming on. With an expected low in the lower 20s, a few extra cubes couldn’t hurt.

Sore thumb? Who sticks out like a sore thumb?

This corriente calf looks out of place among the black baldy/Angus calves. We’re currently eating a corriente hybrid out of our freezer—good eats!

Then I went in the house to feed the indoor cats, only to find that they opted out of the litter box 😦

A Gift and a Day of Rest

December 3, 2011December 3, 2011Leave a comment

I’m looking forward to Sunday—a day of rest. It’s just over two hours away as I write this. I’m weary, tired. It’s been a really exhausting week—two major events, three days apart, thousands of people. Showing up to help is one thing but being responsible and accountable for everything at an event is draining. Both of these major events require an army of volunteers to pull off. I’m in charge of one event and my husband is in charge of the other. And we are both involved with each others events.

I feel like I’ve hardly seen my kid this weekend. I got home tonight to relieve the babysitter. Our sweet little sitter drew Christmas pictures with our kid. That was today’s precious gift.

The sweet little Christmas pictures from Jdubs and Korey.

Tomorrow is Sunday—blessed Sunday. We will be resting. I’ve already talked to my Pastor to tell him I won’t be at church because I’ll be resting. He gave me his blessings 🙂

Pink Slippers

November 29, 2011November 29, 2011Leave a comment

Today has been an extraordinarily busy day … so tonight when I came home from a 12-hour work day I put my pajamas on. I figured why bother changing out of my work clothes only to change again later. Part of my nighttime attire includes a pair of slippers because we have tile or stained concrete in the majority of our house. Hard floors = cold floors in winter.

Every year someone in my family gives me slippers, which I love because I always need a new pair by the time Christmas rolls around. My feet are always cold. Seriously, the only thing colder than my feet is me arse. (But that’s another story.)

The Christmas before my son was born my mother-in-law gave me a pink, furry bath robe and matching slippers. The set was like a little piece of cloud wrapped around my very pregnant middle. And of course the slippers were awesome since my feet hurt and were incredibly swollen most of the time. I packed this robe and slippers in my bag to take with me to the hospital when our son was born. What typically is a two-day process ended up being a five-day stay.

While my son was in the NICU, I shuffled down the hospital corridors in my robe and slippers. I looked like a grizzly bear, all grouchy and postpartum puffy. My house slippers were my only footwear, and it was hard to walk, for obvious reasons. And since my hormones were so completely out of whack I could be fearsome to deal with, like the most ferocious of felines.

I still have the slippers and wear them sometimes. But before I left the hospital, my husband dubbed them the pink slippers of fury because of the tangles I found myself in while wearing them.

So now it’s a family joke and all I have to do to “mean business” is to point to my feet in the pink slippers and our little son will say “no momma, not the pink slippers of fury.”

Thanks for “Ponies”

November 27, 2011November 27, 2011Leave a comment

I’m so thankful Thanksgiving is over… it was just the holiday I needed but I’m glad to get back to it starting Monday.

Tonight we had a special treat. We got back from visiting my husband’s family around 6 p.m. Then my parents came to our house about 6:45 with our dog and we got to visit with them.

We got a rare treat when my dad took up the guitar and played two or three songs. They were old-fashioned, traditional cowboy songs. My favorite of all the music my dad plays. Tonight he played a cowboy campfire Christmas tune and an all-time favorite, “ponies,” which is a song about a horse whisperer.

When I was pregnant with my son, every time I heard the song it would make me cry. Personally I think this song should always be sung in a small setting and acoustically. John Denver recorded the song and it’s featured on his Different Directions album. The produced, recorded versions lose the intimate feel of what the song is all about. This is a beautiful song about a cowboy who understands and communicates with horses in a way that no one else can.

Most of us have encountered a person like the one in the song – a person who has a way with dogs, or horses, or babies or whatever it is that can’t speak. If you’ve ever ridden a horse and been in complete unison with the animal, this song will move you.

Ponies

Somewhere out on the prairie
Is the greatest cowboy that’s ever been
And when he lays his hands upon the ponies
They shudder with an understanding skin

And he says ponies
Now ponies don’t you worry
I have not come to steal your fire away
I want to fly with you across the sunrise
Discover what begins each shining day

When the storm clouds in the west
Are quickly gathering
The ponies they run wild there
Before it rains

You’ll see their sleek dark bodies
Brightly gleaming
You know the fire is flying through
Their veins

And he says ponies
Now ponies don’t you worry
I have not come to steal your fire away
I want to fly with you across the sunrise
Discover what begins each shining day

And he says ponies
Ponies don’t you worry
I have not come to steal your fire away
I want to fly with you across the sunrise
Discover what begins each shining day

Words and music by Jeffrey Bullock

To Catch a Fish

November 25, 2011November 25, 2011Leave a comment

We’re visiting Nanny and Pawpaw this weekend. Pawpaw wanted a new computer so we actually ventured to one of the bigbox stores on Black Friday to find an electronics deal. Remarkably the stores weren’t bad at all – I guess when you go at 6 p.m. all the early birds have gone home to roost.

On our adventure we stopped off at a Mongolian-style grill for dinner. Jdubs has been balking at eating his dinner these days but tonight we had leverage. There was a guy at the restaurant making balloon critters. We threatened Jdubs that if he didn’t eat his dinner then no balloon.

Cute college boy working his way through school just a few balloons at a time.

And this guy was good. He’s a college student at UT-Dallas. Pretty clever part-time job for a college student. Nanny asked if he had to go to a special school to learn how to make balloon animals. He said that he went to the school of You Tube to learn. (A comedian too).

He made Jdubs a goldfish on a fishing pole.

He told us he was available for birthdays and parties, but occasionally he got invited to bachelorette parties, which could get a little awkward… I guess the single girls wanted something other than a fish on a line 😉

Jdubs did good, ate his broccoli and noodle dinner. Thanks Blue Collar Balloon Guy.

Today We Rode a Horse

November 23, 2011November 23, 2011Leave a comment

Today school was out, but I had to work. I had three big deadlines bearing down on me so I worked late even on a holiday eve. Fortunately my mother was off today and took Jdubs for the day. He had a great time, as always.

Today was special because Jdubs really wanted his grandfather to take him for a horse ride.

And that is exactly what they did.

Sugar is a good little starter horse. Very gentle. She's a borrowed horse. It's a common thing to do.

Jdubs decided that he didn’t need any help so he took the reins and took off. It was a great day indeed.

Jdubs is the 4th generation to ride this saddle.

Our legs are finally long enough to reach the stirrups.

And that is a summary on why we live here – because we can go to our grandparents house on a Wednesday before Thanksgiving and ride our horse all by ourselves for the first time.

The Best Medicine

November 19, 2011November 19, 2011Leave a comment

Today I went to visit my 82 year old grandmother. She had her gallbladder surgically removed on Tuesday. We visited her and took food to her and my 93 year old grandfather. Neither of them can hear well so they don’t have stuff on like the TV or radio. I think it’s kind a cool because it’s so quiet at their house. Noise overwhelms me and I really don’t like loud music, noisy kids, gaggles of teenagers or squawking birds or yappy dogs. The quietness of her house is soothing to me, but then again I took my 4 year old son to visit too. He’s really loud and rambunctious. But he was just what MawMaw needed.

Next week we’ll take her a plate of turkey and dressing and pie, especially since “no one can cook anymore,” she told me of the food that someone had brought her.

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