I had no idea what I was going to write about tonight when I came home from work… then this post magically wrote itself. Jdubs and I were wrapping presents. This is what happens when a 4 year old who can recognize a few letters does for gift tags.
Momma, will you write letters for me?
Then we ditched the packages to play with the cat.
Ah, momma, Pussums wants to play with me.
Then the dog got in on the action, and we played cat and dog and kid for a while.
Ruby: "You wanna piece a me?" Pussums: "Bring it. I can't wait to slap you"
Here’s Ruby trying to be playful. (I wish that darn ornament wasn’t in the way, but you will see it in every frame.)
Pussums: "you are so gonna regret this!"
Pussums is definitely ready to take a swipe at Ruby. Fortunately, for Ruby, those paws are sans claws.
Puss is fired up. Ruby: "I double-dog dare you."
Puss is supremely pissed. If I could hear her kitty voice I think she would say: “oh no you didn’t. No way that’s going to fly up in here.”
Pussums slinks away to provide more "personal" space.
Here’s Ruby with two batteries on her shoulder saying: “I dare you to knock these off.” (very bad reference to a very old Duracell battery commercial.)
Too bad I didn't have the video going to capture the little dance before they both darted up the stairs.
The aftermath of Cat and Dog—the dog pounced at the cat, scooting the tree over 3-4 feet; the cat peeled out on the tree skirt and bolted up the stairs with the dog in hot pursuit. And Jdub’s package is left behind.
Today was Jdub’s third [and last] Christmas program at his preschool. This year he graduated to being an “Angel” complete with a speaking part.
We’ve been practicing these lines constantly: Christmas is God’s love for people on Earth, the day we celebrate Jesus’ birth.
My little Angel did great today along with all his schoolmates. Bless Ms. Lori’s heart … it takes a lot of work to get a group of little children all working together to put on a program.
All the sweet little 2 year olds ... it's like hearding cats.My sweet little angel.No Room at the Inn ... the stage is set.
After it was all over I asked Jdubs how he did and he said: “I did amazing.” What a precious moment!
Sometimes things don’t quite come together. Tonight was one of those nights… I had plans for this blog post, but Jdubs is not cooperating so I had to redirect. But now maybe it’s going to be something more awesome than I had originally planned.
I looked through my random photographs and there are several I haven’t been able to use elsewhere. So I decided to write this post as random awesomeness in pictures.
A few days ago United Supermarkets had a sale on berries. I LOVE berries, and since it was cold, I made oatmeal and berry awesome in a bowl. And I have serious coffee every day. This is pressed coffee. The French version of Cowboy Coffee; it’s not for sissies.
French Press Coffee. Old fashioned oats, fresh berries, walnuts and a splash of cream.
Supper tonight. I made vegetable soup and chicken salad from a leftover roast chicken. The bread is the awesome country French bread we got at Central Market on Sunday. Oh and those are the little garden tomatoes I picked when they were still green, just before the killing frost. If you leave them out, they will ripen.
Soup and sandwich supper.
I almost peed my pants when I saw this (at Central Market on Sunday). You know how I love Scharffen Berger chocolate. Well here is a giant block of San Francisco chocolaty awesomeness!
OMG. I've died and gone to chocolate heaven.
The UPS man left a great big cat playhouse on the front porch. (That’s what I told the cat, anyway). Awesomeness in a cat toy.
This is awesome until the cat tries to play at 2 a.m., then not so awesome.
Who doesn’t love Sock Monkey? This hat is random awesomeness!
This Sock Monkey hat was a big hit at the supermarket tonight.
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.Satin-smooth 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.
Butter, sugar and a farm fresh egg.
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.
Sous chef Jean-Guilliam.
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.Payoff. Licking the beaters.
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..Powdered sugar makes it pretty.
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.
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.I think this is such a cool photo.
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.
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!
Happy critters.
Then I went in the house to feed the indoor cats, only to find that they opted out of the litter box 😦
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.”
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
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
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.
This is Sugar ...
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.
That's one happy kid.
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.
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.
The Arcadian Experience 