The Last Time

Hello, if any even reads this. It has been quite a while since I have actively posted anything here and had pretty much accepted that I'd given up. I felt compelled to write tonight.

Hopefully not for the last time, like the title may lead you to believe, tonight I am thinking about doing things for the last time in this house. Last night we cooked a delicious Thanksgiving dinner in our colorful open kitchen in this spacious, quiet house. The dogs laid with their paws and noses on the line of the carpet and watched (and Coop waited for a drop of something, anything). It's a darling sight we've seen hundreds of times while we cooked. Most of our kitchen is packed up, and from the dishwasher into boxes the dishes went today. Just due to timing really, Thanksgiving was our final meal in this kitchen. For the lovers of food, it's a perfect finale in a house we have loved.

***Thanksgiving Dinner Menu*** (will add later, with pictures)

Tonight I shopped at the one small town grocery store in Marble Falls, for the last time.
Sunday I will drive that peaceful curvy 22 miles of country highway at sunrise for the last time. My commute will now be less than four miles, from the other direction.

The list of lasts we'll do here this weekend goes on. And the list of firsts we're facing is infinite. Our new place is a loft-style above a garage apartment, separate from a family residence on a wooded piece of land near Lake Travis. It's a little more than half the size of the house we're in now, which will be an adjustment, but definitely a good one. It's just been finished this month and we're looking forward to all of it's state of the art fanciness. I get to have a desk and laptop in THE PANTRY with a window!!!!!! and our washer and dryer fits inside the walk-in closet. We're downsizing quite a bit, leaving behind anything not worth taking, which for us is mostly everything. : ) Not entirely, but it feels that way. We are donating more than half of each of our wardrobes. Our dining room table, it's a piece of trash, literally now. And most noticeably, Joseph's 70" Monster Screen tv was hauled off into the darkness Monday night.

We'll replace the tv, the table and eventually the clothes. But we will never replace the years we spent in Horseshoe Bay. It's unlike any other place in the world and I can't imagine a more idyllic location to spend your twenties. We each spent ours here. It's the lake-side retirement community where Joseph and I separately, then together, grew up. Now we start our life... as grown ups, in Briarcliff.

Catch up- Food Pictures

These are in no particular order and with very little description. I'm always willing to give up the goods, so ask if you want any recipes. :) These were the "pretty" dishes or just particularly good ones that we wanted to remember from February until May.

Grilled NY strip and shrimp scampi

Spicy shredded chicken, which we used in burritos, sandwiches and enchilada soup

Brunch! Waffles & berries, bacon, country potatoes and veggie fritatta

Massive (2000 calorie) baked potato, seared ahi tuna and a filet

Giant crab cake with lemon aioli

Red & green heirloom tomato & fresh mozzarella salad with pesto, basil and basamic reduction

Seared cod with grapefruit buerre blanc and green beans

Blackened chicken, white wine shrimp and dirty rice (that I finally got right after several not totally successful attempts to meet Joseph's description)

Mini banana bread loaves, with chocolate chips and almonds

Pad Thai prep

Spring rolls, pad thai and fried rice

Cousin Erin frying won-tons and shrimp rolls, and loving it!

Shrimp Pad Thai, ala Amy

Hawaiian Fried Rice

Chicken Parmesan

Cheese

Cooking Easter Dinner by himself, because I had to work. He always uses his butt as a towel when he cooks.

Easter by Joseph, smoked chicken, green bean casserole (with homemade mushroom soup, no shortcuts here), roasted potatoes & garlic sourdough

Spaghetti and Giant Meatballs

Making ice cream in the kitchen aid

Baked Spinach Artichoke dip

Marinated grilled tri-tip, rice, veggies and wine

Tres Leches cake and homemade strawberry ice cream

Pot roast for 10

Delicious crock pot beans

While cleaning out my cupboards I found 4 open, half used bags of beans. I won't even tell you how many different varieties of rice and pasta I found. Anyway, for obvious reasons, I made some seriously delicious crock-pot beans while I worked today.

I still don't know how to post pictures from my BlackBerry and our computer is having issues so there are no photos. Anyone who has an appreciation for a simple meal for under $10 that's nutritious and delicious that practically makes itself will enjoy this recipe.

Any combo of beans will work just as well.
All added to warm crock pot, cooked for 8 hours.
I used red, garbanzo & pinto beans and a few lentils, totaling about 4 cups. Soaked overnight & drained.
1 onion, 1 carrot, 1 green pepper, 2 stalks celery, all medium diced & 1/4 c minced garlic.
1 T each of chile powder, cumin, paprika, bean seasoning. Sprinkle of red pepper flakes, 3 bay leaves & 2 dried peppers.
1 pound ground turkey (or beef) and 2 links sausage peeled & crumbled.
1 32oz. can diced tomatoes, plus 3 cups water.

Joseph made cornbread and rice to go with it. Nice to leave a home cooked meal for him before work and come home to one after work, and a delightfully aroma filled house. Everyone wins with the crock pot. Season with salt after cooking.

Hey Sprint, Kiss Off!

A joyous day it is to finally be rid of that despicable company! We have been eagerly awaiting the end of our sentence (service contract) which seemed to last forever.

I won't go into why we so vehemently hate Sprint, but it has to do with seriously shitty customer service, mysterious and re appearing bill charges and a dropped call percentage of about one in four! Right, Mom? Think about that, every four to five calls cutting out, everywhere but mostly at home, for four years! You would have smashed a few phones or windshields too!

We haven't decided quite what we're going to do with our old p
hones, but it will be ceremonious and destructive! We are almost as happy to be rid of Sprint as we were are Bush.

Cheers to BlackBerries and Verizon and Sprint can suck it!

two things

I have just reread a few of my recent posts. It appears that I occasionally forget how to spell. We ate chicken wing from a turkey fryer in an alley, not an ally, duh!

Also, my broken ass stove is going to be replaced with a shiny new one! Yeah yeah yeah, we're getting a new stove. This bunk POS they've got in here now is like 35 years old. It has already been 3 weeks since it blew up on me, and it may be another 3 before it's installed, but bring it on. A brand new oven to bake in is the very next best thing to my own new oven in my own new house to bake in. It'll due for now!

21 oz. NY Strip

Here's how it works at Costco, I have a list of all the non food stuff we need, which we walk around together picking up. Then I leave him in the meat and wine section with a budget and occupy myself in other areas of the store. He likes to pick up every piece of meat and read every wine label, which kind of irritates me, so I wander around gathering produce, cheese, lotions, looking at cameras & jewelery & such. He always makes great choices, so it works better for us that way.

In the meat department he decided on $20 worth of tri-tip (Joseph's favorite cut of beef), four pounds of ground turkey and a 3-pack of Prime NY Strip steaks that weighed 4 pounds!, one of which we grilled "to perfection" last night.



I got home from work early so we were able to go up to spend 2 hours disc golfing before it got dark. I walked with him, occasionally putting or jogging, for 36 holes. It was nice, super quiet, beautiful sunny weather, a 4 mile hike. It had been several months since I had seen him play, and I was impressed. He is really good! He knew I wanted to get some exercise but was pretty tired, so he ran with me. We jogged up all the hills together and from baskets to tees, and even ran down a big hill holding hands. It was really cheesy, so much so that I pulled my hand away at the bottom of the hill and said that I hoped no one was watching. I really hoped that no one had seen us, but I knew for sure that if any one had, they would have been jealous.

We had worked up an appetite so... We used the remainder of the shrimp cocktail, that we made to take to the back ally shindig (I kid, I kid, it really was pleasant and the people were lovely), and added it to a salad to accompany the steak and shrimp. We drank a bottle of "Nob-lee-oh", which is actually spelled and pronounced Nob-il-o, but for rude and facetious reasons we call it Noblio or Nolibo or Nobilio. It was yet another memorable, delicious and happy meal shared at our table.




Before I left for work today I put 4 chicken breasts and the leftover quart of enchilada soup in the crock pot on low for 8 hours. When I got home it was this... Not really, it had to be shredded to look like that, but it only took about 90 seconds. Today we had it over white rice and tomorrow for lunch it will be in burritos. Nice use of leftovers, if I do say so myself. :)

Naughty Dog

Cooper had an exciting weekend. I got a call from strange number on Saturday just as I was pulling out of work, it was some woman I've never met calling to tell me that Cooper was in her backyard! Oh shit, where's Marshall?

The latch on our fence had broken. I bought a new one and it was sitting on the kitchen table to remind Joseph to go put it on. Without the latch we had resorted to putting the grill in front of the gate to prevent it from opening. Not surprising that Cooper wasn't fooled by that. After all, this is the dog who jumped out a moving jeep window in the dog park parking lot, rolled down the same jeep window (not automatic, the rolly kind) and jumped out in an Albertson's parking lot, jumped over a six foot patio wall to follow me, snuck out of my condo screen door a million times to go hang out with the neighbors (and once that I know of to the pond to swim) and so on and so on...

I drove fast all the way home and was relieved to see little black Marshall sitting front and center on our porch when I pulled around the corner. Good dog. I put him in the house and drove to the house where Cooper was, about half a mile away on our normal walk/run route. Cooper was happy to see me when I got to the huge ass house where he was running around contentedly with the two frilliest looking blond cocker spaniels I've ever seen. The lady told me where they had found him and I thought she was mistaken. I had assumed they had found him near our house, or at least on our street! Nope, he had apparently felt like he was due for a walk, so he went for a walk! He was half way around the 2 mile loop that I take with them every day. She said he was just walking along when they came upon him, he turned around and walked with them to their house. They brought him in, fed him dinner and waited for me to get there. First, what nice people. Second, what a naughty dog?!? Thank goodness he's such a sweet dog, or I'd have a real problem. I can't have him getting out though, it's too dangerous out here. Rednecks in Texas shoot dogs in their yards.

Joseph put the latch on when he woke up on Sunday. But not before I caught Cooper sneaking out one last time that morning. Seriously! I put them out when I got up and then got ready for a run. It had only been about 20 minutes when I headed out in the yard to get them. I found Marshall but no Cooper. I ran into the front yard and called his name. I went around to the side of the house to just catch the back of him hauling ass around the corner of the fence, way down by the road. He was going to run around, sneak in the gate and pretend he had never left. I got him to come back to me and I did my best to make it known that he'd misbehaved. I pointed my finger and said his name as mean as I could and he laid on his back at my feet. I said no no no, you don't leave the yard. Then I took him inside, put his leash on and went for a run. My "punishment" was most likely, very unsuccessful and will in no way deter his out-of-yard adventures. Cesar Milan would tell me it's my own fault.

Clean-out-your-veggie-bin Enchilada Soup

That's what I did today. It's good a good thing to do once in a while, make a giant pot of soup from every scrap of vegetables in your fridge. Here's how it went. I kept it completely vegan til the end, when I added cheese. It was delicious and super flavorful before the cheese, so it's a great alternative to leave it all meat and dairy free.

A few onions, celery, garlic, green peppers, one poblano pepper, shredded carrots, one yellow squash, 2 tomatoes, one ear corn, half bunch cilantro, one avocado and a handful mushrooms is what I came up with from the veggy bin.
Everything was rough chopped and sauteed in olive oil. First celery, garlic and onion.
Then green pepper, poblano and carrots.

Then I added a generous amount of kosher salt, cumin, paprika, chili powder and two bay leaves.

Then the zucchini, corn, tomato and mushrooms.

All this cooked for about 20 minutes. Then I added one large can diced tomatoes, one cup homemade salsa, two cups tomato stock and some Mexican hot sauce.
This cooked for about an hour, until all the veggies were tender.

Then I blended it with an imersion blender, removed from the heat and stirred in one cup cubed cheddar cheese and half a cup cubed cream cheese.

I served it with fresh crispy tortilla strips, seasoned avocado & cilantro with lime and some cheddar cheese. I also diced up half a blackened chicken breast to put in Joseph's soup. It didn't need the chicken at all, I just knew he'd like it. It was rich, filling and flavorful with out it.

After lunch we took the dogs for a walk. It has been nasty and cold for the last few days, and even froze last night. We were happy to take advantage of the afternoon sunshine and warmer weather. Here is Marshall having a stand off with a deer in someone's front yard. In his doggy dreams he wishes he had gotten to catch just one of the thousands of deer he's seen in his life.

Un-sewing

I read all kinds of other people's blogs about their sewing projects. My sister recently got a sewing machine and quickly picked up sewing. I grew up wearing home-sewn clothes and watching my mother sew at the kitchen table on Monday nights with Lynn. I could cross-stitch when I was six and I am naturally gifted in all things domestic. I assumed it wouldn't take much for me to pick up sewing.

I had started to notice more than few seams, socks and buttons that needed to be fixed around our house, and even the fitted sheet of an 800 thread count set with a torn corner. I asked Mama Lisa for a starter sewing kit this past Christmas. Joseph made fun of me for asking for something so lame. She sent me a darling little pink and brown sewing bag with all the basic essentials inside.

Tonight I wondered from my closet to the laundry room for 15 minutes before settling on an outfit which would require me to sew a button to a pair of cute khaki pants for tomorrow. Fine, I have The Office and Kath & Kim on dvr to watch so I'll sit on the couch and sew this button on while I watch.

Wrong. It took me 10 minutes to thread the needle. Then I realized that the thread was the color of the pants and not the button. Start over. Close enough colored thread, button semi-affixed to pants, would make due until I had some patience, or more time. How does it look? Like the wrong button! A black button on a pair of khaki pants with greyish buttons. As Chelsea Handler would say, "What!....a moron." I will find a different pair of pants for tomorrow.

Two Great Pasta Dishes

Last Tuesday we stopped by the local redneck meat market, with a ceiling that looks like this...

to pick up some chicken basil Parmesan sausage. We turned said sausage into this lovely meal. Grilled chicken sausage sliced, tossed with rigatoni, sauteed onions, red & green peppers, spicy marinara, fresh basil and mozzarella pearls. Umm, yes, very delicious. And with jarred marinara, very quick and easy.

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Pork Orloff ala Amy

Joseph requested beef stroganoff for dinner tonight, a good choice given our oven less predicament. We both had steaks last night so I chose to change it up a bit, but still give him what he wanted. Here's how it went down.

First, I thinly sliced a pork tenderloin. Then I browned it up in some bacon fat & butter (gross, right? no, so so good). I sprinkled a bit of flour over it and salt and pepper.
Then removed the pork, added a bit more butter and sauteed one white onion, 2 T minced garlic, one sliced green onion and one pint chopped mushrooms. After 10 minutes, deglazed with 1 ounce of Knob Creek whiskey and 1 cup white wine. Then I scraped all the pork goodness bits off the bottom and added 2 cups beef stock. Brought to a boil and simmered for about 20 minutes.
Once sauce was thickened, removed from heat, made a liaison to slowly add in one cup sour cream, 1 T dijon mustard and 1 chopped green onion. Served over egg noodles with sauteed squash, zucchini and carrots.... it was heavenly. I recommend it highly. Joseph does too. Although now that I'm looking at the pictures, it seems to resemble orphanage food.