Tacos, Anyone?

Did you know you can make your own taco seasoning? You know, the kind you buy in the little 4" x 5" sealed envelope?

I've had and used this recipe for so long I don't remember where I got it.

TACO SEASONING

2 tablespoons chili powder
1 tablespoon onion powder
2-1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
4-1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
5 teaspoons paprika
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon salt

Mix all ingredients together and store in an air-tight jar. Use 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons of mixture for every pound of ground beef.

I think it tastes every bit as good as the purchased taco seasoning. It's very simple to mix together, stores well, is cheaper than purchasing it at the grocery store and you eliminate the packaging involved for each serving.

Yay, We Got Some Snow!

It was only 3-4", but at least it was enough to cover the ground.

This is a picture taken in approximately the same spot as the first one I posted in my last entry while complaining about the lack of snow.

And this is another shot of the second picture in that previous post.

You can see the difference, can't you? Sure ya can!

We have bright, blue skies and sunshine today but about 65 miles south of us they are reported to be in white-out snow conditions with already 12" on the ground. We would have liked to have gotten a bit more here, but at least our precipitation wasn't rain this time around so we're thankful for that.

These Could Be April Pictures

At this time of the year, we usually have our maximum amount of winter snow on the ground.

This is a random shot taken to the right of our driveway going through the woods.

Another picture taken off to the left.

We don't even have total ground cover, for heaven's sake! A whole lot of bare ground lying out there exposed to the elements. (One of them not being snow!)

The right side of the above picture shows a small storage structure in our back work area. On a normal snow year, you would see a narrow walking path kept shoveled so we can gain entry into the storage building.

This illustrates how very little snow on the ground makes it much harder this winter to keep the house consistently and uniformly warm. You're looking at the very back, north-facing part of the house, and usually we would have a wide, heavy bank of snow up against the house to about the level of the bottom of the right hand window. Snow really does insulate! (As an old saying goes, snow is the poor man's insulation and the poor man's fertilizer.)

The level of snow we have on the ground right now is comparable to what we normally see when most of the winter's snow is rapidly melting in April. So is this February 6th or April 6th?

One thing for sure . . . there's no way of changing the whims of Mother Nature.

Wanted: More Time

I know it's a problem with most everyone these days. We have so many choices of what we want (or have) to do with our time. I'm a fairly organized person, keep moving all day long, and believe I'm efficient, but my desires of things I want to get done in a day's time sure do exceed the hours in the day. Seems no matter how fast I go, I come to the end of each day thinking there was so much more 1) I thought I would get gone, and 2) wanted to get done.

Do you ever have the desire to not stop at night? Just keep going doing some of the things you want to do right on through the night time hours when you could/should be sleeping? Would that provide the "extra" hours to do some of my wanna-dos? I've actually been contemplating trying that lately.

Well, I suppose we all know the pay back for such a plan. Not only would I look like something the cat dragged in the following day, but I'd feel like it, too. I sure don't need to do anything that will make me grumpier. I'm cranky enough as it is over this "never enough time" thing.

However . . . I think I just might have come to an intelligent revelation recently.

Being overly concerned about "doing for others" is what I'm coming to realize is a bad habit that eats up (devours!) a lot of my time. If I spend my time making another person's load lighter by helping out in some way, sure I'm being a "good person" but it also takes up time that I could be spending doing something that might give me more joy and satisfaction. No, I'm not advocating becoming a selfish jerk or unfeeling hermit, but rather talking about a finding a healthy balance. (Healthy is the key word here in my case.)

For instance, the reason I can finagle the time to write this blog post tonight is because I'm not doing the dishes for my husband. He left tonight to go work on a special project in the garage of a friend. Right before he left, he said, "Don't do the dishes . . . I'll do them when I get home."

I replied, "But you'll be home so late and I know you won't feel like tackling them then."

"No problem," he said cheerfully. "Really, I'll do them."

Now in the past I've always felt it was the "right" thing to do to have the dishes all done when he arrives home tonight. But really, that's a self-defeating, martyr-ish, foolish way for me to be. He truly won't mind doing the dishes. He'll put on an audio book tape, enjoy listening to it while doing the dishes and it'll probably give him time to wind down from his evening out before bed.

By me not taking the time to do the dishes, I have the opportunity to sit down and do this writing which I truly enjoy.

There ARE ways to change things in my life . . . if I can keep an open mind and be willing to try doing things a little differently. I'm really good at keeping my nose to the grindstone, plodding along in my little rut. Time to climb out, look up at the sky and say, "What changes can I make that will make me feel better so that I'm a nicer person to live with/be around?"

It's the concept of change that's difficult for me. Even a change for the better doesn't feel comfortable at first because it's new and different. Just because I've done something the same way most of my life doesn't make it the best or only way it can be done.

It continues to be a battle, but I'm determined to prove to myself that it's never too late to make some changes.

A Warm Kitchen

Subconsciously I think I'm choosing oven meals to prepare these cold, winter days. Doesn't hurt one bit to have the oven adding a little warmth to the kitchen. So different than in the good ol' summertime when lighting the oven is avoided like the plague.

This oven baked casserole is fairly unusual, but one we really like. Simple name: Pineapple Casserole.

If you don't care for pineapple, you might as well stop reading now. But if you have nothing against this funny looking Hawaiian import, I'm almost positive you'll feel the same way I do about this side dish which, by the way, goes really well with ham.

The first time I made it (November 14, 1988 . . . I'm sure you wanted to know), I wrote on the recipe, "AB-solutely DELICIOUS! Very unique flavor - you want more and more and more."

Okay, now that I've got you all sufficiently primed, here's the recipe.

PINEAPPLE CASSEROLE

1/2 cup sugar
3 tablespoons flour
3 beaten eggs
1 - 20 oz. can unsweetened crushed pineapple
4 slices white bread, cut into 1/2" cubes
1/2 cup melted butter

In a mixing bowl combine sugar, flour and beaten eggs. Stir in pineapple along with the juice and mix well.

Pour into a buttered casserole dish, about 9" square. Top with the cubed bread.

Drizzle melted butter over the bread cubes. Bake, uncovered, at 350° for one hour. Serves 6-8.

This is the casserole right out of the oven.

Pineapple Casserole is at the very top of the plate. (Not to be confused with neighboring scalloped potatoes on the right.)

Gotta tell ya, folks, this oven meal -- Scalloped Potatoes, Baked Ham and Pineapple Casserole -- not only added a nice touch of warmth to the kitchen, but smelled and tasted really good, too.

DEATH BY CARROT or IT WAS CHICKEN MAMA IN THE KITCHEN WITH A CARROT

Yesterday Jody over at The Paw Paw Patch wrote a blog entry about a monster parsnip she grew in her garden and the fear it struck in the heart of one of her co-workers.

It reminded me of an incident that happened when we owned the restaurant.

We used a lot of carrots. They were ordered from a food service company and every now and then we would get ones that were so unnaturally large that we dubbed them "killer carrots."

In the summer when we were the busiest, we always needed extra help in the kitchen in the morning to get fresh food prepped for the day. Our daughter (Chicken Mama), when she was home from college, worked primarily the diningroom as a waitress but this particular morning I had snagged her for some help in the kitchen before we opened.

During the busiest of times, Roy frequently worked out front as host, greeting people as they came in, chatting with them while they waited for a table, then seating them and often checking them out at the cash register when they left.

The night previous to this incident had been extremely busy, Roy had been working out front and Chicken Mama had been one of the wait staff on duty.

The following morning there were probably about four or five of us in the kitchen busily working. Roy came into the kitchen to ask Chicken Mama about something that had transpired out front the night before. I can't remember what the gist of the conversation was but they soon had a lively banter going back and forth, disagreeing about what the circumstances had been. They were standing about ten apart from each other engaged in animated conversation (disagreement?) with all of us in the kitchen half listening in on their chatter.

Chicken Mama happened to have a very large "killer carrot" in her hand, and while holding the narrow end of the carrot, shook her hand (and the carrot) at her dad trying to make her point.

In mid-sentence, the carrot snapped in half, the thick end went sailing across the room and hit Roy smack between the eyes knocking his glasses off which went skittering across the kitchen floor. Everyone in the room stopped as if frozen in a game of "Statues." Roy and Chicken Mama both had the same open-mouthed, stunned look on their face. Several seconds passed before finally someone couldn't hold it in any longer and let out a snorting laugh which released the tension and we rushed to pick Roy up off the floor. (Just kidding!)

All turned out well as not even his glasses were damaged but you can believe that whenever Roy sees an over-sized carrot, he turns and runs the other way. A man can't be too careful when it comes to killer carrots.

Clean, You Slovenly Wench, Clean!

Woke up before dawn this morning (which isn't hard to do this time of year) and laid there in the dark thinking. Thinking it felt so good in bed and the rest of the house wouldn't feel nearly as warm and comfortable. Thinking about all the areas of my house that need a good cleaning.

I think this was sparked by the fact that I pulled a pair of shoes out of the bottom back of my closet yesterday and they had dust balls clinging to the laces. Hmm, when was the last time I took everything off the floor and vacuumed in there?

The little area that is my pantry becomes a messy hodge-podge of things stuffed in anywhere there's room (not near enough space in there for what I try to store) almost immediately after I sort and clean the shelves. I have to haul a stool over every time I need to get out or put away anything on the top shelf of only four so I have been known to actually toss things up onto that highest shelf and hope it doesn't fall back out on me.

My quilt studio has never been dirtier. My husband asks how a quilt studio can possibly get "dirty." It's amazing the amount of threads, scraps of fabric, dust, lint and fuzz that end up not only on the floor but on all surfaces, when it's not dusted and cleaned regularly. Because I haven't had as much time in there to quilt this winter as I've wanted, I think I've avoided spending the time I do have cleaning.

We have lots of books on bookshelves and in bookcases. I talked last fall about the need to pull all of them out and dust the books along with dusting and cleaning the shelves. Haven't gotten to that yet.

My desk. Oh, my desk. I need to sit at my desk for about three days straight going through drawers cleaning and organizing. My one big file drawer is so stuffed full I have a hard time pulling a file out let alone trying to put a new file in. I know I could whittle the files down to about half if I took the time to sort through and throw out obsolete material.

I remember once when I was working full-time outside the home. A co-worker had quit to have a baby and was visiting work one day when she remarked that she was bored silly at home. She said, "Well, I cook and clean and what else is there to do?" I thought at the time that I must have been doing something wrong. I was sure I could be home full-time and not have enough time for all my cooking and cleaning. ('Course, in all fairness to me - yay, me! - at the time I had a huge garden, we had milk goats and poultry, were raising and bottle feeding an orphaned fawn, building our house and had no running water.)

Granted, the everyday (day after day after day!) things get done and I'm sure no one walking into my house thinks it's filthy.

But did I eventually pop out of my warm, cozy bed this morning and start cleaning? No, not yet, but as you can see from this post, I'm still thinking about it.