GOOD FOOD AND HOBART SUNDAY

Yesterday was...well, one of those days, ha.  More on that in upcoming posts.  Today we are relaxing, have some things to do in town but as we do most every Sunday, it's time for some good food and some Hobart.

Here's a meal we had the other night.  Roasted broccolini, rice with chopped jalapeños and chicken with sautéed red onions (made in 2nd Man's electric skillet).  It was delicious.  I love sautéed onions anytime but these were done in the pan with the chicken at the same time and using the red onions added a wonderful sweetness.  It was very good.

Hobart has spent the better part of the weekend sleeping, as cats (especially senior cats), so often do.  Here he is in one of his favorite weekend spots; in the dining room chair that we must push over to balcony window with his afghan carefully folded for his comfort.  Because...

#notspoiled

And let us pause to remember that dark day that changed our nation.  Twenty one years ago today.

Where does the time go?

RIP QUEEN ELIZABETH II

We're not British, but so much of what we have enjoyed over the years is classically British.  Some of our faves: Absolutely Fabulous, Dr. Who, Keeping Up Appearances, Are You Being Served?, and so many other movies and shows and singers and entertainers.  In fact, our TV is on BBC America as much as any other station.

We've never traveled to England, but it's definitely on our list of places to visit and while don't follow much of the monarchy in detail, we are aware of the drama that sometimes goes along with it.

We can't help but be saddened by the death of Elizabeth, but we can marvel at her amazing life.

She was certainly colorful!  Who wouldn't know who this was in an instant?

Her love of horses was beautiful to see.  How happy does she look here?

And we all know about her corgis and her decades long love of them.

We love this picture of a beautiful young Queen who would go on to:

Reign through 14 US Presidents (meeting 13 of them)...

Oversee 15 Prime Ministers (including Churchill)...

Travel to at least 117 different countries and well over a million miles...

She would serve through wars and disasters, tragedies, and family controversies but also through victories and changes and wonderful moments, carefully guiding her nation from one century into another...

And yet through it all, she maintained her calm and steady leadership, her royal steadfastness as it is sometimes called, becoming a symbol of stability for generations of people around the world.

This photo, indeed her last official one, was taken just a few days ago when she met with the new Prime Minister.  Seemingly small in stature, but definitely larger than life, she gave 70 years of dedicated service to her country...and now, at 96, she rests.

RIP QUEEN ELIZABETH

CHORIZO AND EGG BREAKFAST TACOS TEX MEX CLASSIC

Here is a great quick Tex Mex staple that we often have for breakfast but also for lunch and even dinner.  It's that good and satisfying.  They are made with Mexican chorizo (different from Spanish style chorizo link sausage) and is more like ground sausage.

San Manuel Chorizo
We love this brand (we don't get anything for mentioning them, just a shout out for good quality).  Whatever brand you get, there are lesser priced versions that use 'cereal filler'.  It's good but you really want all meat.  Often the good versions will be called "chorizo fino" (meaning "FINE").  This one has pork, vinegar, spices salt and garlic and that's it.  All natural, no MSG, preservatives, or fillers.

Remove it from the casing and put into a skillet.

Cooked chorizo
We cook it until it's done, about 10 minutes.  It's much like cooking ground beef.  We add a little dried cilantro (or you can use parsley) to add some color.  Definitely no additional seasonings needed.  It's very flavorful.

Depending on the pork's fat content, you might have some residual grease.  If it's more than you'd like, just like ground beef, drain the chorizo before the next step.

Eggs cooking in chorizo

To the cooked chorizo, we add 6 eggs and begin stirring  it gently to let the eggs cook into the chorizo.

Keep stirring it until...

Cooking eggs and chorizo 

...you get them looking just like scrambled eggs, only these are scrambled eggs with chorizo.

Chorizo and egg

All that's left to do is get some warm, soft flour tortillas, spoon some in, fold them or roll them up and enjoy.  You can have some salsa on the side or just eat as is.

ROADS MAY FLOOD

The county has recently put these signs up seemingly everywhere around the farm.

We're lucky on our property, we are on a high area (high relative to the areas around) so there is never a danger of the house flooding.  The yard will get very wet with standing water and the driveway too, but the house is on the highest point of the property.

Good thing because this was Saturday at the farm.  The red pin is the house.  This storm cell lasted about 2 hours over the area.  Between Friday, Saturday and part of Sunday, 2nd Family said we received a little over 4 inches of rain in their rain gauge.  Areas to the West got as much as 7 or 8 inches of rain.

The ground was wet enough that there was minor flooding of the yard.  2nd Family warned us the ground was very squishy and muddy so needless to say, there was no mowing and certainly no need to water the fruit trees and bushes.  We needed the rain.

This picture is NOT from this weekend, ha. This is a flood years ago (their front yard) at 2nd Family's house which butts up to the front end of our property (that's how we share part of the driveway).

2nd Family said that when their daughter was a baby, Dad needed to go to the store to get some diapers.  This photo was after one of our monsoon rains that we are known for in these parts and every single road around the farm (except one heading North) was completely flooded at some point along the path.  This was their yard and there was only one way out.

Now that they have put up these signs all around us, including that road going North, we're guessing we could be locked in by flooding at some future point.

All the more reason to be prepared and have all our supplies on hand.

Hope you all had a more productive weekend!

GOOD FOOD AND HOBART SUNDAY

Well, it's a rainy, wet, yucky weekend.  But it's also a long weekend (we're both off Monday) so it's a good weekend for reading, watching TV, and relaxing.

Oh and eating.

Baked tortellini and broccoli salad

On Friday night, I made broccoli salad (RECIPE HERE) so it would sit overnight and develop the flavors and then yesterday afternoon, I made baked tortellini (RECIPE HERE) that is really more like a lasagna.  They are a good complement to each other.  By the way, we broil it at the end so we can have a crispy cheese top.

Pound Cake

2nd Man woke up and decided since I was doing the main parts of the meal, he would bake a pound cake with vanilla glaze.  So yummy.  He just uses the traditional recipe of a pound of eggs, pound of sugar, pound of butter, and pound of flour.  Then extract flavoring of your choice, etc.  It was a great dessert.

With all this food, we'll be repeating the meal a few more times this long, rainy weekend.

Hobart

And of course, it might be raining, we might be relaxing and resting and eating, but Hobart is patiently waiting for us to give him his food.  Because...

#notspoiled

 

NO FARM THIS WEEKEND

No farm today.  And probably not all weekend...

Current radar.

It's already rained at the farm on and off overnight and this morning and all of this is moving up this direction...

...and this is the forecast for today, tomorrow and Monday.  Maybe this is nature's way of telling us to stay home and relax.  Of course, all I can think about is how tall the grass is going to be in another week, but still, we are grateful for the rain.

So today, 2nd Man is making a pound cake and I've already made broccoli salad (so it could sit overnight in the fridge) and later we'll make our baked tortellini (that's more like lasagna).

We will eat well all weekend, ha.

SWASH MACHINE TRASH TO TREASURE

  Regular readers know that I have a favorite place to look for bargains...our downstairs trash area!  Our building has trash chutes on every floor and they feed into a separate room, but for boxes and other things that people can't put in the chute, there is an area (indoor) near the loading dock where people can put the things they don't want.  I've found quite a few cool items over the last few years.

Here is one of the latest (and biggest)!

This is the SWASH machine by Whirlpool.  It was sitting in the loading dock area just like this with a note on it:

Someone moving overseas and not wanting to take this with them.  They even included some cleaning pods.

I brought it back up and 2nd Man said "what the heck is that??".  Now we did some checking and the machine is no longer made.  The pods are still relatively easy to find but not sure for how much longer.

You pull the knob and slide this out, you pop in the pod (it's like a K-cup for clothes, ha), and then you hang the clothing item (two max at a time) and use clips that pull out to pull the clothing taught.  Then close it, push the button and it takes about 10 minutes.

Here is a shirt.  You can see how it works, you hang it on the hanger and then put the sleeves through the bars, cross each other and the pull out the retractable clips to pull them taught. Then, you do the same to the bottom edge and the sides with the other clips.  It holds the shirt tight and then the machine steams on the inside and the wrinkles get out.  

It doesn't clean clothes like dry cleaning but it freshens them up and gets wrinkles out.  We've already used it on a couple of my works shirts and slacks and it worked great.  It will extend the time between dry cleaning bills and there's nothing wrong with that.

Especially since we didn't even have to pay for the machine!  Free is best!

HARVESTED SOME PEARS

So, in between other things at the farm last weekend, we decided it was time to harvest some of the pears on our "wild kieffer pear tree".

As you can see they are weighing down some of the branches and of course they are kind of high up.

I decided to use this grabber stick that I've had for years.  Side note, they are very helpful around the house.  I got it when I hurt my back years ago and we both still use it for odd jobs around the house.

I also brought out one of the plastic crates from a trash to treasure find.

I used the grabber to gently bend the branches down so I could reach them and I also used it to pull off some of the ones higher up.  It worked great!  We know they have some special tools for doing things like this but hey, for now, it worked just fine.

We ended up getting about three dozen.  We were wondering what the brown spots where on the skin and found out that it is called "russeting" and is common to apples and pears.  It is usually caused by extreme weather conditions and in our case, our drought and humidity were probably the factor.  We'll be peeling them to process them so it should be OK.

We just have them in the same crate, sitting in the corner of the apartment so it will be room temperature.  We left a couple dozen more on the tree to let them go a little longer and see what happens.  The ones we brought in a few weeks ago never softened, they just shriveled up.  This is our first year with having this many so we'll just have to learn as we go.

Now we wait!

ONE OF THOSE DAYS

What a difference some rain makes...check this out:

Got to the farm Saturday and it was green again.  That's why we never really worry if the grass turns brown during a drought or freeze, it always comes back.  "Country grass" seems to be like that, such a mixture of things, it just stays green as soon as it gets water.  This was pretty thick and with more rain in the forecast this week, I figured I better go ahead and mow.

I got on the mower to start it and...dead again.  I had to remove the brush guard on the front end to be able to open the hood again and then use the charger to jumpstart it.  It started after a couple of tries and I put everything back in place and then started mowing.

The grass was a bit damp from the morning dew but I was able to mow for a bit until...

....after about 40 minutes, it started sputtering and feeling like it was going to die.  When I turned off the mower deck it would keep running.  I tried to keep mowing by turning it on for a bit and mowing then off again when it felt like it would die but after a few minutes of that, I figured I better get it in the shed while it had power in case it completely died.

I mowed the entire driveway except for this section you can see in the picture above.

I got the front mowed and the back mowed and all around the outbuildings but this was another section I had to skip.  At least I got "most" of it done. 

Oh and I did NOT get on the trails, with the way the day was starting, I did not want to get the mower stuck on top of everything else, ha.

Then I decided to get the trimmer and go around the house and buildings and fruit trees.

Got the buildings done first...

...and here they are, looking nice and neat and tidy.

Then I went to go around the fruit tree beds and about halfway through, I ran out of trimmer line and when I went to the shed to get more, I realized I was completely out.  Sigh.

I put the trimmer up and decided to use the little electric mower around the raised beds and realized I had forgotten to fully charge it the last time I put it up.  I mowed as much as I could until it ran out of juice (which was most of it, thankfully).

The last thing I needed to do was water the plants on the porch.  I moved the galvanized tub that the banana plants are in (I rotate it every week so they get even amounts of sun) and behind it was a snake.  

Needless to say, I didn't stop and take the time to get a picture, LOL, but it it slithered off the porch and into the brush.  It was a harmless brown grass snake.

By this time it was 4pm and 94 degrees with a feels like of 106 (Summer definitely not over yet).  I decided it was a good time to head home.  See yesterday's post for the wonderful meal 2nd Man had waiting for me.

Overall it was good just a few things not going according to plan but hey, I just need to get get a new battery, some more trimmer line, and make sure I plug in electric mower first thing when we get there.

Oh, and check for snakes...😁

GOOD FOOD AND HOBART SUNDAY

Time for some good food and some Hobart.Some of you may have seen this yesterday on our IG post but we wanted to share it here.  

I went to the farm solo yesterday, there was a chance of rain so I wasn't sure how the day would progress.  I missed the rain but there were other issues, coming up in post tomorrow.  All is good, thought just routine stuff. but it was a long day.

When I got home he had this ready for our dinner.  Steak with sautéed mushrooms, loaded baked potato, steamed asparagus and of course, a bottle of wine.  We haven't had steak in a couple of months so it was definitely a great way to end the day.

When I got home, Hobart was sleeping on his fuzzy blue blanket.  But he popped up to say hello.  Or maybe it was "good, you're home, now you can feed me".  We can never be sure because...

#notspoiled

 

WATERMELON DAYS

You ever just have a craving for something?  The other day, I told 2nd Man "we haven't had any watermelon yet this Summer".  He thought that sounded good too and when I came home from work, he had picked one up at the market near the apartment.

It was so good and satisfying.  Like a lot of people (we think?), we enjoy sprinkling a bit of salt on the slices to help bring out that wonderful flavor.

Not sure if you all have ever used this but we LOVE this salt for things like this.  This is more of a finishing kind of salt, not something you'd use as your everyday salt.  The flakes are large (as you can see in the picture) and it works so well for something like this.  It's also great on chocolate items when you want that "chocolate/sea salt" flavor combo.

And hey, we finally got to use that watermelon knife that we found on clearance late last Summer, ha.  It worked great and it's fun to just have a knife dedicated for something like this.  

We cut the rest of it up into smaller pieces and ate on it for a few more days.  Watermelon is just so refreshing and definitely something we want to grow at the farm garden but, we'll need to be there for plenty of watering while it grows.  Cantelope is our other favorite melon.

Do you all like salt on melon slices?

Or is that a Southern thing?

BALL JAR ACCESSORIES BARGAIN

You all know I love to find a bargain.  The other day at lunch, I was at the grocery store getting our weekly groceries and I found this:  

A Ball jar canning utensil set.  I have some of these items already, but it's been our experience with most any kitchen equipment, it never hurts to have extras because you just never know when an extra tool or something might be needed.

This was in the clearance section at my local HEB grocery store.  The package had been torn so we figure that's why it was on clearance.  But how much was it?  Would it be worth it to have some extra tools?

99 cents!  Now THAT'S a bargain.

It looks like it has been floating around since mid-July (or at least that's when they printed the new label).

A jar lifter, a jar funnel and a bubble remover/headspace tool.

I'm trying to get the canning cabinet at the farm all stocked with everything I need.  It's where we keep the jars, rings, lids, tools, pots and pans.  This will also give us some extras to have here in town so they don't all end up at the farm.

Who knows, perhaps an extra set will come in handy if I need 2nd Man to assist me in the process.  We do have a bunch of pears (hopefully) coming soon, so I foresee a possible canning event in the near future.

FRUIT UPDATE

Random fruit plants update.

These are the banana trees, including the most recent addition.  They are growing like crazy on the porch.  It got too hot and dry to get them in the ground and the lingering drought conditions meant they might not have made it so it worked out best.  The ideal time to plant them is either Fall (October/November) or early Spring (February/March).

We are debating a few spots to plant them so we'll have to see how the weather cooperates.

These are the two muscadine grapevines and they are doing great as well.  We are pretty sure we've decided on a place for these (one at each end of the orchard area).  The best time to plant them is "after danger of frost has passed" so probably March or so.  That will give us time to get the raised beds for them ordered and start filling them with soil.

And here is the "wild" pear tree.

We've been watering it by hand, well, by "truck", ha and they are looking good.  Should be ready to harvest soon.  After reading info from people in our part of the country who grow these, they said to just use "Labor Day" as the harvest weekend.  Once we take the pears, we'll have to figure out a pruning plan since it's obviously in need of some correction.

Or, we could just let it keep doing what it's doing and give us pears while we wait for the others in the orchard to give us their pears.