Friday Favorites ~ the green, green grass of home

The monsoon season has been good to my patch of the desert. We've gotten about four inches of rain since late May, and the pasture grass grew noticably greener and taller while I was away.


I love to watch the boys graze, and my favorite sound on earth is when they're chewing on grass that is fresh and still wet from an afternoon shower – it squeaks a little when they rip it with their teeth. Behind the din I can hear the cha-ching cha-ching of the cash register, ringing up all the money I'm saving from not having to feed them hay for the next few months.


This desert rangeland is hardly a thick and lush pasture. There are about six different types of grass they can choose from, and the blue grama appears to be their favorite. The grass grows in clumps among all the other green stuff, and the boys have to work a little to find it. This time of year, they can work a lot less, and I find myself wanting to shout "come up for air!" when I watch them graze. It's a non-stop chewfest.


Here's a fun fact: a horse turned out on pasture 24 hours a day will spend about 17 hours of that time grazing and will walk 8 or 9 miles in the process.


I took these pictures last night as baseline evidence for the boys' growing girths. When their sides begin to bulge out in grass-fed happiness, I will have to restrict their turnout time and they will not be pleased. But for now, we'll all just enjoy our green acres.

How I spent my summer vacation...which I should have taken in winter

Every summer since I moved to New Mexico, my parents have come out to visit. This year, I turned the tables and went to visit them, as well as my sister and brother-in-law. Here is sister, picking me up at the airport in her snazzy red ragtop, on a day the weatherman was calling "extra steamy." The lens fogged up the instant I pulled out my camera.

Once the lens defogged, I busied myself with taking pictures so I wouldn't notice the traffic, and how fast we were going, and how people back east drive assertively like maniacs.

Early the next morning, we headed up the coast in clean, shiny red cars to go to my parents' friends' beach house.

I couldn't help but have a New Mexico flashback.

Beach time was followed by a most hospitable happy hour (think margaritas, followed by key lime martinis) and dinner...


which was followed by a beach walk.

The roar of the ocean drowned out the noise the 80 bazillion no-see-ums must have been making as they buzzed around, chewing on us. Had I known, I could have smuggled a few swallows in my suitcase.

I rolled out of bed the next day in time to hit the beach before the sun came up.

These little guys kept me company.

Sea turtles had come ashore overnight, making their tracks up the sand to their nests.

Watching the pelicans fish for their breakfast was worth the pre-dawn wakeup call.

I left my camera in the bag during all the beach time that involved bathing suits over the next few days. 

Despite oppressively humid weather, a good time was had by all, and these little guys were substitutes for and reminders of everybody waiting for me back home.

Palm trees, shiny cars and waves just don't look right on this blog, so thus ends the show and tell from this year's beach vacation. We'll be back to burros and brown dirt tomorrow.

Smooch is very glad I'm home

Smooch was a tad traumatized by my recent absence. Apparently she tried to dig out under the fence a few times to go find me. Make me feel guilty, why don't you?

Everyone else seemed to fare just fine, though we all seem a little tired and out of sorts today.

When I arrived home last night, I found this list of observations from Ranchsitter Kim:
~ Just because the wind kicks up to 40 miles an hour and the sky is black and it thunders, it does not mean it will rain.
~ If you water the plants, it will rain.
~ The barn cat wants more attention than two horses and two burros.
~ If you give the pig her cookies before she leaves the porch, she still thinks that she should get three more when she is off the porch.
~ I have more kinds of fur stuck to me than I thought possible.
~ I saw a tumbleweed blow across the dining room floor – oops, no, it was Snapper fur!
~ Tried to make homemade lollipops with the girls, so when you go out your garage, on the left side the stuff that looks like shiny lava is the result. At least the house is still standing.
~ I put the red blanket on the floor so Ruby could play with her Barbies. Smooch brought over her toy and traded for a Barbie to chew. Ruby kept giving Smooch her toy to get her Barbie back. I think Ruby and Smooch get along so well because they do not ask anything of each other. No one is in charge, no one gives orders, they both just sit on the floor and lean against each other and play Barbie.

Smooch is worn out from playing with Ruby and all the digging and anxiety, but she'll get over it. I've promised to take her with me next time I go away, or at least get her a Barbie doll of her own to keep her company.

Breaking the news

You're doing WHAT?

I'm going away for a few days, Smooch. Don't worry, you'll be fine. Aunt Kim will take good care of you.

Make sure you tell her to give me my treats at 6:10 a.m. and 9:35 p.m. and to let me outside 87 times a day.

Hey, you guys, come up for air a second. I have something important to tell you.

Oh, nevermind.

Please can I come with you?

Sorry, Deets. No cats are allowed on the beach.

The beach? You're going to a beach?

Yes, I am, Willie. There will be sand and big waves and lots of people. You'd hate it. Ok, maybe you wouldn't hate the frosty beverages, but the heat and humidity would be too much for your old bones.

Wynonna, come back here. Don't turn your butt to me. I'll only be gone for five days.

You're dead to me.

But you can't leave us! You never leave us! Who will scratch our butts? Who will applaud when we dance? 

Who will post our pictures on our blog?

George, it's only for five days. You'll get over it.

No, we won't.

Stop with the moping! It's not the end of the world.

And as for you, Lyle, stay out of trouble, stay out of the cholla, and don't you dare lock Kim in the feed room.

A slightly unorthodox way to remove cat hair

Snapper's mad...very mad. How do we know this? Because he is not sitting on his favorite chair. And why not? Because I hauled it away.

Now why would I toss a perfectly good, not very old, extremely comfortable chair? (You may remember it from the impromptu open house last fall.) For the same reason I hauled off the mother of all area rugs underneath it – I hate my vacuum cleaner.

See Snapper's chair? He wrote his name all over it in cat hair.

In a house-cleaning frenzy over the weekend, I had a vision – a vision of a living room that would be easier to clean. A living room that didn't need to accommodate seven adults. Hello! I live by myself! An open, airy living room that wasn't a cat hair repository!

Deets helped me move the chair into the garage, where its fate remains unknown. Anybody need a chair? It's free and freshly vacuumed – just come and get it. The rug is rolled up and awaits its fate on craigslist. And the living room looks like it lost a couple hundred pounds. After almost four years, I finally figured out I had too much furniture in there. As an added bonus, I feel like a new person, having taken major strides in resolving the dysfunctional relationship I have with my vacuum cleaner.

The only one around here who isn't happy with the new arrangements is Snapper. As he reflects upon his predicament, I'm certain he'll come to realize that he still has a pretty good life, even if it doesn't include a big, comfy chair to call his own.

Empty-nest syndrome

Despite what the Chinese calendar would lead you to believe, this is the Year of the Swallow. My then-little colony returned to the 7MSN in April and moved back in to the three nests they had built last year.

Apparently word got out that I was offering free room and board bugs to all takers. The next thing I knew, I was being swallowed up. I have my very own housing bubble, and there is still no sign of it collapsing. There are nests on the front porch and nests on the back porch. There's even an overflow nest above the garage door filled with swallows on a waiting-list for the roomier nests uptown.

All these swallows allow me to take bug-free afternoon naps on the porch, which seem to occur more frequently these days because the $%#@?! swallows outside my bedroom window wake up around 4 a.m. and make a racket unlike anything I've ever heard! But I won't complain too much because the audiotrack they've provided to my summer has been rather pleasant overall.

Yesterday, the fledglings left their nest on the back porch and ventured down to the hitching rail. Their mom flew in and dropped off a little snack.

She must have told them, "Now you stay right here until I get back and don't you move!" because I was able to walk right up to them.



Before I know it, they'll be off to college or flight school or wherever it is swallows go for their higher education. I'll be left with a bunch of empty nests and I shall miss them. But the messy floors in their rooms? Not so much.

A view from downunder

The dog days of summer ~ 2009

Friday Favorites ~ Hungry Rancher-Woman Chicken

Now we all know that this is not a food blog. You will find no recipes here. I'm an eater, not a cooker, and I'm also a kitchen slob. I would be embarrassed to show you any meals in progress for purposes of gastronomic instruction. But today, I'm making an exception, because it's Friday Favorites and Hungry Rancher-Woman Chicken is my favorite dinner. Some might say it's my only dinner. I make it, or some in-bred cousin of it, several six times a week. And on the seventh day, she ate a salad. How boring is that?

But here's the thing. Hungry Rancher-Woman Chicken works for me on so many levels. It's easy and quick to make. It's satisfying and explodes with flavor. I know exactly where to find the ingredients in the super Walmart. It's a relatively healthy dish, and economical, too. And there are endless variations on the basic recipe theme. And since it's my kitchen and I don't see anybody else around here volunteering to cook for me, I'll do what I dang well please and eat the same dadgum thing night after night if I want to. Maybe I should call it Ornery Rancher-Woman Chicken?

And besides all that, a new recipe/food community site was launched this week by Pioneer Woman called Tasty Kitchen. If you haven't checked it out yet, go forth. It's full of real recipes from real people, and it's all free. Cookbooks? We don't need no stinkin' cookbooks. We can swap our best recipes over there. I want to contribute something to the site, and this will be it.

So without further ado...

Here is everything you'll need: instant rice, frozen orange juice concentrate, boneless, skinless chicken thighs, an apple, and curry powder.

Now this recipe owes its roots to Pioneer Woman. She waxed poetic about the virtues of chicken thighs in her recipe for Linguine with Chicken Thighs. And this recipe is sort of like that one, minus the linguine, the tomatoes, the olive oil, the fresh herbs, and the parmesan cheese.

Make your minute rice first and get that out of the way. Make as much or as little as you want - I won't judge. This recipe will serve one very hungry rancher-woman with a ravenous appetite or two normal people. We'll be serving the chicken over the rice, so the more rice you make, the further this recipe will stretch.

Now it's time to cut up your chicken thighs. My secret to not getting into a violent argument with my chicken thighs is to chop them up while they're partially frozen. If I go at 'em when they're thawed, they're gross and slippery and raw-meat-like and they make me want to be a vegetarian, and then I wouldn't know what to make for dinner.

I cut the block of partially frozen chicken thighs in half, then chop it up into bite-sized pieces. Half of the chicken goes into a ziploc bag for tomorrow's dinner, which will take five fewer minutes to prepare. Yippee! Have I mentioned that this dish can go from zero to the table in about 20 minutes?

Heat your pan on high, then give it a healthy squirt of cooking spray. I always use this Calphalon-wannabe wok, but any old pan should work. When the pan is nice and hot, dump in the chicken and put a lid on it. DO NOT STIR the chicken yet. Let it get brown on one side first, then stir it.

While the chicken is cooking, peel and core an apple, then chop it into bite-sized bits. I use a Granny Smith apple, only because I think I heard that these were good for cooking, but I could be wrong. Use any kind of apple you want.

Back at the pan, your chicken should look sort of like this - brown and cooked. Turn the heat down to medium. The chicken cooks pretty fast and smells really good.

About this time, your dog will come into the kitchen to investigate the aroma and hope that you spill some of the chicken on the floor. Fat chance, Smooch.

When the chicken looks almost fully cooked (should take about 8 minutes or so), dump in the apples, stir things around a bit, and put the lid back on. Reduce the heat to low. The apples will cook pretty fast.

Now we're going to make a little spicy orangey sauce. Mix together one or two tablespoons of orange juice concentrate with some curry powder. How much curry powder? That depends. I love curry powder, so I use about a tablespoon. Less adventurous souls may want to start out with a teaspoon. Add a little water to the mixture so you'll end up with about 3/4 of a cup of sauce.

Are you wondering where I found curry powder for $1.49 in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico? Not at the Walmart, that's for sure. Why are spices so darned expensive anyhow? Anyway, en route to the Walmart, there's a large Mennonite community, and one of the families runs the coolest little market full of bulk baking supplies and spices. And that is where I find curry powder for $1.49.

So now our apples are almost cooked through.

Add the sauce to the pan, stir until all the chicken and apple pieces are coated, leave the heat on low, and put the lid back on.

Put your dog in charge of keeping an eye on things in the kitchen while you go set the table or feed the horses or whatever. This recipe is very forgiving. You can eat it a couple minutes after you add the sauce or an hour later.

When you're ready, spoon the chicken mixture over the rice and take it out to the front porch. This dish tastes best if you eat it while watching your horses graze, your burros play, and the sun set.

Hungry Rancher-Woman Chicken...it's what's for dinner tonight, and tomorrow night, and the next night, and the night after that...

Hungry Rancher-Woman Chicken

Half of a 1.8 lb package of boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces

1 apple, peeled, cored, and cut into bite-sized pieces

1 - 2 tablespoons frozen orange juice concentrate

1 - 3 teaspoons curry powder

1/2 cup water

Instant rice

Cook as much rice as you want to eat. Heat a heavy pan over high heat and squirt with cooking spray. Add chicken. Add a little salt and pepper if you're so inclined. Do not stir until one side is brown. Cook until done – about 8 minutes.

Reduce heat to medium and stir in apples. Cook for a few more minutes until apples are soft. Combine oj, curry powder and water, then add to pan and stir well. Continue to cook on low for a few more minutes until flavors are combined.

Here's the link to this recipe over at Tasty Kitchen.