my 1st attempt at tamales

sooo, my first attempt at tamales was not a flop, just a learning experience, I was working off of a few recipes, i wanted to try to duplicate some I had eaten a few years back, very non-greasy, south american version with potatoes, green olives and chicken......I forgot to put the potatoes in mine, and my filling was a little light in the masa to meat ratio, but they were good and enough to let me know I can make them again and keep adjusting on the ratio until it is what we like......picture is a close up, i want to find the darker yellow masa, this bag said yellow corn meal but the actual contents are very white in my opinion, i think the darker yellow might be more of a visual than taste, but i have to try it all! my 1st attempt at tamales, originally uploaded by glitzypursegirl.

• 2 cups warmed chicken broth
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 2 cups lime treated cornmeal (ma se ca was the only brand i could find here)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup shortening

I made a small batch of about 10 smallish tamales with leftover chicken cut off the carcass, grated cheese and 30 green olives cut in 1/2...i used 1 tablespoon chicken and 1 tablespoon cheese per tamale, with 4-6 olive halves, next time I will put more filling, just wanted to follow the recipe i had I heated the broth in a saucepan with the cumin, then added it to the cornmeal baking powder and salt, mixing it by hand to insure there were no lumps, i blended the shortening with an electric mixer to kind of whip it up and then added the cornmeal/broth mixture in 3 increments, finishing by smushing in by hand to insure even distribution, it was pretty easy.......I had corn husks, fresh from shucking corn yesterday, i put them in boiling water in a rectangular pan to make sure they were pliable, and let them sit to cool in the water in the pan for about 30 minutes, i made square tamales by folding one husk in each direction around the filling mentioned above, I first tried to steam them above my rice in the rice cooker, but they were not getting enough heat, so i put them in an electric vegi steamer alone for an hour with a damp rag on top of them, and they were perfectly cooked in that hour!

Tuesday cook fest

Whatever got into me , it is a good thing that my last batch of corn is now cooked, cooled and de-cobbed in the freezer, no more green husks getting drier by the day in the fridge! I roasted 3 squash and crash hotted 8 red potatoes while baking 2 sweet and one russet that were on the end of fresh, everything is done and all i need to finish is decided what to combine for dinner and washing up the dishes......I also made this quickie chocolate milk recipe from the pioneer woman....link at left, 1 cup of whipping cream and 4oz of semi sweet chocolate melted together on the stove and then bottled for the fridge and added to plain milk as desire for chocolate milk mounts, my son woke up this morning begging for it, have no clue why we very rarely make chocolate milk, he must have dremt about it! Tomorrow is tamale wednesday, will post recipe and pictures if they turn out! hoping they are not another flop from my skills!

Scheels on a Saturday in October

OK, let me first remind all I am not a huge sports fanatic, granted I love my Tony Stewart of the Nascar circuit, and all things autoracing, Fishing is fun, swimming is fun.....this store was a destination for us on this glorious Saturday of blue skies, we trekked to the Sparks Marina in Sparks, Nevada with the intention of seeing the indoor ferris wheel, the Aquariums, the fudge factory all for free........we ended up spending WAY more time than I ever would have thought possible in an enjoyable natural history museum in the retail mega store, there were some anamatronic displays of presidents, a 3 car nascar simulator, a shooting range, a pitching mound, a Terry Redlin art gallery, elevators, salt water aquarium AND a freshwater aquarium bridge, mounted big game in the gun museum, basketball court, rock climbing wall, full sized airplane hanging over the 8 kagillion fishing rods for sale, a hat department of enormous proportions, the largest ferris wheel, operating indoors from the UK a kids shoe dept with a climbing tunnel that snaked overhead like a habitrail for toddlers, complete with about 15 kids gleefully playing while their parents shopped below! So many fabulous artistic bronze statues and art of every kind to bedazzle your eyes, overwhelming and stunning at the same time! We took tons of pictures all with my cameraphone, just in amazement, we even ran into friend of my hubby's from our hometown, this is the DESTINATION, a 248,000 square foot, 2 story department store for every sport on earth, I mean every one, we saw a section of dog toys and gear! EVERYTHING from shuffleboard to snowboarding, windsurfers in the 4k price range on display, ATV's and their accessories are UPSTAIRS! completely a mind blowing experience, here is a link to the store specs, I am too tired to type! http://69.178.222.151/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ScheelsStoreView?langId=-1&storeId=10001&catalogId=10101&storeLoc=RS oh and the snack/deli/restaurant thing that we did not buy a single thing from, not even a drink! has such menu offerings as bison burgers, elk meatball sandwiches and venison stew and i am sure there were fish offerings, but i did not see them, i am curious if these wild food sounding offerings come pre packed and frozen and are just reheated in this airport like snack bar setting.

beans beans more beans please!

Just having consumed more than my share, I am in love with this pot of beans, the secret seems to be adding an onion, simply skinned and sliced in half, that miraculously vanishes into the beans.......that is the only difference between this batch and the last and the end result was fantastic! I assumed I would have large chunks of onion to fish out, but nope they melted into the pinto beans! in case anyone wants it here is the recipe: 1 16oz bag of dried pinto beans (soaked in 8 cups of water and left overnight in the fridge covered) 1 medium white onion 2 bay leaves 1 ham hock 1/2 t sea salt 1/2 t pepper water 2 cloves of garlic Rinse beans after soaking them overnight and discard bean water, I used it to water plants outside, put beans in large stockpot with ham hock and cover with fresh water so that there is about 2 inches of water above the bean line, put on stove on medium high heat, cut onion in half and remove skin and ends, add to beans with bay leaves and garlic, cover pot and let cook about 2 hours, stirring occassionally, about 1/2 hour before serving add salt and pepper and when your beans look like the picture they are done, test a bean and make sure it is tender enough to your liking, this pot cooked in about 3 hours total. The surprise for me is that the onion simply vanished into the beans, melted right into the gravy of the pot, i was quite surprised! Remove Bay leaves, scoop and serve, i topped with raw onion slices and sour cream and cornbread....but if you overcook them you can then have homemade refried beans for burritos, I have done that before, and they taste great in flour tortillas!

what is wrong with me wednesday!

Decided to roast pumpkin and sweet mama squashes and make a rice/corn/zucchini filling, of course all to freeze since it suddenly does not sound good to eat, ugh what is wrong with me?

Random Facts Tag

My life in Germany: Random Facts Meme lets see if i did this correctly....hmmm I wanted to link to her blog since I am doing her 6 things about me.......and I am supposed to tag people, I have no clue how to do that either, so here stands my reply Here are six random facts about me:

1. 1) My mom lied about my age to get me into kindergarten earlier, partly to save on day care costs, partly to get me in school, the cutoff month was october and my birthday is in January, so for the first few years of school I thought my birthday was in October......created havoc later since I was not driving until my senior year of high school and not allowed to do much outside of the house until I was 16.......social issues!
2. 2) I have a strong and abiding fear of monkeys, from that wizard of oz flying monkeys scene, I had horrid nightmares after seeing it, had to be sent to therapy in like 2nd grade from night terrors, still have bad nightmares and try to avoid all monkeys to this day!
3. 3) I have a horrid temper, I blame hormones, but I seem to snap with fire breathing out of my mouth when perturbed in a certain mood.......my poor family! hubby asked me a simple question last week and I about exploded that the smell of his chips were going to make me puke!
4. 4) It drives me crazy when my son puts food in his open cup and or his hand, it also drives me crazy to step on toys in the dark of night that have been left out, but the first sends me screaming into his face, trying to get him to understand that the drink is not to be messed with!
5. 5) My skin is scaly like a snake from the dry lack of humidity air, I hate the feel of lotion, so I am shriveling too fast!
6. 6) I drive too fast, have traffic tickets to prove it.

a full week of bears

We had heard about the mama bear that birthed two cubs on our street this year, my hubby had seen them one day on the way to work going through a neighbor's trash....with smallish schoolkids walking to school right past them, frightening! Then coming home last night we saw people on a deck oogling something, and I knew "BEAR" sighting, so I asked hubby to turn down the street, not ours, about two blocks north of ours, and there was the mama and her two adorable cubs making dinner of trash bags full, which is odd, since this was the day after trash day....so with the salmon eating bear last sunday and these three and the stock market being a bear, it is a week of bears, now as I type this I hear the sounds outside that might lead to the dog barking that signals BEAR, and now i have the fear in me of having to rush to close the dog door and keep our dog in, bear out, it just never ends!

Bear dining al fresco

Let me just say, I never thought I would get good photos of a real , live wild bear....more or less of one fishing with its mouth from taylor creek and catch not just one but two salmon, the bottom photo shows the fish in his mouth...........I am a lousy photographer and was soooooo excited to see the bear not run when all of us viewers started snapping photos.............and loudly talking, I had a fear of a charging bear so I was never quiet in my conversation, nor did I enter the water or get any closer to this bear, he did walk in the water about 20 foot closer to me than when he hopped off the log, but it was mostly in calm walking manner, then the bear just refocused on the fish and ate one while watching the rest scurry, and after the bear caught the second he kept it in his mouth and wandered off into the tall grass, enough for me, we moved along!