Here is a conversation overheard between The Kid and her doll this morning:
The Kid to the doll, “You had better eat that porridge or else!”
The doll to The Kid, “No Mommy, I won’t!”
Intrigued by this conversation since The Kid has never seen or tasted porridge I asked her what she thought porridge was. She looked at me with an entirely straight face and replied, “It’s what bears eat.”
If you know enough fairy tales to shake a stick at you will know that she is right. I love that I can enter a conversation with my kids expecting one outcome and end up with an entirely different conversation. This is why they have made it this far in life. Despite the fact that they can drive me up the wall a lot of the time, they entertain me just as often. I am constantly taken by surprise by their creativeness, logic (or lack of), and silliness. The very best entertainment in this house is The Kid and The Baby.
On a completely different topic: It’s snowing today! We live at about 3000 feet in the Sierra Foothills. This is about 2000 feet below the normal snowline so we only get snow once or twice a year. It never lasts for more than a couple of hours. So, this is a very exciting day around here. Now I just need to leave behind my usual fears of mud and laundry and let the kids go play out there. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can let The Kid get muddy. Maybe.
Filed under - Bright
The post in parenthacks today was about secret ingredients in cooking. My secret ingredients are:
1. Del Monte Organic diced tomatos with Basil and Oregano. It is great in everything from sauces to soups. I use it whenever a recipe calls for diced tomatos even if they don’t call for the basil and oregano. It is just so good!
2. Lipton Onion Soup mix. Delicious in Meatloaf or hamburgers.
3. Yoshidas Sauce and Marinade. Yummy on Chicken!
4. This is my favorite marinade in the world: 1/2 cup beer, 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup teriyaki sauce (yoshidas, of course), lots of pepper. Marinate for an hour or over night. It is amazing on almost any meat you can think of.
5. Hormel real bacon bits. They make a great salad, an even better cheeseburger and a delicious quesadilla.
6. Cream of Mushroom soup. Is there anything that you can’t make with this stuff? Trust me: google “whatever meat you have on hand, Cream of Mushroom Soup”. I guarantee that you will come up with at least 10 recipes that your family will eat.
Filed under - Meme-a-licious
Today marks day 8 that my house has been without water. The water coming into our house is spring-fed which means two things: 1. Our water tastes better than your water; 2. It comes down the side of a mountain through a network of pipes that are highly susceptible to freezing. We have lost water before due to drought but this is the first time that we have been without water for an extended period of time. I have finally given up any hope that we will have water again anytime soon and embraced the wonder of the gallon jug. Every morning, afternoon and evening I ride a four-wheeler up to my mother in laws house and fill 4 gallon jugs with water to do the mundane things that you forget require massive amounts of water. Wash dishes? Get a gallon jug. Coffee? Gallon jug. Flush the toilets? Damn! TWO gallon jugs. Gotta go back to the in-laws.
As I write, my husband and my brother in law are out on the back hoe trying to dig a new deeper trench to lay pvc pipe below the freeze line. I have been promised that we will have water in the pipes by today. But we can’t turn on the water due to the possibility of flooding the house. What? I didn’t mention the flooding? Oh, lets see. Last Saturday I came home to a house half under water because of frozen pipes that cracked and filled the kids rooms and their bathroom. Since then we have lost the hot water pipe under our bathroom and the pipe that leads to the hose in our yard. That was a pretty spectacular explosion. We have shards of pvc strewn across the yard from the force of that burst. Aparently, we have only two choices in this house. We can be under water or without it. I’m not sure what to choose. If you will excuse me I need to drive up to my inlaws. We need water.
Filed under - A Redneck Life, California Dreamin'
