Ranch-giving

Here are some lovely ladies who were surely glad we were having turkey rather than steak.

Baa baa black-n-white sheep.

Minature horse, Tater Tot.

Taz is Tater Tot's daddy.

Goat sandwiched between two sheep.

Remember that story about the musicians of Bremen? I just expected these guys to stack up and start playing a tune. As it was, the pig was highly disturbed....I think she was expecting some dinner since everyone else was eating.

Two of the more domesticated critters we saw that day.

There was way too much food, a lot of fun, a short nap for the menfolk, football, a golf cart, tons of animals, and a whole herd of very sweet children.

It was a very good day of Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving 2009

Here's what we have to be thankful for..........our wild bunch! We had a lovely day at the ranch playing outdoors, driving the golf cart, looking at cows, and petting and loving all the animals. Of course, there was WAY too much food and we ate more than we should have.

I have lots of pictures but since we just got home, I just wanted to quickly wanted to wish all of YOU a very Happy Thanksgiving evening!

Orange Slice Cake - Preview

Hey folks...just a little preview. At least it came out in one piece. I kinda over floured the pan, so it was a little dullish on top, so there had to be a glaze hastily invented. We'll take it to church tonight and see how it goes over. Unfortunately, church dinners are not the best place to get opinions on new recipes because everyone gets some of everything and often there is just so much that one item gets sort of "lost". Also, no one knows who made stuff, so you don't get feedback.

If things go well and anyone tells me that it was good, I'll tell you how I did it.
Now I gotta go make lunch for the starving family and then then get ready for work.

Have a great afternoon!

Trust the Taste Tester

According to our resident taster, it really doesn't matter if the cake LOOKS good, but the important thing is that it TASTES good.

Just to be sure that the fault was mine and not the cake pan, I decided to give the old thing another chance. At this very moment, she is in the oven holding an orange slice cake batter which will hopefully make it to the plate without coming undone.

No worries, if it turns out I will put the recipe up since I made it up sorta. The one I found on the internet was way too complicated and took about three hours, so there was a cake mix in the pantry volunteering for an experiment. I guess we'll see in a little while how it goes.

This time, I greased the pan with butter flavored Crisco because I bought about 20 sticks of it last year during a cookie frenzy and have a LOT left over.

Supposedly, if you put a LOT of criso in there, then dump in some flour and shake it around,

Then you would get this. I had to go back and bang a little more flour around there in the middle.

As you can tell, the broken cake incident has stuck in my craw. I am thinking about trying to make some "Pumpkin Bread Pudding" with the messed up cake. Anybody got a recipe for that?

This Does NOT Bode Well.....

I fear that the church Thanksgiving dinner may be in peril, because this happened to my pumpkin-apple butter cake last night. I think it stuck because I have been using the same non-stick bundt pan for 12 years and it has just decided to keep some of the goodies for itself.

Right now, I have some raspberry jam bars in the oven, and hopefully they will turn out! Rocky Road brownies will follow.....those are always a hit.

So if you don't mind ugliness, come on over and have some cake for breakfast!

We're still here!

Ok friends and family, I have heard received your calls, texts, emails, and facebook queries and the answer is , "Yes, I do intend to continue the blog." The problem is, nothing exciting has been happening except the same old routine. You know... work, laundry, cooking, cleaning, reading, watching movies, dance class, karate class, etc......

The children are fine. Here they are at our volunteer project with Angel Food. They like breaking down the boxes and hauling them out to the recycle thingie.

I have given a few hair cuts recently to the men of the family. I hate to tell them I learned my techniques on about a thousand dogs. I suppose what they don't know won't hurt them.

Things on the animal front have been quite mundane. Of course, the summer's highlight was taking these little guys to the beach on my girl's weekend and not only having them pose for pictures, but also nearly burning down the hotel while heating towels for them , necessitating a

1 am trip to walmart to buy a heating pad, then encountering biker-guy on the way back in who told us about the almost fire that we didn't even know about. Then the little things died anyway.

This is "FreeBird", who was found flying free in Bartlett , now he only flies in here and likes to poop in people's hair.

So forgive me for not being the faithful poster I have always been. We are working hard to keep things in the road so that we can bring you more goodies like this one above. The next recital is in December....we have a girl in 4 numbers. I can't even bring myself to tell you how much the costumes cost. No matter - it is worth every dime.

So, as soon as I learn how to replicate the faces of the entire cast of "Cats!", I will get the blog rolling again. Just kidding, actually I will get you some good things on here this weekend since "New Moon" starts this weekend and I have to review that AND I will be doing a lot of cooking for both the upcoming church Thanksgiving dinner and the family Thanksgiving dinner . Hopefully there will be some new blogworthy recipes or at least some real mess ups that I can share.

Empanadas

Just wanted to let you all know that I haven't forgotten about you , but we have been some busy people the last few weeks.

I am working right now on some variations of empanadas, and hope to have them all worked out to show you soon. So far we have had cheese, onion, mushroom and spinach ones made with frozen yeast roll dough. They were "yummy" according to my taste tester. I can only eat the middles, but she said it was really good.

If there is anything specific that YOU would like to see rolled up in some dough, just send me a line and I'll see if I can figure out how to get it done!

Happy Tuesday, y'all!