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Archive for April, 2011

Beef Stir Fry

Posted in Easy Recipes, Fast Recipes, Main Dish, Recipes, tagged , , on April 29, 2011| Leave a Comment »

If you are looking for a filling, fast and tasty meal, whip up a skillet full of beef stir fry. It comes together quickly and could even be called a healthy meal (which most of my blog posts aren’t. Sorry I grew up on a farm where butter was liberally applied and included in everything. What can I say?)

Give this a whirl and see if it doesn’t make for a fast and easy meal.

Ingredients for Beef Stir Fry - you can use whatever veggies you like, this just happened to be what I had available when I decided to make this for dinner.

I use stew meat and slice it thinly for stir-fry. Because the meat is still a little frozen, it is super easy to slice.

Wash and slice up vegetables. We used celery, zuchinni and yellow squash. You could also use broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, onion, corn, etc.

Brown your meat in a hot skillet. I got out my Big Bertha cast iron skillet so it could hold all the ingredients easily.

Add veggies once the meat is browned.

Add beef broth and simmer until veggies are tender. Thanks Captain Cavedweller for pouring in the broth so I could take photos!

Steaming hot and ready to eat. Serve over rice and you've got a complete meal, ready in minutes!

Beef Stir Fry

1-2 pounds of stew meat, thinly sliced

4 stalks of celery, thinly sliced

1 zucchini, thinly sliced

1 yellow squash, thinly sliced

1 can water sliced chestnust

parsley flakes

onion flakes

beef broth

salt

all-purpose seasoning

Brown meat in a skillet on medium-high heat.  When browned, add in veggies and enough beef broth to cover the mixture. Cover and reduce heat to medium. Simmer until veggies are tender. Serve over rice. We like to sprinkle chow mein noodles on top. You can use any combination of vegetables. Onions and peppers and I are not on speaking terms, so we make do with onion flakes.

Enjoy!

She Who Likes Easy to Throw Together Meals

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Houses Burning and Fire Whirls

Posted in Entertaining at Home, Family, Musings, tagged , , on April 28, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Thirty plus years ago my parents built a house, the one where they currently reside, and moved from the little house that was originally on The Farm. I lived in what was dubbed The Old House for the first few years of my existence. Sadly enough, the only photo I have in my possession of The Old House is the one above. (Yes, I am the one on the pony. If I remember correctly we called it Blue and that is most likely my sister-in-law hiding behind the pony. I would know more detail but I was 3 at the time.) You can see the front of the house in the photo. Note the steps out front.

About a year ago, my nephew, who now owns The Farm, started tearing down The Old House. It had passed derelict status a long time ago and progressed to a hazard. In the fall, the house went from standing upright to having the walls caved in and the roof on the ground. At the far right of the photo you can see the front steps.

Saturday night, because all the family was gathered and we didn’t have anything better to do, Matt decided to burn the house. It was quite a finale to the evening, I must say.

After pouring a little fuel on the dry wood, Matt lit the fire and we all stood around watching and waiting.

It didn’t take long for the fire to start spreading.

The flames were really hopping on this side of the house.

In no time at all, the entire structure was on fire. A few of us watched completely intrigued by the fire whirls. It was at this point my young niece Katie decided we needed to find some marshmallows to roast. We finally convinced her they would be melted before they ever got toasted. Not to mention none of us wanted to get any closer to the fire.

Here you can really see one shooting up in the midst of the fire. The fire whirls are basically ascending currents of air, like a dust devil except with fire. We think the combination of extreme heat (because believe me it was really, really hot) and the fire burning together from two opposing corners caused the velocity to start the whirls. As they burned up and out, little dust devils swirled around the surrounding area. Sorry, it was too dark to get photos of the swirling dust and to be quiet honest, the swirling flames were much more interesting!

You can see here the big plumes of black smoke are gone and the flames are burning really hot as it gets down to embers. This was about the time one of the neighbors came over to see if we were trying to burn down the world or just a small portion of it.

And here are the blazing hot embers at the end of the fire. I should have gone back the next morning to take photos of the ashes, but it just seemed better to stop here.

She Who Thinks Fire Whirls are Fascinating

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Barn Wood

Posted in Family, Hubby, tagged , on April 27, 2011| 2 Comments »

While we were at The Farm for the weekend, I made Captain Cavedweller wander around with me while I took a boatload of photos.

I will freely admit I was more than a little fascinated by all the weathered old wood around the place.

It started with wanting some barn wood photos.

This used to be an old granary. If you look close, you’ll see even the nail heads have turned red from age and weather.

These boards were part of the old chicken coop. This would be the place where I learned to despise chickens because I just knew they were determined to peck me to pieces whenever I got sent in to collect the eggs. The chickens flew the coop about 35 years ago and the building has since been used for irrigation tube storage.

This cool shot was taken in what used to be the original shop built goodness only knows when. The back wall had this great knot hole that peeps out on one of the pastures. When I was growing up I hated walking past here because a flock of terrorist birds would dive bomb me almost every time. So you learned to run fast and hope for the best.

This door used to let the cows out of the milk barn and it seemed like it weighed half a ton when I got stuck opening it. Maybe I need to resume a fitness routine that involves pulling way too heavy doors open. It was great for keeping the arms in shape. This would also be the door that didn’t get opened soon enough on one particular occasion which resulted in the cow going down the steps, into the milkroom and chasing my mom around the tank until my dad and brother came to the rescue.

This is one of the old barn windows. Surprisingly, all the panes were intact. If you look really closely in the right-hand side, you can almost see Captain Cavedweller. He’d be thrilled to know I caught him in the reflection. Or not.

She Who Likes Old Wood

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Keepin’ An Eye Out

Posted in Family, tagged , , , on April 26, 2011| Leave a Comment »

When we went to The Farm for the weekend, I took along my new camera. (That would be the one that makes me smile deliriously every time I get to use it.)

Anyway, I took a few hundred photos of all sorts of farm-related things like barnwood, animals, tractors and even some little people who like devouring candy like it was, well, candy.

And they all looked at me like I needed watching. I kid you not.

It started with this big burly fellow. He kept giving me the eye and I decided to let him be. I’m pretty sure he ate the plywood that is missing and the iron bars were next on his menu.

I wandered over to the pasture where the baby calves were frolicking and enjoying the sunshine. These two stopped jumping around long enough for me to grab a quick shot. They weren’t too keen on the camera or me.

My time spent admiring the bovine babies came to an abrupt halt when this Mama decided I was trouble with a capital T. You go ahead and convince her I came in peace and meant no harm. As for me, I’ll be on the other side of the fence quietly moseying on.

Even the horses weren’t convinced I was not intent on disrupting their blissful rural existence. It took two tries and a flake of hay along with coaxing by my nephew to get them to stand still long enough to snap this photo.

My buddy Pete knows I can be trusted. He has to keep his eye on some of the other characters, but not me. I scratch his ears, rub his back and tell him he is a good boy. He, in turn, rubs against my legs until he nearly knocks me down.

And this kiddo – she keeps her eye on me to make sure I’m watching her antics, not hiding any presents or pilfering her chocolate. Like her auntie, she has a thing for candy. I kind of like her… whole heaps and bunches.

She Who Has Been Watched

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