Wordless Wednesday

Naptime at the Ranch!

Sometimes naptime requires the Cow Boss, books, and a rat!

My boys are getting so big!  <3<3<3

Happy Valentines day!

Granted we live pretty close to town these days, I've opted to cook our Valentines day dinner instead of finding a baby sitter, fighting traffic to town, finding a restaurant that isn't packed, but has good food and so on and so forth.  Besides that, who wants to pay $50 for a not so romantic dinner?

My menu:

Coffee-Rubbed Steak with Peppers and Onions

Spicy Shrimp with pasta

Green Salad

Boiled Potatoes

Corn Bread

Red Velvet Cream Cheese Cupcakes





We all know the quickest way to a man's heart is through his chest with a sharp knife. The second fastest way is through his stomach.  What cowboy (or Cowboss in my case!) doesn't love meat and potatoes?  In our house, it just isn't a meal unless there is lots of meat (preferably beef, fried) and potatoes.  If you don't have both of these, I guarantee you I will find the Cowboss hiding in the pantry 30 minutes after a meal eating potato chips.

So, our main dish will be Coffee-Rubbed Steak with Peppers and Onions (recipe and pictures courtesy of www.foodnetwork.com).

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon packed light or dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon instant coffee
1 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon mustard powder
1/2 teaspoon ancho chili powder
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Kosher salt
1 1 1/4-to-1 1/2-pound skirt steak, cut into 4 pieces
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
1 large onion, cut into wedges
Freshly ground pepper
1 green bell pepper, cut into strips
Juice of 1/2 lime, plus lime wedges for serving

Directions
Combine 2 tablespoons brown sugar, the instant coffee, cocoa powder, mustard powder, chili powder, cinnamon and 1 teaspoon salt in a bowl; rub the mixture between your fingers until fine. Season the steak with salt, then generously rub with the coffee-spice mixture.
Heat the vegetable oil in a large cast-iron skillet over medium heat. Working in batches if necessary, sear the steak, 3 to 6 minutes per side for medium rare. Transfer to a cutting board and let rest; reserve the juices in the skillet.
Add the remaining 1 teaspoon brown sugar and the onion to the skillet. Sprinkle with 1/4 teaspoon salt, and pepper to taste; cook over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until the onion is soft and golden, about 5 minutes. Add the bell pepper and 1/4 cup water; cook, stirring, until crisp-tender, about 5 minutes. Stir in the lime juice. Season with salt and pepper.
Slice the steak against the grain. Divide the steak, bell pepper, onion and the juices from the skillet among plates. Serve with lime wedges and cornbread.

I love shrimp.  I have ever since I was a little girl.  I would eat shrimp all day everyday.  Alas I live in a land lock state, and would be broke within a week if I did!  Also, shrimp does not fall into the meat and potato category according to the Cowboss, and he would starve.

This is a super simple recipe for Spicy Shrimp (and picture) from the Pioneer Woman (www.thepioneerwoman.com):

Ingredients

■3 pounds (more Or Less) Unpeeled Shrimp (21-26 Count Or Larger)

■1/2 cup Olive Oil
■Salt And Pepper, to taste
■3 whole Lemons (juice of)
■1/4 cup (to 1/2 Cup) Worcestershire Sauce
■Tabasco
■1 stick Butter

Preparation Instructions
First, thoroughly rinse raw shrimp w/shells still on. I use 21-26 count (that means 21-26 shrimp per pound) but I’ve certainly used bigger. Any smaller than this, and it’s difficult to peel, so stick with 21-26 or bigger. Place the shrimp in a large baking pan in a single layer. Over top of the shrimp drizzle about ½ cup of extra virgin olive oil.
Generously sprinkle black pepper over top of the shrimp. Be very generous! Now sprinkle generously with salt (I use kosher).
Squeeze the juice of about 3-4 lemons over top of all of the shrimp. Now GENEROUSLY drizzle Worcestershire all over the shrimp, about ¼ to ½ a cup. Drizzle Tabasco sauce over the top to your desired temperature. Some like it hot.
Now grab your stick of butter and cut it into pats. Place the pats of butter on top of the shrimp as evenly spaced as possible.
Place the pan of shrimp under the broiler in your oven for just about 10 minutes until the shrimp are no longer translucent. Serve with a roll of crusty French bread because you need something to absorb all of the glorious juices.



Dessert!  The most important food group!  I found these cupcakes on Pinterest (yes I am addicted!).  They came from:  lickthebowlgood.blogspot.com

Red Velvet Cream Cheese Cupcakes
Filling:
•4 ounces cream cheese, softened
•2 tablespoons granulated sugar
•1 ½ tablespoons lightly beaten egg (break egg, mix with fork, measure)
•1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Batter:
•1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all purpose flour
•2 teaspoons unsweetened natural cocoa powder
•1/2 teaspoon baking soda
•1/4 plus 1/8 teaspoon salt
•1/2 cup vegetable oil
•2/3 cup granulated sugar
•1 teaspoon vinegar
•1 large egg
•1 tablespoon red food coloring
•3/4 teaspoons vanilla
•3 tablespoons sour cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 8 (I needed 9) muffin cups with paper liners.

Prepare filling first. With a mixing spoon, beat together softened cream cheese and sugar. Add egg and vanilla and stir until smooth. Set aside.

In a mixing bowl, thoroughly stir together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt.

In a second mixing bowl, stir together oil, sugar, vinegar, egg, red food coloring, vanilla and sour cream. Mix very well, then add the flour mixture and stir just until blended.

Measure out approximately 1/3 cup red mixture and set aside. Divide remaining red mixture among the 8 muffin cups – each cup should be a little over 1/3 of the way full. Spoon cream cheese mixture over red mixture, dividing evenly between all cups. Drop small spoonfuls of reserved red batter on top of cream cheese mixture, making a bulls-eye pattern.

Bake for 20-23 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack. Carefully remove lift muffins from cups.

Best served slightly chilled. – Makes 8-9  I doubled the recipe so we would have enough!

As far as the cornbread, I follow the recipe on my Alber's Cornmeal Box, and boiled potatoes pretty much speak for themselves. Boil potatoes until tender, drain, add a little butter, salt, pepper, and if you want to dress them up parsley.

I hope you have a wonderful Valentines Day!

2011 Favorites

I thought I would start off with a recape of favorite pictures from this last year. 

May:  Here we have QT.

This is one of my favorite branding shots from June.

July:  Lamoille traffic jam.

August:  TR's first day cowboying with the Cow Boss.

September:  Moving cows down the road.

October:  Don't kiss me GiGi!

November:  Taking lessons

December:  Cowboy tools.







P365 November Highlights

December is nearly half finished, and I'm still trying to figure out where November went.  Here are my favorite pictures from November!

I took this picture of TR at the Cow Boss' folks place in Idaho.  It was a dreary overcast day, and TR was our bright spot of color in his new yellow vest.  "Mom!  It's yellow just like bananas, and I do love bananas!"  There was no talking him out of it!

QT is our little cosmonaut in his Elmer Fudd hat.  I just like the expression on his face!

I look at this picture and wonder who this long legged little boy is.  If I didn't recognise the red scotch cap, I would argue that it wasn't TR.  I find myself wondering what has happened to my babies and who these boys are a lot these days.  I like this picture because even though TR looks so tall, he still isn't tall enough to see over the gate!

It is tradition in my family to get a Christmas tree by the weekend after Thanksgiving.  We go up behind my family's ranch and cut down our own.  It includes lots of hiking looking for the perfect tree, then going back to the very first tree you saw to cut down, then coffee and cookies before heading back to my mom's house for lunch.  I love this picture so much, it is my Christmas card picture this year.  Some days you just picture the picture you want in your mind, and then it happens.  QT and I were waiting at the bottom of the mountain for TR and the Cow Boss.  When we saw them coming down the road with our tree, I knew that was my picture, and if I didn't take any other pictures that day, I had to take this one.

I wasn't at the right angle with this picture.  I wanted to get the Cow Boss and the horse he was working with in the picture as well so that you could see what the boys were watching.  If you look close you can see the horse, but no Cow Boss.

The Bucket List

This is my entry in the Just Ask Bucket List Getaway Giveaway. Just Ask offers a breast and ovarian cancer screening and is encouraging people to share 15 things that I want to enjoy in my lifetime as a reminder to be aware of my health. Want to enter? Head over to TodaysMama.com to get the details.

1.  Take TR and QT to Disney World in Orlando Florida.  My sister and I got to go when I was about 4 years old.  I don't remember much of the trip, just that it was magical!

2.  Take TR and QT to the ocean so maybe they can see a real shark!  TR is fascinated with sharks (and dinosaurs, but where would I take him to see a live dinosaur?).  Every large body of water we come to he thinks is an ocean and it has sharks.  It would be awesome to be able to show him a real ocean and sharks.

3.  Show a horse at the Elko County Fair, and do well.  Meet Max.  He just turned 2 this July.  Max is short for Maximus because he is huge.  I hope to show him at the fair.

4.  Win the Women's Branding Contest at the Elko County Fair.

5.  Win the Coed Branding Contest at the Elko County Fair with the Cowboss.  I love roping with the Cowboss.  I've never won a buckle in anything.  I think that winning a buckle roping with him would be the best thing in the whole wide world!  =)

6.  Own my own home/ranch.  Because who wouldn't?

7.  Visit Ireland.  I've always wanted to go.

8.  Visit Australia.

9.  Be a grandma, but not for at least 20 years!  My boys are 2 and 4, if they have kids before I am 40, something will be seriously wrong!

10.  Raise my boys to be happy, healthy, adults.

11.  Never miss an opportunity to tell someone I love them.

12.  Successfully bake an Angel Food Cake from scratch without if falling out of the pan.  Lets face it, this is a pretty lofty goal, and I may not be able to do it until I am a grandma!  I haven't even attempted it yet.  I remember being young and my mom banishing us from the kitchen, and house if the weather permitted while baking an Angel Food Cake.  Something tells me that with my little boys in the house, my cake would fall for sure.  My mom makes the best Angel Food cakes.

13.  Write a book.  Whether it is a cookbook or photography book, I'm not picky, I just want to be published someday!

14.  Run in a marathon.  Maybe not a marathon, but a race of some sort.  I don't even have to win, just to say that I did it.  My motto has always been "Why run if nobody's chasing you!"  I'm hoping to change that in 2012.

15.  Go to Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Derby, and not sit in the cheap seats!  I first Visited Churchill Downs when I was a Sophomore in High School, and have been back a few times since, just never to actually watch the Derby. 

What's on your bucket list?

P365 October

What a busy week!  I feel so far behind today I may never catch up!  We've spent the last 5 days with the in laws in Idaho weaning, picking replacement heifers, and pregging our cows.  Our herd tripled last spring when, in a momentary lapse of judgement the Cowboss and I decided to take out a loan and buy some bred cows.  Our motto:  Buy high, sell low!  Well, we wont be selling low this year, we should be able to double our loan payment this fall, and hopefully cover ourselves just in case the market suddenly drops in the next year or two!  Who else but a cowboy and his wife would use their vacation time to brave chilly temperatures and do more cow work?!!

Here are my favorite P365 pictures from the month of October.  This first one I took of the Cowboss roping at my brother and sister's place in Northern Nevada.  My sister and her husband bought this cute little guy this fall.  For just a baby, he is really willing, and what he doesn't have in knowledge, he makes up with heart.  Kind of strange seeing these white calves, in a primarily black Angus area!



I like this picture because to me to speaks fall in northern Nevada.  It is dry, dusty, and in some places drab.  There is still a little green grass, but everything has taken on that brownish color that tells me snow is not too far away.

This week is S-Curve week.  You can see the road curving in an S away from TR and QT.  It gives the viewer a place to start at, and makes you wonder what is just beyond the edge of the picture, where the road is going to take them.



It also shows fall in the Rubies.

Here is our "Fudd Filly" aka "Sadie."  It is kind of an uncommon angle for a picture of a horse.  What I like the best is that it shows her kind eye.  You don't have to see all of her to know she is a horse.  I also really like the almost sepia feel of the picture.

We have some pretty high expectations for "Sadie"  she is a potential kids horse for TR and QT.  Her breeding should make her an awesome cow horse, something they can drag calves to the fire on, and sort cattle.  As a three year old, her kindness and willingness to do what is asked of her make us think she will be perfect for the boys before too long!

I think this cabin is called The Fish Creek Cabin.  We stopped here for lunch while Elk hunting a week ago.  I love the chinking between the ties, and felt that it just begged to be photographed.



Hindsight being 20/20, I wish I would have been there at a different time of the day, or asked the Cowboss to stand up so that he wasn't partially in the shadow.  I wish it wasn't so far away, it would be a great place for some family pictures.

Lastly, last week was Circle Week.  Our challenge was to find something circular in shape to photograph for the week.  While cutting wood I stumbled across this old barbed wire (literally!).  Keeping with the fall feel, it worked perfectly as a picture.

Nothing spectacular, but these are my favorites for the month!