Salsa!

If ever food should become boring or bland, I can now rely on the flavors of Jalapeño, Serrano, and Anaheim peppers to bring excitement and spice back to it all.  These four batches of salsa took two days and several diet cokes to complete.  My fingers, because of my carelessness with the peppers and thinking I’m too cool to wear latex gloves, have been burning now for 3 days.  The first night was the worst as I slept holding an icepack.  Today, my fingers are just a bit sore but much better.  I think it was the Serranos that did the worst damage, but it was so worth it and we now have a ton of delicious salsa which I may or may not share . 

Side note:  the best thing to stop the burning on the lips and tongue was whole milk.  The burning on the skin:  time.

Popcorn Balls

3.) Share a family favorite childhood recipe.  --Mama’s Losin’ It Blog

If my memory is to be reliable, which it some times isn’t according to some, we’ve been making these as a family since I was at least 9 years old.  It started with a gift of several different kinds of extracts.  I think there was a blueberry, maybe a lemon, but it was the cherry flavor that made these sweet balls of delicious-ness possible.  Now, every Christmas, the making of popcorn balls has become a tradition very much looked forward to.

Chili con yummy!

Chili yumminess!  I made this last night for my family and all of us loved it.  I rarely hear my boys ask, “can you make this every night?”  That’s just not something 9 year olds and a 6 year old will ask for unless I’m serving cookies for dinner.

Note step #2, it is not a “ground beef mixture” as I used stew meat instead.  Me no like ground beef or beans….

Blankies

Using up one’s fabric gives one the thrill and moral fortitude that comes with recycling one’s hundreds of diet Coke cans.  However, if I wasn’t such an addict of buying both of these things, I would not have to do either but, at the same time would most likely be missing out on this forced feel-good moment.  Anyway, I was glad I had the fabric so I could make these baby blankets for a friend who is now having identical twin boys.  The ironic thing is, she was one of two people who threw a baby shower for me when I was preparing to have my second set of twins.  Lesson to be learned:  don’t throw showers for twin bearers unless you have had a tubal ligation, hysterectomy, or you are male.  I jest, I think.

 

Them peaches

Before…

After.

Last night I deliriously posted in my other blog about the insanity of canning.

“Tonight I did an idiotic thing and started canning peaches. I bought a whole bushel today because I thought I might miss the season and they’d all be gone. I didn’t know it at the time, but that thought was a subliminal message piped into my little brain by the insane asylum’s testing center and I fell for it.”

Fortunately, today I believe I am ready to keep going. I’d better be because these peaches ain’t getting any younger.