Charlie Sheen Tea

At our house this is called Charlie Sheen tea. Why you may ask?  Mr. Ranch was having trouble telling me what kind of tea to buy and he could only remember the word "tiger" (which you may notice, doesn't actually appear on the box).  And since it was around the time Charlie Sheen gave his famous "I have tiger blood" interview, the name has stuck.

It is a quite versatile tea--caffeine free so it can be consumed at night...and it makes a reasonable facsimile of Chai--using almond milk and honey.

So if you're ever at the grocery store with me and I can't figure out the name of "that" tea...this would be it...

Ah, Ski season is nearly here

We had hoped to not need anything for ski season other than passes.  And maybe snow pants for The Girl.  Right.  We ended up at the fall ski sale with two pairs of boots (one ski and one snowboard), the necessary snow pants, suspenders with peace signs (purchased from Amazon), two new pairs of ski socks, and a pair of goggles to replace the ones damaged in the rail riding incident of last winter.  But, we did not purchase the Star Wars themed board.  Just saying.  My favorite part of the shopping extravaganza was when the young clerk said, “hi, how can I help you?”  The Boy responded with “I need new boarding boots”  Clerk:  “Snowboarding boots?”  Boy:  (with quizzical look) “Um, yeah?”  Clerk: “Have you ever snowboarded before?”  Boy “yeah”  Clerk “once or twice?”  Boy “once or twice a weekend since I was 5….”  Clerk “Ah, then I guess you know what you need then”  Boy “Yeah”.

 Old boots on left, new on right...hmm, guess he needed them...

Yet another reason I love our neighborhood

The first weekend after Labor Day our neighborhood hosted a “movie in the park”. The weather was perfect—we had a lovely time. 

 When The Girl was only a few months old, Grandude bought her a giant wagon, which we actually used as a bassinet for awhile in the townhouse.  We didn't use it much while we lived in the townhouse, occasionally to move firewood, or we took it to the zoo, but usually, we just took a stroller.  Since we moved to this house it has had a lot of use--walking to the neighborhood CSA veggie pick up, moving various things around the yard, bringing back pumpkins from the neighborhood pumpkin fest, and this time toting a bunch of stuff to movie night in the park!


 Let's see--what provisions do we have--bug spray (didn't need it), bag of homemade popcorn with butter, flashlight, chairs, blanket, cooler with drinks...

 And there it is, in the field at the tiny park that is usually just a big area of grass--a 40 foot high movie screen!

 It wasn't as far as it looks--actually only about 4 blocks from our house!











Apparently the area has a name now.

 The movie was supposed to start about 7:00, we went down about 6:30, and it was super hot.  These folks in front of us were smart--they brought one of those sports umbrella things, like you'd take to an all-day soccer meet.

 See what a cute little area we set up? :)

When the boy was about 2, he stuck popcorn up his nose while at my parents' house in rural South Dakota.  My mom's reaction to this picture was "you let him have popcorn?!!!".  Yeah, we do let him sometimes...but only if he promises not to put it up his nose.

 The kids had a great time running around...

 And resting....

 I love that the wagon has cup holders...ours is holding bug spray and a flashlight, of course..

 The neighborhood association was also passing out popcorn and bottled water--more homemade popcorn for me!

 Ok, things are getting silly...time to start the movie!

There it is! Yay!

 It was a little chilly, so the kids warmed up inside the blanket.

A very nice evening!

New Fish

When I was a kid my brother's fish died and my folks got him a dog.  Go figure.  When Goldie the Goldfish died we kept an empty fish tank on the counter for a couple weeks and just pretended there was a fish in it.  Today we paid a visit to the local pet store and 30 cents later (plus tax, well, and a bunch of dog stuff), we came home with two little goldfish.  They are named...wait for it..."Goldie Junior" and Tony.  Yes, Tony.  Why Tony you might ask?  After Tony Stark, Iron Man's not so secret identity.  I'm sorry, I don't know which one is which....I think the white one might be Tony, but then again, who really knows?

Bunny, Bunny, Bunny

The other day we had a visitor to our yard…can you find him? Or maybe it is a her?  At least it wasn’t a coyote or a mountain lion!  Stay out of my garden, Bunny…

More Boy-isms

Ah, The Boy…here are some more classics….

Boy:  “My teacher’s daughters just graduated from college and need jobs”

Me: “What do they do?”

Boy:  “Nothing!  They don’t have jobs!”

Boy: “I keep hearing all this stuff about ‘Mile High’.  What is that, a school, like Sky High, or something?”

Boy:  “You went to Iowa without me?!!!”

Me:  “We went in 2000. “

Boy:  “You went to Iowa without me?!!!”

(he was born in 2004…..)

Pickles Part 2

So the first round of pickles was so successful that Mr. Ranch decided we should pickle "other things".  He is a big fan of "hot mix", which is about $6 a jar at the local King Soopers...so I decided, why not?  We used the spicy recipe from my 9/13 post and a spicy beet pickle from my handy dandy Ball Canning Book.  This time I remembered to buy coriander...which at $5.99 a jar made me glad that I planted more cilantro for next summer!

 My trusty Ball Blue Book (say that 5 times fast...)

 Ok, didn't can this, in fact it is still sitting on my counter.  We think it is mutant cucumber.  It is very interesting.

 Some of the trimmings...

 Jalapenos...I used gloves when I cut them up, but not when I put them in jars and have spent the last 24 hours trying not to touch my face or eyes.  Which made taking out and putting in my contacts interesting. Luckily, today I found a home remedy ("wash" your hands in olive oil for 1-2 minutes, then wash with dish soap and cold water.)  It's about time for bed, so we'll see if it worked when I take out my contacts in a few...

 More cucumbers...they just keep coming...

 Some of the other produce that is going to be pickled or otherwise processed.  From left-ish to right...that weird cucumber, cauliflower, celery, green and yellow peppers, cucumbers, beets, onions from the garden, asparagus, carrots from the garden, and tomatoes to be made into salsa. (Eat some, freeze some).

 A close up...

 Most of what I made was "refrigerator pickled"--it has to be stored in the fridge because I don't use a pressure cooker.  Most of the jars "seal", so I feel pretty good about it not going bad...

 There are a few jars here (on the left)  that were new jars and seemed to seal themselves, so we are going to try not refrigerating them...we think that means we can give them to people who can't immediately refrigerate them.  We'll see...

And finally, we had a few beets from the CSA.  Last week we froze some, but given that we don't often eat beets..that didn't seem like a reasonable solution for this round.  Luckily I found this recipe...

Spicy Pickled Beets

4 lbs beets, cooked

3 cups thinly sliced onions

2 ½ cups cider vinegar

1 ½ cups water

1 tsp salt

2 cups sugar

1 TBSP mustard seed

 1 tsp whole allspice

1 tsp whole cloves

3 sticks cinnamon, broken

Only had 3 beets, forgot the water, didn’t have whole allspice or cloves, so used ground allspice and ground cloves...sigh.

Wash and drain beets, remove peel, cool and cut.

Combine remaining ingredients in a sauce pan, bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for 5 min.  Add beets, cook until hot. Remove cinnamon sticks.  Pack beets (and onions) into jars, pour hot pickling liquid over beets.  Put on lids...

Then I put them in the refrigerator.  I tasted the one piece leftover and they were yummy...

 As you can tell from the color though, these might have been sugar beets.  Or even turnips.  But I'm pretty sure they were beets...and they were yummy when they went in the jars, so it's all good!