Little Zoe, Not So Little Anymore...

Little Zoe, she is our little rescue dog, we have had her since early last spring, in the beginning I didn't know if she would work out for us, I really REALLY wanted another long hair chihuahua, a lapdog, a little baby I could carry around and love. Zoe was everything I didn't want in a dog, I didn't want a terrier, docked tail, too big to be a lapdog, but she has really filled an empty spot we had in our home after our little Pekoe passed away.

She is really learning what we want from her, we are still working on "come here", it works a little more than half the time, but in the beginning it never worked at all, so in that respect she has come a LONG way. Walking on a leash has also gotten better, in the beginning she would run out the full length of the leash and almost yank my arm off, now she runs the full length of the leash and stops, turns to look at me as if to say, "come on, hurry up!" I would love to be able to take her out off the leash, but she's still too unpredictable, and she runs FAST, even with those short little legs, she can gallop away in no time flat, especially if she sees another critter. I have been practicing with her by taking her off the leash when we are almost to the sky castle, I tell her "let's go home" or "go to the house", she understands what that means and runs right home and up the stairs.

She is getting better about sleeping with us, in the beginning she would not get under the blanket, and she would only sleep at our feet, now she comes up and lays her head on the pillow, she snuggles close, I jokingly told her that she had until this coming spring to become more of a snuggle dog or I would bring home a long hair chihuahua, I guess she heard me loud and clear. :)

So today, I'm on the computer, PB got up super early this morning so he went in and is taking a nap, Zoe is laying between his legs with her head between his boots. I grabbed the camera and snapped a few cute pix, I couldn't resist.

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Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

Snow, Beans & Cornbread

This has been a stay at home week, we had snow, lots of it for us, at least a foot deep... a lot of is has melted off, but now I can't get off of my road, I tried to go out yesterday, but I never made it past the first hill, I got a quarter of the way up and came to a stop, oh my wheels were turning, but I wasn't going anywhere. It wasn't because of the snow either, most of it has melted off, but the roads are now mushy clay, even those with 4 wheel drive are getting stuck here and there.

So today I decided it would be a good day for a pot of beans, I meant to start these soaking last night but I went to bed early and it never happened. So today I picked and cleaned the beans, put them in the pressure cooker with plain water, brought them up to pressure then turned them off. When the pressure let off on its own, I opened the pot, poured the beans into a colander and rinsed them, returned the beans to the pot and added 1 can of Campbells French onion soup and a large can of beef stock, I added some oil and hot & mild chili powder, then started the beans cooking again.

So what goes better with beans than cornbread? I quickly realized I didn't have any cornmeal, I don't often use it and only buy it when I have a purpose for it, I began looking around for something, anything I could use to substitute for cornmeal, I have masa, but I didn't think that would work very well, I even eyeballed a bag of corn chips... then I remembered I had a #10 can of freeze dried corn, I have ground up popcorn before to make cornbread and it worked pretty well, I figured the freeze dried corn would work at least as well.

I don't follow a recipe to make cornbread, I just take 1 cup cornmeal, 1 cup flour, some baking powder, some salt, sugar (I like my cornbread sweet), an egg, some oil and enough milk to turn it into a batter, pour it into a greased pan and cook it until it's done.

So I opened the can of freeze dried corn, I measured out a little more than a cup, put it into a heavy duty zipper baggie, I used a rolling pin to crush the corn, freeze dried corn is very easy to crush, it came out to just about a cup of crushed corn, I used it along with the rest of the ingredients and baked it in the oven. I did omit the sugar on this one, I tasted the corn and the batter, it turns out that freeze dried corn is very sweet on its own.

Well, I have to say that the cornbread turned out great! The texture is just a little finer than regular cornbread, other than that, you would never know it started out as freeze dried corn! Oh and the beans turned out pretty good too. :)




All written text from this blog are copyrighted and owned by Wretha unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved, You may download or copy for your own personal enjoyment, but please do not distribute without written permission. You may post a portion of this (or any) message from this blog on another site as long as you include a link back to this site and the original message.

Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

Scratching That Itch

Have I told you? I have this itch, and sometimes it gets really bad, I've had it most of my life, at least as early as I can remember... sometimes it goes away for a while, but it always returns, and here lately it's been pretty bad...

What is this issue? Well, it's art, I have really wanted to get back into drawing, a while back I purchased a big box of crayons, yes the ones that kids use :)

I have, in the past, used crayons to draw what would be considered "fine art", ie it wasn't kids stuff, and it has turned out pretty well if I do say so myself. I would like to start working on some "local" art, subject matter of the local area, cactus, local wildlife and such. Yesterday and today I worked on a lion face, I know that African lions are not a local animal for me, I just love their look and have drawn them before using crayon. Here is the picture I just worked on, you can click on it to make it large:

Sorry about the watermark, I don't expect this picture will go viral and people will probably not print it out and sell these as original artworks (LOL), but perhaps someday if I get really good, well who knows. :) Let's just say I'm covering my posterior just in case. I'm not sure if I am done with it or not, I might go back in and tweak it more, I'd like to add more darks to the picture.

I have been following some crayon artists, those who really do "fine art" using crayons, they somehow manage to get richer colors and darker darks. I'm beginning to figure out how they are doing it, using another medium like ink (pen and ink or markers) or perhaps watercolor for the black, but some of them say they used only crayons, so I just don't know for sure... here are some links to their works:

http://www.themastercrayonartist.com

http://www.jeffreyrobert.com/

If I read it right, the second one is the son of the first one, they are both fantastic artists!



All written text from this blog are copyrighted and owned by Wretha unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved, You may download or copy for your own personal enjoyment, but please do not distribute without written permission. You may post a portion of this (or any) message from this blog on another site as long as you include a link back to this site and the original message.

Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!