Milk To The 4th

We like milk. Well, at least we used to. Now it seems regular milk is simply not good enough for our population of mammals. Where once we had a total of 3 types of “cow” milk (Our kids drank 2%, my wife(on the rare occassions she drank milk) and I drank skim milk, and our undernourished foster child drank whole milk) living in our refrigerator, we now, today as I write this, have a variety of things that have never seen the inside of a cow.

The milk-ish products in our frig include the following:

Gallon of 2% milk: Our only shout out to the milk of my youth. (Growing up, we got milk directly from our neighbor who milked the cows. We got whole milk that was unpasteurized and unhomogenized. Once the milk settled out, my mother scraped off the cream that rose to the top and made yogurt. I don’t remember eating any of the yogurt, but she told me she used the dehydrator to make it. My daughter has heard this rumor and wants me to put the dehydrator on my Christmas list so she can experiment. Since getting the blender for Father’s Day, she has had far more fun with it than I. Why shouldn’t she ask for it?)
Almond milk: My mother has been buying Almond milk at Aldi’s for a number of years. She has been cheering its merits for quite some time. I have tried it, but remain a traditional mammal. The non-traditional mammals will drink it knowing full well there is no guarantee when or IF the carton will be replaced when emptied.
Soy milk: This one was one I did not really ever planning on drinking. Our Chinese exchange student doesn’t ask for much, so when she requested the soy milk, it seemed hard to turn her down. She drinks it very diligently….a cup in the morning and at night. [I believe.] (My experience with Chinese students [I am guessing adults, too.] is they are very disciplined. And she certainly is that. She likes sweets, but limits (at least she gives all appearances of limiting) her consumption of them. She may sneak an extra cookie into her lunch, but she is rarely seen getting a snack after dinner.)
Coconut milk: This one is my fault. I had this incredible plan to make a Caribbean feast for dinner. I had 15 or so skinless, boneless chicken thighs marinated w/ a bottle of Caribbean Jerk marinade. Since I was such a good planner the night before, I had set 4 cups of beans in a bowl with 12 cups of cold water. They expanded nicely and after cooking in the crockpot all day, they were ready to be blended with some rice in an INCREDIBLE (or not) Caribbean Beans w/ Rice. Since last time we made rice, I doubled it and there was barely any left over for school lunches. I determined I was going to get ahead of the curve and double it. The plan was good, but I failed to factor in the impact of the coconut milk on the flavor of the rice. Needless to say, the rice wasn’t a hot mover at dinner. When the containers came out for pre-packing tomorrow’s lunch, the rice was almost completely absent from the festivities. Only one container had the rice paired with some broccoli. I don’t fault them for not being more enthusiastic. A happy, satisfied cook is much more likely to experiment and sometimes hit one out of the park. Right…..a half gallon of coconut was purchased for the bean and rice experiment. It was cheaper than buying 2 cans, and it may tempt us into other experiments.
Hazelnut creamer: We have had one of these in the frig for quite some time. I am NOT a black coffee drinker. My wife sometimes dances with the black brew. I am also a recovering sugar user–why does my wife stay married to me? I usually don’t use full strength creamer. I will splash the creamer and make up the difference with milk. I have attempted to take walks with other flavors of creamer, but I usually reach the bottom of the cup unsatisfied.
Chocolate Caramel creamer: Since my son moved back home while commuting to school, he has revealed a variety of new habits. The habit that pleases my wife the most is his graduation to coffee drinker. As an added bonus, he usually has coffee in the morning and another cup in the nightish time. The chocolate caramel is definitely his creamer of choice. My daughters have also been known to make an iced coffee where this creamer is an ingredient. If our youngest son would only start drinking coffee, my wife would know her job as mother was a successful one.

I suppose milk to the 6th might also have been an appropriate title. Having sometimes been overly a purist, I was not sure exactly if the creamers qualified for a “power of milk”. In my desire to be accurate, I may have inadvertently offended any whose entire dairy consumption comes from their coffee cup. (Better milk than those little, non-dairy creamer cups–yuch!)

Also, I have failed to address any cheese present in the frig. For those who are curious:

we have mexican shredded cheese for our frequent tacos, carnitas, and fajitas
cream cheese for any of those bagel purchased at the discount bread store,
American cheese-we really don’t eat it. It is only to show our support for America–kind of like putting out the flag on various holidays,
Provolone-one of the best cheeses ever. When it goes on a hamburger, the meat gives it a big hug and takes a bite out of its neck in a pseudo-vampirian embrace,
Mozzarella-the pizza cheese of choice–as long as it hasn’t already gone moldy,
Parmesan- a nice thing to have around for those Italianish things us Americans think we do so well.
The final holdout…sour cream– not a cheese, not a milk. It is a big glob of dairy goo that is all too necessary when I make banana bread.

Maybe at some future day, I can give a tour of the vegetables presently residing in our frig. (Even more exciting, the ice cream and dairy products residing in our freezer.) It is not as good as an adventure movie, but may compete with “Honey Boo Boo”. (I doubt they have many vegetables in their refrigerator.) Making a milk “suicide” (in my youth, a suicide was a little bit of each soda/pop available at the fountain. Cream soda was essential for a good one.) might just be the right way to bring closure to my dairy adventure….

Learning To Breathe

If you came here looking for something profound and life changing, you need to change the station now. This is exactly as stated….

As I attempted to refill my black mango tea cup today, the sweetener was not set up correctly. As I poured a small taste into my cup of both non-sweetened and sweetened, it was clear there was a sweetener issue. The staff at QuikTrip confirmed the sweetener issue and made up a new batch. And, because of my wait, they provided two coupons for a free drink refill. As I attempted my second draw of tea, I must have been distracted because it did not go so well. I coughed and hacked and drooled on the floor. As I attempted to clean up my mess and draw a normal breath, my tea princess popped her head around the corner to check on me. I thanked her and let her know I would make it.

I have been breathing all of my life. (Well, since I believe life begins at conception, I guess “darn near most of it” would be a more accurate statement. Breathing without lungs is something not even an illusionist like David Copperfield could get away it.) And, with the exception of the time frame just mentioned, I have been drinking (i.e. milk, tea, coffee, water etc.) most of my life. Maybe I have been occasionally choking most of my life as well. It is bad enough having a self-inducing coughing/choking fit in your home with just your children or siblings to mock you. When you have such an attack in a public place where you have already drawn attention to yourself, every one of the spittey, drooley, frothey, projectile balls flying from your mouth seems like a reason to be referred to you as an aging member of society with compromised bodily functions.

I am not that old. I don’t look that old. But, I do creak more along with more of all of the other noises that are part of the human experience. And, maybe living in my body for a number of years now makes me sensitive to the odd looks and personal questions more than I should. I was young once with an absolute certainty I would never age. I used to look at older people and wonder how they were able to function in a body so lacking in youth. Now, the mirror, my ears, joints and hairline confirm I am on the path to what I saw as old. Fortunately, I continue to reset the boundary. Although I am older, old is reserved for people in the cemetery–I have PLENTY of time!

Cross Country Morning Madness

The beginning of the school year revolves around pretty much one thing–cross country. Yes, there is school and homework and various other social things. But, these other things are only added to the calendar if is does not interfere with cross country. So, as much as my daughters enjoy (not always) cross country, here is a somewhat unbiased look at its impact on our lives:

Wake up time: Cross country practice starts at 6:00 AM through almost the end of October. Since they don’t drive themselves and can’t walk there, my wife an I alternate between assuming taxi duties. After my wife’s dropoff, she usually drives in to work and fires the computer up early to be prepared for any of the east coast meetings she needs to participate in. When I return to the house at about 6:20, I usually drag for a couple hours before crawling back into bed OR I go immediately back to bed. Even when there are exceptions to adding more sleep to my beauty (or something like that), I often do not function at to high of a level without hoarding some more “shut-eye”.
No weekend off: It would be one thing if it were only during the week, but all of this training has to be put into action sometimes, and the sometime is almost always the weekend. Since it gets warm later in the day, the meets also occur early morning. As it is our coaches desire to arrive at all meets an hour before the first heat so the course can be walked prior to running, the kids sometimes need to be at the course 2 to 3 hours before they actually run. When the meets start at 8:00, it makes the adults coffee addicts for a solid couple of months.
Four girls out the door: They try so hard, but it is hard. When they leave the house, they need to have their lunch, a water bottle, a couple of snacks, a change of clothes, and shower supplies. If it were just one or two kids, I could keep track of things a little more closely. When 4 girls (no matter how responsible and/or sincere in trying to get everything) participate in this daily morning ritual, it is no surprise when a couple times a month an extra trip needs to be made to school to fix a “whoops”. (Snacks are not a “whoops”; lack of clothes definitely are!)
Prepacked breakfast and lunches: Even though they do provide cereal for the kids to eat prior to school, they usually need something before their morning cross country work outs. The quality of this morning snack depends on their planning (both the night before and the morning of) and their pickyness. Almost all lunches are packed the night before. This causes the front of the refrigerator (at least 2 of the shelves) to look like something nearly any engineer would be embarrassed to claim any knowledge of. Each girl may have 2 or 3 plastic containers and possibly a sandwich bag with a pita/wrap/bread inefficiently balanced on top of a few other soon-to-be consumed items. This is a little chaos–far less chaos and inefficiency if it were necessary to get everyone up 10 minutes earlier to pack their lunches in a semi-sleeping state.
Leaving something in the taxi: This is usually a pretty simple “turn around and remove” the forgotten item. It is the “turning” around I dread. This morning, I started turning around as soon as I heard my cell phone ring. (I don’t get many calls at 6:00 AM) Even though it was an early hour, the other drivers seemed to be bothered when I took up 2.5 lanes waiting for a opening. As I have been known to say when we leave the house, “Don’t forget your pants.”, I will now add, “Don’t forget your waters.” as I prepare to pull out of the school parking lot.
Differing schedules: This year, I have 1-middle schooler, 2-high schooler, and 1-cross country photographer. The middle schoolers don’t practice every day, and the photographer really doesn’t have to be there for practice. (The taxi driver goes into a rant if he/she has to drive the school route to many times within a 2 hour period.) Due to this schedule, two (or one) or our students are forced to be there early with nothing specific to do. When the season started, the coach held the line saying they couldn’t go into the school. With this rule softening, the “non-practicers” can hang out in the school and safely do their homework without over-straining their sand-encrusted eyes.

Now, that I totally discouraged everyone from encouraged their kids to do cross country, I will try (some may call these big stretches but I prefer to view it as just being optimistic.) to point out some good things:

More opportunities for dates: As we drop the girls off at the school so they can take the bus to the meet, my wife and I get chances to have more little dates together. Although breakfast is not my favorite date meal, it is better than nothing. (It would be better if Texas had a few Bob Evans restaurants….) Our conversations are often somewhat superficial as the “talking” part of our brains are content to hide their wit until after coffee or mental boredom becomes impossible to bear. If you can like your spouse consistently at a time prior to 6:00 AM, you should have a good marriage. 😉
Self-esteem in the kids: Both of our bio-daughters are pretty consistent-to-improving in their meet participation. Our Korean exchange student has never run competitively before. She started getting up early shortly after arriving–no matter how much her body’s clock fought her. She ran despite the pain and all out rebellion of most of her muscle groups. She endured excessive sunshine (based on info I have, Koreans like cloudy days with some rain. Full sunshine is an allergen that makes them run to shade while practically abandoning all concerns of personal safety.) As she ran her first meet on a difficult track and completed the course in front of many other runners, you could see the satisfaction on her face of having accomplished something. (My daughters were 2 – 5 minutes ahead of her in time. The coach is convinced she was not winded enough at the end and she can cut 4 minutes from her time—ohhhhh, cross country coaches!)
Part of a team: The coach acts like a coach. She praises rarely, and criticizes freely. Whether it is loyalty to the coach or it is all of the runners uniting against a shared dictator, the team is very supportive of each other. The high school kids cheer on the middle school kids. Because the team needs 5 “good” times to have a chance of placing at the meet, even the slowest athlete is given very positive encouragement to “hang in there”. (Since it is a small school, no matter how slow the 5th member of the team is, there would not be a team capable of competing without him. )

If my youngest daughter participates her senior year, we have 4 more years of this madness. It is not our desire for our girls to get good enough to get any type of scholarship out of this sport. We know it is one of the experiences that makes them more interesting people. It is an activity that balances them as people. And, as parents, we are not supposed to think of our comfort. Children are a gift, and we owe it to them to let them know it. Comfort is for cruise vacations; life is a series of experiences shared with others–regardless of the time of day you need to be there to be bathed in it.

Faux Fall

I just like to say it….it certainly has the makings of a good tongue twister!

Up north where I spent the first 40+ years of my life, we had Indian Summer. And, although this is not politically correct, it is a term used to designate a few warm days of summer like weather (high 70’s or 80’s) that occurs after the first frost of fall. It still creeps down to fall-like temperatures at night, but the daylight temperatures give a last fleeting glance of weather not available in the Midwest until a few months have passed in the new year.

I have designated “Faux Fall” as a glance of fall while summer is otherwise still fully operational. The air conditioner can get a few days off (allergy suffers and those who are not in tune with these weather aberrations will continue to burn the electricity they wouldn’t need to if they would only open their windows) and the rooms can get aired out. For our exchange students it was literally “a breath of fresh air” as the windows were opened. Summer in Texas made it a little harder to love their visit to the US. Now they know what the fall will look like, they can hang on a few more weeks until summer hits the “pause” button until next year.

Spicy Hands

As a father and “exchange” dad of 2 to 4 daughters (depending on how you want to count them—presently, there is a very strong case to be made for the 4), I don’t make it a habit of smacking their bottoms. (The teenage years are challenging years as the “new” father/daughter dynamics emerge, but it certainly is not as often as it used to be.) After some events of this weekend, I find out the kids (I am hoping it does not cross gender boundaries.) play a game called “hot hand”. (Maybe “kids” is throwing the net out there too widely…it might just be my daughters or whatever other girls are inhabiting our house at the moment…) Apparently, the winner in hot hand is the one who is capable of using their hands to smack some one in the rear and have in sting significantly.

The whole “hot hand” thing only came to my attention when I heard the girls talking about “spicy hands”. Our Korean exchange student claims this is what they call someone who has the American equivalent of a “hot hand”. (After dinner last night, the 4 girls were in the family room together trying to come up with “girl” stuff to talk about. Once they got started and spicy was mentioned, three or four more spicy body parts were mentioned including spicy foot, spicy elbow and I know I definitely heard “spicy toe”. ) It is worth mentioning at this point what “hot hand” meant in my youth. A hot hand was the star basketball player who was having a difficult time missing the basket. (Rarely me…although I am pretty good at killing flies. The key to killing flies with your hands is not swinging where they are at, it is swinging where they will be. Flies typically spring backwards a little before taking off. So, my fly killing success comes from clapping my hands about an inch above the surface they are sitting on. I don’t always get them, but since I am such a good clapper and have my eyes clouded w/ fly blood, I often have a “hot hand” after either an attempt or a success.) And, when boiled down, “hot hand” was just someone with a good streak of luck going. Regardless, our Korean exchange student was going to get her definition of “spicy hand” broadened…..

(I am sorry this is another blog post that mentions carnitas. They will not be the star; they are only a necessary evil to justify the “spice” for the broadened “spicy hand”.)

When we go to Sams and buy pork shoulder butt (it is the carnita meat of choice), it comes in a two pack. With one of the butts being quickly spoken for, the second one is too expensive a cut of meat to sit too long in the frig. So, we make another batch of carnitas and freeze it. A key ingredient in our carnitas is the jalapenos. Since our Chinese student cut the jalapenos last time, I felt it was fair for me to ask our Korean student. (They already have both told me they will not cut onions, so I have to find something for them to do in the kitchen.) Fortunately, she jumped right in. There was 15 or so jalapenos, but I only showed her 6 of them before revealing the rest of them. I showed her “my” technique of cutting off the ends before slitting them up the middle. A spoon is used to clean out the seeds so the contact with the juices can be minimized. It is not a completely pepper juice free experience, but it makes it pretty safe.

As she slogged her way through the peppers, she decided to try some cream cheese icing my daughter was mixing. As she dipped her finger in the icing and licked her finger, she said, ” Cream cheese icing is hot.” I let her know it was the pepper juice on her hand, but she complained no more and finished up all of the peppers. She easily transitioned into cookie icer/decorator without making any more mention of the peppers. (At this point, I had chopped all of the jalapenos and onions up in the food processor. The crockpot was set up for a long cooking on “low”. As I went to bed, my brain was completely “spicy hand” free.

As everyone assembling in the kitchen to eat breakfast before church, I heard those fateful words, “I will never cut jalapenos again. My hands were so spicy. I touch my face and hands, and I could not sleep. I like to eat carnitas, but I cannot cut the peppers again. I do not like spicy hands, Sam-I am.”

With the exception of the Dr. Seuss reference, this is pretty much all true. I wanted to be a fiction writer once, but decided I did not have the imagination for it. I have found a much happier marriage when my mind takes reality and warps or twists it into some sort of sausage. It closely resembles the meat I started with but with a couple of extra spices and a casing that holds it all together.

A Lasting Impression

-ALLCOUNTRY

I will admit to not being a huge Mel Brooks fan, but I am a fan of those who are willing to do the unexpected and act in a way where the “normal” is turned on its ear. And, this is where Mel Brooks proved he is a comedienne who has comedy to span generations.

A quick glance may prevent you from seeing his humorous spin on the Chinese Theater experience. Using a prosthetic extra finger and allowing it to be captured in concrete, will give this Hollywood “star stop” a very interesting back story for years to come. Did he really have 6 fingers on one hand? I never knew he had 6 fingers. But, in a generation of smartphone owners, any legends created just for fun will quickly be shot down by a Googling public. Regardless, I applaud this attempt to make a fun and lasting impression in a world where extreme behaviors are normalized.

Grilled Cheese With Waffle Iron Included

Another one to clear out of the “draft” folder….

After last weeks cruise, the emphasis this week was on improving our diets. (Although cruises are infamous for throwing a few pounds on the hips and any other place they will stick, a combination of exercise and minimal additional meals [the always available pizza and hamburgers does seem to make our decisions more like fish stories, but they are true!!] allowed us to not get to far off of the scale.) We had two meals using spinach tortillas. Chicken and lots of those green leafy, onioney, and peppery things with a touch of salad dressing made these pretty healthy choices. The girls made a new batch of red roasted pepper hummus. They invited me to join them for their carrot/celery/pretzel dipping feast. As a reward and because it just does not seem right to let a week go by without serving our taste buds something new, my daughters fulfilled their wish to re-purpose the waffle iron.

Without much guidance but a pressing need to use a non-stick spray, we treated the waffle-grilled cheese just like how we would have treated it if on a griddle. The waffle timer was mostly irrelevant. And, our waffle iron “likes” to have everything squashed together pretty tight before it will allow the waffle iron to do a half flip. The first couple sandwiches were not fully embracing their waffleness. We were reluctant to force everything into the very tight space demanded by the waffle iron. As the successes continued, we took more risk. By the 5th one (my oldest son ate two), we were pretty confident in the latitude allowed us.

This was not a diet meal, but it was fun and not too bad for us. (We did use wheat bread!) With the carbohydrates being watched (breakfast food tends to be heavy in the carbs and the grease – pancakes and sausage or french toast and bacon or donuts.), it is good to take one of the those appliances that has to compete for shelf space a chance to shine. And, shine it did! Although we were tempted to fill the waffle dimples with syrup, we were very content to consume our sandwich with a side of chips and salsa.

Maybe the waffle quesadilla will be our next attempt to give the waffle iron a little higher place on the appliance shelf. (I don’t know if there is a pecking order with appliances, but I am sure the non-electric ones [manual can opener] are constantly dealing with self-esteem issues.) Regardless of the appliance or ingredients, lunch is better with my girls and the enthusiasm they bring to nearly everything.

Blanchity Blanchity Peaches

This was started originally a couple of months ago….trying to clean out my drafts….

Blanching peaches is a pretty simple process. The peel of the peach needs to be removed from the peach. Since the goal is to maximize and preserve the greatest amount of the fruit, my wife insisted I engage in this ingenious process while my she visited her family out of state. (She also insisted in me picking them after driving over an hour one way. I will admit to under-thinking my “Yes, Dears.”, but it would seem I should have spent a little more time reflecting on what exactly I was signing up for.) The tools for blanching: boiling water, ice bath, cutting board with knife, discerning eye to see worms, bruises and all other phenomenon considered unappealing to the eye and the taste, and a place for the “good” stuff. (The trash can was left off of the list. I believe it is implied unless you live in a household that actively invites insects and other vermin to dine at their leisure.)

The first wave of the blanching (We did this in 3 waves. There were advantages and disadvantages associated with each wave. I am no expert, but I felt the disadvantages outweighed the advantages in almost all cases. The largest redeeming factor was the quality family time it encouraged.) The first wave was mostly an exercise in getting the proper pans in their proper places. (My wife chose this day to “pretend” she wasn’t getting my text. My request was simple, “Please call me and tell me what to do with these peaches, or they will go down the disposal.” Her continued lack of response brought even greater text threats, “The peaches are screaming as I warm up the disposal.” Also to no avail was my, “We have sacrificed the first. It is entirely on your conscience.” ) Since threats were getting me no where, we went where the world goes for all of the DIY projects, Youtube. My son was responsible for the details of the first wave. (The pictures above are of the third wave, but the work space was laid out approximately the same for the first two.)

The first step was drowning the peaches in the boiling water after an “X” was cut into their base. The boil time was supposed to be a minute or so. However, we must have overloaded the water so the “boil” was lost. We ended up putting the lid on the pan for most of the rest of the first wave. With the peaches only having been in our possession a few hours, the peaches were not very familiar with the word “ripe”. They were more familiar with the idea of “ripening”. Although the first wave yielding almost a 1 gallon freezer bag of peaches, it was not without some struggles. As the peels started to hint they were ready to be removed while enjoying the hot tub, we found, in many cases, the entire peel was not in agreement with this. The ice bath that followed was meant to convince the peach any further resistance was entirely futile. Some of the peaches were knuckleheads-they insisted on the life slicing off nearly their entire peel.

The peels were not the entire process. Once the peach was liberated of its peel, the pits needed to be evacuated. Ideally, if the peach freely gave up its peel, the peach was cut open, and the pit quickly removed. The peach halves were placed in the proper tub, and the next challenger stepped onto the cutting board. Due to the peels having a deep affinity for the peaches (they are family really. I realize it is practically like removing a skin from an animal. Although no leather is made of the peel, it is almost exactly the same, isn’t it?) and the peaches having to be boiled excessively to defeat the peels in one-on-one combat, the peach fruit was VERY warm. In fact, warm does not accurately describe it. It was somewhere between a state of liquid and solid. It could be grasped if you didn’t grab too tightly. The longer the peach was in the boiling water, the worst the peach dweller fared. The worms were not everywhere, but when they were, every brown spot their slimy little bodies touched was severed from the “good” fruit.

Wave Two looked much like the first wave. The two big difference were I did it alone, and some of the fruit was not aging well. All of the peaches were resting on newspaper as they attempted to gracefully go through the aging process. At the time of the 2nd Wave of blanching, only a few of the peaches had mold tendrils reaching out to the newspaper or fellow peach captives. The worms seemed better fed in this round. While the boiling process was still not as smooth as I or the peels would have liked – I knew I would ultimately win. The peels would come gracefully or they would embrace their inner pit, and fight me with every inch of their fruitiness. A few of the peaches were spared the boiling due to their accelerated aging process. Whether it was mold or the worms within or the unbalanced maturing of the peach, some of the peaches went into the trash with their bodies intact.

The 3rd wave was highlighted because my daughters were able to help. They were part of last years “team”, and their experience showed. As the third wave took place almost 4 days after the picking, the more senior peaches were again ready to skip the water and head directly to their eternal homes. My daughters were more deliberate in making these “yes” or “no” decision. We were still able to fill a couple of freezer bags. The “rejects” would have made more than a bag were they not so intent on maturing so rapidly. (Or, maybe I was intent on leaving them sit on the counter to receive pity from the portion of my family that had been traveling while I participated in both sides of the adventure – the picking and the blanching.)

Now, “mom” has 4 bags of peaches awaiting her jam and/or syrup attention. Her original request to pick peaches and “keep” the tradition alive has turned into an excessive amount of freezer space dedicated to preserving peaches we may or may not enjoy yet this year. As with many things, it is not what you do, but who you do it with. This was one of those times when teenage enthusiasm trumped the redundancy of the activity.

Carnita Cravings

Our Carnita in the crockpot

It is an exciting time at our house again. It is not Christmas or someone’s birthday. And, if is not even close to a vacation. It is time for carnitas. As I searched Wikipedia briefly, I wonder if what we are eating is really “carnitas”. It refers to them as “little meats”. Our is kind of little, but it is definitely cooked in its own juices. Since we use a pork shoulder butt, there is PLENTY of its own juices to cook in. We don’t claim to make the best carnitas, but we have developed a following within our household. Thanks to our exchange students, it also seems to play well in China and Korea.

Besides cooking the meat slowly (we put it in before and let it cook slowly all night–it will probably cook 12-15 hours before it is all done), their are a few spices. Cumin, chili powder, salt, pepper and garlic are something found in every kitchen. After adding a couple of finely chopped onions, the real key is the jalapenos peppers. The original recipe I started with mentioned only a small amount of some other pepper. But, being in Texas with a bounty of jalapenos, it just seemed right to include them. Today’s batch included 14 or 15 of them finely chopped. The real secret here is convincing your exchange student who is craving this spicy, yummy taco-ish meal to step up and prep the peppers to be chopped. (Cutting off the stem and halving the peppers is not bad. It is using the spoon to scrape out the seeds that becomes slightly dangerous. Eye rubbing is not permitted for quite a few hours after preparing the peppers for the carnage unleashed by the food processor.) Once all ingredients are all piled into the nearly overflowing crockpot w/ a 12 hours setting on “low”, we can all go to bed knowing the craving will only accelerate as the time for dinner eventually arrives.

At this point, I am anticipating the meal more than the others. I have pulled the bone out of the meat. I have tried to separate the meat into small little pieces that can be completely saturated by the juicy porky-ness. The jalapenos are nearly “dead” in the vegetable sense of the word. They have released nearly all of their flavors into the juices that are completely infusing the pork……excuse me, but I think drooled. Once dinner time arrives, there is one more step that precedes consumption. As I was looking for carnita recipes way back in the spring, this is the step that hooked me. After pulling the meat out of the crockpot, the meat is placed on a cookie sheet. After making sure the meat is separated nicely, the meat is put under the broiler for 5 minutes. The sheet is then pulled out, and the meat is turned over with more juices drizzled over it. After being broiled for another 5 minutes or so, it comes out an irresistible crispy. It is served with regular taco sides, and in this families humble opinion, it is pretty awesome. Our Chinese exchange student said carnitas and tacos are her favorite things she has eaten since being here.

I try to have a “message” or insight at the end of my blog postings. I am afraid this one might fall short, but I will still try….. It doesn’t matter what food your make or what you like to eat! A meal at home with all gathered around the table is a good thing. And, when this meal is something causing all the saliva glands of all of the household members to work overtime, then chances are the conversation will be special, too. As our kids age, it is memories of these type of meals that will help make their own families stronger. And, selfishly, I hope it makes them want to call home someday and ask, “So, are you making carnitas soon?”

The carnitas post-crisping

Board With Life

Prior to our home being invaded by our exchange students, there was this blank wall. As we anticipated having to maintain reminders and schedules for two additional young ladies, the board seemed like a good idea. It is mounted right inside the back door. It is visible (at least partially) from our dining area, and it is magnetic. All of these things would seem to be all of the ingredients necessary to keep us organized–making sure the board performed its assigned function without any argument.

Unfortunately, we did not factor in the need such space would create in our local “artist”. They have felt inclined to show off for us in a number of ways. And, as a couple of the images illustrate, they felt the need to take a few different English names and write them in both Korean and Chinese. Having a tub of colored markers readily available also makes it more difficult to maintain “board” integrity.

Although, many things don’t work out the way you plan, it does not mean it does not work out like it is supposed to. I do believe in serendipity. I wish I opened myself up to it more often. I look at this board and the humble plans I had for it. I wish I gave serendipity more latitude–not because I think I am a secret genius capable of solving the world’s problem somewhere in my subconscious mind, but because I believe in a God who tries to nudge me into action much more frequently then I let Him.

Walking Down Life's Road With Andy