Thanksgiving comes and goes, foodie stuff

 Time scoots right along on by, but that's ok as long as everyone is healthy, happy and staying busy. It's getting late in the year and I'm starting to get a bit excited about Christmas season, but let's not forget one of my other favorites, Thanksgiving. Much more low-key, (most holidays are pretty low-key around here), and full of thanks to the Lord for all His blessings. 

By now, we are fully back in the groove around here after our return from our summer retreat. This is likely to become a food-centric post as that's what's on my mind most often.  Here's a gander at the 13#/.49¢ lb. turkey I picked up, along with the pan-roasted cornbread dressing. It was so-o good and I was thrilled it came out OK. It's been a while since I roasted a whole bird, luckily I inherited my MIL's roasting pan.

I dry-brined it overnight which added flavor and kept it moist.

We still have some of the Saraceni Blumond sparkling wine we discovered in Italy a few years back, (btw they ship to the US), to have with it. I was surprised the other day while talking to my sister - she and her clan always eat mashed potatoes with their turkey dinner. We are definitely rice people. Haha, different strokes I guess.

Here's a shot of the price tag from the turkey.

Last year I couldn't find a smallish one and 
the big ones were so expensive, so 
I was pretty happy with this year's offerings.

Many years ago I used to water-bath can jams, pickles, preserves and the like, but all the related jars/pots/utensils went away when we moved aboard Dreamtime. I decided to get back into it only this time I've invested in a good quality pressure canner in order to broaden the range of things I can put up. Sky's the limit now for sure! It'll be fun!  So I've been doing some of that, buying meats when on sale to take advantage of low prices (they're just going to go up 😒). Hence, a 2nd 49¢ per lb turkey in our freezer. 

These All American canners are awesome, and
can last forever, a super nice hand-me-down.

The great thing about putting some meats, chili or stews up is that they can be a fast and easy meal, or can become burritos, sandwich spread, casseroles etc. Who knows which way the wind will be blowing by next year. My Orthopedic Dr. wants me to have foot surgery. Can you imagine the logistics of shopping/cooking while on crutches? It would be nice to have some heat & eat's put by.  Anyway..

Here's a shot of my latest obsession, dried mango from Aldi's. It's my go to dessert these days. Try some!

I tried several brands when we were out west
and none held a candle to these.

For those of you who thrift out there, my latest great find, a stained glass, lighted Christmas votive for $2.99! Wow, really well made (and it would have taken me several hours to make myself).

This is the real deal, can't wait to put it out 
with my other decorations in another 
week or so. We like to wait until the 2nd 
week in December to decorate.

We've had some nice weather for eating out back on the deck. It's a  wonderful and intimate setting for a nice dinner.

Not to mention the lovely sunrises. Here's a shot taken about a week ago.

Morning on the lake. Our resident male swan patrols for geese
 and ducks he can run off. He can really move when he wants.

It's been a while since my last post, and I've taken a bunch of shots and have a fair amount left to say, but I think I will save some for next time.

Thanks for dropping by, hopefully it won't be so long til the next one. 😊

Fall fun and food passions

 As I write this, fall has been in full swing in many of the other parts of the country, not to mention up in Canada. Leaf peepers have seen the glory of the fall colors and now many trees are past peak. Not so much fall weather here yet. We've had a total of maybe a week or 10 days of cooler temps and crystal blue skies. Sleeping with the windows open and smelling that crisp air is so wonderful, I want more!

One of my wonderful neighbors gifted us with a stellar loaf of Iced Pumpkin Bread, how cool is that. It is delicious, especially after dinner with a cup of hot tea. Generous and thoughtful 💖 She gets the "good neighbor" award for sure.

So good, so moist and the spices are on point too.

For me, this is the food time of year. I can have fun making many of our favorite dishes and stock the freezer as well.  On the docket this week was the Ree Drummond King Ranch Chicken Casserole recipe, which is pretty labor intensive the way I make it, but hearty and oh-so-good. I do a lot of the prep work a day or 2 in advance to pace myself - (sounds so dramatic, huh?). Here's what it looks like at assembly time.

Top left, corn tortillas & chipotle sauce, well-simmered and
seasoned pinto beans, cheddar cheese shreds, a bowl of
sauteed mushrooms, onions and red & green bell peppers,
and a bag with the whole, torn up rotisserie chicken.

Let the layering begin! Out of the picture is a big pot of Tex-Mex seasoned "gravy" which gets ladled on after each layer. It's much like making lasagna; sauce, then torn-up tortillas, chicken, pintos, the mushroom mixture, shredded cheese then the magic gravy.. Repeat.

The first layer in process, with mushroom mixture just going on.
When you think about 2 layers like that you can tell just
 how hearty it will end up being.

Finally topped up and ready for the oven. After baking, I refrigerate it overnight to not only let the flavors develop but also to make it easier to divvy-up for the freezer.

I got 8 generous (can you say lunch leftovers?)
2-person servings out of this batch. Not bad.

There is always some yard work needed after we get home from the Rockies. The palm tree beds, on the dock level, are full of weeds and the silk flower arrangements are tired after being out in the summer sun. Time to put all that in order. Ship-shape and Bristol finish, haha, we try. 😊

Yep, this is pretty overgrown and awful.

I pull all the weeds and tidy up the lava rocks etc, and
the Boss gets the shop-vac after all the mess that's left behind,
This year our biggest queen palm had a couple of big seed pods
and the seeds were a mess, but we got 'em.

The after shot, taken from the deck, looks so much better.  Here's a shot of one of my silk floral arrangements that I made last year. 

It just dresses up the bulkhead wall and looks pretty.

The other day was the Air Show up at the Naval Air Station. We didn't go, but had hopes that we might get a good fly-by from the Blue Angels (like we did last year). Nope, we saw them from afar but they didn't pass overhead here.  Here's a shot courtesy of the Ft. Lauderdale Air Show.

Love the precision of their formations.

One last shot of a beautiful morning sunrise, so pretty.

Morning sunrise over the lake.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great day!

Homeward bound

 Sorry this blog is long overdue, but we got very busy at the end of Sept and we're still playing catch-up.  And so it went, the buttoning up of Rocky, our summer abode, and then on the road heading back to Florida and our forever home, where the cleaning, unpacking and organizing is still in progress.  The trip is about 1900 miles and usually requires 4 overnights. We take the 1st night in Fort Collins because by the time every little thing is done, all we want to do is drive down the canyon (45 miles of twisty, slow-going road), shower, eat and crash.  This year we took an extra night so that we only had a short 3-4 hour final leg before rolling into town. This gave us a few hours to work on opening the house up, get the water & fridge turned on, the place aired out, do a small shop and get squared away throughout the afternoon and evening.

The last week out west was pretty busy, and most especially the last couple of days before leaving. We had several boxes with canned/boxed foodstuffs that couldn't go into the car until the last minute for fear of bear activity, so our other "bring-backs" got piled up here and there inside the rig. In our down time, we watched the turkeys enjoy themselves around the park and up on the fence next door to us.

These turkey's got to where they liked sitting up on the fence and preening.
They would come into our park to browse for bugs, then fly up and preen,
then jump down to the property next door which is largely undeveloped.

One day while up at the laundry room I was sitting outside on the phone talking to my sister and I watched this squirrel stock up on pinecones. He'd race across the driveway and up the pine tree, pick out a likely pinecone, and with it in his teeth, race back to the shed and into his entry hole to stash it. I guess his eyes were bigger than his entry point! These cones got stuck and he couldn't get them inside, lol.

Not the best shot but here he is.

And so it began, the long drive back home, first through the diminishing hills of Colorado, and into the huge stretch of agricultural land in the mid-west.

I often wonder exactly what is being grown, sometimes
it's pretty obvious but other times it keeps me guessing.

 As we made our way through the Missouri/Tenn territories we found a few roads with light traffic - what a treat! Driving through big cities, even on the bypasses really taxes the patience of my DH.

Made it home in one piece, and a couple days afterwards, started the big cooking projects, which is fun for me!! 😀  A visit to my handy Publix for a ready-made pizza crust, got a pie made up for supper one night. I always keep on hand the fixings for pizza, it's an easy fix up.

Before the stint in the oven.

One of my first priorities is always to make up some of the dishes that I haven't made over the summer and get them stashed in the freezer for easy, delicious meals on those days I'm not feeling it. The ground beef, black beans and rice filling for stuffed peppers and burritos is a bit time-consuming, (the meat is fully cooked), but so worthwhile. I add plenty of onions, mushrooms and corn plus all the taco-type seasonings that "Tex-Mex" it up, Hatch chilies too. They aren't super spicy, just flavorful. Here's what I ended up with; 3 sets of stuffed peppers, (we ate one set), and 6 burritos. Yum in advance.

With a few tortilla chips these are a favorite. They freeze well
and reheat easily in a covered frying pan, a low oven or the microwave.

I pop these into a covered frying pan, nestled in a "dirty rice"
mixture, pour on some salsa and sharp cheddar, cover them and
let them heat over a low burner for a half hour or so, again more chips.

One of the veggies I love, LOVE most is collards, and you can get a big bunch, cook them and end up with some for the freezer. This time I used a big bunch of turnip greens and a big bunch of collards. Add a ham hock, sauteed onions & garlic, some chipotle sauce and homemade stock and you've got greens to die for, for days! I got 6, 4-serving batches, 5 of which went into the freezer. 😋

Still mopping, polishing and doing laundry, not to mention clearing up our overgrown, weed-infested palm tree beds, but early morning sunrises like this are truly something to be enjoyed with your sweetie and a cup of coffee.

Thanks for checking in, see you the next time.

Time flies by, cooler weather

 Besides the daily "scope-out" of the morning temp's showing a downtrend, the flowers and foliage show us that change is coming. The day before yesterday it was 31° first thing and never rose above the low 50's with thick fog blanketing the canyon. So different from the blue, BLUE skies we normally see.  The electric blanket is on the bed and the tiny electric heater plugged in and ready to turn on if needed overnight.

We had a relatively sedate Labor Day weekend in our park, so dead one day then full of happy campers for the next couple of days and back to just a few "regulars" spread out around the park. 

The cabins and transient RV spots are all empty first thing in
the morning on Fri 9/02/22. By the next morning everything was full. 

Can you say quiet?

We like it both ways just fine, people (and dog) watching and things happening in the pavillion/playground area when it's busy, and bird (and critter) watching when it's quiet.  This time of year the bears are on the prowl trying to get beefed-up for their upcoming hibernation. We have had a momma bear and her cub(s) coming around in search of good eats, however, everyone is pretty disciplined in food & garbage management and there's not much to be had.  The momma knows how to open unlocked car doors, so we had several people whose vehicles were investigated, and one morning the momma and her cub were "treed" up a large pine by the bathhouse. Of course, like you see everywhere, some people don't know how to give wildlife some space, but we had no dramas, thank goodness.

The above video was taken by a "workamper" who's working here for the season. It's also the 1st vid I've tried to post, hopefully it works.

I spied a downy(I think) woodpecker on a cottonwood tree up near the laundry room and tried to get a decent picture of it.

Pretty good camouflage job, just a tiny red 
spot under the chin.

While up near the laundry I spied this (tired) tire cover I found amusing.

Let's not forget these guys running around, wild turkeys. They were very skittish and it was hard to get a good pic, but it looked like a him/her. 

Tom and Mrs. Tom?

I mentioned the flowers showing some signs of the upcoming end of the season, however this lady's planter box has done beautifully over the course of the past few months, thanks in large part to her diligent applications of Miracle Grow I suspect.

How pretty is that? Good job neighbor!

On the cooking front, I've discovered a "new to me" wonderful chipotle product that I don't believe I've seen back east, so I've stocked up on some to take back home. It's a sauce, so it's been pureed, no hassles, so good and so easy to use.

The combination of chipotle, ancho and guajillo chilies makes for a nicely Tex-Mex flavor with a moderately spicy heat. So wonderful added in smallish quantities to stews, chilies and the like. Pour some over enchiladas to tune them up - YAY! When I get home I will fill an ice tray up with this sauce and have handy ice cubes on hand to toss in to my dishes. 

Finally, I will share this cartoon, which is often the case when coming up/down our canyon on the weekends, albeit never that much traffic! Haha. See you the next time, thanks for stopping by.

Courtesy of ??? (I don't remember, please don't be mad 😨)

Northern Flicker hatchlings, travelling Flamingos & cooler weather

 We had a planned power outage the other day which, when combined with the glorious weather (sunny and low 70's), presented the perfect opportunity to take a nice walk across the river and around the neighborhood. 

Hwy 14, which runs east and west through the canyon, has a few bridges for access over the river to the roads running parallel on the far side. In previous years we were able to walk these roads together quite often, however foot problems in recent months have put the kibosh on that.

It worked out great, with my feet on good behavior for the 1+ mile trek. I know, some of y'all can hike for miles & miles (you go!), so my effort seems kind of puny comparatively speaking, but I was happy with it. 😊

The pale blue arrow points to our car/site, for some perspective
of our location vis-à-vis the river. Nice and shady too.

We've been under a flash flood watch due to a fair amount of rain, and you can see that the water is a bit ashy with runoff from the burn scar up the road.

A while back I posted about the Northern Flickers nesting in a cottonwood next door to us. Well, they were noisy chicks, and I was hoping to watch them fledge, but one day that was it - dead quiet at the nest and no more sightings. We didn't know what had happened, but maybe 2 weeks later, here was the family of 5 back "home" for a visit and to search for bugs in the lawn next door. Whew, so happy they all made it.

The parents watch the kids on the ground.

Speaking of birds, these "travelling flamingos" showed up on our neighbor's lawn the other day. A note around one's neck suggests moving them to a new locale every week or so, haha.

The are metal and very well made - cool idea
as long as they don't travel home with somebody.

We are car racing fans, F1 and Indy in particular, which we record so we can stream them at our leisure. We usually have some good eats ready when watching at dinnertime.

A race and a half rack of ribs to split.

Another drive and picnic lunch up north to the Dowdy Lakes area. Lots of dirt roads around but fortunately, most are in decent shape.

Dowdy Lake @ the Day Use entrance

Some sights of the area we travelled through. Big bee on thistle, birch tree with a blemish, and rock formations.

We've had some great sunsets and moon sightings, so I've included a couple of those here as well. With cooler weather we have checked out the sunset and evening approach in front of the firepit too.

Sunset and moon above.

A nice evening was had by all.

Well, that about wraps up this post, thanks for visiting, and come again!

Neat diversionary jaunt to the USFS North Michigan Reservoir State Park

 The other day, the 1st of August, we had an internet outage throughout the entire canyon, so we packed up a lunch and headed out for an auto-tour with the objective of riding through the North Michigan Reservoir USFS State Park, out west of us some 40 miles.  After passing over the Continental Divide at Cameron Peak, we came to the State Forest State Park Visitor's Center with their magnificent full-sized, barbwire moose sculpture. I wanted a pit stop and to take in the scenery of the area.

Full-sized for sure, I think he's been waiting for me 
for a bit to take the shot, I was distracted by flowers.

I took a companion shot from inside the lobby of this stuffed moose in a diorama setting.

 Anyway, beyond that maybe another 6 or 8 miles is the entrance to the North Michigan Reservoir and campground. The main road, although unpaved, was nicely maintained and easy going. There were plenty of less well-maintained side roads, leading to cabins, yurts and dispersed camping sites. Some were specifically meant for off road vehicles, horses, hikers and the like.

Eventually we made it to the reservoir, which was slap-up full with water running down the spill-way. So nice to see, an abundance of water. I guess being fed by the Michigan River, there's most likely water in the spill-way most of the time.

North Michigan Reservoir - so pretty

Here's a shot of the spill-way.

The reservoir side of the spill-way.

The valley side of the spill-way, the water flowing down the concrete
 and into the creek/river down below. It actually looked a bit swampy.

Very pretty around there, lots of wildflowers, large queen anne's lace for one, and plenty of wild daisy's.

Another shot of the reservoir and it's surroundings, so lovely!

We ate lunch, then as we were leaving we came upon this guy, standing in the middle of the road ~ deja vu! He skedaddled pretty quick.

Yep, an antelope. He's checking us out.

We decided to head up to Walden to pick up a copy of the incident report from our antelope encounter back in May. Driving along with the Medicine Bow Mountains on our right and another range on the left, the middle area is called North Park. I love it because of the vast views. The photos don't do it justice though.

North Park heading north to Walden, Colorado.

A shot out the driver's side. All the rains have really greened things up.

This is big-time cattle country, these pastures are full of cattle, so it's no wonder we spotted a few of these signs around.

I can't say I blame them if you look at the predation caused by coyotes
and the damage caused by the feral hog problem plaguing the southern states. 

Once we retrieved our report from the Sheriff's Office we headed out of town. Ed spotted this house with this wonderful garden. I couldn't fit it all into one shot. They had 2 fantastically gnarly, weathered tree stumps as focal points, and plenty of flowers of all types. I liked the tall, blue larkspurs - super nice job folks!

I wish I had the space, talent, patience - did I leave anything out?

The ones here in our RV park are 5' tall - larkspur.

Well, that's the day for you, we were gone a lot longer than I had figured on, but luckily I had Italian Sausage spaghetti sauce in the fridge and even cooked pasta all ready to go. I always cook a lot of extra pasta and dress it with EVOO or butter plus a few sprinkles of garlic & herbs seasoning.  It reheats really well in a frying pan or covered pot with the smallest dab of water for some steam.

Thanks for dropping by, and we'll see you the next time.