Pancake Ninja: May 2012

My life is temporarily in crisis with yesterdays untimely stroke, heart attack, seizure or whatever happened to my desktop. I cannot get to any of my pictures I feel like a part of me is missing. I did find these pictures stashed on usb drive and just looking at what a few flowers can do for a kid made me smile.

Rebecca came over with her PaPaw one day when the poppies and Bachelor buttons were blooming.
Those little sweaty fingers were thrilled to be told sure, we can pick flowers pick what ever you like.

She picked a few poppies and then stood there remembering a moment, a moment last year when her sister got married. Looked like a princess and had a beautiful bouquet of flowers. Rebecca had hoped her sister would give her some of the flowers but instead a terrible thing happened, her sister threw the flowers to some tall girl. Rebecca had burst into tears. People said things like "Hush Honey, that's how it works at a wedding" and "Bless her heart isn't she precious?"

Today she had her own flowers

So happy in fact that she decided to try being a flower for a moment and sat right down in the flower bed with the poppies. Yes, that looks like a dried stick she's holding up to her chin but really it's her stem because she's a flower right now.

PaPaw said he was a fixin' to go.

Rebecca gave her PaPaw the flowers. He was tickled pink to have his own bouquet of flowers.

Even if seconds later he was told they were his only while she was putting on her seat belt.

I can do all things through Christ which strengthen me

I think she walked on air all the way home.

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My sister once made a cook book and illustrated it with these hilarious illustrations. I just re-found the hand sewn book so I thought I’d share my favorite chicken recipe/illustrations.

Honey Soy Glazed Chicken

recipe from Marky90 in Dearborn MI

ingredients

    1/2 cup honey
    2 tablespoons soy sauce
    1/3 Cup water
    12 chicken drumsticks (about 3 pounds total)
    kosher salt and ground pepper

Preheat oven to 475 degrees. Line a shallow roasting pan or 9-by-13-inch baking dish with aluminum foil. In a large bowl, mix together honey, soy sauce, and 1/3 cup water. Add chicken, and toss to coat; season with salt and pepper. Transfer chicken and honey mixture to prepared roasting pan.
Bake chicken, basting with juices from edges of pan every 10 minutes, until well browned and an instant-read thermometer inserted into thickest part of drumstick (avoiding bone) registers 165 degrees, 30 to 40 minutes.

Serve chicken drizzled with pan juices

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I’d never heard of Melvin Roberts before not that that means anything ‘cause I don’t keep up on a lot of things.

So when this guy on the trail said he’d been hit by lightning I just asked where he was when he got hit.

He showed us the burn on his wrist where it hit his watch and something about it coming out his knuckles.

He said he was out mowing the lawn when he got hit the eighth time.

He pointed to his instep and said that’s where most of it exited.

“EIGHT TIMES?!” I asked.

Then he said I’m Melvin Roberts, I was in the National Inquirer.

I stared blankly and said I hadn’t read the national inquirer recently, actually never unless reading the cover still in the rack in the grocery checkout lines counts but I didn’t mention that.

“Google Melvin Roberts when you get home. You can read all about me” he said.

Sure enough google has some stories listed about him.

I think I learned I should stay far far away from Melvin even if it looks like there might be a possible storm.

Technorati Tags: lightning,Melvin Roberts

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Mini Mexican Lasagnas made in muffin pans.

If you live somewhere that they make fresh tortillas I’m sure those are better so get those but if you can’t any ol’ tortillas will work. I’m using “any ol tortillas”. They were a little crumbly but they were in the fridge when I decided I wanted to make these.

In a bowl mix cooked ground beef and onions with ground cumin, chili powder, red pepper, salt, and pepper.

add diced tomatoes. I drained mine a little first.

In another bowl mix egg, and shredded pepper jack cheese.

Drain the cottage cheese and then combine into the egg and cheese mixture.

Carefully place the tortillas in muffin cups.

Spoon in a layer of beef mixture. Pull off a few of the doubled over pieces of tortilla and layer it on top of the beef mixture.

Spoon on cheese mixture and Bake at 350° for 30 minutes

Chop some tomatoes and lettuce even if you decide the lettuce will not fit on top of the muffin sized little Mexican Lasgnas two minutes later.

even if you decide the lettuce will not fit on top of the muffin sized little Mexican Lasgnas two minutes later.

Eat one then rearrange the plate so it doesn’t look like anyone took any.

Mini Mexican Lasagna

Adapted from Addicted to saving

Ingredients

3/4 lb. Cooked Ground Beef with onions
1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 t Chili Powder
1/4 t Red Pepper
1/2 t Salt
1/2 t Pepper
1 16 oz can Tomatoes drained
Small Soft Corn Tortillas
1 c small curd cottage cheese, drained
1/2 c Monterey Jack Grated Cheese
1 Egg

Topping Ingredients

1/2 c Cheddar Cheese Grated
1 c Lettuce
Diced Fresh Tomatoes
Black Olives

Directions
Preheat oven at 350 degrees
Add tomatoes to Ground Beef, season with chili powder, red pepper, garlic powder, salt and pepper.
In a bowl, combine cottage cheese with Monterey Jack cheese and egg.
Layer bottom of dish with 6 corn tortillas. Cover tortillas with ground beef mixture.
Layer with remaining 6 corn tortillas. Cover with cottage cheese mixture.
Bake for 30 mins. Remove from oven; sprinkle rows of cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and olives diagonally across center

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Mount Sterling’s 60’ fire tower (5,842 ft elevation) gives some spectacular panoramic views. But I only used my 50mm lens so don’t ask to see any panoramic pictures right now. Supposedly this is the highest elevation of any fire tower remaining in the eastern USA.

At first it looked like the clouds were coming in to make it a miserable flop of a sunset. It looked like all that driving into North Carolina on some curvy switchbacky gravel road to get to some remote part of the Smokies was going to amount to just some good exercise.

But then the sun peeked back out a bit!

This was definitely not the sunset I had pictured in my mind when I’d climbed up all those stairs to the top of the tower. The stairs really weren’t that bad, they were in good shape. The wooden steps weren’t rotted there were railings on both sides and the whole tower didn’t really wiggle in the wind.