"pot roast" for food-haters

I love Cooking and eating and sharing good recipes with friends. So...I have decided to do a little twist and share a bad recipe. Not fried Crab brains, grilled horse tongue, or any other gross food I have had, but just a regular old recipe gone awry. I welcome readers to share their own recipes of doom!

With all due respect to my mother, here is her recipe for pot roast which is probably single-handedly why I never ever ate beef as a child.

Get a tri-tip or any pot-roast type beef, whatever is on sale. You need enough to fit into whatever pot you are cooking in. See? Its one of those old recipes without exact amounts.
Add the tiniest bit of garlic salt to the roast ..maybe a teaspoon? And heat up a cast iron pan. Brown the outside of the roast...you may need to add some canola oil if your iron isn't well seasoned/greased from use.
Toss the roast in a tall pot. Cover it with water. Add a pinch ...as in less than a teaspoon of salt...my mother prides herself in never salting food. Add a pinch of pepper while you are at it.
Chop a yellow onion into about 1 1/2" chunks. Chop a few unpeeled red potatoes into 1 1/2 - 2" chunks. If you are feeling peppy, throw in a sliced carrot. Set aside/refrigerate, they do not go in the soup just yet. But, if you wish to go really crazy, add a single bay leaf.

Boil it, covered, stirring occasionally. Skim some fat off. Boil some more. This isn't a one hour or 30 minute meal. This takes time. About an hour before its ready, but well boiled to death, add the veggies.

It should not be a thick gravy type pot roast. Whatever you do, do not add flour/make a roux. Do not pour off the broth in attempt to make New England boiled dinner. It should be about as brothy (is that a term?) As chicken soup, just with big chunks of stuff. Do not serve with bread because this is too soupy to dunk your bread. Just serve as is, and imagine you are my father who actually loves this stuff.

300 yards

Less than 300 yards could have changed my life.

I live in a tinder box, I mean national forest full of dying trees. Ten years ago, we had a fire that destroyed an area larger than Detroit in less than a week. Hundreds of homes were lost. So when you see fire, your heart skips a few beats.

The smoke was behind the trees across the street, and I didn't hear any fire engines. I was the first to report the fire. My husband drove over with a fire extinguisher and came back in a hurry. "Total madness. Pack. Now. We need to leave" he yelled. So we packed clothing, two large dogs, two angry cats, and two young children in record time. As we pulled away, a parade of fire trucks passed us by. A mile away, we could look back and saw a huge glowing area that was our neighborhood. I don't have words for what I was feeling or thinking. As I saw the trees light up and the fire crown, I knew from history that it meant nothing good. The Santa Ana winds whipped at gusts of up to 60mph, fanning the flames and sucking all humidity away.

We left town and frantically checked the internet, fire logs, scanner traffic until we heard that the flames had died down and all we had to worry about were embers. Exhausted, we made our way back home, not sure if we had a home.

We did. Three homes were destroyed, less than 300 yards from my home. I feel awful for the residents who lost their homes.

It happened in a matter of seconds. Had my husband not looked out the window, we would not have known about the fire until the engines roared past, fifteen minutes later. Had the fierce winds blown a different direction, the fire would have gone our direction and we may not have known it until it was too late, because the flames were hiding behind bushy trees over 100 feet high.

Here you can see the smoke, I took this photo while on hold with 9-1-1. Then, the flames a mile away as we had already evacuated.

Dodging death

How many times did I dodge death as a child? I must wonder.....

My hippy parents (whom claim they aren't hippies, if you've met them, you are" LOL" right now) saved animals. We had foxes, crocodiles, owls, coyote, skunks, snakes, angry goats and crazy boosters, a full bred wolf.....and probably enough spiders to make the movie Arachnophobia cry. Ok....so we didn't actually have spiders as pets (hey Suzie wanna see my thirty deadly spiders in the terrarium?) But they were...ours.

I've never seen my parents kill a spider, and we get black widows like no other. My dad's been bit three times. I never even knew what a widow looked like until college and I was like oh...those...pshaw, it's the larger than a quarter wolf spiders I spotted daily in the tub that I noticed. Dusty messy widow webs? Oh those things that inhabited every corner, knick knack, or notch in the knotty pine walls? No one noticed. Not even me.

And the mice....my parents refused to even trap those, so hanta virus threatened in the attic and cupboards. Just wipe up the poo, my mom said, even poo on plates or clothing or anything.

And snakes. Aside from our pets, I personally can attest to three barely-misses of rattlesnake attacks on my personal body. Ever seen that show on that learning channel about rescuing and air-lifting victims of rattlers in So Cal? Yeah...those snakes are luckily what hadn't killed me.

Oh. And my parents collected antiques and rusty salvaged art and guess what? I'm allergic to tetanus shots. And penicillin.

And I'm here to tell you I survived, and why I hesitate taking my two curious boys to Grandma's.

popular parts

My umm...lady parts are popular this week. So I couldnt find my sole paor of pajama bottoms, a common tragedy, and I had a feeling they were in my husband's office (my dresser drawers are in there). I was in a shirt and nothing else, running around in a frantic search when I dash into his officce. He's on the phone and I say "ummyoure not on skype are you, cause I'm missing pants". Except, see, I said it kinda out loud. As in, whatever CEO he was talking to heard me. Luckily he wasn't on skype. Then today I am squatting down cleaning stuff and somehow lose my balance squatting and fall. Allarently a metal folding chair is within my falling reach. The metal leg lands right on my lady parts. I fell full-force onto the metal pole leg. I have a pitch black swollen bruise and I walk bow-legged due to the pain. Its a total freak accident only I would get into.

broken fences broken lives

I recently travelled through El Paso, Texas, a town that reminds me of Vegas without the casinos. Its dusty, full of ghetto strip malls and broken promises. But...it is more than that. A quick look into the city's history tells me the borders of New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico have changed boundaries many times. As I looked at the brightly lit border fence from my hotel window, scaring the landscape like the Great Wall, I couldn't help but think how the citizens of Ciudad Juarez, just feet away, must feel. To look at a place I might find less than appealing as a beacon of hope, a place with less violence and poverty. Separated by a tightly guarded and ugly wall. Families separated, like the Berlin Wall, all because eugenicists wanted to eradicate the darker, feeble minded stock from the United States.

We left El Paso and entered the desolate expanse of West Texas, almost as empty as Alaska....no gas for a hundred miles. Coyotes (people, not canines) help illegal persons cross the border and often leave them to die, the elements and vast expanses taking their lives.

We gassed up in Fort Hancock, a homeless-looking man asked if we would kindly buy him something to eat. I was fascinated by the changing borders of the area, the culture (something like 75% of El Paso people speak Spanish as their primary language) and the history, that I had googled the few outposts of West Texas. I found out that Fort Hancock featured a gap in the border fence, often unmanned, and before the border patrol road block. I guess it was kind of an unwritten acceptance to allow a piece of open border and exchange. Somehow, the violence of Juarez rarely spilled the border, the open fence being kind of a peaceful spot, considering. I then found out the Mexican towns nearest Fort Hancock were far more deadly than Juarez; in one month in 2010, the area (with about 18,000 people) had 45 recorded murders. The scene looked just like No Country for Old Men, but the man didn't seem quite as scary.


The man asking for a meal really strikes me as the poster child for the entire situation. If a picture could speak a thousand words....he wears a military green trenchcoat, wrinkled and dusty. He huddles inside it, the thin, worn fabric not much against the howlin dust storm and near freezing temperatures. His pants are not a discernable color, his boots worn. I can't tell if he is hispanic or white; he looks like a photo from the Dust Bowl or from the coal mining children, full of blemishes and days old dirt. His wrinkles cut deep, his skin leathery. His accent is a mesh of Mexican and American, like I often hear in California. He stands out yet blends into the dusty worn down buildings, cracked asphalt, scraggly trees and tumbleweeds bending in the wind. This is a rough yet poetic time and place. This man is destitute, somehow victim of the changing borders, open and closed fences, policy, corruption, hope, dreams, and violence that plays a unique tune for the area. I don't know his story, but yet it still resonates with me, so much that I am wanting to paint the scene Isaw, to forever etch his story, whatever it is, in history. So here is my sketch, it is a mereetch) to say, you, whoever you are, are important. Your struggles are real and unique yet far too common. I don't know the solution, or even the story, but I remember you. 

< a href="http://yeahwrite.me/challenge-155/"><img src="http://yeahwrite.me/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/challenge155.png"></a>

steer, deer, and....

So my husband had to travel to Texas and last minute, he says, hey wanna go? Last minute as in, the kids' bedtime is in 8 hours,dog boarding is an hour away and closes in 5 hours, and the need shots first, and oh we need a rental car because what noise did ours just make, and the kids' mobile video system just broke and we need dinner and the laundry is dirty and omg breathe. We rather uneventfully leave and traverse a good portion of the desert southwest, and lay our heads to rest in El Paso, Texas at mearly midnight. I barely sleep, hyped up from the drive, plus my usual insomnia and an unfound fear I'm going to get shot because are those huge ball park type lights within ball throwing distance the border with beyond super deadly Ciuidad Juarez? Yes! Anyways...I wake after maybe two hours sleep, put my son's shoes on backwards, my moby on backwards, and my throat is on fire from all the dust storms. Yee haw. Welcome to El Paso, where I feel like I'm hungover and in Vegas. Really, it reminds me of Vegas minus you know, Vegas...slot machines and stuff. To quote the guy we met in the elevator, supernatural. We trek across Texas, prettier than I would expect (but pretty doesn't come to mind) and even more sparsely populated than expected. We encounter a border patrol stop, and unlike California where they show signs of illegal families running across the freeway lanes cause umm..that's probably realistic (I've never even had to slow in the patrol crossing) here they mean business, everyone stops and their car gets a once around by a dog who, I must giggle, excitedly snifffed the rear of every car. Too many hours later we end up in Fredericksburg, its like shangrila, like a step back into a 1950s quaint downtown with a main street and clean, quaint brick buildings...meets...Germamy...meets the Portlandia show. There are bier hauses all around. It really had that quaint main street americana feeling. Outside of it, Texas Hill Country abounds. I get far too excited over horses and cows, sheep, goats, ostriches, peach orchards and omg is that a wildflower farm? Full of....bluebonnets, my favorite flower? And look, a herd of wild deer. And a deer processing shack (no bambis were harmed in the herd I saw). And wait? Tuscany of Texas? Wineries! Art galleries! Grass Fed beef, quaint cafes, fresh peach pies, farmers markets, deer hunting stores, and mansions on acreage. Seriously where else on earth can you sipfine wine, eat an organic burger, browse an art gallery, hunt and gut a deer, and pick wildflowers all in one block? This place is awesome! And housing and food and gas and everything is chesper! I'm convinced there's a catch. After midnighg the gremlin come out. Or zombies.no,zombies with pet gremlims.

ouch

My son will revert to, say, age one when he is upset...he ends up forgetting all his words and signs and just cries. So yesterday, when I went into the other room real quick and heard a thud and an "ouch" from the living room, I knew it meant trouble. I came to find my sonn had fallen off the couch, normally something not deserving of an "ouch". I kissed him and snuggled up to him and whispered "shh its ok" but all he could do was cry...and say "ouch". As stated, communicating during crisis doesn't happen with him so "ouch" spoke volumes. He held his left arm and balwed, refusing to let us near it. I tried turning on tv, fedding him ice cream, giving him his favorite trains to get his mind off the pain as sometimes he gets "stuck" and needs distracting. It didn't work. The three year old didn't want ice cream. Icce cream! This meant trouble. I went to get my shoes on to go to the hospital and....he fell asleep on the couch, cradling his arm. I woke him about a half hour later, due to concern for his arm. He awoke bawling and screaming "ouch" again. We got him in the car, buckling him in meant extra hollering as I had to move the poor guy's arm. Each turn of the car meant a yelp. 45 minutes later, we got to urgent care (I reserve the ER for life-threatening or middle of the night stuff). He started to calm a bit, distracted by other toddlers and babies in the waiting room. But I knew he was suffering, as he refused to eat his goldfish crackers and refused to touch his trains. He kept his arm cradled and if I even went near it, he freaked. The slightest movement sent him yelping, and his happier moments were interrupted with whimpers of "ouch". 1.5 hours later, we finally went into a little room where we waited another ten minutes or so. The doctor touched his arm (more crying) and my son refused to tell anyone if it iwas his hand, arm, or elbow that hurt. The dr ordered xrays just in case, and brought in codeine so he'd be able to manipulate the arm for xrays. We waited another 45 Min and then suffered through xrays. I had to move his arm and twist it as he screeched in pain, thrashing, telling me "doh!" (No!). I felt so awful, causing him more pain, but I had to do it. Then we went back into the little room for a half hour, my son again having some calm moments and some moments of screaming in pain. The dr came in and....no breaks, chips, or fractures....his elbow was dislocated in a way that caused pain in the forearm and wrist. A dislocated elbow! Lemme repeat...dislocated elbow! Totally ouch-worthy! The dr then told me to hold my son up against me tightly and I grimaced in anticipation of what I knew was to come...popping his arm into place. The dr grabbed his arm (scream!) And yank! Pop! I felt a shudder ripple through his body and....the dr said "move your bad arm, buddy". He waved with his good arm. I demonstrate movin both arms. He moves his bad arm's thumb almost inperceptively. Then the fingers. The hand. The arm ever so slightly.... and the dr then taight me how to (shudder) pop his bone back in place, as (shudder) once his elbow dislocates, its much more likely to happen again. We drove home, my son finally suckin his thumb on his "bad arm", proving he was healed and doing much better. Kid injuries suck.