Freezer Surprise…

I’m thinking I need a new category, kitchen adventures.

This afternoon, sometime around 2:30 I think it was, I came into the house and realized I hadn’t given a single thought to what was for dinner.  No I’m not the ultimate organized planner aheader, but most nights I like to have dinner figured out before 5:00.  So, I gave it a little thought.  Chili sounded good, just thaw some burger and throw it all together to cook while I kept going outside.  Wouldn’t be as good as if I had started it in the morning, but hey, it should be edible.  As I was starting to pull out the ground beef, I spied a reusable container with something red frozen in it.  It had to be some chili I had saved from a batch this fall.  It had to be.  Or was it some spaghetti sauce?  Is there anything else it could be?  Deciding that it was either chili or spaghetti sauce I pulled it out to start thawing.  It hadn’t gotten very far in that mode when I was ready to make dinner, so I popped it in the microwave to defrost for a bit.  After that, I was more convinced it was spaghetti sauce than chili.  It still wasn’t warm though, so I couldn’t smell it enough to know if it was spicier meat with tomatoes (chili) or not quite so spicy meat with tomatoes (spaghetti sauce, just in case you hadn’t gotten there ahead of me by process of elimination).

Thinking it was sauce I chose to make noodles.  To kind of hedge my bets I went for the penne instead of long spaghetti noodles.  I finished thawing the sauce in a pot while the (gluten free rice) noodles were cooking.  Turns out it was chili.  Chili + Noodles = Cowboy Surprise.  Good stuff.

Maybe now I’ll label my leftovers that I freeze.  Then again, it is one way to live on the edge.

Got a bug to go show.

The NRCHA Celebration of Champions starts tomorrow.  In looking through the schedule and the draws I realize I have the bug to show.  Again.  Let me be clearer.  For the last few years I could have cared less about showing anything.  I thought I was over the going and competing thing.  Maybe it was from burn-out, maybe I just had grown past that, maybe I just didn’t care anymore.  Whatever it was, it’s not now, showing sounds like fun.  It sounds like it did when I was a teen and in my early twenties.  Go to a show every weekend if you can.  Why?  Because!  It’s fun!  It’s challenging!  Right now, deep down, I want to go out and show a horse.  I want to win too.

Being as Sierra and I are not in San Angelo, TX at the moment.  Even if we were, we would be oh so poorly prepared.  I started looking at some other possibilities.

There is a Stock Horse Challenge coming up here the first weekend of March.  For the last few years I would be looking for any excuse why not to go.  Now, I’m trying to figure out how to make it work.  I did ride Sierra today.  She felt ok for having six or seven months off from riding.  (Once the bubble in her back settled down.  She was snorty to start with!)  Could I have her ready to show in about five weeks?  She felt soft in the face and moved off my legs well.  I just need to get her strong and fit, put a lead change on her, see if she can slide and teach her to spin.  Oh, one more thing roping and stopping a steer is required.  (Along with working it at one end and down the fence.)  She can deal with being roped off of.  I can throw a rope.  Sure I can.  I can even twirl it a bit before I chuck it out there.  The problem is in catching anything in the loop.  And this would be the first time she’d be at a horse show, of any sort.

Right at this moment instead of thinking to myself there is no way I could have her ready, and figure out how I could catch in the second part of the competition so I could get a score.  I’m trying to figure out what it will take to get ready.  If it’s doable.  Not automatically dismissing the possibility.  I have to decide in a couple weeks as entries are due February 11.  All of this with the idea that I want to win.  Part of the deciding factor is if we can be well enough prepared to have a shot at winning.  Thinking through what we need to be able to do versus what I know we can do right now, the odds don’t look good.  However, I’m giving it a go for a couple weeks to see what kind of progress we can make.  Who knows what surprises we can come up with.  If this Stock Horse Challenge ends up being a no-go for us, we’ll be that much better prepared for the next option that comes up.

Anyone else itching to go to a horse show and compete?

Cabbage. Cabbage? Cabbage!

Image by bgblogging via Flickr

Somehow last night I got into researching making homemade sauerkraut.  It looks insanely easy.  Not much needed either, cabbage, salt and an appropriate container for it to ferment in.

I never cared for cabbage in the past.  Ok, there is this one salad we call California Summer Salad that had cabbage in it, but it also had a ton of Ramen noodles.  I didn’t get turned on to that until I was in my 20′s though.  I never would have liked that as a kid.  More than five years ago I would have turned up my nose at sauerkraut or coleslaw or even cabbage in my stir fry.  Now, its all good.  Ooooh, I forgot about (Un)Stuffed Cabbage.  Best casserole ever.  (Except maybe for Green Chicken Enchilada Casserole.)   I might even try to garden next summer and grow some cabbages of my own.  (Note so far I have proven to have a black thumb when it comes to gardening, but how hard can these be to grow?)

What I can’t figure out is why I had an aversion to the stuff.  I know I was a picky eater growing up.  Maybe coleslaw was too tangy and sauerkraut was too tart?

Maybe it was a backlash against the popularity of Cabbage Patch Dolls?  I never had one.  But I think I didn’t want one.  Too much of a mass-hyped over-marketed kitschy trip-the-light-craptastic thing.  Then again maybe I didn’t want one because I didn’t get to have one?  At this point I don’t recall.  Somehow, I think they soured me on cabbage in general.  (I was the same way about the Beanie Babies, hey, maybe that’s why I don’t care so much for beans?)

Isn’t it weird what we end up associating food with?  (I have to admit at this point that this blog is working out to have a very high therapeutic value for me.)

Back to the DIY sauerkraut.  Making it at home and having it fresh fermented is supposed to yield pro-biotics and enzymes which are beneficial to the old digestive tract.

Anyone out there have experience with it?  Is it really as easy as it sounds?  Any confirmation the homemade is way better than store bought in this case?

How to deal with mud.

How to deal with mud?  Don’t.  Yesterday I was thinking it would be dry enough to work the footing in the arena and work some horses today.  Wrong.  It took until at least noon for the ground to thaw.   Which means the moisture didn’t start moving through the ground until then.  This is what it looked like at 2:00 in the afternoon.

Yummy, standing water with mud underneath.  I tried walking in the arena and realized I would definitely get the tractor stuck out there.   Maybe tomorrow I can work horses.

Here’s how my day started.  Bruce wanted out first thing, so I let him out the front door and saw that my chickens were roaming about.  Crap!  I forgot to close them in last night.  I treat the flock of hens with the rooster kind of like a Koi pond.  I don’t have a specific count of how many there are, but as a unit they should have a certain look.  As near as I can tell they still look the same, so I’m under the impression none were lost to coyotes.

Then I went out back to let Karat out of her stall.  (She is being prepped for the breeding season by keeping her under lights for part of the night, simulating summer light which makes her body think it is breeding season.)  As I stepped out the door, a little yellow head was in the pen directly behind the house.  Exactly where it didn’t belong.  There was also a small sorrel and bay out there.  Yes, the babies (yearlings) had gotten into the pasture with two of the older horses.  As I held my breath to prepare for the worst – blood, babies being crashed into fences by bigger/older horses, miles of fence down – I realized there was no catastrophe.  In fact the palomino filly was holding her own with Ki.  (She’s so in love with him.)  The colts were sticking to themselves.

I traipsed out to put the babies back where they belonged and at least put a band-aid on the fence.  There was mud right by the barn where they all hang out.  Once I was thirty feet away from there the ground was frozen with a nice crust of snow on top still.  The colts came running up to me.  Probably trying to tattle on the filly, that it was her fault the fence was broken and it was her idea that they should all be in the same pen with the grown up horses and it was because of her that they couldn’t figure out how to get back to their pen.  Uh-huh, yeah, sure.  After I got everyone sorted out to where they were supposed to be, I did a red-neck fix on the fence.  It held through the day.  Fixing fence is someone else’s department and they didn’t get to it.  Maybe tomorrow, huh?

This is what you do when you are a princess filly after you got to run around with the big horses and seriously flirt with your crush earlier in the day.

You nap on a bed of hay the colts made,

and eat some when you feel like it.  BTW, don’t you just love the look of a muddy horse!  I have no idea how she got her hip that covered in mud.

So what did I do all day?  I made stuff in the kitchen.  I knew it was cold enough in the morning that I could concoct things until noonish.  I watched for the snow to melt off the driveway.  When that happened I went out to see if there was any possible hope for the day.  Not seeing any, I took pictures of mud and a muddy baby horse.

So here’s what I made and what I thought of it.

BarBQ Pulled Chicken to make into sandwiches for dinner.  I’d include a link, but I just kind of throw stuff in the crock pot for this and stop when it smells good.  This one had about three or four pounds of chicken thighs (skin on, bone in), a can of pineapple tidbits, a roughly chopped red onion, a yellow bell pepper, a red bell pepper, about 5 cloves of garlic, a bottle of BarBQ sauce, a bottle of hard cider and a jalapeno pepper.  I shouldn’t have used as much liquid (probably could have eliminated most of the cider) as it turned out soupy.  Good, but soupy.

Scotch Eggs.  Sausage and egg married together in loving harmony.  The first place I saw this was in the 30-page sample of Well Fed.  Then I saw a slightly different version at Mark’s Daily Apple.  The version I made was closer to the one at MDA.  I think next time I will try to just bake them like Melissa does in Well Fed.  Not that I mind frying things up a bit, but I had them in the oven for about 20 minutes anyhow before the sausage was cooked even with frying them to start with.  Why bother with grease and potential grease burns (or actual ones, like I wound up with) if it doesn’t hurry things up.

You need to know that I don’t care much for hard-boiled eggs.  Just have never been something that I enjoy.  In a salad they’re ok.  Sort of.  Sometimes I avoid salads that have hard-boiled eggs in them.  These were really good.  I ate one warm in a bowl, it would have been great with a little bit of ranch or mayo.  I used chorizo sausage which added tons of flavor and pretty well masked the stinky boiled egg-ness of it.  I have leftovers for breakfast tomorrow and will likely make them again.

Yesterday (I think, but it might have been the day before) I saw this recipe for Flourless Crack Brownies.  Pretty much any combination of chocolate and peanut butter has me thinking it will be a good thing.  What I love about this recipe and how Brittany has it laid out is that it is so flexible.  Also, the options.  The options that she says are ok and that she encourages you to do what you need to do are awesome!  Yumminess.  Mine were made with normal powdered sugar (trying to use it up and get it out of the house) and mostly almond butter, but didn’t quite have enough so I added a little bit of peanut butter from the near empty jar that I’m planning to not replace when it’s all gone, also I used gluten free oats (again, trying to use them up and get them gone – now that I’m not making granola for my mornings).  I think I shall now semi-worship Brittany as a kind, helpful kitchen goddess.  She has tons of other recipes that look absolutely amazing.  I also love that she is not at all fazed by someone being upset at her calling these Crack Brownies.  Seriously, some people need to get a sense of humor and a life.

I’m almost positive that either part of this recipe could stand on it’s own.  The brownie part would be a flourless tort.  It would be way better and cheaper than the semi-ok one they sell at Trader Joe’s.  The Nut Butter topping would totally work as no bake cookies.  In fact one thing to note in making these is to not mix the topping up too early.  I would suggest timing it be ready as you take the brownies out.  If not, do not sample it, unless you have very good self-control.  I had to walk out of the kitchen and wait for the timer on the brownies, other wise I was going to just set there and pick away at that nutty delicious mess until it was all gone.  Needless to say, the finished combination is heavenly and is calling me back for another bite right now.

Finally, I made grain free flat bread to use as buns for my BarBQ sandwich.  Stupid easy and quick to make, I just mixed mine in a measuring cup and really followed directions (for once!).  They did spread and poof up a little.  I like coconut, I just wasn’t expecting to taste it here.  Not because I didn’t think the taste would carry through, but because I was expecting (normal) buns.  Totally my screw up for having wrong expectations.  These did a good job of sopping up the extra liquid of the BarBQ.  I think for me to love these I need to use expeller pressed coconut oil, to cut down some on the coconutty taste.

Oh and I threw together cole-slaw quick too.  Don’t be too impressed, the cabbage was prepared (from a bag) and the dressing was store bought.  It hit the spot with the chicken though.

I’m off to double check that all my birds are locked up for the night.

Had to share this…

Having been through the grief process several times in my life because of the loss of people (and animals, they are people too), and more recently realizing that any change I put myself through can create a grieving process, this post on grieving over food at Whole9 rang very true.

Now please note that I have not gone through their Whole30 program, a 30 day challenge to clean up your eating habits.  It is on my radar.  Once I get past a bit more of my grief over gluten, I’m thinking I’ll go ahead with it.  (On missing gluten, I do not miss what it does to my body.  I do miss buying the fresh loaf of french bread while it’s still warm and smelling its sweetness the whole drive home then tearing a chunk off it and slathering it in butter.)

Meanwhile, I am pushing myself a bit more to go grain free.  Today I succeeded.  I failed though at eliminating sugars and chocolate.  Failed big time.

Tomorrow is a new day with a clean slate.  Sort of a clean slate, I actually have a few things planned food wise that fall within the clean eating realm.  What I am doing in effect is narrowing my diet down to the restricted Whole 30 program.  Probably not the way to do it.  (In fact their instructions are very clear to just start in on it, now.)   In a way it reminds me of the people who can’t/won’t get up to speed to merge on the freeway and nearly causing a pile-up on the on ramp while someone in the lane they want to merge into is slowing down to let them in nearly causing a wreck on the freeway.  Sound familiar to anyone in Portland?

I think I’m stuck at number 3 on the list.  Bargaining.  A lot.  If I give up all grains can I can have chocolate?  If I bake with good ingredients I can have a cookie?  If it is consumed with alcohol it doesn’t count at all right?  (My logic here is that alcohol is flammable, so in the metabolism of my body burning up that fuel the alcohol just goes right up in flames taking everything consumed with it, with it.  Faulty logic you say?   You say that’s right up there with broken cookies don’t count because all the calories fall out when they break.  Hmm, way to be a friend.)  No matter how I try, if I’m making compromises its like I’m stepping on the accelerator while I’m holding the emergency brake and I still haven’t let the clutch out.  Not. making. any. progress.

What I’m trying to say, is whether you embrace a Paleo-ish diet, or Gluten Free, or anything other than what is considered the Standard American Diet the post on grief is helpful.  Go read it.  For me, it’s shining light on some BS I’ve been feeding myself for the past couple of months.  I know what I need to do, I just want to be able to eat like I used to.

Tomorrow’s Forecast

We have mud here.  Mud!  I do not like mud.  Not one bit.  I was going to try for a Seussian rhyme, but it just wasn’t in me.  Sorry.

There was a rumor that we were going to hit the 60′s mid week.  That was started by a weatherman over the weekend.  Now he appears to be wrong.  We still have snow on the ground.  More of it melted off today though.  That made more mud.

Since I couldn’t rhyme for you, let me just gripe about mud for a minute.  I moved here so I wouldn’t have to live with mud through the winter.  At least I tell myself that was only part of the reason.  I really hate mud though, so it may have weighed heavily in the decision making process.  Somewhere, somehow I knew that there would be some mud.  Some.  In my brain that translated to an almost negligible amount.  To my way of thinking that means a little tiny bit.  The small amount that you can easily go around.  As in oh look, there’s a bit of mud, guess I won’t walk right there.  But this. This I have to put on rubber boots that would be most appropriate in a dairy barn to go out and feed. (Although I do love my rubber boots in the snow too, they are very warm.)  I console myself by thinking it will be gone in a day, or two.  There are more sun icons in the ten day forecast, that’s a good sign things will dry back up.

Meanwhile my riding pen is still covered in snow.  It needs to be worked.  If fortune (and the sun) shine on me tomorrow I can get the ground worked and do something with these horses.

Jr is bored.  Every time I go by his pen he is right there, wanting to go do something.  He tore his feeder off the panel the other day.  Absolutely not a sign of boredom, right?

Kanak was playing tetherball the other morning in the snow.  Of course I didn’t even have my phone with me to get any sort of video.  He was poking the ball with his nose then letting it swing around and hit his hip as he bucked, then it would swing back towards his nose and he’d bump it again – back to his hip and so on. I have to be careful to stay away from where his halter is.  If he thinks I’m reaching for it he books it to the gate.  No he’s not bored either.  Why do you ask?

Good news.  I talked to someone that is starting colts here.  Bad news.  He will not have time until later in February to take on Kanak.  He should be pretty easy, a 30 – 60 day project I hope. Just enough time with to understand what’s expected out of him when someone climbs up on his back.  We talked about Jr too… he needs to get started as well.  It never ends.  Next year I may have three to get started.  Better save my pennies.  Or sell some horses.  While we’re marking time off the calendar until the boys can go to school, I need to be working on their pre-school stuff.  But there is mud.

Truthfully, I know better than to really bitch about a little bit of mud (everywhere!).  There are definitely worse things going on in the world.  There are definitely places with more mud!  Certainly we needed the moisture.  It’s just that whining a tiny bit is therapeutic.  Wine seems to be therapeutic too.  As is chocolate.  Anyhow, the whining is out of my system now, so I can deal with the mud tomorrow.  After it dries out some more tonight.  And maybe after some of these other forms of therapy.

A Northwest kind of weekend

My desert let me down.  We had rain, quite a bit of it, and gray skies for several days.  Truly I’m not that disappointed, we do need moisture.  It’s just that I would prefer it in the form of snow instead of rain though.  According to the weather sources my preferences shall be honored tonight.  Meanwhile though, I got nothing accomplished outside with the horses.  Too much wind and apparently I now melt in the rain.  Overall the gray days and on-again/off-again rain pattern reminded me of life on the west side of the Cascades.  I still don’t miss it.

Saturday morning I was being ultra lazy as it had rained all night and was still pretty soggy.  So I was a bit of a bum about taking a shower and getting going for the day.  I chatted with Bruce about it and he declared I smelled better than cat butt.

I was feeling pretty good about things until I thought about who Bruce is, and what his scale for good and bad smells might be.  This is a dog who can find a dead thing to roll in almost anywhere we go.  Instantly too, he will suss out the stinkiest most decayed pile of varmint remains and just roll in there to his heart’s content.  Or, until I yell at him to stop.  If he can not find stinky dead things a pile of well-aged horse poop will do, in a pinch.  Anyhow, upon further consideration, being compared to cat butt just didn’t seem good in general, whether his idea of better than was the same as my idea of worse than, I decided to shower.  And I felt much better.  (Ok, I didn’t really have a talk with Bruce, but he was fascinated by some smell on my PJs – more than likely bacon grease, they got washed.)

Just in case you were wondering who Bruce is... Say G'Day Bruce.

Back to the stinky weather.  The early part of this winter had me really spoiled.  Cold, yes.  Wind, not so much.  Snow, only a smidge.  Rain, none.  By cold I mean lows in single digits warming up to mid-40s.  Clear blue skies everyday.  Almost no serious wind.  A light breeze here and there, but no steady 30-plus mile an hour winds gusting up to 50.  No buckets of rain dumping in short spans of time.  Today actually was the best day of the weekend, except for the chill and the wind.

Tonight I almost wound up making pan-fried Tuna steaks with alfalfa.  Sounds gourmet, right?  With the shorter days during this time of year I usually feed the horses before I make my dinner.  The wind was blowing enough that each horse I fed tonight, no matter which direction I was moving hay, some portion of it blew back onto me.  In my hair, down my shirt, all over my coat.  Any sudden move on my part once back inside, might dislodge a shower of little green bits.  Normally, I ignore this.  It’s all part of doing what I do.  When I was seasoning the Tuna I felt a sneeze coming on.  I walked into the mud room to let it out.  Otherwise, I feared a violent sneeze would dislodge alfalfa particles all over the kitchen and onto my dinner.  My plan worked, the only seasoning I detected was the salt, pepper and cayenne I intended to have there.

Trader Joe’s Ahi Tuna Steaks are worth the two and a half hour drive to get.  I hadn’t realized how much I had been missing fish.  Definitely stocking up the next trip to Town.  These are good enough, fresh enough (frozen) they probably could carry some alfalfa seasoning.  Not sure I’ll push it though.

I’m off to shower to get the hay out of my hair.  Hope your weekends were more productive than mine.

Stand up straight!

Wow, this Body Work category I set up is sorely neglected.  I figure it’s time I threw out something that focuses on this.

I have no idea how many times I was told to stand up or sit up straight.  By my parents, by riding instructors/coaches/4H leaders.  I probably heard it when I did dance for that one year.  I think even when I was learning to play piano I heard it, something about sitting up straight helped with playing music better.

Going to massage school is what finally helped me to understand what straight actually is.  I tell you what, it’s not what my very linear brain thinks straight should be.  (For horsey folks, it’s much like the kind of straightness we want with correct bend on a circle.)  Who would think you could achieve straightness by having curves.  My a-ha came with not only understanding how the curves of the spine are supposed to work together, but being corrected in my own posture for my body mechanics.  Who would ever guess that I might have poor posture.  (Ha! hahahahaha!)

Most massage therapist who desire longevity to their careers pay attention to their body mechanics.  Good body mechanics start with good posture and a properly aligned spine.

What I learned about my own posture is that the way I had stood every time someone told me to stand up straight was to literally try to straighten my spine out.  Which actually made it harder for me to be correct with my posture.  What I wound up with was a posterior rotation in my pelvis, slumpy shoulders (technical term, can’t you tell) and excess strain through out my back.  It’s no wonder I had encountered back problems.

It was halfway through the year of massage school that one of the instructors (thanks Miss Elisa!) got it through my thick skull how to change my posture.  She told me to stick my butt out.  What?  That’s just rude, right?  Well kind of, coming from the polite middle class upbringing I did, where those things weren’t much discussed.  The better place for my pelvis leans more towards what I call a “ghetto booty” (btw, do not do a google search for images using that term!) as opposed to the “old man/no butt” posture that I tended towards. (Think a bit of Steve Urkel from “Family Matters” if you haven’t seen too many old men.)  In more technical terms, I needed to rotate my pelvis more anteriorly.

Quick Anatomy and Physiology lesson.  Our spines naturally have curves to them.  They are not simply a column of building blocks with one stacked squarely on top of the other.  Our neck (cervical vertebrae) have what is called a lordotic curve.  When viewed from the side the middle part of the section moves towards the front of the body.  Next the upper back or thoracic section of the vertebral column has a kyphotic curve where the middle part of that portion of spine is farther away from the front of the body.   The low back (lumbar vertebrae) have a lordotic curve again, the sacrum repeats the kyphotic curve.  For the horse geeks out there (like me) that learned a sway back horse has lordosis these are relatively easy to keep straight.  Kyphosis is what Quasimodo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) had.  Human spines have to have these curves to function normally.  (Note, kyphosis and lordosis are the pathological conditions where the curve is taken to an extreme, impairing (that seems to be the assumption) normal function.)

To continue the A&P lesson, our sacrum is more or less attached to our pelvis at the Ilia (one of the bones that make up each side of your hips.)  So, any flexion of the pelvis will drag the sacrum along.  Now, the sacrum is one bone made of (usually) five vertebrae that fuse together when we are very, very young.  There is not individual articulations (movements) within the sacrum.  It does have have movement where it meets up with the last lumbar vertebrae.  Back to the connection between the sacrum and pelvis, it is not a solid connection.  There are the sacrum meets up with the Ilia at the sacroiliac joint (SI for short) where, as with most joints, things are stabilized with ligaments.  There is a small degree of movement at the SI joints, certainly enough for them to be put under strain and even displaced.

Why did I tend to tuck my rear under, putting more strain on my SI joints and my whole lower back musculature?  The short answer is who knows.  Somehow, things in my head translated “stand-up straight” to literally trying to straighten my spine out.  It was also probably tied in to a whacked out body image, not knowing what to do with curves that appeared with puberty and other such things.  Might be in part that to “suck it in” to appear thinner I pulled my stomach in and rounded my lower back.  Whatever all the reasons, I have a habit of rotating my pelvis and putting undue strain on my body.

Whether my instructor was rude or not in telling me to stick my butt out, it helped.  Any time I feel I am working too hard with a massage stroke, I check if I have my butt tucked under or not.  It is the key for me.  Some folks have to think about bending their knees more, or where they have their feet placed or putting the wrist in a more neutral position… for me those things fall in line once my pelvis is properly oriented to the rest of my body.

An added perk (this is aimed again at my horse-y friends)… when we as riders have good posture it is so much easier for our horses to have good posture.

This and That

Hi there!  I have a hodge-podge post for you today.

First of all, since I’m drinking yummy red wine out my mug.  Yes a mug, I’m classy like that.  I thought I’d fill you in on this stuff.  Somewhere I picked up this bottle of Ste Chapelle Soft Red.  The winery is based in Caldwell, ID.  Who would think that they would make decent wine in Idaho?  Right, not me!

Note, I am not any sort of wine connoisseur.   I like what I like, but I don’t use technical terminology to explain any of it.  Lately (meaning for the last year plus), I’ve been on a run of Malbecs from Argentina, which have a bit more edge than this one does.  Soft Red is an excellent description of this wine.  It’s soft like a chenille blanket, that I could easily curl up in.  I opened this yesterday morning to use in cooking a Pot Roast.  (Which turned out very well, thank you.  Eating leftovers right now.)  That gave it a while to air, although it smelled fantastic yesterday.  I almost went whine-o and started drinking it yesterday at 10:00 in the morning.  Yes, I showed great restraint.  Really, I don’t drink much, often, but when I do it had better be good (to my tastes).  This bottle is not likely to see tomorrow. Fruity tasting, not dry at all, light finish and very drinkable.  Pairs well with leftover Pot Roast and Plain M&Ms.  (Oops, I guess I fell off the no refined sugar wagon.)  Usually I know right away if a wine will give me a headache.  This one isn’t bad, I may need to drink a lot of water with it to keep from getting headachey.

Now that I’m liquored up, I’ll tell you why I didn’t post yesterday. Feel free to join me in the alcohol consumption.  Unless you are reading this in the morning and prefer not to appear to be an alcoholic.  Or, if you need to go operate a car or heavy machinery in the near future.  But first, there is some back story.

Up until five years ago I did not own a TV.  If I didn’t have a room-mate/boyfriend/(now ex-)husband with a TV, I just did without.  That’s right, I can survive without a TV.  If there was news happening in the world, I would read it online.  As I noted here, I refuse to pay for cable.  Not that I have anything really against it.  It just doesn’t seem like a good use of money.  57 channels and nothing on, times at least four now.  So there was one channel that came through the rabbit ears to the old analog TV here.  Without the digital antenna the flat screen unit didn’t get anything.  Finally, yesterday was the day to get a converter box and digital antennas.

On to the story… I picked up two indoor antennas, I’m not so far from the repeater that I shouldn’t be able to get signal.  Never would I have guessed that the cheaper of the two got better reception.  Naturally, the first one I hooked up was the more expensive one.  I spent way too long trying to make it work, figuring out how to check the signal strength.  Once I figured out it was getting zero signal, I thought maybe I was SOL.  Out of sheer curiosity I tried the cheaper of the two.  It works and gets 11 channels.  Oh baby!  This is better than 1982!  “Can’t stop the signal.”  So not 1982.  Anyone?  Name that movie?

Short story, not much to it.  After I got the antenna hooked up, I became a TV zombie.  (A large part of why I avoid cable, somehow when the TV is on it commands my undivided attention.)  Non-functional antenna returned and got another of the less expensive models.  TVs going at both ends of the house.

In breaking news, tonight I am thankful not to live in south Reno.  Local news has been going since at least 3:00 this afternoon.  As of this moment there are at least 3000 acres that have burned.  No solid count on the number of homes and structures that have burned.  This definitely gives me good perspective on having my house stink like burnt ham and beans.

Right now it’s raining off and on.  That has quieted down the wind.  It was so windy when I got home from working and a trip to town that all the chickens were in their respective houses.  Maybe I’ll be productive with the horses tomorrow.

Quick note about making Pot Roasts… whatever you do, you must sear the roast then sear/brown the onions before adding them to the meat to cook.  It makes all the difference.

Cheers!

Listening, part 1…

On Friday I worked Ki and he was a bit naughty.  At first he was his usual lazy self, I was happy when he stepped into the lope a few steps after I cued him.  I was unhappy though when he felt like he wanted to stop and rear, or get bucky, he alternated between the two.  Wha-huh?  He hadn’t offered to do anything like this so far.  Granted the only thing I could get out of the guy that started him was “he lazy.”   There was difficulty in Spanish to English communication there.  Anyhow, bucking, or even rearing would take effort.  Not something this horse is going to just come up with.  At least that is what I thought so far.  But, maybe somewhere in the last week he had decided to put effort into not getting worked.  So I kept going until I found a sort of good place to end with him for the day and figured we’d tackle it all again the next day.

Saturday he was the first horse I pulled out.  I was planning on spending some, ahem, “quality” time with him.  If he just needed an attitude adjustment, let me tell you I could dig into my bag of tricks and catch him off-guard.  I had all day to deal with him.  As I was grooming him I checked his neck and back to be sure nothing was bothering him.  Everything there felt solid – no soreness detected.  I went to get a different brush out of my tack room and was sort of mentally scratching my head, genuinely wondering what was up with him.  As I walked around behind him, I noticed he had a very fine line that started at his coronet band and ran about half-way down his hoof.  I looked.  I looked again.  Really, a quarter crack!  On a hind foot!  What the fuhhh?

While he was out (away from here) getting started last Spring he had a few less than stellar shoeing jobs.  (Anything that is getting worked/ridden at all almost has to have shoes on with all the rocks and hard ground here.)   Ki has been back from his adventure as a ranch horse since June.  Since then my shoer had been getting his feet back to where they should be, slowly.  (It really sucks when someone screws up a horses feet… it can take less than twenty minutes for someone to create something that will take a year or more to fix – be it undoing ideal angles or un-balancing the foot or creating asymmetry anywhere in the hoof.)   Something in the process of correcting his feet back to where they need to be caused enough shearing force between the toe and heel to create separation at the inside quarter of his feet.  The good news is that it is not a full blown crack – it is not all the way through the hoof wall.  The bad news is that it’s there at all.  Anyhow, the shoer reset Ki’s hind feet and took some pressure off the inside walls.  Immediately the wall of his hooves started to relax, like there was less pressure where the crack was forming.  Ki also relaxed a bit.  Not that he had been really edgy or very uncomfortable, but he just hadn’t quite seemed settled.

As an aside, (skip this paragraph if you don’t want more about quarter cracks)… I have only ever seen them on the front feet, in horses that either had contracted or sheared heels.  I am not a shoer or farrier, so I have no idea how to cause or fix cracks and I certainly haven’t seen that many cases.  I have known horses in the past that had problems with cracks – some of them get corrected and never have a problem again, for some of them it is a chronic problem.  I’m hoping that this is just a one-time deal with Ki, due to an imbalance in his feet caused by trying to correct a poor shoeing job from eight months or so ago. Even though the cracks Ki has do not go into what is considered the sensitive part of the foot, I feel they still cause pain.  That is from past experience dealing with a horse that had quarter cracks on his front feet who would spook, jam his feet into the ground, get mad because it hurt then spook worse.  In that case, once his cracks healed up he was the picture of perfect behavior, well not really, but he did quit spooking.

The point of that whole long drawn out story was that I asked a question, then shut-up (mentally, in this case) long enough to “hear” (or see in this case) to actually get an answer.  The answer?  Hopefully, the crack will turn out to be what was causing Ki to misbehave.  Time will tell.  Maybe it was not what I wanted to find out. I would have been happier to find an ouchy spot in his back or neck that I could work on with some massage and help it be all better.  So I certainly didn’t find the answer I was looking for.  That’s the point of listening openly, without an attachment to the answer.

If I had not listened for the slightest answer, instead taking him out for that “quality” time, I may well have created enough stress on the feet to actually have the crack “blow out” – yep kind of like a tire.  Where we are now is like when you notice that a tire has a slow leak, you take it to Les Schwab’s, they find the screw, patch the tire and you are good to go.  Instead if you go ahead and drive on that tire, you risk a blow-out.

This was just my little lesson over the weekend about shutting up and listening after I ask a question. I have found that the more I do this, the better results I get in everything.  Be it my health, massage or body work, horses, finances, romance, whatever.  Everything.

Listen.  It helps.