Life in the Country

Favorite TV Shows

1. Grey's Anatomy

2. CSI

3. Without A Trace

4. Numbers

5. Criminal Minds

6. Brothers and Sisters

7. So You Think You Can Dance

8. Nashville Star

Things I did yesterday

1. Had snowball fight with Noah.

2. Attempted to have the coondogs pull me and Noah on a piece of cardboard as a sled. (Didn't work)

3. Put hay in Buttercup's stall.

4. Played the Wii with Noah.

5. Made chili.

6. Ate chili.

7. Continued my "Teach yourself to crochet" lesson. (I have mastered the slip knot, just the whole being even with the tightness gets me!)

8. Read about different things in the "Children's Encyclopedia" with Noah.

Things I look forward to

1. Waking Noah up in the mornings.

2. Feeding Buttercup.

3. Riding Buttercup.

4. Spring

5. Flowers

6. Having my first garden this year

7. Taking the boys to the beach for vacation

8. Having constant orders for my business!!

Favorite Restaurants

1. Ciao Bella

2. Wasabe (before it was shut down for extortion)

3. Outback

4. Macaroni Grill

5. Houstons

6. Bahama Breeze

7. El Matador's

8. Wolf River Cafe (Best catfish you'll ever eat!!)

Things I wish for

1. A greater sense of purpose

2. A comfortable life

3. That I knew how to play the guitar

4. That I would have stayed in piano lessons

5. Closer relationships with family; near and far

6. Success

7. That Jason would act more on his cowboy nature (like Agustus McRae or Woodrow McCall) whisk me off to some romantic wedding I knew nothing about and we would become horse farmers in Montana

8. To have a nice car again

People I tagged

No one, they have all been tagged.

I bake. I bake a lot. I do it well. But let me just tell you I have discovered that not all baking is the same. You see, ever since Jason can remember, it has been tradition that on Sunday, everyone in Jason's family goes to his grandmother's for coffee and breakfast. She always has fresh biscuits, sausage, eggs, sometimes pork brains and eggs, ham all kinds of breakfast foods. (To answer your question, no I am NOT kidding!! And no I have NOT and WILL NOT eat them Sam I am!!! This is quite humorous to everyone in his family, but that is okay. As far as they are concerned, I will become a Jew or whatever religion I need to be so I am forbidden to eat pork if necessary! This issue requires it own post, to be continued...) Well, his grandmother is now 86 and is sick with Hodgkin's Lymphoma, so his mother who she now lives with has taken over this duty. I should note that his mother has very strange tastes and doesn't like cooking (she does like to bake), so needless to say, it isn't always the best and when it is, most of the time it was by accident.

When I first started going to breakfast, she would make these eggs that she called orange juice eggs. She seemed humored every time I politely denied her offer for one. But come on, who in the hell wants to eat an egg that has been cooked with orange juice? Pretty soon everyone seemed to see the humor in it but me. But this family has so many old traditions I didn't want to offend somebody by saying that, you know. Now I have had to learn to be patient with Jason because sometimes he is just totally unobservant. So after about a month or so, I finally asked him why his mom cooked her eggs in orange juice. I was informed that this was their way of getting children to eat the yolk in a fried egg. So as the warmth of rage and embarrassment filled my face, I began to see the humor!

Last year I had the opportunity to work as a personal chef for a very wealthy man. It was a fun and humbling job all at the same time. I was proud to have this job, but no where near as proud as Jason was for me. He is amazing. He had absolutely no qualms about telling the person checking us out at the store or the person beside us at the red light or the gentleman in Florida who was bringing us our food (who turned out to be Ronald Reagan's chef at the White House) about it and how great I was. (Now this is flattering and all but when you have no professional training and stumble upon some guy like the guy in Florida who trained in France at one of the most sought after culinary schools ever, it is a bit humiliating. But you got to love him for it, because training or not, to Jason the man in Florida had nothing on me.) One Sunday, Jason decided that I was going to cook breakfast for everyone. It is one of the Sundays that everyone showed up. Now usually, this would be no big thing. But I am completely out of my element. We are talking, homemade lard, cast iron skillet (which I have NEVER even owned or cooked in) a "spatchla" or what I call a scraper and use to clean the sides of the mixing bowl, and what is worse, NO CANNED BISCUITS! WHO THE HELL DOESN'T HAVE CANNED BISCUITS?????So, with a smile on my face and very colorful words going through my mind, I began to cook breakfast. Now, you have to keep in mind that this is after Jason has ranted and raved about how I can bake this and that, so there is NO PRESSURE or anything. But when he says this and that we're talking quiche Lorraine and red wine braised leg of lamb, things they probably can't even tell you what it is much less make, and I am worried about some damn biscuits and eggs! Okay, this can't be that hard. I have made plenty of quiche crusts, pie crusts, tarts, its all the same theory right?? Well I will just look at my old trustee cook book, oh wait, we are in the land before time where those things don't exist. How in the world am I suppose to know what ingredients to use? Flour, gotta have flour. (Inner full fledged panic has set in at this point.) So I pick up the flour and viola there is a recipe on the back for biscuits!! Watch out, I am good to go!! So as relief starts to come over my body, I am getting to the step where it says to "cut in the shortening with the dry mix". Now in my experience, this means almost literally cutting it in. So, thinking nothing of it, I grab a knife and a fork (heaven knows there is not going to be a pastry cutter o'er yonder in the drawer) and commence to cutting. The room grew oddly quiet. This is not normal at any family gathering anywhere, so I look up only to see the most perplexed, baffled, confused (not sure of the word really) looks on everyones faces except for Jason. After what seemed like 10 minutes of awkward silence, Jason's mom finally asked what I was doing. I casually responded "cutting in the shortening, you know just like you do in pastry crusts". "Ahum" is all that was said. So, I do this until the mixture gets pea like and then add the milk and begin to roll it out, why in the world is it so sticky?? This can't be right. So I sprinkle some flour on and knead it in (I did this 3 times I think) until it wasn't sticky, rolled it out, cut them out (with a glass, no cookie cutters) and baked them. So while they are baking, I start the sausage, in the cast iron skillet since the only other option was a single bottom pan of what looked like aluminum foil and at this rate would burn through during the cooking process. So cooking on the electric circle burners is no good after you are use to gas, you can't control the flame and there for have NO IDEA what kind of heat is going into the pan. Did you know sausage was suppose to be grey when cooked not black, hmm. I shall make a note. So time is up on the biscuits. I am excited, first time biscuit maker and all. I open the oven, ooh, I shut the oven. They can't be done. They are just as flat as when I put them in there!! Okay, I look again, color is good, the done kind of good. So, I pull them out and set them over by the cursed black sausage. At this point, I am thinking I now know what it feels like to be on Hell's Kitchen. So I pour out some of the grease from the sausage and leave some for flavor and non stick purposes and then add the eggs. You know, I am beginning to think there must be a manual that comes along with this skillet, even I know eggs are suppose to be yellow and brown variegated. Seriously, this can't be happening. Bless his grandma's soul. She says, "Oh, I haven't had flat biscuits in so long." I gracefully accept this polite old lady jab and humbly reply, "Yeah, I don't know what happened. I did just what the recipe said." She says back, "You mean you didn't make actual flat biscuits?" You mean to tell me there is such a thing? I totally could have just played that off, but no, my canned biscuit making self am scraping my pride off the ground just in time to hear Jason's brother say, "I have never had a sausage, egg and cracker before." NICE!! I was not a happy girl!

So, I have been on this quest to conquer this biscuit making thing. As you can see from the picture, still have a way to go. I did recently find out that biscuit dough is suppose to be sticky-ish. (Thanks mom!) I was also informed by Jason this morning after getting up at 4:50 am to cook biscuits (and 3lbs of bacon for Noah's class breakfast) and giving him yet another flat biscuit that were going to go have his grandma teach me how to make them "fluffy". Given my last encounter with what I have now named Hell's Kitchen, I am not so sure that will be happening!!!