halibut, carne asada, cucumber salad, and more!

This is supposed to be My Dude Ranching Adventure, which leads you to believe I might be telling you about things going on at, well, at the Dude Ranch!  But the thing is, I've been sooooooooo busy there, that by the time I'm done, I just want to go to sleep!

Actually, it doesn't help that I'm out of shape, it's 2000 feet higher than Dow's house, or that there was a foot of wet snow to tromp through, but this will probably be another post, assuming I get to it!

Since it is my "day off", I will spend the day cooking for the Food Guy and tutoring.   

So let's talk about food!  (One of my favorite subjects, by the way...something I never would have believed if you'd told me 10 years ago.)

As I mentioned in previous posts, I have to think about how the food will keep or reheat.  Let me show you how I send him stuff.


Pineapple Chicken Salad Pitas
This chicken salad is my favorite!  It's so quick, especially if you use canned chicken or a roasted chicken from the store, and so good.  But, it only lasts for about 3 days before the almonds and carrots lose their crunch.

So, I made the mayonnaise mixture separately from the dry ingredients and left the pineapple in a can.  I write him a sheet of instructions that tells him to drain the pineapple, dump it into the chicken, add the mayo, mix and stuff in a pita with some lettuce.

Steamed Halibut with Sesame-Lime Sauce and Coconut Rice and Mom's Cucumber Salad
I generally don't cook the fish for Food Guy, because when he re-heats it, it becomes rubbery.  On a separate note, I think steamed meat is gross.  I mean, would you steam a steak?  Didn't think so.  As such, my instructions tell him he can steam it, however, I suggested he put it in a pan with a little oil.  That's what we did last night and it had a really nice brown crust to it.

As you might have guessed, Mom's Cucumber Salad isn't on the Cooking Light website.  So here goes:

Ingredients:  Cucumbers, salt, rice vinegar, and sugar (for 2 people, I used 1.5 cucumbers, some salt (?), 1/4 cup rice vinegar and 1/4 cup sugar)

Directions:  Peel cucumbers, slice length-wise, spoon out the seeds.  Use a mandolin to shave the cukes or slice as thinly as possible. Sprinkle salt on the heap o' cukes and let set for a few minutes.  Massage cucumbers and pour out the excess water that comes from massaging.  Combine equal parts rice vinegar and sugar, stirring to dissolve.  Pour vinegar over cucumbers.  Eat within a day or so!  (Or it loses its crunch.) 

Chef Salad with breadsticks (yeah, I cheated...Pillsbury!)
Nothing Special here...Cold cuts, tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and cucumbers.  It's not exactly vegetarian, but Food Guy isn't exactly vegetarian and he loves salads, so why make my life difficult?  And like he said, while it sounds ridiculous, he just really likes having the stuff all chopped so all he has to do is throw it together.

Peasant Soup with breadsticks (uh-huh...Pillsbury again.)
I had made a huge ham a couple of months ago, so I'm using up the leftovers now.

This soup smelled DELICIOUS while I was making it and tasted great!  Not a quick recipe, but definitely an easy one.  And even better if you have leftovers to throw in. And all Food Guy has to do is reheat!

This is just a gratuitous picture to show you my beautiful red pot (I LOVE RED!) that Dow gave me for Christmas.

Carne Asada Taco with Avocado Pico de Gallo
They always tell you to read through your recipes first.  And I suppose I did, a while ago.  But this was one of my last recipes to make when I saw that the meat had marinate for 3 hours!  I guess I'll go relax for a while as it basks in the lime juice and cumin.  This one isn't much work for Food Guy either...he has to dice the avocado and toss it with the Pico de Gallo - I didn't add it so it wouldn't discolor or get mooshy.

And there you have it!  Another week's worth of meals...with pictures to boot!

the deal

Alright, so here's the deal and I need your help.

First of all, let me give you some background information. Dan is always looking for web optimization and for all you techies out there, I know there's some cool acronym for it, but I can't remember it right now. For those of you who are like me, who just use the internet and don't think about all the fancy schmancy stuff, basically, he wants Sundance Trail to show up in the top 10 of Google when you search "dude ranch".

Apparently, for a while, I was in the top 10 of the search!

Now for the deal...

Dan said he'll pay me for every posting about the ranch, as long as I stay in the top 10.

Now where you come in...

Please come here via Google.

How do you do that?

Go to Google, search "Dude Ranch", look for a link to my site, hit the next button at the bottom until you find it.

I originally thought it might be somewhat unethical to make this posting, but then I realized, this exactly what Dan wants! He wants this blog to be at the beginning of Google so people will see it. Consider it inexpensive marketing. And you, my loyal readers, can help us out!

I understand that it may be a pain in the butt, if I'm not near the top, but if you can spare the effort, I'd really appreciate it.

Warmly yours,

The Google Wrangler

first day back

Today was my first day back at the Ranch...Sundance Trail Guest Ranch, that is. I'm returning as the head wrangler there, but dude season doesn't start for another month. So, for right now, I'm supposed to be working horses, making sure they're ready to go once everyone arrives.

We need about 6-10 new horses for this season, and usually we lease them, but unfortunately, our lease guy passed away last year. So, we're trying to buy them and get them up here so they can get worked.

Dan already purchased one new kids' horse.

Her name is Mocha. And she is 25...and looks darn good for her age!

But she's not very photogenic...she kept blinking in her pictures!

I only got to work with her for a little while because she was just buddied up with two other new horses (the cook's horses) and had a little limp. I think Dan put it the best way today. Horses are like 7th grade girls. They are always fighting for who the popular one is and they'll beat the snot out of any others just for the heck of it. Basically, you have to kind of eeeeeaaaase a horse into a herd. And even then, they still have to prove themselves and may end up with a swift kick to the......

Anyhow, as I was saying, I didn't get to work Mocha much because she was a little limpy.

After that, we headed down to look at another horse. You know how I used Craigslist to get all my winter jobs? Well, Dan uses it to find horses.

But the weird thing is I somehow always have a connection with the Craigslist people. For instance, the first guy I tutored lived next door to Amy's mom's house. The Food Guy lives less than a mile from my cousin's house (a few towns away). I know my tutoring lady's daughter from Florida...I just haven't figured out from where yet!

So what I'm saying is, Dan was looking for a horse on Craigslist and the girl selling him happens to be Justin's ex-girlfriend, who I know from a couple of years back. We went down to her place to look at the feller and decided he was what we were looking for. Of course I forgot my camera..... But it's ok, he should be here soon.

When we got back, I had just enough time to work the baby.

Rose Blossom is her name, but I always call her baby. She's really little, even though she's 2, because she's the pony's baby.

Amazingly, she remembered everything Georgia and I taught her last summer. And she even took her first steps toward side-passing (moving sideways without moving forward).

Finishing up the day, I helped Dan feed.

He looks like he belongs on that tractor, doesn't he?

I joke because the poor guy gets stuck up in the office on the computer all day. I guess that's what always happens, huh? You get a job you like and then they promote you to management and make you sit at a desk! At least that's what the Seester says.

I guess the good news for me is that I AM management and I STILL have an awesome job - driving tractors and riding horses - who could ask for anything more?

dow...and florida

Dow is a Colorado boy, born and raised. He doesn't take vacations. He takes hunting trips. Considering where I grew up and went to college, he's been most places I've lived...because it's good hunting country. But, Florida? Now that's another story.

Dow saw the ocean through the fog for 5 minutes when he was in the 5th grade. That was more than a few days ago. So he decided he wanted to come with me the next time I went back to Florida to check on the house and visit friends.

I warned him that this wasn't exactly a vacation, but he wanted to do it! We bought the tickets, booked a rental car, and we were on.

Taking a country boy to Florida, to meet your Florida friends means you've got a little work to do before you go.

This is what Dow is most comfortable in, but it's not exactly good for Florida weather.

This is what guys in Florida wear. Shorts and flip-flops. Neither of which are in Dow's wardrobe. I'm not even sure the last time his legs saw the sun.

As such, I took the liberty of shopping for him.

$85 later (thank you, Target!), he looked like a true Floridian.

*Note: I did not "make" Dow wear anything he was uncomfortable in and I took the directions I was given in making my purchases.

As I mentioned, Dow has never really taken a vacation before and he's never really been to the beach. So there were only a couple of things he had in mind, but he was definitely adamant about doing them.

He had never had a martini or been to a martini bar (not necessarily needed to be done in Florida, but I figured what better place) and he had always wanted to sip a fruity drink on the beach.

Since this trip was a combination of meeting my friends, doing yard work at the house, and vacation, I figured we could do both of his things while meeting up with friends.

We went to the Twisted Martini with Little Jessica, where we were supposed to meet up with some other friends from my old job.

Unfortunately, neither of them were able to meet us there, but we did get Dow's martini!

We thought we would head down to Cape Canaveral to see the Kennedy Space Center (we just missed the shuttle launch by a day or two!).

And we did head down there. And we did head right back out. That place is as bad as going to Disney Land! It was $40 per person, which was not the cost of our interest in space.

Having been friends with Jessica as long as I have, I decided to whip back around to get pictures to show we were at least there.

Since Cape Canaveral is 2 hours from my house and only 15 minutes away from Cocoa Beach, we decided to make the most of our drive. We had a picnic of Publix subs on the beach.

For those of you who haven't been to Florida, Publix is a grocery store, but they have uh-MAZE-ing subs. Maybe it wasn't worth a 2 hour drive to eat a grocery store sandwich on the beach when we could have done the same thing 15 minutes away, but at least we got to see Cocoa Beach.

We spent the next day scooting around. Although there is no proof of Dow doing this. He didn't want his picture taken on the scooter at the time, but once we got back to Colorado, he was a little sad there wasn't one.

Finally on Sunday, we did what he had been really looking forward to...spending the day on the beach.

Ryan and Jessica picked us up, threw some bikes in the back of the truck and we headed to Jacksonville Beach for the Blues Festival.

Little Jessica's dad is a lifeguard, so he showed us around the lifeguard station (think fire station) and took this picture of us at the very top.

We rode bikes up and down 1st Avenue and sipped our fruity drinks on the beach.

At one place, we ran into this guy...

Talk about begging!

We ended our perfect Florida day with a perfect Florida evening at Clark's Fish Camp.

Where the gators didn't get fed,

But Justin ate their tails,

Where I had a hard time eating my meal with this view,

Ryan and Little Jessica continued to enjoy their first year of marriage,

And I *almost* talked Dow into moving to Florida.

food - favorites week

This is the 14th week, since I started cooking for Food Guy. Although, I'll admit, I have had 3 weeks off in there, because he had too much food...a much better problem than the other direction.

So whether it's technically week 11 or week 14, we had a favorites week, allowing me not to think very hard about the menu while I was in Florida. His menu was as follows:

Pan-seared Scallops with Ginger-Orange Spinach and Lars' Bread

Adobo Chicken with Sticky Rice and Asparagus

Grilled Sirloin Salad with Lars' Bread

Chicago Deep-Dish Pizza with Salad

Southwestern Bean Stew over Mexican Polenta

A couple of notes about the food.

1. The scallops were not a favorite, but Food Guy hadn't rated any of the previous fish meals with a high enough rating. Same for the vegetarian meal, except that the meals he rated highly were more winter dishes and I think it's time for spring. So there. Take that.
2. I added Lars' Bread (of Lars & Amy) to myrecipes.com, but it hasn't shown up yet. I'll add the link if it does.
3. The Adobo Chicken sauce needs to be at least doubled. You'll be happy you did.
4. You REEEEEEAAAAAALLLLY need to make the Chicago Deep-Dish Pizza. Food Guy sent me an email the very night he made it, to tell me it was the ABSOLUTE BEST pizza he'd had. EVER. That's right EVER. Ok, so he said maybe it contended with some pizza he had in Italy, but that was 15 years ago and he couldn't exactly remember now. Therefore, my pizza is the best EVER.
5. I test as I go, usually.
6. (This is 5a.) The Southwestern stew seemed blah...til I added the sour cream and avocado that just seemed like a condiment. It made the dish AWESOME!
7. (This is 5b...I love outlines, by the way.) The scallops were PHENOMENAL! Restaurant quality! (As long as you cook it on high heat. I learned that mistake the hard way, too many times. And scallops are expensive!) The spinach on the other hand, was overpoweringly orange and kinda ruined the scallops in my opinion. But that's just me.
8. If you stick with me, kid, you'll never make a bad meal again. I tell you whether it was good or not. And almost everything - unless it's favorites week - is an experiment.

Ok, so moving on. I've gotten a couple of questions about cooking (mostly from my mother, but from a few others, too) and I'll attempt to answer them here. Watch out! There's another outline coming!

1. Do you freeze all your meals for Food Guy?

• No, my college roommate and I decided that food was good in the fridge for 7 days. After moving out on my own, I decided 10 days...I couldn't eat as fast by myself. That being said, I make the food and deliver it within a day or two and figure it's good in the fridge until I bring new food. If he can't get to it, it's up to him to do the freezing.
• Food Guy told me he didn't have enough food this past week and therefore his children simply did not eat. I felt the guilt of his kids being malnourished. He admitted he was too lazy to take food out of the freezer and reheat it. I put the guilt back on him. Thank goodness I don't freeze everything or the whole family would be malnourished, not just the kids. (Btw, he has a sense of humor.)

2. Is everything just "leftover"?

• Well, yeah, kinda. I try to think through the cooking process and how it will be reheated. Sometimes I fail. Like I cooked the mahimahi for him and when reheated it became rubber. I cooked some mushroom-stuffed chicken that had a nice, crisp, breaded crust...but not when reheated. It was soggy.
• Food Guy doesn't mind a little cooking. In fact, he hired me because it was too time-consuming, so if I do the prep work and he just has to grill a steak or something (usually fish), he's good.
• I send raw meats to him frozen.

3. Did you use fresh corn last week? (That was my mother)

• No, I used frozen corn for the Roasted Corn, Black Bean, and Mango Salad.

If y'all have ANY questions about techniques, products, etc., just leave me a comment. It will give me something to talk about!

And if there are any chemists out there...can you tell my why baking soda and vinegar make my pan come clean when I burn stuff on it? (Did I mention the scallops are cooked on high heat?) I LOVE it! I'm not sure if someone (the parental units?) told me to do that or if I've just burned enough stuff to have figured it out myself. But it's magic. And if you REEEEEAAAAALLLy burn something, pour dish soap on it, baking soda on top of it, and let it set in that paste overnight. Rinse and repeat as needed.

quick update

I know, I know. Over a week again.

Dow and I went down to Florida, did a BUNCH of yard work, met friends, had a sort of vacation and flew home. I tutored today, bought groceries, came home and cooked. Finish cooking tomorrow then head to Dowma's house to pick up Bella and meet his family.

I promise I've got pictures from our time in Florida and we've *finally* picked a paint color and I'll get those posted, too.

I start at the ranch next Tuesday, so we might ACTUALLY get back to "My Dude Ranching Adventure," instead of just "What the Heck is LeAndra doing?".

Phew! Are you tired? I am!

food guy

As I mentioned, during my leave from the ranch, I have been a Craigslist hound. I posted for healthy in-home cooking and low and behold, someone found me! Food Guy thought he was coming up with a clever and unique idea until he found that I was already offering the service he was looking for.

He is a single dad of two kids and training for a marathon. His dilemma was that he either had to eat out, which is hard because you have to try to make healthy decisions and it's expensive, or he had to cook for himself, but didn't have enough time. Voila! Insert me! It's probably cheaper than eating out and I'm making healthy, well-rounded meals from Cooking Light.

Every week, I make a meal plan that includes 5 different main dishes: beef, chicken, pork, fish, and vegetarian. Each meal comes with a starch and a vegetable, making sure he's getting the nutrients he needs to fuel his body for the marathon.

The hard part, though, is that his kids are picky eaters. The good news (for me, anyhow!) is that he only has them every other week, so I can make "adult" food when it's just him.

So, if you're having a hard time deciding what to make this week, check back here! I'll try to post the recipes I'm making for him. And at some point, when I have more time, I'll try to get pictures of what I'm making.

For this week, you'll have to be satisfied with links to recipes. Here's what I made and most of it was pretty quick and easy, good for weeknight dinners.

• Kung Pao Shrimp with Rice (vegetables in the main dish)
• Green Curry Chicken with Rice (vegetables in the main dish)
• Herb-roasted Beef with Potatoes and Brussel Sprouts
• Pork Tenderloin, Pear, and Cranberry Salad with Coucous Pilaf
• Roasted Corn, Black Bean, and Mango Salad with Quesadillas

Happy cooking!

peeing in a cup

Everybody's had to do it at least once. And no, I'm not going to drag you through some miserable experience I've had, so keep reading...it's kinda entertaining!

Dow's mom came to town to pick up Bella, so we can go to Florida without worrying about her. And while Dow's sister is in the process of growing Dowma's first grandchild, Bella is currently her only grand-anything besides the grandcat, which means she gets a lot of attention and love. She even goes to the beauty shop when she goes home with Dowma. (Thank goodness - poor little, ratty thing.) Well, Dow noticed that Bella had been, well, um, licking herself a lot...in places we don't like to see dogs licking.

He called the vet's office to see if he could get her in before she left. No problem, they could get her in on Friday (today)...they just needed a urine sample.

A WHAAAAAAAAT?!?!

While this is probably no big deal for city dogs who are used to being followed around by a human on a leash while they do their thing, and often by humans who even pick up their doodee, this is not a normal occurrence for Bella. And trying to get her to pee while being followed by all three of us (I had to get a picture of this!) was no easy feat!

You see, Dow and Dowma went out there thinking that Bella, being the good dog she is, and really, really having to go would pee in a cup right away.

WRONG!

But at least they know which end it comes out...

Right?

Anyhow going back to how quickly or easily this job would be done, I need to mention a couple of things.

First of all, this dog is not a leashed dog.

Notice the rope. It's not latched onto her collar like a normal leash. Oh no, no, no! It's lassoed around her neck like she's a calf. You might feel bad for her, but honestly? She doesn't know the difference.

Secondly, she won't even go in the front yard. She goes out a ways where we won't step in it. Dow says, if he has to leave her tied up for a day or two (with food and water, of course!) while he's gone, she won't doodee until he lets her off her leash. Apparently, 3 days is her limit for holding it.

Basically, what I'm saying is, Bella likes to keep her area clean and doesn't like to go in front of an audience.

We were definitely NOT dressed for the occasion, considering they thought this would be a quick deal. It was downright cold out there! (It was 77 degrees on Tuesday and about 27 degrees yesterday, go figure.) Dow had just grabbed the nearest pair of shoes he saw, and considering Bella has this thing for running around with a shoe when she's excited, he couldn't find his Crocs.

Sooooooo......

He used his mother's. They're pink. I just wanted that in writing. Dow is wearing pink Crocs.

The shenanigans went on for at least a half hour.

Dowma was holding the leash, Bella would start to squat, Dow would lunge at her with a cup, and she would jump back to standing unsure of what was going on.

Or he would say, "Come on, Bella, go potty!"

But what Bella heard was "Come! blah, blah, blah", so she wouldn't go potty because she was awaiting her next command.

We finally gave up and made her come back in, regardless of the fact she reeeeeeeally needed to potty, lest she go without us, and decided to try again later.

Because it was getting late and the sun was going down (read: getting REALLY cold!), Dowma and I opted not to help Dow feed the horses and embark on attempt #2 to get Bella to pee in a cup.

And low and behold! He was successful! (See? I told you she didn't like an audience!)

Which means, I didn't get a picture of the actual event.

...and I spared you a picture of the actual cup of pee.

But just keep this in mind the next time you're dreading having to pee in a cup...at least it's easier than trying to get a DOG to do it!