Scrappy Tidbits

Many, many moons ago, the husband I and moved our then only child to Idaho. Husband had lived there when he was younger, and as luck would have it, his mom was still living there.

It was there, in the little two bedroom home we rented that I discovered the secret to making great tasting fried rice.

Growing up in San Francisco, I was spoiled with really great food. Not just Chinese, but every kind of food you can imagine. Luckily enough, most of these places were truly authentic and when we would go elsewhere, we sometimes found ourselves disappointed.

Most of the time I was able to duplicate the taste of food I cooked myself. The one thing I could never get right, was fried rice.

We would go to Kim Ling on Mission Street. My most favorite thing in the world to eat there was the barbecue pork fried rice. I was a very picky eater as a kid, so me finding something that I wouldn’t consider punishment to eat daily was a small feat.

At the time, we had been married for around 4 years. Husband worked evenings at a beer plant across town. We has one car.

Twin Falls is a pretty good sizes city, so often, I’d be loading the baby up in the night to go pick up the old man.

I tried my best to make food that wasn’t only nutritious, but that was tasty.

On the side, I delivered newspapers in our neighborhood. Naturally, I got the paper. One day, in the food section was a recipe for fried rice. I didn’t know what some of the stuff was or even looked like, but I made my way to the store to get what was needed.

That night, I made the greatest pot of fried rice I had ever made. It was perfection. It tasted like HOME.

The secret I had been missing ginger, but more than that SESAME OIL! Where had this been my entire life?? It was an life changing experience.

I tried to save the recipe and may have for a while, but these days, I just wing it.

Keep in mind, for this, I dont really measure, except for the ginger.

Ingredients:

5 slices thick cut bacon, chopped

3 green onions, chopped

Garlic, as many cloves as you feel the need to add, diced

1/2 tsp ginger

1 egg, whisked

Cooked rice (I cooked 2 cups of rice)

Sesame oil

Soy sauce

Here’s what I did:

You’ll need a big pan.

Fry the bacon, after a few minutes, add in green onion, garlic, ginger l, sesame oil and egg. Cook for another minute, stirring

Add the rice and mix everything well.

Add the soy sauce to taste. I always add a little bit more sesame oil.

Serve warm.

We had this Friday evening with Spicy Korean Style Pork Medallions, which everyone said were great.

I hope you enjoy it! Let me know if you give it a try!

Its Sunday again, and like usual, I took something out to cook and then fret about what I was actually going to make all day long.

I finally decided on Arroz con Pollo. I don’t exactly remember where I learned to make it, I think it was just a recipe I found somewhere.

It’s a great one pot dish and everyone loves it.

Here’s what you need:

Olive oil

1 package chicken thighs

Garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper to taste

1 onion, chopped

2 cups rice

2 tbsp chicken bullion

4 cups water

2 small tomatoes, chopped or 1 can chopped tomatoes, undrained

1 package Goya Sazon

Heat the oil in a large pot/Dutch oven. Brown the chicken. Usually, its 2 or 3 batches. Season the chicken to taste.

Remove chicken from the pot. Cook onions and rice, until onion is translucent. Add the bullion, stir well.

Add water, and stir, scraping the brown bits on the bottom. Add remaining ingredients and bring to a boil.

Add chicken back into pan, cover and lower heat to simmer for 20-25 minutes.

Its Saturday!

Saturday dawns much like any other day: I wake up early, sit on my butt for a bit, I make coffee and go outside. I get wet and complain to the dog about my hands being cold now. I come inside and pour some coffee. Then I sit down and wait for everyone else to get up.

Nothing to exciting. Plus, I get a chrome every morning. I mean so what if he runs off to the back of the property and then tries to sneak up on me two or fourteen times.

I have been getting some ideas lately though.

I have a lone dwarf plum tree in the back. Basically, it’s our mini orchard. There should be two apple trees and a plum tree, but one died and the other broke off at the dirt line. It gets pretty windy sometimes.

Anyway, we have had the tree back there for over a year now, and it’s just a bit taller than me and full of beautiful green leaves. That’s all there is though.

So I did some research and apparently not all dwarf plum trees are self fertile and more often than not, they should be planted at least in pairs. Whoops, probably should have read past the watering and planting instructions on the card it came with.

Reading that made me think about what my other plants might need. Then I saw something swoosh by me. It was a bee.

Of course, pollination! I realized I haven’t seen many bees around the property. Truthfully, we DON’T have a lot of flowers around, but there are some.

So, we bought some flowers yesterday. Petunias that can handle the sun a bit. I also bought a planter of Russian Sage, but that was more because I wanted to have some sage.

My raised bed in the back has now been fertilized, and planted fully. Theres barely a spot that shouldn’t have something growing soon and if there is, it’s probably where I put the cantaloupe seeds (they take some time)

To recap, my garden will hopefully soon have some green onions, okra, spinach, radishes (they’re my favorite. They grow quickly and help build confidence that you aren’t a murderer of epic proportions), bell peppers (hopefully) serrano peppers, more spinach, eggplant, tomatoes and green beans.

Whew! That’s a lot! I’m very excited to see what we can harvest.

The tomatoes, I purchased two tomato plants, a sort of cheat, I know, but its July, for goodness sake I gotta get busy on this stuff.

So, the flowers, we’ll see if they help. Down the road, though, I’d like to get a beehive on the property and be able to have them nearby, so they aren’t travelling too far. My husband agrees, but bees aren’t his top priority right now.

First is a gate for the goat pen. He has a garden gate on it now. Its worked fine, but they’ve all bit destroyed it and it’s being held together by various strands of hay twine, which we have in abundance.

The goats occasionally got out and wreaked havoc on my plants. One day I went out and found stuff had been pulled from.the ground, only to hear, “Oh yeah, the goats got out.” Well, thanks.

So he and my son have constructed a new door. Its wood and heavy, which is what he wanted. It’ll probably go in today, but first we have to figure out how to do it without the goats escaping and eating all my vegetables.

We have an idea, but who knows if it will hold long enough to get everything done.

I guess we’ll find out.

Ever since we moved out of the city, to a sort of rural area in Northern Arizona, we have managed to make a lot of things. Mostly sheds, for animals, wood, hay storage, etc.

Walking the property is exciting, as there is always something we didn’t know we had back there, thanks to wind and rain.

There’s a LOT of stuff out here that we can repurpose. One of those things that have been used the most was a set of shelves the previous owners had installed in one of the back rooms.We wanted to use it for a bedroom and the occupant didn’t want the shelves, though I’m sure they regretted it later. We have used the shelves they made for a bunch of stuff.My first creation was for a wood holder for in the house. We had installed a woodstove and needed something to store the wood in the house. It still is one of my proudest crafts.Today, though, I was inspired by watching the Raney family on Homestead Rescue. They repurpose the crap out of all kinds of stuff. We have been watching almost all day yesterday and today and I just decided I was going to make something.

One thing we are really making a go of, is growing our own vegetables. I have a raised bed in the yard. Its yields are low, but theres something. My husband made me another raised bed from an old metal sink and some 2x4s. Things sprouted in there, but Podkayne, my cat, keeps plopping her ass in it, so I think she has eaten everything that’s come out so far.I have been thinking, specifically about 4 pots in the front yard. I think they were trees at one time, but by the time we moved in, they were basically four pots of dirt. I made a half hearted attempt at planting stuff in them, but I kept forgetting them. Now I have a lot of time and have been vigilant with watering and feeding the plants. At first, I thought I’d plant something in the pots. Then I thought, well, we need to move them, why not build a little table for them. So that’s what I did.

I found one of those shelves that I was talking about and four pieces of wood posts that were basically the same size. I have a drill, bits and a ridiculous amount of screws in an old Folgers coffee can (its metal, if that gives you a hint). I almost thought it would be too small and briefly considered not doing it, but I REALLY wanted to make something. I did require some assistance with drilling a few of the screws, but I figured out the design and assembled it.This picture here, with the yellow string… I needed to measure the distance between the two legs on the short sides and found using the tape measure in that space way too fiddly. I cut a length of cotton yarn and then stretched it out and measured that.

It’s now at home, up against the front of the house, and I managed to get all four pots on it. On the table, they’re just about the same height as my sink garden bed, so it’s almost perfect. Now, we just need those veggies to grow!