Monthly Archives: January 2014

Eat Your Vegetables

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I mentioned that I did not make New Year’s resolutions for 2014; instead, I’m doing monthly challenges. My challenge for January is to drink eight glasses of water a day. I’m doing reasonably well. I’m probably not getting to eight each day, but I’m definitely getting to 6, and that’s an improvement. It will at least prevent me from drying up like a dandelion and blowing away.

Though it’s not a resolution (I did not make resolutions this year!), I intend, starting now (or maybe a little bit later) to eat healthier. I will forgo the goal of losing X number of pounds because that doesn’t really work for me (or really, anybody). But I definitely fell into an unhealthy eating habit over the holidays that made me feel less, well, healthy. Remember those couple of weeks of making Christmas cookies. Well, when you make them, someone must eat them. I did my duty.

My determination to eat healthier is, of course, a 180 degree digression from yesterday’s blog post in which I yammered on and on about those tamales (which, considering their yumminess, were undoubtedly made using lard). I am simply taking advantage of a woman’s prerogative to change her mind. Also, I weighed myself. Those tamales will be safe and sound in my freezer for a few weeks. I can eat them one at a time instead of in batches of THREE! (Just kidding. No I’m not.)

Bill and I started back at the gym Monday (and don’t my sore muscles reinforce that fact), and I joined the legions of others back at a Weight Watchers meeting yesterday, my tail between my chubby legs. I simply need to have someone remind me that there are options to snacking on Cheetos and Oreos all day. Apples, oranges, and pretzels, for example.

I refuse to count calories. I won’t even count WW Points Plus. It’s not rocket science after all. You simply need to burn more calories than you ingest. Smaller portions, more movement. Simple as that.

I made a really tasty vegetable soup that I ate for lunch, along with some turkey lunch meat. Mylee would be happy. Nothing that 3-year-old likes more than a turkey sandwich. And the soup was really good.

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients
1 T. olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 red pepper, chopped
1 fennel bulb, sliced thin
2 c. baby spinach
1 zucchini or summer squash, chopped
1 can fire-roasted diced tomatoes
4 c. chicken, beef, or vegetable broth
2 c. tomato juice
½ t. red pepper flakes
1 t. fresh thyme, minced
1 T. fresh basil, chopped
Salt and pepper

Process
Brown onion in olive oil until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about a minute. Add the red pepper and zucchini and cook for a few minutes. Add remaining ingredients and cook for about 45 minutes, or until vegetables are soft and flavors mingle. Garnish with basil when you serve.

Nana’s Notes: You can use whatever vegetables you have in your fridge. I sort of make this recipe when I have vegetables that are needing to be used or tossed. Carrots, celery, etc. all would work. The fennel (which I happen to love either raw or cooked) gives it a bit of an Italian flavor; hence, the basil. You could make it a bit Mexican by using cilantro instead and throw in a bit of avocado. It makes me – a devoted lover of soup – happy because it is filling and healthy and delicious.

Chilly Today, Hot Tamale

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So, I’ve become obsessed with tamales.

There used to be a place near where I worked in lower downtown Denver that made delicious tamales. The old-fashioned kind that were wrapped in corn husks and sold for something like a buck-and-a-half each. I would occasionally walk over and get a dozen for my coworkers and me on a Friday morning. Sometimes I would buy a half dozen or so for a Sunday morning.

For the past few years that we have been coming here in the winter, I have looked for tamales such as these. Many of the Mexican restaurants offer tamales on their menu, but they weren’t quite what I was looking for. I wanted the tamales that were inexpensive, wrapped in those corn husks, smelling delightfully of masa, pork and chili. Restaurants offer tamales sitting on a plate covered in green chili. Probably good, but not what I wanted.

My sister-in-law made tamales for the Mexican feast she hosted on Sunday, and they were very good, filled with Monterey Jack cheese, spinach, and a green chili. I haven’t been able to get my mind off of them since that feast. So yesterday I went on a full-out internet search for someplace in the East Valley that sells tamales.

Eureka. I found Old El Paso Tamales, a little storefront shop near the heavily Hispanic occupied section of Mesa. The reviews were good, and I got my hopes up. I asked Bill if he was willing to take a field trip yesterday after we worked out (for the first time in a month – we deserved a reward). Not surprisingly, he was game.

About s 20-minute ride from our house, the shop was located in an area fairly unfamiliar to us. We found it easily enough, however. As we walked up to the door, I told Bill I probably would have been smart to call ahead and make sure they were open on Mondays. Sure enough, the sign said “Closed Mondays.” Still, it looked like there were customers inside, and indeed, the door was open. The nicest young man helped me as I ordered four tamales – two chicken and chili and two pork. We ate our chicken first, and they were delicious. Very spicy. When I bit into what I thought was the pork, I was surprised to bite into very sweet yumminess. “It tastes exactly like I’m eating an ear of really delicious sweet corn,” I told Bill. I figured out that while I asked for pork, what the proprietor heard was corn. I have never eaten a corn tamale, and it was surprisingly delicious. Sweet as candy.

Needless to say, we took some home to freeze.

Since we were in the neighborhood, we stopped at a large Mexican market called Pro’s Ranch Market. It seriously is like entering another country. The first sign that we weren’t in Kansas anymore was the chickens with intact heads in the meat case. That, and the cow hooves, tongue, and tripe. It was, however, a fun experience. I picked up some instant masa for a tamale-making experience I’m going to have with a friend in a couple of weeks.

Actually, the first sign that I was out of my neighborhood was when I got out of our car that was parked right next to a truck. Inside the truck, which had the windows rolled down, was a woman talking on a cell phone. As I walked by the truck, I heard her say, “Well, now that they have my fingerprints, they will find out about my drug charge.” There you have it. Why I never give my fingerprints…..

The Old El Paso Tamale shop proprietor gave Bill and me a sample of his green chili. I was surprised and happy to see that his green chili was made using ground beef. Ground beef is, of course, not typical in green chili, but it was typical of green chili in Leadville, where I first became familiar with Mexican food. My sister Jen makes excellent green chili with ground beef. Here is her recipe.

Jen’s Green Chili

Ingredients
1 lb. ground beef
1 onion, chopped
5-6 fresh, roasted green chilis
1-16 oz. can whole tomatoes
1 T. flour
1 clove garlic, minced
Salt and pepper

Process
Brown the ground beef with the chopped onion and salt and pepper. Drain grease. Place fresh chilis in the bottom of a blender. Add tomatoes to blender, along with a half a can of water. Blend for a few seconds. Add flour to ground beef and incorporate. Stir in tomato mixture, garlic, and pinch of salt and pepper. Simmer until flavors have blended, about an hour.

Nana’s Notes: I had never tasted green chili until moving to Leadville in 1973. Ground beef in the chili is the way my family learned to make it. It’s very unusual to run into it in a restaurant. The proprietor was very pleased that I commented on it favorably. The spiciness in the green chili is entirely dependent upon the chilis. Some are hotter than others. My family mostly likes it pretty darn hot. She always gets her chilis in the fall when they are roasting Hatch’s green chilis. Surprisingly, you can’t get New Mexico green chilis in Arizona. Or at least I haven’t found them.

Hey, Cuz!

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I have countless cousins. Well, that, of course, is not literally true. If I took the time, I could count them, thereby making them not countless. But my mother had 12 brothers and sisters that lived to adulthood, and she came from a good, Catholic family. So the 13 children resulted in many, many cousins for my siblings and me.

Most of my cousins lived in or around the area of Nebraska where we grew up. One of my mother’s brothers ended up in Minnesota, along with his large family, but the rest, as I recall, lived near us, at least as children. We rarely, however, gathered together as one group. We might gather one family at a time, but it was very uncommon for the entire family to gather, as it was quite formidable.

The one exception was our (almost) annual family picnic. We would get together, usually at a public park. Each aunt brought delicious picnic food; each uncle brought a more-than-sufficient amount of beer. Let the festivities commence! The adults would laugh and reminisce and gossip and drink and eat, getting livelier as the beer diminished. The kids would group together and run and play all sorts of games. The picnics were great fun. Even as adults, my sibs and I will occasionally talk about those picnics.

I thought about those picnics yesterday afternoon-into-evening as we were all together at yet-another celebration, this one a joint hullaballoo for my brother (with his year-end December birthday) and three of his children, with birthdays throughout January. My sister-in-law offered an amazing assortments of more unusual Mexican dishes – posole, menudo, and tamales made with Monterey Jack cheese, spinach, and green chili.

One thing about my Arizona family – if you give a party, they will come. And bring their kids. So much fun. So, the children – at least the ones joining us yesterday – ranged in ages from 8 to just over one month. Let’s see if I can get this right: one girl at 8, one girl at 7, two boys at 6, one girl at 4, two boys and one girl at 3, one girl at 1, and one baby girl just over a month. I think I’m close in those ages. You can sort of figure out how they paired up, though I did have occasion to see the 3-year-old boys playing with the 6-year-old boys. Or rather, the 6-year-olds were teasing the 3-year-olds mercilessly by keeping the ball away from them. Boys!

The weather was perfect – high 60s, so the kids played mostly outside, making up games as they went along. Later in the evening, one of my nephews lit up some logs in the firepit, and the inevitable cry, “Do you have any marshmallows”? rang out, to no avail, I’m afraid. Still, there was plenty of birthday cake to go around. For my part, I simply held my breath and prayed that none of the children would fall into the fire as they worked at finding a place to sit. Bill suggested he would dial 9-1 on his phone to be ready for the seemingly inevitable accident, which never transpired to my surprise. I missed my grandchildren immensely. They would have had fun with their cousins.

The whole scene made me think back on my days as a child with my cousins, as well as the days when all of my nieces and nephews gathered at my mom and dad’s house in Dillon, Colorado, every summer. The activities then were very similar. Cousins rock. They are like built-in best friends.

Until last night, I had never eaten posole. Posole is a soup made with pork and hominy (basically dried corn). The photo is stock, and is not of her soup. Most posole recipes use slowly-cooked pork shoulder as in the photo, but she used ground pork, which I thought was delicious.

New Mexican Style Posole from New Mexico Cookbook by Lynn Nusom

Ingredients
2 T. olive oil
1 medium-sized yellow onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, run through a garlic press
1 lb. lean, ground pork
1 t. salt
1 t. dried oregano
2 T ground cumin
1 c. chopped green chile
1 can (#10)white hominy, with the juice

Process
Heat oil in a frying pan, saute onion and garlic until soft. Stir in ground pork, add salt, oregano, cumin and green chile, and cook until pork is brown.Pour hominy (with liquid) into a large pot, stir in pork mixture and cook, covered, over low heat for at least one hour. Serve in soup bowls with Red Chile Sauce on the side.

Nana’s Notes: You may have noticed I said very little about the menudo. My sister-in-law didn’t make the menudo; she got it from a friend. I love all things Mexican, but I couldn’t make myself even try the menudo. The smell, donchaknow. Oh, and the pig’s hoof that was floating in it — a treat for my brother who enjoyed it with great relish. Well, it was his birthday celebration after all. As for the posole, Sami didn’t serve it with Red Chile Sauce on the side; instead, she used a seasoning mix she found in the Mexican section of the grocery store — a mixture of chili pepper and oregano and probably other spices. She thinks it was called menudo seasoning.

I Are They; They is Me

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The snowbirds have landed.

And I really hesitate to complain about it too much. After all, they are me; I am them. Snowbirds = Bill and Kris. Nana and Papa = Arizona Winter Visitors. There you have it.

Apparently, many of the winter visitors (that’s what they kindly and in a wholly Christian manner called snowbirds at All Saints Catholic Church on Sunday as they welcome us back) arrive on or immediately after Christmas, just as Bill and I. And, again, just as Bill and me, they wait until after New Year’s Day to make their way to Costco and Walmart to fill up their larders and pantries. (See, I’m displaying my “nana-ness” by using the word “larder.”)

While many of you haven’t visited the east Mesa Costco store, just imagine any Costco store in the United States. In particular, picture the enormous parking lots at every single store. Now imagine that you drive in and there is not a single, solitary place to park. Not even when you are willing to park at the very back of the parking lot. No room at the inn. Just like Mary and Joseph. We parked on the street where there were still a few spaces, somewhere around a mile-and-a-half from the front door! If we hadn’t had some Very Important Medication-Related Business, we would have left for another less-busy day.

While Bill took care of his Very Important Business, I attempted to peruse the books to no avail. Couldn’t even get close. So I put a couple of items in my basket – paper towels and Kleenex – and made my way to the check-out stands. Predictably, the lines ran clear back into the store, ending somewhere around the frozen foods. I have never seen the lines so long. Now, I never cease to be impressed with how quickly Costco checkers can get people through the lines. Nevertheless, I simply didn’t have it in me to stand in such a long line simply to be able to blow my nose and wipe off my counters. Both could wait. I abandoned my cart, and we left for Walmart, which we naively thought would be better.

Sigh.

And let me just tell you, the Walmart shoppers are just flat-out mean. Perhaps they were all just cranky because they had come from Costco. The problem was, just like the rest of the “winter visitors,” I really did need to fill up my larder and pantry, and by that time I had realized that there wasn’t going to be a store in the East Valley that was going to be any better. And my nose was running.

We laughed about it after we got home. As I said earlier, how can I complain? They are us. I just move a bit faster than many. And it is worth it because I spent much of yesterday reading outside and had all my doors and windows open to let in the warm 73 degree air. The forecast for the week ahead is much the same.

I will learn patience and will soon stop complaining. I hope.

Have a good weekend.

Friday Book Whimsy: Books I Want to Read in 2014

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I am a compulsive reader. In 2013, I read 94 books. Darn. I wanted to hit an even 100. I shouldn’t have taken that time off to go to my grandmother’s funeral. (Oh, don’t judge. I’m just kidding.) Continue reading →

New Year, New Challenges

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When we arrive in Arizona right after Christmas, we surely do hit the ground running. We generally have a bit of a second Christmas with nieces and sisters, my brother’s birthday is Dec. 28, one great-niece has a January 1 birthday, a niece has a January 2, and then, of course, one of us hosts the family for a New Year’s Day bash. All fun. All involve a plethora of delicious food. Time to hit the gym. Big time.

But, as I already know, when you own a house, you also own all of the problems that come with home ownership. Yesterday we discovered that we have termites. Apparently, with all structures in Arizona, it’s not a matter of if you get termites, but when. We will have someone come out and look today, but, in the meantime, euwwww. I am thoroughly convinced last night as I lay in bed that I could hear them crunching! At least I could picture them, and that’s even worse. Oh well. Before I know it the problem will be solved and we will be onto the next house problem. At least it isn’t scorpions. Yet.

I have given a lot of thought about 2014 resolutions. I have read that the key to actually keeping the resolution is to be very specific. In other words, don’t say I am going to save more money in 2014; say I will put $25 every week into my savings account. So my general “I will be more generous, I will cook and eat healthier, I will be more prayerful” just don’t cut it.

My niece Kate (who will kill me if I don’t point out that she actually goes by Jojo, but will always be Kate to me) does an interesting thing when it comes to resolutions. Instead of drawing up her list each January 1, she does what she calls monthly challenges, and she makes them pretty difficult. After all, it’s only for a month, right? Yesterday it occurred to me that monthly challenges make more sense than meaningless yearly goals. So I guess you could say my new year’s resolution is to have monthly resolutions. Hmmmm.

Anyway, she assured me no challenge is too silly, so my first challenge will be to drink eight glasses of water every day this month. I drink virtually no water, and very little of anything else. I have three or four cups of coffee every morning and my glass of wine in the evening, and perhaps a sip or two of a diet cola if we go out to lunch. That’s pretty much it Folks. My son has said to me, “Mom, I don’t know how you even continue to live drinking so little fluid in a day!” But I have. For 60 years.

So there you have it. I will fill up a 64-oz. jug with water every day and by evening it will be gone. At least for a month. Kate promises when you do something for a month, it becomes a habit.

Here are some pictures of our feast yesterday:

One of the standing rib roasts on the grill (the other was roasted in the oven)…

My niece Brooke (left), my niece Jessie (with her head cocked), and their respective friends Alex and Jennie….

Bill carves the roast beasts, and he is a master carver!….

My two nieces Maggie and Kate. Maggie’s baby is due any minute now….

Our buffet…..

I’m going to have a glass of water. Then go to the bathroom. See ya.

Herbed Rib Roast from Epicurious.com

Ingredients
1 7-8 lb. prime rib roast (3-4 ribs)
1 T. whole black peppercorns
2 bay leaves
1 T. kosher salt
3 garlic cloves
1 t. chopped fresh thyme
1 t. chopped fresh rosemary
1 T. olive oil

Process
Grind peppercorns and salt to a powder in an electric coffee/spice grinder, then transfer to a mortar. Add garlic, thyme, and rosemary, pound to a smooth paste with pestle. Stir in oil. Rub paste over roast. Transfer roast to a rack set in a small flameproof roasting pan. Marinate, covered and chilled, at least 8 hours.

To cook:
Let roast stand at room temperature 1 hour. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Roast beef in middle of oven 20 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350 degrees and roast beef until a thermometer inserted into center of meat registers 110, 1-1/2 hours to 1-3/4 hours more. Transfer beef to a large platter and let stand, uncovered, 25 minutes. Meat will continue to cook, reaching about 130 for medium rare.

Nana’s Notes: Because when we all get together, we are a huge group, my sister (who hosted) had an enormous roast that she cut in two (three bones each). She marinated each the same way, but prepared one as above in the oven, and one on the grill. To grill, prepare your grill for indirect heat. Place an aluminum pan in the unheated area, put your rack over the pan, and place your roast on that area of the rack. Bring your grill to 375 degrees, and cook for about the same length of time. Don’t open your grill! Both were delicious.

Auld Acquaintance

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Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my jo,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp!
And surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my jo,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

Happy New Year and a wonderful and prosperous 2014 from Nana’s Whimsies.

Nana’s Notes: And in honor of my husband’s Scottish ancestry, I used the traditional Scottish version. Thank you Robert Burns.