Well I tell you we are so disappointed! We thought we would give ourselves a treat at home with some ice cream and orange juice.
We bought the big bucket of bunny ice cream and some Simply Orange Juice.
Brought it home stuck in freezer to get good and cold and orange juice in fridge. A good 4 hours later we thought that just sounded pretty good. The problem is the ice cream was'nt anywhere near as good as it used to be! I mean it was barely hard enough to call it ice cream. I went out to the freezer to see if it was working right and the meat was all hard as a rock so that was ok. Man we poured the juice over the ice cream expecting it to get all nice and hard and icy with some really great flavor. All we wound up with is some kind of squishy mush. Totally ruined our treat.
A few days later hubby went to town and picked up some Hershey's Chocolate Syrup and we got it out after supper and thought we could surely enjoy this! Nope, didn't improve it at all. Not even a smidgen. Hubby said he has no clue what in the world to do with that lousy ice cream. I told him I will salvage it with turning into a chocolate frosty like Wendy's and see how that goes.
Won't be using that one again.
I guess it is a sign of the economy with cheapening the ingredients to keep it at a price people will still buy the product. It's that or maybe the company thinks their target market is aging and they can't dip out the really nice hard ice cream
I got news I AIN'T THAT OLD FOLKS!!! I CAN STILL HANDLE SOME REALLY GOOD ICE CREAM THE WAY IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE!
Oh yes, I read the ingredients on the high price Hershey's syrup and all I saw was a bunch of stuff I can really do without! I can do better than this I know if I make my own.
http://www.thehersheycompany.com/brands/syrup/hersheys-chocolate.aspx?cat=icon#/1926
HERSHEY'S Chocolate Syrup
Ingredients
HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP; CORN SYRUP; WATER; COCOA; SUGAR; CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF: POTASSIUM SORBATE (PRESERVATIVE); SALT; MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES; XANTHAN GUM; POLYSORBATE 60; VANILLIN, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR
It is getting hard to find a quality product out in the stores any more. I can make a REAL chocolate syrup and I guess I am going to have to do just that if I want something that I like.
I know someone may be saying what is the big deal about all this ice cream? The big deal is that we haven't been spending money on some things like this and he probably spent $15 or more on these items. If I am going to spend some money on something I want it the way it used to be just in the last year or so. Don't sell me a inferiour product that I KNOW used to taste really good. I expect to have the same quality that it did only within the last season or so.
What a shame the quality isn't as available as it used to be. That's ok, I guess if I can make it at home I can at least have good stuff without all the additives and high fructose corn syrup !
Ranchmama
(Grumbling about poor quality and now having to add something else to the to do list.)
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Genetics and Stealth Mode
Thursday my daughter sent me a pic of my youngest of 3 grandsons graduating kindergarten. That is the cool thing about cell phones. I might not be able to be almost 300 miles away but she can send me a pic and I can get it anywhere my cell phone is.
We were driving to town and decided to pick up some salt blocks we had forgoten and left in a pasture that we had recently moved a bunch of young heifers out of. It is little over 4 miles away. It is just a little 10 acre pasture behind Nikki's house that is just the right size to put really young heifers that we think we want to keep for breeders. We can feed them seperately the way they need to be fed without a bunch of pigs hogging all the feed from them. As they grow and develop we can watch and see if we still like them to keep for mama cows.
I got the cute pics and leaned over to show hubby on the IPhone. I said, see this is you grandson graduating kindergarten!
"My Grandson?"
"That's not my Grandson!"
"He's YOUR grandson!"
Yes he is he has your genetics in there to.
"Well if there in there they must be in stealth mode!"
I have so much fun with his off the wall comments sometimes. He is such a serious, class A type workaholic personality. Always thinking and planning and figuring on how to keep things going and working properly on the ranch. I tell him a joke that everyone else gets and it just seems to fly right over his head and he hasn't a clue even when I explain it to him. So you can see how when something like this comes spilling out I get a really good chuckle.
Today was a busy day for him. During all the other things going on one of Allexcia's heifers we have in the West pasture behind the house we use for a nursery / sell lot decided she was going to have her calf today. He put her in the corral and watched her for about 30 minutes. She only had 2 front feet out. He fed her and left her alone waiting to see how she would do. After about 45 minutes she had only laid down once and he decided not to take a chance and just put her in the head catcher and give her some help. He called me down from the house and I helped him hold the strap to the butt jack on her back and held the tail out of the way while he attached the chains to the feet to get ready to pull. She was having contractions but nothing was really happening and everything was lined up right but that was about it. After he started putting some pressure on with the jack the calf started to come out more. The little black nose was out and boy was she doing some major pushing! I don't think I have ever seen one of the cows hunker down an push that hard and I have seen a few. It wasn't a overly large calf or anything, pretty average for limousine cattle anyway. Got the baby out and he pulled it around to the front of the cow for her to smell and all. I got the heck out because I didn't want to be anywhere near when she come out of that headcatcher! He put stuff up then carefully let her out so she wouldn't get him. After he got all the stuff cleaned up he opened the gate so she and the other calves from that pasture could go out. While she wasn't looking he snuck over and tagged the baby before he even got off the ground. We had to really watch her or she would for sure get him! It was fun watching this brand new baby calf. He was just all wobbly sitting up looking around and all. I never noticed it before but he was trying to do a baby calf moo. Looked like he needed to clear his throat because it barely came out sounding like a sheep with a tiny little baaaa... he tried 3 or 4 times to sound like a real cow. LOL A few hours later she had that baby all cleaned up sporting it around the pasture and he was sucking really good. She is going to be a good mama.
So now Allexica has 2 official baby calves on the ground from the heifers we had set back for her. Allexcia (blue tags) and Nikki (pink tags) both have heifers that have either been set back or they have grown for them to have some extra money some time during the year. Maybe someday they will each have a small herd to bring extra income in.
Well it is late, about midnight and there is no telling what tomarrow brings so I better get some sleep.
Ranchmama
We were driving to town and decided to pick up some salt blocks we had forgoten and left in a pasture that we had recently moved a bunch of young heifers out of. It is little over 4 miles away. It is just a little 10 acre pasture behind Nikki's house that is just the right size to put really young heifers that we think we want to keep for breeders. We can feed them seperately the way they need to be fed without a bunch of pigs hogging all the feed from them. As they grow and develop we can watch and see if we still like them to keep for mama cows.
I got the cute pics and leaned over to show hubby on the IPhone. I said, see this is you grandson graduating kindergarten!
"My Grandson?"
"That's not my Grandson!"
"He's YOUR grandson!"
Yes he is he has your genetics in there to.
"Well if there in there they must be in stealth mode!"
I have so much fun with his off the wall comments sometimes. He is such a serious, class A type workaholic personality. Always thinking and planning and figuring on how to keep things going and working properly on the ranch. I tell him a joke that everyone else gets and it just seems to fly right over his head and he hasn't a clue even when I explain it to him. So you can see how when something like this comes spilling out I get a really good chuckle.
Today was a busy day for him. During all the other things going on one of Allexcia's heifers we have in the West pasture behind the house we use for a nursery / sell lot decided she was going to have her calf today. He put her in the corral and watched her for about 30 minutes. She only had 2 front feet out. He fed her and left her alone waiting to see how she would do. After about 45 minutes she had only laid down once and he decided not to take a chance and just put her in the head catcher and give her some help. He called me down from the house and I helped him hold the strap to the butt jack on her back and held the tail out of the way while he attached the chains to the feet to get ready to pull. She was having contractions but nothing was really happening and everything was lined up right but that was about it. After he started putting some pressure on with the jack the calf started to come out more. The little black nose was out and boy was she doing some major pushing! I don't think I have ever seen one of the cows hunker down an push that hard and I have seen a few. It wasn't a overly large calf or anything, pretty average for limousine cattle anyway. Got the baby out and he pulled it around to the front of the cow for her to smell and all. I got the heck out because I didn't want to be anywhere near when she come out of that headcatcher! He put stuff up then carefully let her out so she wouldn't get him. After he got all the stuff cleaned up he opened the gate so she and the other calves from that pasture could go out. While she wasn't looking he snuck over and tagged the baby before he even got off the ground. We had to really watch her or she would for sure get him! It was fun watching this brand new baby calf. He was just all wobbly sitting up looking around and all. I never noticed it before but he was trying to do a baby calf moo. Looked like he needed to clear his throat because it barely came out sounding like a sheep with a tiny little baaaa... he tried 3 or 4 times to sound like a real cow. LOL A few hours later she had that baby all cleaned up sporting it around the pasture and he was sucking really good. She is going to be a good mama.
So now Allexica has 2 official baby calves on the ground from the heifers we had set back for her. Allexcia (blue tags) and Nikki (pink tags) both have heifers that have either been set back or they have grown for them to have some extra money some time during the year. Maybe someday they will each have a small herd to bring extra income in.
Well it is late, about midnight and there is no telling what tomarrow brings so I better get some sleep.
Ranchmama
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Mother in Laws and Coleslaw
This is my Mother in Laws recipe she would fix all the time. I learned a long time ago some of the best recipes are from old style cooks. She was the oldest of 8 kids and helped raise them all including feeding, cooking meals,changing the diapers and teaching them in class when she became a school teacher in a 1 room school house. I am not educated well in the world of slaw and thought ok so it is coleslaw. Well since that time I have made this recipe for someone around here at a function and they just raved about it and called it the Czech Coleslaw recipe. My mother in law Beulah never called it anything like that. From what I can tell what is supposed to be special about it is that it is kind of pickled and will store in the frig. for a week or more.
Daughter just requested the recipe since she has cabbage in her garden the size of basketballs.
So here it is...........
Put in a bowl.... chopped to the texture you like (she used a blender)
1 head cabbage
1 onion
1 bell pepper
============
Sprinkle on top of ingredients in bowl
1 cup sugar
============
Boil these items and stir into the cabbage mixture. Place in fridge overnight for best flavor.
1 T. mustard seed
1 T. celery
1 T. salt
1 c vinegar
3/4 c. oil
Ranchmama
(who had the best mother in law in the world)
Daughter just requested the recipe since she has cabbage in her garden the size of basketballs.
So here it is...........
Put in a bowl.... chopped to the texture you like (she used a blender)
1 head cabbage
1 onion
1 bell pepper
============
Sprinkle on top of ingredients in bowl
1 cup sugar
============
Boil these items and stir into the cabbage mixture. Place in fridge overnight for best flavor.
1 T. mustard seed
1 T. celery
1 T. salt
1 c vinegar
3/4 c. oil
Ranchmama
(who had the best mother in law in the world)
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
First Post *** Storms***
Been trying to figure out what in the world to post the first go around. I am so behind on my Ranchmama letters it just ain't funny!
Today Tuesday, May 24th has been a humdinger of a adventure in a worrisome kind of way. All the day before they had been talking about super bad weather. Well here in central Oklahoma we can sure get that and sometimes you just think the weather people want to scare you to death! I mean you would think we didn't have brains enough to go jump in a hole somewhere like a scared rabbit when your supposed to! Speaking of scared rabbits. Have you ever had a really wild bunny you tried to make a pet out of? We did when we lived in Arkansas a whole lifetime ago. Hubby brought it in from a nest or something one time when he was out on a tractor. We learned you just can't take the wild out of a bunny. A wild bunny is a wild bunny forever. Poor thing even with food and water in a nice safe cage he was not happy at all. He tried to hide everywhere! We brought it into the house and at the least little bit of freight he would go jump behind something and hide. We finally let the bunny go when we realized he just wasn't going to ever be happy. I got to watching bunnies on the road and from my deck out in the pasture and I noticed wild animal always know where the nearest hidy hole is. No kidding it is like radar or like when they venture out into the open they look around and say...." Hmmm.... ok there is a hole right over there and just 20 feet further is another hole if I can't get to that one." They have holes imprinted with a map to each one in there head. Ok well anyway.... we just went about our business of feeding cows this morning, him doing bird house work and me hunting for some replacement tires on old blue for the front. Seems like last week we just put them through more than they could handle checking fence lines and cutting down cedar trees with the limb loppers. Little bit after noon and a little lunch we start hearing about the tornadoes forming west of the city and probably heading this direction. Hubby is trying to ignore it and make believe those people on TV are just flapping their jaws to try and equal the amount of wind the storms are producing. I ignored him and he ignored me while I checked and packed up the medical, some clothes, food and other BOB goodies. With the clouds getting darker and the wind getting quiet I tell him we need to get one of the trucks in the barn away from hail damage. Usually we wait and take things to the cellar when we have to go but this time I have it all ready and tell him lets do it BEFORE it starts raining. You should have heard him .... " WHAT!!! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOUR TALKING ABOUT!!! YOU DON'T WANT TO GO DOWN IN THAT CELLAR!!!" Ok , why not ? Is there water in the bottom of it? Is it nastier than usual? " YOU JUST DON'T WANT TO AND I CAN SEE YOU HAVEN'T BEEN DOWN THERE IN A LONG TIME~!! All tense and nervous doesn't even touch him right now.LOL "I'M NOT GOING DOWN THERE!!! I THINK WE WOULD BE BETTER OFF JUST TO PUT THE STUFF IN THE CAR AND OUT RUN IT!!! I don't think that will work this time considering how big and long this line of storms are. Let's just put the stuff in the cellar so it will be done we can take it out later. In the mean time I have phone calls and text messages and facebook messages of people telling me to duck and run. (If they only knew how much fun hubby was being ...LOL) Got eveything down in front of the cellar sitting in the car. I tell him lets just get it in there. He opens the door and shines the light in to check it out. Yup, there is a almost 2 foot long snake skin on the wall by the steps going down. I tell him just put it on the south wall on the shelf. "I'M NOT GOING IN THAT FAR!!! NO WAY! I'M JUST GOING TO PUT IT AT THE END OF THE STEPS!!" No, the wind will suck it out and it is muddy there. He finally said he has a blue plastic barrel we can put stuff in and put it down there. I told him ok that will work.
With all that done we sat in front of the cellar in the Yukon watching the weather around us and listening to the radio and tracking it on Kfor.com to see what direction everything was going. They told everyone in Lincoln county to hit the hole it is coming your way!!! We looked at the map on the IPhone and decided that it looked like it was going to miss us. I guess this was about 6pm or so. We were so hungry and supper was just a total mess with this kind of thing going on. He said with a big grin on his face..... You want to make a trip to town and eat at Sonic? We had Heidi Ho in the car with us and I just said I am starved why not! LOL I told hubby I am not to sure this is a good idea even when I can see the radar because we could be going right into something worse considering Prague,OK has actually had 2 tornadoes in one day. One in the morning and again one in the afternoon. We did it anyway. I called the neighbors next door and told them the cellar isn't all that great and has mud and maybe water in the bottom but if they got scared we would leave the gate open so they could go to the cellar. I told them we were going to Sonic! Should have seen us. He said are you happy now? Is this doing something D-I-F-F-E-R-E-N-T enough for you? I told him I LOVE it! I figure if storm chasers could do it we could to. We did great until we pulled into Sonic. He didn't want to sit where he could see the weather. When we were ordering it started getting really dark windy and nasty with some wind gusts and boy did he have that wild rabbit look on him! LOLOLOLOLOLOL We ordered and he decided that he didn't want to sit there and eat. I told him fine but I was going to chow down on the way back home. I was really hoping we would get back in time to see American Idol. It cleared up nicely on the way back and I told hubby to be sure and look behind us to make sure a tornado wasn't giving us a boost.
When we got back to the gate I called the neighbors and asked if it was safe to lock the gate yet. They said it was and thank you. For what? They said they went to the cellar! She said she had a green colored flashlight and it made it really spooky. I laughed really hard. She said it was a really nice one specially since they don't have one. Sure enough when hubby goes down later after American Idol to get our stuff out of the barrel he said there were 3 chairs down there. Did they dust the chairs off for us? Yup, they sure did! Now what gets me is he is beaming ear to ear like he is proud of that cellar and how good it is when not just a hour before he was almost refusing to go down in it!! (I think he went to sonic to get out of going down in the cellar where it is dark and nasty.) My hubby is 6'3" and weighs 190 pounds and packs a 9mm glock on his hip almost 24/7 so you tell me what is so bad about that hidy hole that he doesn't want to go down in it? LOL
There are some things I realized today. We are taking care of his 91 yo father by taking a evening meal and checking on him a couple of times a day. Here we have all this bad weather and there isn't a lot you can do for him to protect him. He moves so slow and he is so frail it wouldn't take much for him to get badly hurt. If you pick him up and take him to our house that could also easily hurt him and then even once we got here we couldn't get him down into the cellar. He can't walk it and we couldn't carry him so he was better off staying at his house and going into the bathroom like he said he does. That is just a no win deal all the way around.
I also noticed that with all our healthy eating trying to stay away from high fructose corn syrup as much as possible and MSG we don't have any snacking type of foods to take to the cellar. So I just packed up some stuff you have to boil. So now I am going to improve on food things for the BOB. A good practice run is always a good thing to see where we are lacking and all so maybe next time will be better.
Got to go now. It has been a really long day and it is now 1:30 and I think I can finally sleep. Hope everyone made it through the storms in a good way.
Ranchmama
Today Tuesday, May 24th has been a humdinger of a adventure in a worrisome kind of way. All the day before they had been talking about super bad weather. Well here in central Oklahoma we can sure get that and sometimes you just think the weather people want to scare you to death! I mean you would think we didn't have brains enough to go jump in a hole somewhere like a scared rabbit when your supposed to! Speaking of scared rabbits. Have you ever had a really wild bunny you tried to make a pet out of? We did when we lived in Arkansas a whole lifetime ago. Hubby brought it in from a nest or something one time when he was out on a tractor. We learned you just can't take the wild out of a bunny. A wild bunny is a wild bunny forever. Poor thing even with food and water in a nice safe cage he was not happy at all. He tried to hide everywhere! We brought it into the house and at the least little bit of freight he would go jump behind something and hide. We finally let the bunny go when we realized he just wasn't going to ever be happy. I got to watching bunnies on the road and from my deck out in the pasture and I noticed wild animal always know where the nearest hidy hole is. No kidding it is like radar or like when they venture out into the open they look around and say...." Hmmm.... ok there is a hole right over there and just 20 feet further is another hole if I can't get to that one." They have holes imprinted with a map to each one in there head. Ok well anyway.... we just went about our business of feeding cows this morning, him doing bird house work and me hunting for some replacement tires on old blue for the front. Seems like last week we just put them through more than they could handle checking fence lines and cutting down cedar trees with the limb loppers. Little bit after noon and a little lunch we start hearing about the tornadoes forming west of the city and probably heading this direction. Hubby is trying to ignore it and make believe those people on TV are just flapping their jaws to try and equal the amount of wind the storms are producing. I ignored him and he ignored me while I checked and packed up the medical, some clothes, food and other BOB goodies. With the clouds getting darker and the wind getting quiet I tell him we need to get one of the trucks in the barn away from hail damage. Usually we wait and take things to the cellar when we have to go but this time I have it all ready and tell him lets do it BEFORE it starts raining. You should have heard him .... " WHAT!!! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOUR TALKING ABOUT!!! YOU DON'T WANT TO GO DOWN IN THAT CELLAR!!!" Ok , why not ? Is there water in the bottom of it? Is it nastier than usual? " YOU JUST DON'T WANT TO AND I CAN SEE YOU HAVEN'T BEEN DOWN THERE IN A LONG TIME~!! All tense and nervous doesn't even touch him right now.LOL "I'M NOT GOING DOWN THERE!!! I THINK WE WOULD BE BETTER OFF JUST TO PUT THE STUFF IN THE CAR AND OUT RUN IT!!! I don't think that will work this time considering how big and long this line of storms are. Let's just put the stuff in the cellar so it will be done we can take it out later. In the mean time I have phone calls and text messages and facebook messages of people telling me to duck and run. (If they only knew how much fun hubby was being ...LOL) Got eveything down in front of the cellar sitting in the car. I tell him lets just get it in there. He opens the door and shines the light in to check it out. Yup, there is a almost 2 foot long snake skin on the wall by the steps going down. I tell him just put it on the south wall on the shelf. "I'M NOT GOING IN THAT FAR!!! NO WAY! I'M JUST GOING TO PUT IT AT THE END OF THE STEPS!!" No, the wind will suck it out and it is muddy there. He finally said he has a blue plastic barrel we can put stuff in and put it down there. I told him ok that will work.
With all that done we sat in front of the cellar in the Yukon watching the weather around us and listening to the radio and tracking it on Kfor.com to see what direction everything was going. They told everyone in Lincoln county to hit the hole it is coming your way!!! We looked at the map on the IPhone and decided that it looked like it was going to miss us. I guess this was about 6pm or so. We were so hungry and supper was just a total mess with this kind of thing going on. He said with a big grin on his face..... You want to make a trip to town and eat at Sonic? We had Heidi Ho in the car with us and I just said I am starved why not! LOL I told hubby I am not to sure this is a good idea even when I can see the radar because we could be going right into something worse considering Prague,OK has actually had 2 tornadoes in one day. One in the morning and again one in the afternoon. We did it anyway. I called the neighbors next door and told them the cellar isn't all that great and has mud and maybe water in the bottom but if they got scared we would leave the gate open so they could go to the cellar. I told them we were going to Sonic! Should have seen us. He said are you happy now? Is this doing something D-I-F-F-E-R-E-N-T enough for you? I told him I LOVE it! I figure if storm chasers could do it we could to. We did great until we pulled into Sonic. He didn't want to sit where he could see the weather. When we were ordering it started getting really dark windy and nasty with some wind gusts and boy did he have that wild rabbit look on him! LOLOLOLOLOLOL We ordered and he decided that he didn't want to sit there and eat. I told him fine but I was going to chow down on the way back home. I was really hoping we would get back in time to see American Idol. It cleared up nicely on the way back and I told hubby to be sure and look behind us to make sure a tornado wasn't giving us a boost.
When we got back to the gate I called the neighbors and asked if it was safe to lock the gate yet. They said it was and thank you. For what? They said they went to the cellar! She said she had a green colored flashlight and it made it really spooky. I laughed really hard. She said it was a really nice one specially since they don't have one. Sure enough when hubby goes down later after American Idol to get our stuff out of the barrel he said there were 3 chairs down there. Did they dust the chairs off for us? Yup, they sure did! Now what gets me is he is beaming ear to ear like he is proud of that cellar and how good it is when not just a hour before he was almost refusing to go down in it!! (I think he went to sonic to get out of going down in the cellar where it is dark and nasty.) My hubby is 6'3" and weighs 190 pounds and packs a 9mm glock on his hip almost 24/7 so you tell me what is so bad about that hidy hole that he doesn't want to go down in it? LOL
There are some things I realized today. We are taking care of his 91 yo father by taking a evening meal and checking on him a couple of times a day. Here we have all this bad weather and there isn't a lot you can do for him to protect him. He moves so slow and he is so frail it wouldn't take much for him to get badly hurt. If you pick him up and take him to our house that could also easily hurt him and then even once we got here we couldn't get him down into the cellar. He can't walk it and we couldn't carry him so he was better off staying at his house and going into the bathroom like he said he does. That is just a no win deal all the way around.
I also noticed that with all our healthy eating trying to stay away from high fructose corn syrup as much as possible and MSG we don't have any snacking type of foods to take to the cellar. So I just packed up some stuff you have to boil. So now I am going to improve on food things for the BOB. A good practice run is always a good thing to see where we are lacking and all so maybe next time will be better.
Got to go now. It has been a really long day and it is now 1:30 and I think I can finally sleep. Hope everyone made it through the storms in a good way.
Ranchmama
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