Navajo Tacos (with easy chili)

It is Autumn! Anne of Green Gables said "I am glad that I live in world that has Octobers." I'm sure that she loved the crisp feel of the air, the warmness of the candle lit homes, and especially the smells of cinnamon and pumpkin and of course chili! So here is my suuuuuuuper easy Navajo Taco (with chili recipe)

Simple Chili:

1 lb. ground beef

1/2 c. chopped onion

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

1(14 1/2 oz) can diced tomatoes, undrained

1 (8 oz) can tomato sauce

1Tbs. chili powder

3/4 tsp. ground cumin

1/4 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. pepper

1 (15-16 oz) can kidney or pinto beans

 Instructions:

Cook beef, onion, and garlic in 3 qt. saucepan until beef is brown. Stir in remaining ingredients except beans. Cover and Simmer 1 hr, stirring  occasionally. Stir in beans. Heat to boiling, reduce heat to low., Stirring occasionally, until desired thickness.

Bread:

Rhodes Rolls (2 rolls for 1 taco)

Canola Oil

Instructions:

Let rolls rise according to bags instructions. When the rolls are risen, heat oil in a pan. When oil is heated, combine two rolls together, stretch them out and drop them in the oil. Brown each side!

FINALLY!!! Put chili and whatever toppings such as cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, salsa, or ANYTHING on your taco! 

DONE!

Mom (and Dad) fixed the chair and she ate her vegetables!

This post is coming about 12 hours past the due time because I didn't do my main goal until this morning. But now, thanks to a lot of help from Dad, it's done. The chair is finally repaired!



In its useless shape.

A snippet of cheese cloth on the peg ends, some Elmer's wood glue, and a nice pipe clamp.
Now it just needs some time to set.

Ta-da! Fully functioning....almost.
(The glue needs 24 hours to cure before it can be sat on.)

 

Now, I set an ongoing goal--maybe for two more blog cycles--to eat eight different vegetables in the week. That may not seem like a lot to you, but it's better than I've been doing. I must now improve on spreading the vegetables around the week. Here's what our table looked like last night as I sought to make my goal.

From the top: glazed carrots (left over from Sunday), broccoli salad (left over from Sunday), corn cut from the cob (left over from Sunday), tomatoes, fresh carrots (since the other carrot dish was cooked and these are raw, I counted both), tomatoes, and celery. I didn't count the broccoli again as they were both raw. It's a picture of procrastination.

Now for this coming week....hmmm. I can't get carried away because we're leaving town on Saturday for our family camp. Okay, here we go....

 

The new goal is:

Clean our bedroom

 

And the ongoing goal, slightly modified, is: 

Eat 8 full servings of vegetables over at least 4 days. 

Goal Complete

I planted my flower pot!!!  I'll try and come up with a good goal to post on sunday, but for now the goal is to live through this week.

So, I didn't finish my scarf, but that is alright since I won't be wearing it for several months anyway. I don't have much down time, so there is probably better use of the little free time I do have. It will mainly be something I can do when I am wanting to relax in front of the TV.

Mom wanted me to tell the story of how I got the yarn:
Over Memorial Day Weekend we went up to Montana for Craig to go fishing with his Grandpa. They went out on Saturday and Kara (my mother-in-law) and I went on a "honey run." There is this wildflower honey she bought last year from a tiny shop in a tiny town that isn't crystallized even a year later. She wanted to get some for her mother's birthday, so we went to Beaverslide Dry Goods in Dupuyer, MT. It's so small that there isn't even a Wikipedia page I can link to. This store is pretty small and it serves as a consignment shop, convenience store, and yarn shop. I believe the owners of the store are the ones who supply the wool for the yarn. Someone else in town makes the honey. Anyways, the yarn looked so beautiful and I loved the colors, so I bought a spool and some knitting needles and for several hours over the trip.

My New Goal: Cook two meals this week that don't involve pasta. I bought ingredients for hamburgers last night and we are thawing out the trout Craig and I caught in MT to cook tonight on the grill with corn.

Fixing the old wooden chair. And still eating my vegetables.

I set a goal to eat 8 vegetables this week.

On Tuesday I made fresh tomato soup using a recipe highly recommended by my mom and sister, Kathy. Two pounds plum tomatoes, golden bell pepper, summer squash, lots of onion. I ate a big bowlful. Jim wasn't interested, nor was Caitlin when she dropped by. With good reason--I didn't like it at all.

I had some tomatoes Thursday and Friday. My memory fogs for Saturday.

On Sunday I made a delicious recipe with sautéed vegetables (zucchini, leek, onion, fire-roasted tomatoes, olive oil, and basil), served with grilled chicken and whole wheat thin spaghetti. Delicious!

I ate some more today. In addition, today I made a broccoli salad for our Empty Nesters dinner party. Love that stuff, but seldom make it. So that has broccoli and red onion. At the party I also had a big bunch of Caesar Salad, so a serving of lettuce.

So, what's the count? It looks like 10 or so different veggies. Good for me!
plum tomatoes
golden bell pepper
summer squash
onion
tomatoes again
zucchini
leek
onion again
fire-roasted tomato
basil
broccoli
red onion
lettuce

Serendipitous benefits:
Cleaned fridge thoroughly
Did an hour of pool walking this morning with a friend
Admired my drapes.

My new goal:
Repair disconnected joints on old brown Windsor chair.

Now, I'm going to keep a longer term goal that I hope will become a habit:
Eat 8 different veggies this week.

Update: We read all but one day last week! This was tricky because this goal landed on a week where Cameron was home late most nights. The biggest difference between the start of the week and now is that Maddie isn't dragging her feet when it's time to read. We'll keep going with this, and I'll report on her progress periodically.

New Goal: To style my hair 3 times this week - no pony-tails :)

Mom's new goal

I've delayed posting as long as I can, I guess. I sent you all two other emails to prolong my reporting time.

You might have guessed the haltingness: I didn't exercise 6 times. But I did exercise 2 times! Who wouldn't have guessed that this would be a tough goal for me.

For this coming week, I will lay down only one very cool goal. (Maybe the energy from that will spring me into some exercise action.)

MY GOAL: I will use 8 different kinds of vegetables in my meal preparations this week. My first spots to acquire the veggies will be from my produce drawers in my fridge.

I'm anxious to hear how the rest of you have fared and what your new goals are.

Flowers

My initial reaction to this blog was much like Janet's.  To make a goal that doesn't involve keeping a straight house, taking care of the little ones or getting dinner on the table is laughable.  I feel nauseated (and no I'm not pregnant) just thinking about making ANOTHER goal that involves one of those three things.  So, I will do my best to contribute and hopefully I can make some fun goals that don't involve those three.  My goal this week is to plant some flowers in a flower pot.  I have a pot.  I have soil.  I have flowers.  All I have to do is plant.  Super hard!! : )  

Reading Time

When I first saw the idea for this post, I scoffed at the idea that I would be able to contribute much. I'm very much in the phase of life where I feel like pretty Hot Stuff if I end the day with a clean kitchen. But there are a few little projects and good habits that I'd like to work on and this is a nice way to keep me accountable.

Recently, I've been trying to come up with a better way to help Maddie practice her reading. She knows all her sounds but is still very slow and frustrates easily. Trying to practice when there's a question-asking brother or book-grabbing sister to break her concentration is especially aggravating for her. Last week, she went to school in tears because her little carpool friend spent the ride boasting about her advanced reading level. Maddie draws better than any 6(or 7) year old that I know and learned to tie her shoes and ride a two-wheeler long before her peers. But reading is the academic equivalent of the Golden Child and I want her to FEEL as smart as she is.

So...the plan is that every night after Lucy is in bed, Cameron takes James off to some other area of the house and Maddie and I meet up in the kitchen. She reads to me while I clean-up the kitchen for the night. It keeps my hands busy so I'm not looking over her shoulder and helping her too much. Tonight she read about a newborn litter of puppies. My goal is to make this a nightly ritual and keep it as fun and positive as possible. I will report back!

Drapery weights in, and then some....

 

I did it! I hand-sewed in all the drapery weights, all 32. It took me a lot longer than I thought it would. The process seemed simple enough, but each stitch was very slow because I had to make sure none of the stitching came through the outer layer. If I had not had this goal made public by this blog, I most definitely WOULD NOT have completed the job. I figure it took more than 3 hours on Saturday, then at least 3 today--way too much for me under my own puny motivation. 

 

I love the drapes even more now.

 

Closeup of a weight, handstitched to a drape corner.





Weight on the lining corner.
 

Hanging straighter on the side and bottom hems.



Pretty drapes.

As I was hoping would happen, my setting a goal in one area kick-started me in a few other areas:

• I started reading the Doctrine and Covenants. In fact, I made an important-to-me spiritual discovery in Section 6.
• I washed the front porch and porch furniture, cleaned out a dead asparagus fern, and trimmed a number of dead fronds from two small queen palms in front of the porch. I've procrastinated this project for a couple of months.
• And last, but not least, I'm back to writing my book, after probably two years of doing nothing with it. I'm still doing the same basic book, mainly because another plot is not coming to me. But I'm trimming it down by about a third, and am restructuring it. This week I made some pretty good outlining progress. It's a fun process for me now that I'm at it again.

Go ahead, now, praise me.

Now, for the new goal: I will exercise 15 minutes a day every day but Sunday.

Frames

Dad and I built three frames for cross stitches a few weeks ago. I don't need to finish them now, but I do need to get them sanded since Adrian doesn't have a sander.

As a possible bonus, and if Dad is up to it, I'd like to build three more frames for Adrian's karate black belt certificates. They're really pretty so they'd be a nice decor piece, plus they're a record of big achievements by Adrian.

So by the end of next weekend, I'll accomplish at least the first part of the goal.

Knitting

So I bought some good yarn yesterday that I found at a cute shop and I decided to start a scarf since that is the only thing I know how to knit. It wasn't going great so I undid it and started to knit a tiny scarf for Annie. About 30 minutes later I was finished. She has been wearing it since,  which is a miracle since she would normally yank something like that off.

After I finished her "neck warmer" I started knitting my own scarf. I've got about a foot in length which would normally take me months. My goal this week is to finish my scarf, working on it at times when I am watching tv or just relaxing.

Linda's Project week of 5/20/2013

This week I plan to sew drapery weights in the bottom corners of the drapes in my living room. That's 16 weights (8 panels, 2 bottom corners each). The drapes are beautiful, but the will hang somewhat better with these weights. I'll report next Monday.

Let's Get Going!

To My Five Dear Daughters:

 

As you know, Dad and I are at a crossroads:

the empty nest

after nearly 35 years.

 

There are so many things I want to do in my new life,

things I really like to do.

I have the time

and enough resources.

I even have the energy (I think).

 

But I'm afraid one day will pass, then another,

then a week, and a month, and a year,

and I will have wasted a lot of my precious time.

 

Sure, I may have straightened the kitchen daily,

made my bed (usually),

kept up the laundry,

taught piano lessons,

tidied here and there,

made a little food,

prepared a Sunday School lesson (some weeks better than others),

talked to my kids and mom some.

 

But I want so much more from life.

 

I want to learn to fiddle.

I want to read the whole conference Ensign.

I want to learn to play Chopin's Fantasie-Impromptu.

I want to finish Lucy's and Josh's baby quilts.

I want to be a more involved grandma.

I want to be a visiting teacher who makes a difference.

I want to have people over for dinner more often.

I want to make neighbor Christmas gifts early this year so they actually get out.

I want to do family history.

I want to make something pretty to hang on the stairwell wall.

I want to write another novel--one that works better than the other one.

I want to organize some cupboards.

I want to become an excellent cook of healthy foods.

I want to sew the weights in the bottoms of my beautiful new drapes.

I want to get serious about stretching and walking and stretching.

 

That's just the tip of my list.

 

Do you struggle to find the gumption to just do what you really want to do?

 

I know you're all much busier than I am,

but I'll bet all of you experience some frustration of not getting at

some of the neat things you want to do.

 

I invite you to team up with me.

To get going together.

 

Here's what I'm thinking:

At the first of each week, each of us posts on the blog ONE (only one) project

we want to do that week.

Some projects can easily be started and finished

within a short period of time

(sometimes just minutes), 

while others need to be broken up into one-week-sized pieces.

 

At the first of the next week,

each of us reports on how we did on that one goal.

Photos will be a nice touch, especially before and afters.

And if we end up doing more, let's report on that, too.

 

After the old goal is reported on,

then we set a new goal for the coming week.

 

Let's be generous in our praise and encouragement with one another.

That will be a great source of our strength. 

And let's pray for inspiration and motivation. The Lord will help us.

 

Please comment soon on what you think of this plan.

 

I want to make this so that all of us can post.

Not sure how to do that, but I'll get back with you as soon as I know. (Cameron......)

Meanwhile, just use the comments option.

 

Tell me if you want to participate, or tell me if you don't.

 

Love, Mom