Happy New Years Everyone!

We welcomed in the New Year with a hodge podge of home maintenance. How does the hood over the stove get soo greasy anyway? The grill to the refrigerator, when is the last time you took that off? Why did we do this on New Years Day? Who knows, we were home and had the energy.

After all the cleaning we made a batch of hot coco mix. I will share the recipe with you, but beware it makes a ton! Great to share with neighbors, friends, and teachers.

1 21oz nestle quick drink mix
4 packets Dream dry whip cream
2 cups powdered sugar
16 cups powdered milk

We also like to add instant coffee, but are still working on the ratio so I’ll have to get back to you on that. Mix 1/3 cup of mix with some steaming hot water and enjoy.

In the afternoon, we sedated Sienna (Macklee’s new horse) to examine her teeth, she has been loosing weight through the winter. What I found turned into a project. The triticale hay that we have been feeding was causing sores in her mouth. There were triticale seeds embedded everywhere. It was like removing cactus from the sides of a wet, slimy, dark rabbit hole. The only sounds that could be heard was David gripping about how heavy her head was to hold up! When I finally finished, we decided to float her teeth and deworm all the horses. It is not unusual for us to do horse maintenance on major holidays, this helps us remember when we did it! Bottom line, I don’t think feeding triticale hay to horses is a good idea. My professional opinion of course. I hope, that I don’t receive hate mail from all the triticale farmers!

Then, it was off to pick up dog and cat poop from the yard. Really? All this land and they have to defecate in our little yard. Aargh!

Next, some advice to all women dating ranchers. When your cowboy invites you to go with them, they really only want a gate opener. I have figured this out after 13 years of marriage. I am sure most ranch wives figure this out sooner, but what can I say. My husband is sneaky, he says things like do you want to go on a safari? This sounds great, like we are going to drive around the ranch and see wild animals (because looking at my two banshee children all day isn’t wild enough)! “Safari” is David’s code for can you come and open gates for me while I check waters?! Can you see why it took me so long to catch on? This time, it worked out, we saw a beautiful buck.

Chili rellenos for dinner. Yummy for the tummy. We use egg roll wrappers a trick I learned from my sister in law.

Use one freshly roasted and peeled hatch chili. Set it in the egg roll wrapper, insert medium cheddar cheese and roll up. Use water to seal edges. Sprinkle stuffed wrapper with water and then roll in corn meal. Fry them up! Serve with homemade pinto beans. They are even good to snack on the next day.

Made menu plans for the next week and went to bed.

Did I mention that I have wild children?  Doesn’t she look wild?