Shovel, Swear and Hello Sandwich with Taco Chicken Leftovers

I knew that Taco Chicken would be great for leftovers in a Pita with Caesar Salad from the extra salad I made yesterday with a hot tea.

Enough with this bloody snow

My front entrance is usually protected from the north blow but this is what I have today and it is cold, cold, cold and heavy.

All I could do is the entrance for the mailman.....and I shovelled on Saturday to the cement.

Do I have to think about South Dakota to feel positive?

I guess this coulda been my entrance if I lived there. 

Yikes!!

Happy Birthday Curtis

Happy Birthday Curtis

Taco Chicken on Oscar Night and a Greek Salad

Well it's Oscar night and I want a ready made supper when I throw on my hot pink boa, $6 black leggings from Giant Tiger( this week) and my gold high heels,  to settle in for three hours of watching the Glamour night of the year. 

There is nothing easier than this.

Just the best!

Taco Chicken

3 -4 chicken breasts

1 can mushroom soup

1 cup medium salsa

1/2 package Taco seasoning

Crockpot

1/2 cup sour cream

Rinse out chicken breasts and cut in half and place in crockpot.  Sprinkle with taco seasoning.  Pour mushroom soup and salsa on top. Cover and cook on Low for 6 hours.  You can add 1/2 cup sour cream to mixture just before turning crockpot off, or add put a spoonful of sourcream on chicken when it's on your plate...if you're a visual person...and like a Chef's presentation. 

Being that I was home, I set the crockpot to High for 3 hours and noticed that the sauce was starting to burn along the top edges a bit, so reduced the heat to Low for 2 more hours.
Served with Greek Salad and short grain rice.

I'll never do this again without doubling the recipe because it is a great leftover food.
Sooo good.

Add a bottle of red Cabernet Sauvignon, Copper Moon, Kelowna, B.C. and the Oscars were bearly bearable. I was so bored I coulda vacuumed. 

When the Tabloid Queen has to get drunk to enjoy the Oscars...they are pretty bad.

                                    

Day 35

Mother nature just dusts my hill every week with a layer of snow because she knows the grader isn't coming.

Could Kick Myself

My shopping goal price for items is $24.99 and under. 
I was shopping a few months ago at Winners and found this hot pink sequined Betseyville bags for $24 .  Bought one and then went back and rethought about buying a few extra for gifts because I thought they were so cheap and fun and glittery and definitely a glamour bag everyone would want to have.  Thought about it, went and looked at the bag a couple of times and finally decided not to buy any that day.  I went this week and the bag caught my eye again and I went to see how much it was....

Regular $70....on sale for $40. 

Well I'm glad I bought mine anyhow.  If nothing else it's eye candy for my closet.

Glampingbaba's Bread Pudding

Soul satisfying dessert on a cold day from simple kitchen ingredients.

I take my ingredients out of my new fridge

Thanks to Rob and Brandy

Glampingbaba’s Bread Pudding

3 eggs

3 cups whole milk or half and half

¾ cup brown sugar

¼ cup butter

Dash of salt

4-5 cups old bread

1 tsp. Cinnamon

½ cup raisins(optional)

1 tsp. Vanilla

¼ tsp. Nutmeg.

Butter a casserole dish, size depending on how much bread you have.  In a medium saucepan over medium heat milk until hot but not boiling. Remove from heat and add butter, stir until melted and cool to lukewarm.  Beat eggs, salt, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla, and slowly add milk.  Place small pieces of  torn up bread and sprinkle raisins on top  into buttered 

 Calories all the way!

Babcia's Homemade Buns

I took this picture of one of Babcia's baking pans when she moved into her present senior's place.

 She won't be baking anymore.

 She used to take such pride in baking her buns.

If this pan could talk.

Yehzoos!

In this picture if you squint really hard, you can almost see dough that's buttered, rising in the pan and smell yeast.

See it was rising.



Babcia’s Buns

Old tarnished bake pans sit on the floor

Hot buns will come from these no more

Babcia’s homemade buns were her pride

Golden crusted, fluffy, with butter on the side

Robin Hood flour gently baked, lovingly with lard

Having  fresh buns on the table was hard

She fired up a wood stove in the early days

And blended into the dough her country ways

She kneaded and punched till we were fed

Those were the days when bread was bread.

Our satisfied stomachs did not give her joy

It was the “finished bun” that made her say “Yoy”

Aroma filled her tiny kitchen space as she baked

And the hard work she did never left a trace

When she brought us care packages to eat

Her homemade buns were always a treat

Garlic Sausage and dills and a couple of buns

Add a nice cold beer and we were done

Making  chleb out of her old tarnished pans

Were a gift we remember from Babcia’s hands

Grammas are supposed to bake cookies and cake

But it’s Babcia’s kids who will miss what she baked.

Day 28...still no grader

Graders are now phantoms in the city.....well actually they have always been dreamed of here so I guess they were always phantoms in our area but I remain optimistic. Not only do we still have no grader but a grader went down the main road and cleaned something... and then dropped his dump in our crescent on our snow pile on top of fresh snow so now it looks dirty. 

What the hell???

Am I driving backwords?

I'm in my car. This is in my driving lane on the way home from work.  I guess this guy wasn't listening when they were teaching the rules of parking.  Then I turn the corner and there's a car parked  in the middle of the road with the driver and passenger doors both open wide taking up the whole road so no one can pass on either side.  I understand road rage!

Glampingbaba's Lazy Sauerkraut Holopchi

Well it's Valentine's....so instead of just having a "big" glass of red wine and calling it a day after scrubbing, and vacuming.....I made one of my favorite dishes with  a little red in it.  I like cabbage rolls but I am not an authentic cabbage roller.  I prefer the lazy ones and sometimes when you crave some sauerkraut, these will taste much better.

Glampingbaba's Sauerkraut Holopchi

1 litre Bicks wine sauerkraut
14 oz, can original diced tomatoes
1 cup uncooked rice( cooked to directions)
1 package ground beef
1 onion
salt and pepper
garlic salt
dill weed

Cook rice. Put drained sauerkraut in 2 cups of water and simmer for about 10-15 minutes just to presoften it a bit. Not necessary but I prefer it this way. Brown ground beef until it almost changes colour and throw in 1 diced onion until almost translucent. Salt and pepper to preferred taste. Add hot sauerkraut, drained of water,  to beef mixture, stir and add cooked rice. Sprinkle garlic salt and dill as desired. Add 1 can diced tomatoes.  Simmer turning mixture over for about 15-20 minutes until all flavours blend into each other.  Better as the days go by for reheating.  This makes alot but one can use smaller sauerkraut jars and less hamburger and rice quantities....and for the Veggie nuts.....use your fake steak and mix with everything else in much the same way. (Saute your onion till golden and then add  veggie ground and sauerkraut, rice, tomatoes and season.  You'll get a similar taste just no meat flavour).

Day 21 Snow Pile

Day 14 Snowpile in crescent

Day 14...Still waiting for the grader...

Parking is hilarious

Glampingbaba's Easy Pulled Pork

Wow was this easy, fast and delicious on fresh baked bread with butter.  Threw this in a crockpot at noon and it was ready when I came home for supper.  Wish I had made coleslaw.

11/2 kg. pork shoulder blade roast
1 onion
1 botttle Kraft Chicken n' Rib Barbecue sauce.

Slice onion and put in bottom of crockpot, set roast on top, 1 bottle barbecue sauce mixed with 1 cup water poured over roast. cover and set on High for 5 hours.  No fuss....my kinda cookin'.
  

Happy 2nd Birthday Lukee

          Happy Birthday my little Lukee.......

oooops and Babcia too

Okay this is bad...but not really bad.

I wanted a birthday cupcake so I could SKYPE Lukee with and blow out the candles on his very special day .  But I was too tired to go to the grocery store and buy just one cupcake.  Then I remembered......and this is the really bad part..........

On December 23rd, 2010,  Brandy made some chocolate peppermint cupcakes at my house before I came home from work.  When I got home I was too sick to eat anything and so didn't have one.  The cupcakes were on the counter and the evening passed and nobody had eaten a cupcake.  Next morning they were still sitting there. I guess too many chocolates and Xmas goodies and there just wasn't time to eat everything.  So I put the cupcakes into a cupcake carrier and put them in my attached garage where it was freezing cold. I didn't want the cupcakes drying out before we ate them.  Well as it turned out....nobody ate them....forgot about them, I guess.....and they stayed in the garage.  After being sick for so long, I never went out to the garage to empty the carrier, even though I look at them everyday as I leave in  my car and come back in my car........I look at them with guilt.....that they were so delicious looking and nobody had one.

Well here it is February 2nd, 2011....and they are still in the garage frozen and just as scrumptious looking as the day they were baked. .....right down to the shaved chocolate on the icing.

 So I just plucked one out, stuck a candle in it and sang my Happy Birthday on SKYPE to Lukee.  So these were not baked for nothing.....

I sure wish I could eat mine...but even tho' they are pretty frozen....I think I'll just imagine I ate one. 

                             The end of my sad cupcake story

I Love This:

An idle mind is the devil's workshop
And the devil's name is Alzheimer's.

We build our own Mountains

We may not have the Rocky mountain view that Calgary does but we have mountains poppin' up all over the city, in front of our houses, behind businesses, from our snow removal cleanup....and I use that word cautiously...cleanup.....I'm still waiting for the grader that was promised 7 days ago. I believe that online this neighborhood  is classified as "Completed".

Yikes!!! I just went out to take this picture and realized I left my big garage door open all night....and is it freakin' cold in there.  Well if nothing else....my neighborhood is safe.
Yikes!Yikes!Yikes!


                                              Day 7 waiting for City Grader

Behind the theatre

That'a a city truck there with driver just relaxing in his nice warm truck while he sips on a pop, obscure from the public.

Sundried Tomato Dressing Chicken Breasts....No More McNuggets For Me

After reading the disgusting ingredients in McDonald's chicken nuggets, I've decided to experiment with some other ways of cooking chicken breasts. Though not particularly my favorite, because I find them dry, these are actually quite good.  At least I don't think of corn and silly putty when I eat these.  They are great for sandwiches the next day with whole cranberry sauce, lettuce, tomato, onion and cheddar cheese and mayo.

Marinate chicken breasts in Kraft Sundried Tomato salad dressing for an hour. Brown in skillet with oil for a few minutes, and transfer to a foil lined pan in the oven for 25 minutes at 350 degrees. I put just a little more dressing on each breast in the oven.

                                      Geez, I hope I have time
                                  to eat my lunch tomorrow.

Happy 24th Birthday Kassie

What a nice Surprise!

Well I awoke this morning to a mirage in my crescent....a yellow  loader moving around snow. I was so excited I even offered to make a pot of coffee for the driver which he said he would like. I knew the loader would only put a dent in the snow moving effort but it was better than nothing. By the end of 20 minutes I was right, he didn't know what the hell he was doing. He  was like a kid driving a loader in the snow, backin' up and goin' forward but no direction in where to put the dumps.....here ....there...maybe over there.  I was afriad he might get stuck in the beginning.

                        So I'm out there in my" red flannel pj's with white snowmen"  that Brandy bought me for Xmas, and my beautiful majenta winter coat with fur trimmed hood,  telling him what he should do.

  The loader could only move the snow and wasn't big enough for the massive snowpiles in the crescent.  I suggested that in the past when we did  private cleaning  .....that he move all the snow to the middle of the crescent and just clean up around our driveways so we could all get our cars out.  So he said that is what he would try to do....then he shows me a city map and asks me where this particular address is.  He is actually doing the wrong crescent. 

Well good for us, I say....keep on grading. 

So after I got him some coffee, I videotaped and took pictures for 30 minutes. I'm smart enough to know that if there is nobody standing outside here,  he will do as little as possible, whiz through and be gone.  By now three more neighbors are doing the happy dance as they walk towards  my driveway.  I am the only videographer/photographer in pyjamas.  So we all tell him where else he should scrape. He is quite cooperative. Then his supervisor comes to get him back to where he is supposed to be.

  Now the job in our crescent is way too big because there is too much snow and they have to call in a grader to finish it. We ask when the grader will come?????  When is a good question....could be next week...next month...after the moguls melt.  Nothing is ever as you wish it to be.... but even though it is still a mess,  I am happy enough with this rinky dink botched up job, compliments of Edmonton's pathetic snow removal department.....because they simply do not have enough snow removal equipment that is required for our winter snow removal. But.....hey...we are talking about getting a new arena that will cost millions to be erected in the downtown core where they probably have clean streets down to the pavement. Suburbians don't really know for sure....we just imagine that.... because we can't get out of our neighborhoods to go downtown to really look at paved roads.

View From My Driveway

 

 Well can't do anymore...he's done...at least  my driveway is semiclean.













Is this not pathetic?????
Enlarge and see the wind row blocking the truck on the driveway....that comes with the service. We had to run after him to tell him to come back and remove that. Only because the truck owner was outside...all other driveways were blocked...except mine and my neighbors.

Fourth Time Out Today

My driveway snow and street snow.  The street should be level with the sidewalk, if we had snow removal.

These look like kids shovels...but they are not.

12 feet high mountain.

Even the snow drifts are protecting each other.

A hottub sits under this.

Snow, Soup, Snot and Shameful Lack of Snow Removal

I am so thankful I always make chicken broth and freeze it in 2 cup containers. With as much snow as we have been getting and the ever lingering flu, chicken noodle soup has gotta be the best comfort food after shovelling or even  not anywhere related to shovelling. There is nothing better to open up your sinuses like steaming hot broth and the noodles are just comfort.

Bring a container of clear frozen broth to boil , add 1 sliced carrot, 1/8 cup frozen peas and let simmer till carrots are tender. In another pot make some egg noodles and add as preferred.

This is my snow off my driveway. ....over 10 feet high

This is the City of Edmonton's warped  interpretation of "excellent" snow removable in residential neighborhoods, as they call it....ZERO.....NEVER.....WHEN HELL FREEZE$$ OVER....OR NO......WAIT AND SEE THE TAX INCREASE NEXT YEAR  FOR  RESIDENTS WHO  WOULD  ACTUALLY THINK THAT THEIR PROPERTY TAXES SHOULD COVER ANY  SNOW REMOVAL IN THEIR NEIGHBORHOODS.

It's hard to tell here but there is a sidewalk in between the two mountains. This is my exit to the driveway..almost impassable.  I've been out three times already today  and only half the driveway is cleared.

There is just no where to put the excess snow anymore and with all the snow we've had,  we have not had one snow grader in our crescent.  "Shame On Edmonton" for squandering our snow removal budget on grading up levelled,  ice streets, when not needed, and complimenting themselves on a lousy job. instead of doing snow removal, when really needed.