Oh, No...Snow!

The Bag lady had a post written for today about cattle and ranching, but when she woke up this morning it was snowing. So she changed her mind about that post. The Bag Lady hates winter. She doesn’t like the cold, although the last few years it hasn’t been nearly as cold as it could have been. And it occasionally serves a purpose on those days when the hot flashes drive her around the bend. (Just step outside for a minute and cool off!)

The Bag Lady doesn’t know why she lives here in the winter. She doesn’t ski, or snow-shoe, or skate, or even curl (which seems to her the second most boring game invented, next to golf). The only good thing about snow is that you can use it in biscuits in place of eggs. If you ever run out of eggs and want to make biscuits, use 2 tablespoons of snow for each egg…
Just about the time she starts looking at real estate somewhere warm, she remembers the summers here and hesitates. Her mother always said “He who hesitates is lost”, and that’s what happens. The Bag Lady starts thinking about the 20 hour-long days in June (and conveniently forgets the helicopter-sized mosquitoes) and decides to stick it out one more year. She knows that the warm places don’t have those long, long summer days, where it doesn’t get dark until almost midnight; then the sun starts streaking the sky pink at 3 in the morning. Where the northern sky has a glow for those 4 short hours, and, if the full moon happens to coincide with the summer solstice, it doesn’t really seem to get dark at all!

But that is half a year away, and it is snowing and dark outside. Conversely, at the winter solstice, the sun seems to rise about noon and set at 3, but of course, that isn’t really true. It gets light after 9 am and is dark again by 5. This is the time of year that the Bag Lady finds depressing. Mind you, the last few years, she starts getting depressed around the first part of July because she knows it’s all downhill from there! The days are getting shorter, and the cowboy keeps reminding her that the summer is almost over…

The Bag Lady knows that she will eventually get accustomed to the weather, sort of. She will never like it, though. She will have to force herself to leave the house every day. She knows there will be warm winter days, when the sun shines so brilliantly off the snow that it can cause blindness. She knows that the crisp air will fill her lungs and taste as sweet as an apple. She knows there will be days when the frost covers everything with a glittering coat of diamonds, and the snow crunches underfoot. There will be days when the snow squeaks under the cows’ hooves and you can see their breath rising like smoke. There will also be warm days when the Chinook winds blow down from the mountains, melting the snow and shaping it into dunes and waves; making a treacherous crust of ice everywhere. And there will be days when the sky is such an incredible shade of blue it seems to make the snow even whiter. Or is it the whiteness of the snow that makes the sky seem bluer?

The Bag Lady knows that there will be picture-perfect days, and there will be horrible, dark days when the clouds roll in and it seems the snow will never stop falling, and hey, didn’t my car used to be there under that snowbank somewhere? But she also knows that eventually it will melt, and it will be muddy and horrible, and the world will be reborn.

Perhaps that is why she lives here. What's it doing in your world today?

More Ranching

The Bag Lady had a very busy day yesterday. She had a doctor’s appointment in the morning in town, so decided to try to squeeze every errand possible into her day. The radio (the real one, not the one in her head) was reporting that the roads were in very poor winter driving condition due to the freezing rain and snow we had experienced the night before, so she left early, giving herself lots of time. Luckily, the sanding trucks had been out, so the highway was not bad. The city streets were also not too bad, but the sidewalks and parking lots in some places were terribly treacherous. The Bag Lady saw a woman go flat on her back in the WalMart parking lot! (The woman seemed to be okay, and refused the Bag Lady’s offer of help)
So the Bag Lady went to her doctor’s appointment and learned about the digestive system (Eat Lots and Lots of Fiber – Fiber is your friend!). The best thing to come out of her doctor’s visit is that the very nice lady doctor ordered four CartSmart bags for her four daughters! One of said bags is going to Australia!
Then the Bag Lady did some banking and went to the Post Office to mail a parcel to New York. Canada Post has many different ways to mail parcels, each more expensive than the last. There’s ground mail, which must still be by team and wagon (the parcel would get there sometime in 2008; no guarantees). Then there is air mail, at least 12 days to New York from here; the Bag Lady assumes ‘by air’ means hot air balloon, so quite dependent on the prevailing winds. Then there was expedited air which Guarantees 12 days (twelve days? For across the country? Sheesh, the SARS virus got here from China in one day!!) The last was express air, which, judging by the cost, the lady behind the counter was going to deliver personally! And really enjoy herself along the way, because that was guaranteed to arrive in only 6 days. After her puzzling experience at the post office, the Bag Lady did some marathon grocery shopping, then headed for home.
Once home, she discovered that the Cowboy had not been idle while she was gone, and after jamming her groceries any-old-way into cupboards and refrigerator, she rushed out to help bring the cows home from summer pasture.
We had tried to walk them home on the weekend as they were pastured less than a mile from home, but our well-trained cows would not go through the hole we cut in the fence! Cows are funny. If they had knocked that fence down themselves, we would have been rounding up all of them off the highway. But since we actually wanted them to go through the fence and across the highway, there was not a chance they would. Oh, a couple of the braver cows did actually go onto the pavement and start down the gravel road towards home, but most of them balked. So we had a change of plan.

Once we got the cows hauled home in the stock trailer, we let them out with the cows that had stayed home for the summer. Of course, we have two bulls, and when they became re-acquainted in the pasture, they had to have a fight. This is not at all uncommon (something to do with testosterone…) but sheesh, they could have waited until they were away from the fence! They managed to wreck a quarter-mile of fence, so the Cowboy and the Bag Lady had to fix fence in the cold wind.
Today the Cowboy had to go back to work, so the Bag Lady has to check the fence in the north pasture and repair any damage she finds. This will be a nice, mile-long walk, carrying the fencing tools, so she’s hoping the sun will be shining and that there isn’t too much damage.
Just another day on the ranch.

With a Song in My... Head?

Terrie Farley Moran made a comment yesterday that every time she reads the Bag Lady’s blog, songs from old western movies start running through her head.
This comment got the Bag Lady thinking about how often that happens to her. Some days it seems as though anything and everything anyone says to her reminds her of a song. A chance phrase, sometimes even just a couple of words start another sound loop in her head. In fact, it is almost as though she has a radio running up there all the time. Someone will say something, and the radio changes channels. Fortunately, there’s no deejay up there, babbling some inane nonsense in between the songs. Then she really would worry! Someone will say tomato, and, presto, “You Say Tomayto and I Say Tomahto” starts up. Or they say corn and suddenly “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” is goin’ on.
Does this happen to anyone else? Some days it drives the poor Bag Lady crazy. There are days she hears a song on the radio and it gets stuck in her head and runs there all day. And it’s usually a song she Doesn’t Even Like! She has learned NOT to turn the radio off when they play a song she doesn’t like because that will guarantee that it will be stuck there for the rest of the day!
Her cell phone plays “Camptown Racetrack”, so it’s a good thing it rings so seldom. She chose that song because no one else in their right mind would use it, so she always knows it is HER phone ringing! The only drawback, of course, is that on the rare occasion that her phone rings, she’s stuck with “doodah, doodah” for the rest of the day!
The Bag Lady used to think that she was the only person this happened to, and blamed it on her musical background. She has had other people tell her that they get songs stuck in their heads, too, but what she wonders is; do other people have a musical soundtrack going all the time? It seems as though there is almost never a moment when the Bag Lady doesn’t have a song in her head. It’s like living in a 1940’s musical where everything was set to music. Strangely enough, a lot of the songs that pop into her head with certain words or phrases are from Broadway musicals. Some of the tunes are pretty obscure, too. Years ago when the Bag Lady was doing theatre, she was in a production of “A Little Night Music”; so every time someone says they are planning a Weekend in the Country, THAT song starts running in her head.
So, is the Bag Lady alone in this situation? Do any of you have your own personal radio? And is there a 12-step program for this?

Cooking in a Dutch Oven

How to cook in a Dutch oven over a campfire:

1. Start a fire.

2. Have a beer.

3. Re-light fire.

4. Have another beer.

5. Feed fire.

Okay, enough silliness. You need a really good coal-bed to cook in a Dutch oven. You also need a really good cast-iron Dutch oven with a tight-fitting lid. The best ovens have three stubby little feet and a slightly domed lid with a lip. They come in a variety of sizes from about 8 inches across to 16 inches across.
Now, cast iron needs to be seasoned, and most cast-iron implements come with instructions on how to do this. If yours didn’t come complete with instructions, the easiest way to season any cast-iron is to wipe it with oil or shortening, completely covering the cooking surface, then heat it in a warm oven for an hour or so. Wipe off the excess oil. When storing it, make sure it is well greased, and store it somewhere it will stay dry. Once it is seasoned, try never to wash it. Just wipe it clean with a dry rag or paper towel. If you have cooked something really sticky in it, you can fill it with water and boil it, then wipe it dry. Remember to grease it again. Never pour cold water into a hot oven – it will warp.
You can cook almost anything in a Dutch oven over an open fire. Stew, beans, cake, biscuits…I’ve heard of them being used for everything from deep-frying to baking pie. To use it for things like deep-frying, you need some way to hang it over the fire. If you plan on baking a cake, or biscuits, you set it into the coal bed, and pile coals on top of the lid to surround it with heat. This is a very fast method of cooking, so you have to pay attention. The first time the Bag Lady tried baking biscuits; she settled back with her beer and left them, without checking them, for the full amount of time, only to discover she had manufactured hockey pucks - colour and all!
The easiest way to hang your oven is to drive a couple metal posts into the ground on either side of your fire, then rest another post across these with some hooks for hanging your pots. To cook this way, your pots should be hanging approximately 12 – 16 inches above the fire.
You also need some type of implement to handle your pots and lids, called a goncho, or pothook. These can be made of twisted wire, or strap iron. Even a stout green limb with a stub of a fork can be used in a pinch.
(The Bag Lady couldn't find any pictures of her actually cooking with her Dutch oven, but the photo at left does show the apparatus the Cowboy constructed for hanging the pots.)
The best wood for cooking fires is a hardwood – oak is great, but hard to come by in some areas. Poplar and aspen are plentiful in this neck of the woods, though not the greatest for cooking. But you have to make do with what you have.
Once you have a good bed of coals, it’s time to start cooking. Warm your oven – pre-heat the lid, too – then grease it, and cover the bottom of the oven with biscuits. Put the lid on, then set your oven on a level bed of coals. Pile coals up along the sides of the oven, and fill the lid to the rim with coals. Use your goncho to remove the lid to check on things, but be careful not to spill ashes on your food. Rotate the lid when you replace it.
If your biscuits are browning too fast on the top, remove the lid and dump your coals; replace the lid. If they are browning too fast on the bottom, lift the whole oven off the coals. The biscuits will finish cooking in the hot oven.
This is a quick, basic, rather simplified lesson in the art of Dutch oven cooking. (The Bag Lady likes quick, basic, simple instructions!)

Recipe Day

Leah over at The Goat's Lunch Pail did a post the other day about dry goods that food bank recipients refuse because they don’t know what to do with them. The Bag Lady then bragged about her easy and delicious recipe for Beans and Pork, and promised to post it. She didn’t get around to posting it yesterday, as Bunnygirl so delicately reminded her, so here it is!

Beans and Pork

2 Cups white beans
1 lb bacon*, chopped
2 chopped green onions
2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 Tbsp brown sugar
2 1/2 tsp salt**
1 tsp dry mustard
1 Cup catsup
*the Bag Lady uses bacon ends
**the Bag Lady reduces the salt to 1 tsp

1 pm*** – rinse beans in cold water, discard shriveled beans. In 8-quart Dutch oven, over high heat, bring beans and 8 cups of water to boiling. Boil for 3 minutes. Remove from heat, cover and let stand 1 hour. Drain and rinse beans.
In same Dutch oven, fry bacon and onions ‘til bacon browns. Drain most of the fat. Add beans, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, salt and 4 cups of water. Bring to boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 2 hours. Add catsup, heat to boiling, reduce heat, cover and simmer half an hour. (These are even better the next day, and you can freeze the left-overs.)

***If you start around 1 pm, they will be ready for supper. The Bag Lady serves these with a salad and fresh home made bread (or biscuits). Or Indian Frybread, if you aren’t at all concerned about calories, or your cholesterol levels or any of that other health-related stuff…

Indian Frybread

2 Cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp shortening
1 1/2 Cups milk
1 tsp salt

Mix dry ingredients – add shortening and work with hands ‘til crumbly. Add milk and mix. Turn out onto floured board. Knead. Avoid using too much flour. Pat out round and flat (1/4 inch thick). Poke hole in middle of round*. Fry in hot oil, turning once, approximately 1 ½ minutes per side. Drain on paper towel. The Bag Lady uses a heavy cast-iron skillet for these, and makes her rounds slightly smaller than the skillet. The Frybread should be a nice, golden brown colour. Watch it closely as it will burn quickly. (*The hole in the middle is very important as an escape for the oil.)

Both of these are terrific for camping – we cook our Frybread over an open campfire. Damn, now the Bag Lady wishes it was July instead of November!!

Have you ever had biscuits cooked in a real Dutch oven in a campfire? Absolutely delicious. If anyone is interested in learning how to cook in a Dutch oven over a campfire, I can post about that another day.

Special Request Post

Twice in one day!! This is a "Twinsie" post, just for Crabby (refer to today's earlier post for links to Crabby's blog, Cranky Fitness, and to Reb's blog, Sibu Pegasus Power - which will explain what is going on here...)

Can you tell who is older from either of these photos? In the first photo, the Bag Lady is on the right and Reb is on the left, in the second photo, the order is reversed.

The Wonders of Word

Okay, the Bag Lady is going to do some experimenting in this post. She feels rather inadequate because it seems as though every other blogger out there has no problem creating links to other people’s blogs. Well, it just wasn’t working for the Bag Lady, so she decided to try to learn how.
Crabby, over at Cranky Fitness, gave her detailed instructions, but the Bag Lady still couldn’t do it that way. Oh, the link seemed to be there, but it didn’t look the way the Bag Lady wanted. Something still wasn’t right.
Reb, over at Sibu Pegasus Power, also gave the Bag Lady helpful pointers, but nada.
Then Leah, over at The Goat's Lunch Pail tried to help, too. The Bag Lady started to feel totally incompetent. Perhaps it just wasn’t meant to be – no linking from the Bag Lady to all her friends.
Well, the Bag Lady wasn’t going to take this lying down, so she opened her trusty Microsoft Word program and started looking around. “Well, what the heck is that little icon?” she asked herself.
So she clicked on it and started experimenting. Well, looky here…she discovered how to link to Hilary at The Smitten Image.
Now she’s hoping you will all check out Terrie and friends over at Women of Mystery, too!
So this is all well and good…she’s still in her Word program and everything looks just the way she wanted. But will it all stay this way? Guess she’ll find out soon. The last time she tried something fancy in Word, it wouldn’t translate when she tried to paste it onto her blog.
So hopefully this will work, and all her loyal readers can now check each other out!

(By Jove, I think she's got it!!)