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Today I took a big step.  I overcame my fear of hominy.  Yep, hominy.  I had a unfortunate experience during my young adult years that involved an open can of hominy, a fork, a filthy house and a hypodermic needle.  I’ll spare the details, but I’ve refused to eat it until tonight.  

Actually I was pleasantly surprised. Jason likes the texture. He’s a texture man when it comes to his food. He likes that mushy middle of a hominy kernel.
I tried out a new recipe for a hominy casserole that I found from thepioneerwoman.com, a site that I check out regularly these days.  I’m envious of this transplanted city girl who gets to stay home, live on a ranch, and homeschool her children.  Uh…I could do without the homeschooling and, well,  the children too. But the staying home and living on a ranch part would suit me just fine. 
 
If you say hominy 3 times fast, you sort of sound like an auctioneer.  Go ahead.  I know you want to.

Tomorrow is October and Autumn is descending. You can tell the season is upon us here at our house by the great abundance of acorns that clutter our yard and driveway. Our yard is quite small, but we have 78 oak trees. Maybe I exaggerate, okay then, 77 oak trees.

Beautiful trees.
These mighty oaks produce mighty acorns. And I exaggerate not. Just look at this branch.

Look closer. They actually grow like grapes in clusters. And then, they fall. And if I don’t get them all picked up, they nestle down in the dark earth throughout the winter, and sprout as dumb little saplings in the spring, only to grow up and produce more acorns. It’s a vicious cycle folks. And if I don’t pull them when they are tiny, their roots grow deep and it is nearly impossible to pull out a little oak. Now, all you tree huggers don’t get mad, I am a tree lover too. I’m all for trees. Look at the beautiful foliage.

Now look at the beautiful mess.

Pulling into our drive-way sounds like stampeding elephants on bubblewrap.
I have had so many acorns in the past 4 years living here, that I actually have sold them on Ebay. Yes, you heard me right! There are people who will buy acorns at the affordable price of 99 cents per pound. When you pick up acorns, you have a lot of time to think. It’s a time consuming chore. It’s tedious, boring, back breaking, and monotonous. Not exactly my idea of fun. As I was picking them up one afternoon, I thought to myself there has got to be a way to make a little money here. I mean I have an abundance, surely there is a market for these boogers. So I checked it out. It’s not much of a market, but a small market just the same. With competition I might add. Others try to sell their acorns on ebay too.

This was the pic I took to post on ebay. See how huge they get compared to a quarter? One year, I sold 50 pounds. One lady fed them to a pet flying squirrel. A teacher did a unit of study on Native Americans up in Ohio and the class ground the acorns down to make bread……or something. I’m not sure what drove others to buy them, but I shipped some to New York and all sorts of places. Well sweeping, raking, and bending is a lot of work. So I researched and found a little acorn picker-upper.

Some ingenious person invented this. It is called the Nut Wizard and you can buy it online. It does make my acorn harvesting alot easier. You just roll it around, and it does the work for you.

When it fills up, you empty it.

The nut wizard has always reminded me of this little toy.

Maybe it’s the shape? Maybe it’s the vaccumming motion? Maybe its the little popping sound? Maybe I’m weird? I knew that already.

I wish there were more hours in the day. I can’t ever seem to get accomplished what I desire. I love reading blogs, but need several hours to explore them the way I’d like to. I still don’t know what I’m doing with my own blog. Really I don’t even know the purpose of blogging except that it fulfills my writer’s need. I’m in the discovery stage of trying to figure this all out. I’ve found a lot of blogs out there are “mommy blogs”. I’m not a mom, so my future blogs more than likely will cover unimportant topics. I’ve started a list:

1. My pumpkin patch
2. Picking blueberries
3. Bottlefeeding calves
4. Eating hominy
5. Never having enough time in the day (oh yeah, that’s what I’m talking about now

Lots of food stuff huh? Obviously, I’m a little obsessed with eating!

I’d like more time to blog. I have 2 followers now and I’m so glad to know someone is interested in my random thoughts and ramblings. I hope not to disappoint!

The weather is chilly and I decided that flip flops might not be conducive to 50* weather, so I had to squeeze into actual shoes and socks today for the first time in more than 4 months. My feet did not like the feeling of confinement. My big toes are sore. Well I guess this isn’t entirely true. The more I think about it, I do wear my tenni runners (as my dad calls them) every morning to walk and I occasionally wear my cowboy boots.

I enjoy taking our two dogs out and letting them experience what a dog should. Wide open spaces, wind, and birds or flying bugs or whatever catches their fancy to chase. I don’t enjoy taking them in my car. They don’t ride well. They bounce from the backseat to the front. The big dog is a superstar drooler and puddles of drool are all over the console where he is hanging over from the backseat. The little dog sheds like crazy and it sticks to the car seats. A vaccuum won’t even pick up all the dog hair, but you better believe that my black pants will! So, my darling husband offered to drive us (us being me, the big dog, the littler dog, and my niece) out to the land. This weekend, I envisioned a day of relaxing and resting out on the land that we partly own. It’s an empty pasture land. To most people, it’s ugly and barren, but to me it’s a little slice of paradise.

I suggested he drop us off. Why this hairbrained idea came to me, I’ll never know. “Sure I said, it will be fun, just drop us off, we’ll entertain ourselves.” Being the ever obedient husband that he is, he agreed and dropped us off at the gate. We walked and walked and walked, just to get to the windmill. We crossed great big draws, and had to slide down our butts on a dirt slide. When we arrived at the windmill, we expected clear, flowing water.

Clear water??? Not on your life…..this dirt tank looked like pea soup. And no, I don’t understand the difference between a pond and a dirt tank.

Some cows glare at us, as if to say what are you doing on my pasture??

Ashlynn rolled up her old pant legs and thought about heading in with the dogs, but was turned off by the stinky, muddy gunk that squeezed between her toes and had to be scraped off with a stick.

Ashlynn thought this cow patty looked like an easter egg. It kinda does, doesn’t it?

Until next time……

The weather took a very sharp turn to super chilly today. The wind picked up to a comfortable 50 mph blasting autumn into our little town. I worked late, and left the school at 7:00. I hate doing that, but if I hadn’t I would be up to my eyebrows in work. As it stands, I’m only up to my nose hairs. As soon as I walked in the house, I shed the funeral clothes I wore today, and donned the ratty, soft sweats. Potato soup. Nothing says comfort like potato soup. I put a little too much salt, but it wasn’t half bad. Now, my belly is full, my toes are warm, and my bed is calling.

Isn’t this beautiful?? This is nothing like fall here in the Texas panhandle……

Ah, yes…..this is more like it.