A Great New Recipe

      I've told you before what a great cook Dick is.  I am very fortunate in that respect.  Usually the meals he cooks are very simple but flavorful.  He NEVER uses a recipe.  He just starts throwing things together and they always seem to turn out very tasty.

      Well, this last week he really pulled a surprise on me.  He decided he was going to make Chili Verde.  It is one of my favorite meals, and one of my specialties.  I love making it and usually make a huge batch.  I use about five pounds of pork, cut it up in small bite size pieces, brown it and put all the rest of the ingredients into a very large pan and finish cooking it on the top of the stove.  He decided he wanted to make it easier and had a package of pork chops that he decided to use, instead of the shoulder I usually use.  The pork chops he used were shoulder chops though, so there wasn't much difference there.  He threw all those cut up pork chops in the crock pot, added all the rest of the ingredients and put it on to cook.  He actually used my recipe, but he cut it in half as he only had about 2 1/2 pounds by the time he got it all cut up and off the bones.  It sure didn't take him very long.  He cooked it all about 6 hours on high.  It turned out to be delicious.  In fact, I thought it was every bit as good as mine, and mine took a lot more work.  So now, I have a new way to cook Chili Verde.  He actually made it twice this week.  We had a couple of our friends over last night, and we enjoyed it and the company so much that we decided to do it again tonight, only we had a different couple of friends over.  I have decided to share HIS recipe with you tonight.  Yes, he went to the church tonight so I will have to wait until he comes back to post the picture he took of it last night.  I might have tried again, but it is still on his i-phone so will have to wait until he gets home so that he can first put it on the computer before he can transfer it.  I hope it all works out. 

 

      Here it is and I truly hope that you will give it a try.  I'll give you the 2 1/2 pound recipe and you can double it if you like. 

      Chili Verde:

2 1/2 pounds pork, cut up
1 can stewed tomatoes ( 14 1/2 oz)
1 can diced tomatoes (14 1/2 oz)
7 green chilis (canned)
3 stalks celery, diced fine
4 cloves garlic finely chopped
1/2 can water (use tomato can in measuring
1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. pepper
3/4 t. cumin

Put pork pieces in bottom of crock pot and add the rest of the ingredients.  Turn to high and cook for 6 hours.   Enjoy! 

Or, if you want to cook it on top of the stove, brown the meat before, I use a 12 inch frying pan with lid, and after pork is browned, put in the rest of the ingredients, cover and cook on top of stove on medium for 2 1/2 to 3 hours or until pork is very tender.

By the way.............I will be posting on Wednesdays instead of Tuesdays from now on.  Dick prefers not having to do this after he gets home from church and I don't think I will get quite as stressed as I do on Wednesdays.  I don't think I will be able to post at all next week though because we will be VERY busy on this 7 or 8 day trip.  I'll try though.

     

     



     

    

    

Trip Highlights

On my way to find a place for me to sit down. I'll admit, I'm in a bit of a hurry.

At last! I'm pretty sure mom won't mind.
Kristin, Andelin and Sullivan, not long after Andelin was born.

It may be that her hair is a bit red

Proud Great Granadma with Andelin

Kristin and Craig

A better picture of Kristin and Craig

As usual, I have spent the last hour or so trying to download some pictures so that this post will be a bit more interesting. I guess I will have to just do the written part and hope that Dick won't be too late getting home from his meeting with the Bishopric tonight. I really would love to be able to show you some pictures of my newest great granddaughter, Andelin Grace Mills. A few of you have expressed interest in knowing how the induced birth of her mom, my adorable granddaughter, Kristin, went. Actually she did give birth that very night and the baby was totally perfect. She had a lot of black hair, but the latest picture of her shows that her hair is turning a bit auburn. It looks to have quite a bit of red in it. That wouldn't be too surprising because her grandfather, Perry, has red hair. I guess time will tell.

Kristin herself has had a rough time since. She lost so much blood that she came within a hair of having to have blood transfusions, but managed to avoid that. Her sisters-in-law have provided so much support though. One of them took Sullivan (her two and half year old, enough said ) on Wednesdays and Thursdays and the other one took him on Fridays. That was disappointing to me, because I didn't get to see nearly enough of him to suit me. I think you will all remember how besotted I have been with him since he was born. She had a Nanny who came in to help on Mondays and Tuesdays. That pretty much took up the week. Craig was there to help on weekends. I am pretty sure she is doing much better by now. I need to call her myself to see if I am correct in my assumption. I don't think I've mentioned before that my first name is Grace. They named the baby Andelin (a family name on Perry's side of the family and Grace, after me, as her middle name. Pretty cool, huh?

I seem to have been pretty busy myself this past week:

I knew I needed to see my doctor, so made an appointment for a complete physical for Thursday. Before that, I pretty much didn't do a thing but rest and sleep. We were in the doctor's office for an hour and ten minutes!! He never rushes me whenever I go. He had some great suggestions and I am trying very hard to do what he said. It is really quite funny what happened. He told me that my legs would feel much better if I could lose some weight. Whenever he mentions that (which I know that of course it would help me) I remind him that he could also lose a few pounds and that invariably leads to my asking him if he remembers a bet we had some years ago to see which of us could lose ten pounds the quickest. (I don't remember who won, but the jist of the conversation is that we finally ended up having a three way bet, $1.00 each, to see who could lose 40 pounds by January 13. We each had to put up the money, and he put it in my folder. At the end, the one who has lost the most, wins the whole pot! Dick has by far the most to lose, so he probably will win.

So far, both of us have done very very well. Dick has lost 7 1/2 pounds in five days. I have lost 3 l/2 pounds. We write every single thing we eat for the whole three meals (nothing in between) and total up the calories for the day. Dick can't go over 1200 and I can't go over 800. Well see how it goes. I am feeling much better doing that plus exercising. He is really stressing that! I have to walk on the treadmill for five minutes every morning and on the stationary bike for another five minutes. I am supposed to increase that by 10% every week. Plus we do our 40 minute pool exercises that are supposed to exercise every muscle in our bodies. So far we have done it and between doing those two things, I really have improved. I seem to feel a little bit stronger every day. On Jan. 13 I will post before and after pictures. Hopefully I will have learned to transfer pictures to by blog on my own by then. (Don't count on it though).

I didn't post ALL the highlights of our 10 day Salt Lake trip. We did do more than just enjoy our three day family reunion. I didn't tell about our trip to the cemetary at the end of our reunion. My mom and dad and others in our family were buried in Lund, Idaho, which is a little farming community on the other side of the divide from Lava Hot Springs. We did enjoy the peaceful feeling we all had there. It was so beautiful. The caretaker does such a wonderful job of keeping it up. I may post a picture of me and my grand niece, Beth-Anee. I was pretty worn out just walking to the gravesites and the guy who was supposed to have brought a chair for me to sit on forgot to load it in the car. I had to sit, so had to make do by sitting on Mom's gravestone!! Beth-Anee is standing behind me. She lives in South Carolina and I was so glad that she could be there to represent her family. After we had been there for awhile, just visiting and taking pictures, we left to go back over the mountain where we all had lunch and then disbursed as the reunion was declared to be over. We are going to meet again in two years instead of the usual three because everyone who went enjoyed it so much, even my daughter, Jayne, who insisted on driving her own car there because she expected to be bored, but she had so much fun that we were about the last ones to leave. I am the youngest in my family by far, so all of her first cousins were way older than she and actually she hadn't met a lot of the older ones. She knew the three youngest as they spent most of a lot of their summers staying with us as they were growing up.

This post is a bit jumbled up, but at least I was able to write one. When I started, I can tell you that I sure wasn't in the mood. Thank heaven, Dick came home early tonight. Sometimes he doesn't get home until after 10.00p.m. I am going to turn this over to him and see if he can find a few pictures to post for me. Love to you all.....................

I'm going to post now, so if you find all of the paragraphs and the spacing messed up, I can tell you it was fine at this point and I AM NOT going to call Sue to have her fix it for me.

Home Again

Dick, Jayne, and me at the reunion.

Our six weeks trip didn't last very long, I'm afraid. We were in Salt Lake for ten days and attended my family reunion. I am so glad we were able to be there for that, because it wasn't long after that Dick and I realized that I would not be able to do the whole trip. I am just not strong enough for a road trip lasting that long. Hopefully next year we can do the middle part by flying instead of trying to drive. I could hardly wait to get back to my chair. I couldn't find a comfortable place to sit at Jayne's. I had a wonderful chair there, but her daughter, our 21-year-old autistic granddaughter, Kirsten, broke it. Bless her heart, Jayne did try very hard to find something that would do, by bringing up a chaise and another chair from the basement, where she spends most of her time. She has a large living area down there, incuding living room, bedroom, bath and office. I don't blame her for living down there as it is much cooler and far more spacious than upstairs where the bedrooms are small, along with the bathroom. I really couldn't spend much time down there because of having to go up and down stairs. Dick was up and down quite a lot because before we left his legs were aching pretty badly.

I am so sorry that Dick didn't get to attend his high school reunion because so many of the things were prepaid and not refundable, hotels, meals etc. I wanted him to fly back and attend anyway, but after figuring it out, he decided not to go, because the people he really wanted to see were not going to be attending or had died. I hope he won't be sorry in the future.

We got home Friday night (drove straight through). I haven't done very much since then and am hopeful that I will start to feel better soon. I have made an appointment to see the doctor Thursday. I don't expect he can do anything for me as my biggest problem is pain, hot pain in the back of my calves in both legs, and hot pain in my shoulders and upper arms. I can't imagine why it is so bad. Of course I can't take pain pills so I don't know what the heck he can do. I have had so many cortisone shots that I don't suppose that would help either. I actually think that I will just have to rest a lot for quite a period. I hope it feels better in three weeks though, because we still want to try to make the end of our trip as we are scheduled to attend the Four Freshmen convention in Reno in October, and I surely do not want to miss that! Also, our son lives in Lake Tahoe, so we were planning to stay three or four days with him. I am going to think positive thoughts. My niece Nancy, from Dallas, is meeting us there and she says if we don't go, she won't either! Another good reason to go! I didn't get to see enough of her at the reunion, so wish me well, everyone, because both Dick and I really want to go. We do love the Four Freshmen!!

I am so darned disappointed that we didn't get to do the middle of our trip as I truly wanted to see our friends in Canada, to say nothing about longing to be with Kathy (Yaya) and Donna, my wonderful blogging friends. We had planned to stay with Kathy for three days!! Some of you are blogging friends to them too, so you know that Donna is finished with her chemo and is now taking daily radiation treatments. That gal has been through a lot, and she has even managed to work part of the time throughout all of this. I just hope we can make that trip one day and if we do, you can be sure we will fly.

Well, my dear friends, I am about finished, I think..........'til next Tuesday then...........................

Darlene