Baked Stuffed Acorn Squash

The rain poured down in buckets on Friday so I decided to make some heart-warming, stick-to-your ribs baked stuffed acorn squash. I'd been meaning to try this recipe for well over a year, ever since my daughter-in-law, Johanna's grandmother Peggy gave me the recipe. So, again, thank you Peggy!
You can see in this close-up of one of the squashes that I substituted cooked buckwheat for cooked brown rice. I tend to have high cholesterol and high blood pressure, and buckwheat can help reduce both of those things. Check it out here. It's also gluten free, for those of you with gluten allergies.
Winter squashes like acorn squash are also packed full of nutrients such as Vitamin A in the form of beta carotene, not to mention fiber and loads of other vitamins. So, our baked stuffed acorn squashes were not only nutritious, they were delicious, too, and we have them as leftovers for another night.
I ate a whole half, but Jerry only had half of a half because we also had steak and broccoli.

Baked Stuffed Acorn Squash

2 acorn squash, halved and seeded
2 cups cooked brown rice or cooked buckwheat (cook 1 cup rice with 2 1/3 cups chicken broth)
2 stalks celery, diced
1 medium onion, diced
2 tbs olive oil
1 tsp dried sage or poultry seasoning
1 tsp dried thyme
2 tbs chopped fresh parsley
½ cup coarsely chopped pecans or walnuts
¾ cup dried cranberries
salt to taste (or about 1/2 tsp)

Slice off the bottom of each acorn squash half so that it will be stable and set the four halves on a 10”x15”x1” pan. Pour ½ cup of water into pan. Sauté celery and onion in olive oil until tender. Stir in sage, thyme, parsley, rice, pecans and cranberries. Salt to taste. I also added 1 tsp garlic powder because Jerry says everything tastes better with garlic powder, except for ice cream. Fill each acorn squash. You will have a lot of the stuffing left over, so put it in a casserole dish and save it for another meal. Cover the stuffed squashes in the pan with heavy duty aluminum foil that has been sprayed with PAM (spray cooking oil) and bake at 350° for 50 to 60 minutes.

Eat it with a spoon right down to the peel---yumm! I suppose you could eat the peel, too, for a little extra fiber, but I didn't.

Bon appetit!

Mister Wonderful

This is Mr. Wonderful #2....Mr. Wonderful #1 is Jerry...but they both make me laugh!

One of my sons gave this to me one Christmas...I think it was Tim.

Christmas Eve sunset in Huntington Beach

This past Christmas Eve we were driving from our son's house over to his wife's parents' house in Huntington Beach when I noticed the sunset. All but the last shot were taken as we were driving along, so they're not the greatest and not all in focus, but the sky colors were pretty.

I kinda like these blurred palm tree silhouettes---it seems to symbolize the fast pace of life in urban southern California.


...and we just made it to their house for a fine Christmas Eve dinner before the sun set.
See prettier skies at SkywatchFriday. Thank you Klaus, Sandy, Wren, Fishing guy, Louise and Sylvia for keeping up this site!

Shadow Self Portrait

Chocolate City

Some of you, especially Michelle at Honest and Truly, have expressed an interest in Chocolate City (real name: Tuxtla Chico) in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. So this is for all you chocolate lovers out there. The name Chocolate City enticed us, too, so Jerry and I signed up for the excursion to that town and also to the Mayan ruins.

The bus took us on a 30-minute drive from Puerto Chiapas through lush green fields and hills to Tuxtla Chico where the big draw was chocolate being made by hand in the city center. It is a very poor area whose inhabitants are descendants of the Mayans.
As in many parts of Mexico and Central America, buildings are often painted bright colors. Since it was the Christmas season, there were Christmas decorations everywhere, exemplified by the draped Christmas lights on this coral-and-mustard-colored building.

Our tour guide, Maria, explains some of the process of making chocolate as one of the chocolate-makers sets up his display in a courtyard adjacent to the city square. He's holding a cut-open cacao fruit. The pitcher of what looks like lemonade is cacao fruit juice, a sweet and refreshing drink. The plant on the left is a cacao tree sapling. We missed out on the free samples of the fruit juice.
After the cacao seeds are roasted, they are ground together with cinnamon, sugar, vanilla and almonds with a stone rolling pin on a stone block; then they are formed into a big sausage shape which is sliced up. We all got free samples of the chocolate and it's not like chocolate you would buy at home. It had a grainy texture, not a smooth melty texture, but it did taste like chocolate....grainy, sand-like chocolate....definitely an acquired taste!
The man showed us the beans before and after they've been roasted.
Ripe cacao fruit...They are about 10 to 12 inches long...kind of like big green footballs.
The ingredints for making Chiapas chocolate... roasted cacao beans, cinnamon, sugar, vanilla and almonds.
After the demonstration, the stage was cleared off and a young couple performed several traditional Mexican folk dances. The girl smiled some, but the young man never smiled; it did not look like he was having fun at all.
After an hour or two in Tuxtla Chico, where we also meandered through the blocks of outdoor markets (that will be another post), we piled onto the bus and headed off to the Mayan ruins. These cacao trees were growing right next to the ruins.
More cacao fruit growing on the trees.
A variety of exotic-looking tropical fruit was for sale at tables set up near the Mayan ruins. I had never seen any of these fruits before---very strange-looking! We didn't buy any, but snapped pix and hurried off to explore the ruins.

See other fasciating places at My World Tuesday.

A stairway to heaven?

There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold
And she's buying a stairway to heaven
When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for
Ooh, ooh, and she's buying a stairway to heaven

There's a sign on the wall but she wants to be sure
'Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings
In a tree by the brook, there's a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiving
Ooh, it makes me wonder
Ooh, it makes me wonder

So...is it a stairway to heaven?
There are 52 steps in this stairway. I counted them.
We're almost there.
It's a stairway to...
...math, music,...
...drafting and more math,...
...history, economics and Spanish,...
...and German.

Here in the foothills, flat land is at a premium, so our local high school is built on a long hillside in three levels. There are lots of outdoor stairs and ramps. The original, main campus was built in 1978 for 200 students. Over the years, the student population has grown and so an upper campus and a lower campus have been added with portable buildings. The upper campus buildings have stained wood exteriors so they look like little cabins in the woods, as you can see in the photos above.

The lower campus looks like drab modular office buildings.

Cal OSHA required the construction of a handicapped ramp with safety railing from the main campus to the lower campus, so the following are shots of the maze of ramping leading you down the hill.
It winds back and forth for almost 200 yards, nearly two football field lengths.
This could probably be used for some kind of Olympic competition (wheelchairs?).
Skateboarders would probably love this, but there are serious signs on campus saying "No Skateboarding."

Students at this high school get a great workout hiking up and down the hill to their classes...It's our Fight For Fitness in Garden Valley.

And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all is one and one is all, yeah
To be a rock and not to roll.

And she's buying the stairway to heaven

-from Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin

Turkey Enchiladas

Last weekend we had a guest, Jerry's niece, Julie, who had come out from Missouri to attend her father's memorial service. I decided to cook a turkey that had been frozen since November, unused for Thanksgiving because we were invited to our friends' home for Thanksgiving dinner.

So it was like Thanksgiving in February with the seasoned turkey roasting for four hours. I had stuffed it with an orange, a lemon and a lime (cut into quarters), slid pats of butter under the breast skin, rubbed olive oil on the outside and then sprinkled it with poultry seasoning, salt and pepper. Plus, I had the giblets simmering with an onion and celery stalks to make giblet gravy, so the wonderful, homey smells of Thanksgiving filled the house.

Needless to say, we had lots of turkey left over, so we have had many turkey sandwiches.

Since the cooked turkey was approaching the end of its refrigerator shelf life, I decided to make turkey enchiladas with whole wheat tortillas.
I was almost out of brown rice, only 1/4 cup left, so I supplemented it with buckwheat to make 1 cup. I cooked the rice/buckwheat mixture according to the brown rice directions, and it turned out great...tasted pretty much the same as cooked rice.

Turkey Enchiladas

4 cups cooked turkey
8 whole wheat tortillas
chunky green chile salsa
1 to 2 cups green enchilada sauce
2 cups cooked brown rice
8 ounces mozzerella cheese (or any white cheese), grated
1 16-ounce can black beans
4 to 8 ounces cheddar cheese, grated

In each tortilla, layer cheese, rice, turkey, black beans and 4 ounces chunky green chile salsa. Roll up the tortilla and place in greased 9"x13" glass baking dish. Repeat till dish is full. I used an additional 9" square baking dish because only 5 fit into the bigger dish. Spread green enchilada sauce evenly over the enchiladas and top with grated cheddar cheese. Bake at 375 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes until cheese is lightly browned.

Bon appetit!

Smokey Bear helper

Recently we received a thick packet of fire safety information from the county Fire Marshal regarding clearing forest fire fuel from our property. Some of these recommendations were to limb trees 6 feet up from the ground, to have no branches overhanging our house, to have brush and wild grasses cleared within 100 feet of our house and to have pine needles and brush cleared from within ten feet of our propane tank. I had some time on my hands so I decided to rake the pine needles away from the propane tank.

When Jerry came home, he had to take a picture of me raking to show our friends that I actually do grunt labor around the house sometimes.
I raked for an hour until I had a blister on my soft girly hand. Hey, don't laugh. It's hard to rake up 8-inch long Ponderosa Pine needles that are stuck on wet grass and soil!

I'm holding a 30-gallon trash bag, which, I might add, I filled up four times in that hour and carried down the hill to the burn pile.
Jerry took these shots from up on our top deck (veranda)....You can see that we live on quite a steep slope.
Here are the four 30-gallon trash bags worth of pine needles. OK, it doesn't look like a lot, but it seemed like a lot to me.
You can see the residual ashes left from Jerry's second and most recent burn of the season. It's all good, because it's all for the sake of fire safety. Burn permits are suspended by June due to all the dry brush, so we burn unwanted branches, pine needles and brush as much as we can while burning is permitted. You have to call the El Dorado County Burn Day Information Line to hear if it's a burn day, even in the winter.

The counties in the mountains and foothills are probably the only ones in CA that allow burning because of the forest fire danger we have here. It's kind of fun to have a periodic bonfire on your own property. Smokey Bear would be proud of us.

BTW, Smokey Bear no longer goes by Smokey the Bear. Here's the chorus of his song which I first heard when I was a little girl in the 1950s:

Smokey the Bear, Smokey the Bear.
Prowlin' and a growlin' and a sniffin' the air.
He can find a fire before it starts to flame.
That's why they call him Smokey,
That was how he got his name.

I think Smokey is still promoting fire prevention today, fifty-some years later, and we do our part in preventing forest fires.

Weeping willows in the winter

The bare-bones willow tree on the right is the same one that's in my header photo, but bereft of all its leaves. The two geese gliding silently across the lake are an "item," two of many paired-off geese, preparing for "married" bliss.

Since we are surrounded by mountains, hills and tall trees, I can rarely get a great sunrise or sunset photo here in Garden Valley, but we do have some pretty daytime skies. See more pretty spectacular skies at SkywatchFriday. Thank you Klaus, Sandy, Wren, Fishing guy, Louise and Sylvia for keeping up this site!

Happy Birthday, Jolene!

Daffodils for my daffodil-loving daughter-in-law....

Hope you have a wonderful birthday today, Jolene!

Spanish Moss or Old Man's Beard?

The following photos look like they could have been taken in the Louisiana bayou country, the swampy areas where Spanish moss hangs from the trees. But they were actually taken right across Oak Lane from our house. Our neighbors have pasture land for horses and there are many oak trees in their pasture, covered with what looks like Spanish moss.
It's actually called "Usnea," though it is often mistaken for Spanish Moss. It's formed by the symbiosis of a fungus and an alga.
It is commonly called Old Man's Beard, Beard Lichen or Tree Moss.
All overgrown by cunning moss,
All interspersed with weeds,
The mighty oak trees of Oak Lane
Watch over all their steeds.
Recent rain and winds knocked down a large piece of the hanging lichen, so I picked it up and took it home to get some close-ups of it, it was so unusual looking.
It felt soft, spongy and rubbery.

I was amazed at the intricacy and laciness of it.
Nature's beautiful soft, green lace.

Join the fun and see natural and man-made beauty all around the world at My World Tuesday.

Caught in the storms of life

My blogger friend, Esther Garvi, is going through a very painful time in her life right now. This song is for her...We sang it in church today and I thought of you, Esther.

You Never Let Go
by Matt Redman


Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
Your perfect love is casting out fear
And even when I'm caught in the middle of the storms of this life
I won't turn back
I know you are near

And I will fear no evil
For my God is with me
And if my God is with me
Whom then shall I fear?
Whom then shall I fear?

(Chorus:)
Oh no, You never let go
Through the calm and through the storm
Oh no, You never let go
In every high and every low
Oh no, You never let go

Lord, You never let go of me

And I can see a light that is coming for the heart that holds on
A glorious light beyond all compare
And there will be an end to these troubles
But until that day comes
We'll live to know You here on the earth

(Chorus)

Yes, I can see a light that is coming for the heart that holds on
And there will be an end to these troubles
But until that day comes
Still I will praise You, still I will praise You

(Chorus 2x)

Coloma Valley Skywatch

The rain had just stopped and Jerry and I were driving down the mountain toward the Coloma Valley for a meeting in El Dorado Hills. The south fork of the American River flows through the lovely Coloma valley, famous for being the site of the discovery of gold in California. James Marshall discovered the first nuggets of gold as he was working at John Sutter's sawmill. In the tailrace of the mill, which was turned by the flowing river, Marshall found the glittering nugget on January 30, 1848. Though Sutter tried to keep it quiet, word eventually spread around the world, thus starting the California Gold Rush in 1849. Gold seekers rushing to California became known as the 49ers. The highway that runs from Yosemite in the south to well above Nevada City in the north is called, of course, Highway 49 because it runs through the gold country of the foothills.
This is Marshall Road, which runs from Highway 49 in the south to Georgetown, an old former logging town, in the north. We travel down Marshall Road many times a month; it's one of the ways off the Georgetown Divide. The Georgetown Divide is the body of land which divides the north fork of the American River from the south fork of the American River.
A bit of cloud was hanging low over the Coloma valley. You can see a little bit of the south fork American River down in the valley.
You can see houses scattered here and there among the hills below us.
We are just coming out of the infamous hairpin turn on Marshall Road, still enjoying the views of the valley.
Later in the day the Coloma Valley looked like this from Marshall Road.

Hope your sky is pretty today. See skies around the world at SkywatchFriday. Thank you Klaus, Sandy, Wren, Fishing guy, Louise and Sylvia for keeping up this site!