Cow Camp Meals

 It's a tough life.  After chasing the ball on the patio while I sipped my cup of Joe, Cooper and I went for our morning walk around the neighborhood.  He completely missed the black kitty kitty hiding at the edge of the lawn.  If it was a snake, it would have jumped out and bit him, or at the least, scared hime half to death!!  This kid is not the Mohammed Ali of dogdom.

Once back in the house, I set about baking up a storm, or maybe just a squall, all to be done before the 4:00 power deadline.  For some weird reason, it appears the small cans of crushed pineapple are no longer in production.  I only need 8 ounces, not 16, so on this day my Hawaiian bread became plain old banana bread.  Even so, Jonathan loves it!!

Then it was on to the Instant Pot for some some Cooper pot roast.  Little does he know he only gets two small bowls of it (stuck in the freezer) while MOM gets a bowl all to herself for tacos.  That of course requires salsa.  

There's an old story about this salsa.  When we took cattle to the mountains, we stayed at our cow camp.  Rarely did we ever take fresh meat because we had to pack the mules for the 30 mile ride.  Ice chests were unheard of, not to mention the threat of carrying delectable bear food on top of a horse or mule.  Bears were prevalent, which scared me absolutely to death since we slept outside on the ground in sleeping bags.  Unless we got lucky during deer season, we ate dried beef.  

As you can imagine, dried beef on bread (not even toast) got pretty tiring.  Trying to change it up a bit, rattlesnake was fried over the campfire.  Hey, it was fresh meat.  With the snake den out back by the outhouse (yup we were uptown with that outhouse) there was always something available to skin and fry.  It tastes like chicken if you were wondering.

The favorite was Cowboy Stew, with potatoes, chipped beef, some sort of canned vegetable and gravy, but that was only for special occasions.  

One day just for giggles, my Mom made some salsa to pour over the chipped beef.  We were in Heaven.  After that, every time we had cooked beef of any kind that was a little dry, it was smothered in salsa.  Try it sometime ... you'll love it!!

On this day however, it went on my beef tacos, completely smothered in cheese.  It's even better on deep pit barbecue.

I spent much of the day watching Rodeo finals and working on the next challenge of this quilt.  Gee I only have 92 more of these to make.  And here I thought I was home free.  These pieces make up the ribbon that runs through it.

Gee again ... I only have 42 more ribbons to go, after those 92 pieces are done.  This better be worth it in the end!!!  There will be a major celebration when it's done!

BUT FOR TODAY ..... I just got the call.  Sandy and I are going riding!  Time to gather up all my gear and hit the trail!!