Jambalaya

I've been on a little bit of a canning kick. I'm on a mission to build up some food supply that's easy to prepare.  Cster makes a pretty mean jambalaya so a few saturdays ago we decided to attempt jambalaya. We weren't sure exactly the best way to accomplish this feat. But Cster had some good ideas. He made the jambalaya without cooking everything all the way through and he didn't add the rice.

I canned the jambalaya "soup".

My neighbour took one look at the jar, raised her eyebrows and said, "you have not sold me yet." :)

Last Sunday, I hadn't really made any plans for dinner. Everybody had been gone all day Saturday and there wasn't a super abundance of food to make dinner. Nor was anything taken out of the freezer. I thought this would be a great day to try out the jambalaya.

Cster opened the jar and dumped it in the pot. He added the appropriate amount of rice. (It will be different for every jar because the liquid is not equally distributed). As soon as the rice was cooked, we ate.

The result...IT WORKED!!

The dish was not as good as freshly made jambalaya but it still tasted great. Really great. So for conveniance food, it was PERFECT!

Will we make jambalaya fresh again? Of course. But for those moments when we don't have a dinner plan, we don't have to do take out.

What did you do yesterday?

Yesterday I participated in the WarriorDash.  Its a 3 mile race over 10 obstacles, one of them being a big mut pit with 3 barbed wire lines about 1.5 feet up and across so you have to climb under them (in the mud) to get through.

This is our before picture.

These are the warrior hats we got with our race packages (along with an "I survived the warrior dash" tshirt) Mster is now wearing it and announcing that she is a Warrior while marching around the house giving orders to her younger siblings.

This is us after the race. We finished the race. We did all the obstacles and we survived. I was unsure at one point when I found myself hyperventalating at the top of an obstacle for sure that I was not going to make it.

We wished we had pictures of all the obstacles but as you can see cameras wouldn't have quite made it through the course alive. :(

Obstacle 1: running through swinging tires.

Obstacle 2: jumping (climbing) over hurdle walls

Obstacle 3: climbing up a steep wall with foot holes (The guy at the bottom told us there were margaritas at the top, which as you can imagine was highly motivating. :) )

Obstacle 4: The mud pit

Here is the beginning of the pit, where you jump in. If you just jump in, you get booed by spectators. They want belly dives. They love front flips.

As you can imagine, this guy got booed.

Then you climb under 3 barbed wires. And then, it is near impossible to run as you have to go uphill, on a muddy slope, covered in mud yourself. We were just happy not to fall down.

Here is where my memory is a little hazy so the obstacles might not be in the right order and hopefully I remember them all.

Obstacle 5: climbing under a wooden structure covered with a tarp. So, its dark, and you have to crawl on the ground. (But really you can sort of bend over and make it if you aren't super tall)

Obstacle 6: Tightrope Walk. They had a balance beam that sloped up and down and up and down that you had to walk across.

Obstacle 7: Climb up a huge structure and climb, fall down the other side. You climb up one side that has beams of 2X4's spread  pretty far apart. Then on the other side they are spread apart until part way down when it is just a sheet of metal that you sort of shimmy down.

Obstacle 8: Rope climb. They have a slanted obstacle with rope. You grab onto the rope and use it to climb to the top. Somehow you get yourself over to the other side, and use the spaced out 2X4's to get down. (When I say spaced out, I mean very spaced out)

Obstacle 9: Chained rope. Climb up rope and then cross a bunch of chained rope sections. We heard a guy tell use to log roll across, so we did. I have a nice rope burn welt on my knee. But I still think it was the best way to go.

Obstacle 10: Jump through fire.

Finish Race!

At the end you are head to toe muddy. Luckily they have some showers you can try and scrape the mud off of you with and luckily this year the water was tepid/warm (we heard last year they pumped the water from the 45degree river).

For those people feeling generous, and not in the mood to clean their shoes, they collect shoes for third world countries. (I had to laugh when they kept announcing that they would powerwash them before shipping them off to needy families.)

And here we are feeling extra warriorish. What a FUN DAY!

Tortilla Chips and Leftovers

We've been eating fish tacos lately which use corn tortillas and we can never use the entire package before they go bad. We finally found the solution and now I'm kicking myself that we didn't think of it sooner.

First take your corn tortillas (I'm sure you could use flour but we go through those like hotcakes). Make a solution of 1 part oil and 3 parts lime juice and salt (how much is your preference.) Either spritz or "paint" on both sides of tortilla. Use a pizze cutter to cut the tortillas in 8 wedges. Place tortilla wedges in one layer on a cookie sheet.

Bake at 350 for 7 minutes and then flip over and bake for another 8 minutes

Enjoy and wonder why you never did this sooner.

Back to School

Outside Influences

Today my kids saw a clip from Jersey Shore while I was at the Pharmacy. They had Regis and Kelly interviewing one of the cast members and they turned to a clip of some crazy antics. Lovely.