Javalina Sighting.

The other evening, before sunset, my husband and I took the dogs for a walk down the dirt road.  As we made the turnaround to come home I started noticing the different types of tracks in the DG. Dog, person, and…what’s this?  Small unusual prints that I had never seen before, the spread of each print indicated that the animal was probably the size of a raccoon or an opossum…that wasn’t the odd part, however.  The tracks ran perfectly straight.  Rodents tend to scurry, and coyote’s kinda “meander” like a dog…this was a straight line…it really made me wonder WHAT THE HECK CAME THROUGH HERE?

Two nights later, my husband and I are driving home, this time its around 11pm…its dark.  The usual suspects romp to get out of our way…rabbits, a field mouse, and…what’s this?  I could have sworn the back end of a koala bear ducked under the field fence.  Noooo, not a koala bear, maybe a…what? Some kind of pig?  My husband laughed at me, “its a coyote babe.”  That was no coyote…it didn’t have a tail.  It was short and had stubby legs.  He Googled it the next day…Javalina.

This is exactly what I saw.

Great…we not only have every nasty rodent under the sun living here, plus coyotes and wild dogs, mountain lions and skunks; now we also have destructive wild pigs.  My husband was wondering what tore apart his irrigation a few weeks ago.  We chalked it up to coyotes desperate for water, but usually coyotes just chew the hose in one spot.  Our drip lines were DESTROYED.  Now what?

On to other news…

I am back to working on our food budget again, and I’m putting together an idea on blogging my shopping trips, meal planning, menus, time saving ideas, etc…I will eventually make a separate blog site for that, but until then, I am still working on my shopping techniques.  I’d also like to incorporate “how to” videos and offer shopping services and meal planning to others.

Today I was up bright and early…this is how my morning looked:

I only had about $200 to spend (as I mentioned, this was a lean month so my trips to the market have been piecemeal.  Ideally, as mentioned in a previous post, I try to do all of my shopping for the month in one day, hitting 4 or 5 different stores for the best deals…but today we only went to Stater Brothers and Albertsons.  I ended up spending a little over $230, but I still scored a lot of food, including wine, dog kibble and cat food. There is enough meat and vegetables in our fridge for 9 dinners with leftovers for lunches. This should carry us until our next payday.

Today we have been eating the last of our leftovers from last week.  In my last trip I bought a ham (on sale after Easter) it made 2 dinners for us, the second one was ham & cabbage soup…(YUM) and I still have a tupperware FULL of meat.  Great with eggs in the morning, and grilled ham & cheese sandwiches.  Once it is gone, my husband is burned out on ham for awhile. heehee

OK, that was one long blog post.  Hope everyone is having a happy Monday.

Hugs & Kisses from Long Ranch.

Lettuce Leaf Tacos

I am always looking for creative ways to eat the foods we love and still stay within the low carb parameters.  We have been “low carbing it” for about 3 weeks now and really enjoying it. When the weekend rolls around and things get hectic, however, its really hard to stick with it.  I’m thinking low carb for 5 days a week is still better than nothing.

Years ago I did the Atkins thing for 6 months and lost 13 pounds…it was awesome, but hard to stick with it because a) I had no imagination and b) because my kids were small and were always wanting spaghetti, pizza, and tacos.  Now that they are older they have broadened their horizons and frankly they are enjoying eating veggies instead of starches as much as we are.

So…here is an idea I came up with because my boys still love taco night…I present to you…The Lettuce Leaf Taco.

The ingredients are simple:

Meat of your choice with mexican seasoning (in this example I made carnitas, but I have also used pollo, and I’m sure ground beef would work too)

Chopped spinach

Guacamole

Shredded cheese

Salsa

Romaine Lettuce leaves

It is amazingly filling, and kinda fun to eat…just stack your ingredients onto the lettuce leaf and pick them up like a regular taco. RAD!

To make my carnitas, I chopped up 2 onions, cubed a whole pork roast and simmered it in chicken broth and water for 2 – 3 hours.  Half way in between I also added a few tablespoons of salsa…you can add heat to it by using any of your favorite hot sauce, jalapenos or ground red pepper.

 

You will have to keep chopping up the meat with a metal spoon or spatula to get it to fall apart as you get to the stage where it is cooked thoroughly…usually after 1 hour of cooking.  If the water and chicken broth boil down before your carnitas are done cooking you can always add more.  I usually start with enough liquid to cover the meat, and add another cup or two…just keep an eye on it so your meat does not dry out or burn to the bottom of the pot.

I am open to any low carb recipes you’d like to share!