Update: Lime Cilantro Slaw

I realized this morning that I forgot an ingredient in the recipe. The first time I made it, I used honey to balance the tart acidity of the lime juice. The second time, I used agave syrup because my honey was beginning to crystallize.

So here is the new, improved recipe (still without ingredient amounts because I am trying to live more on the edge these days).

Lime Cilantro Slaw

Mix together, tasting for flavor:

green cabbage, thinly sliced
chopped jalapenos
a large handful of chopped fresh cilantro
juice from several limes
a squirt or two of honey or agave syrup
a dollop of mayonnaise
a dash of salt

I was also thinking last night as I improvised lemon penne with broccoli and romano that the above slaw would be good if you grated some lime zest into it.

And vegetarians, you know what to do instead of that pork: black bean tacos! Or burritos.

Pork and Pioneers

I've recently become a fan of The Pioneer Woman's blog, which is filled with confessions, cooking, and photography among other things. One of the most alluring things about her blog (aside from the food, farm, and photography) is that she updates her blog multiple times a day. Not unlike what has been happening on this blog in the last month, er, um, anyway...

I have had my eye on a certain pork recipe (sorry, Tricia) on PW's blog. We had a visitor from Salt Lake City this past weekend and I seized the opportunity to test this out in tacos. It's sort of a Carolina pork barbecue meets Mexico recipe, minus the barbecue. I diced up avocado, fresh jalapenos, and scallions, grated jack cheese, and served chipotle sour cream and two salsas: red (homemade and canned this past summer) and green (outed as supermarket canned salsa by our guest--when asked if it was homemade, I couldn't tell a lie). The piece de resistance, however, was a lime cilantro slaw that I adapted from a recipe I found in Bon Apetit magazine. Oh my, was it ever good!


Even after dinner for five (including three very hungry backcountry ski and snowboarders) and lunch the following day, we had plenty of pork left over which we froze in individual vacuum-sealed packages. Last night, we thawed a package while I whipped up another batch of lime cilantro slaw and we had round three of these beauties. I think they might deserve their own food group.



Lime Cilantro Slaw (sorry, I hate when recipes don't give ingredient amounts)

Mix together, tasting for flavor:

green cabbage, thinly sliced
chopped jalapenos
a large handful of chopped fresh cilantro
juice from several limes
a dollop of mayonnaise
a dash of salt

Not Winter

I did an informal poll of myself to find out my favorite season.

Now in my second year here in Idaho, I have decided that winter is not it. Especially not this winter.

When we were in North Carolina, I thought the reason I didn't like winter was because there was nothing to do during the cold months. I admit I like winter better here in Boise than I did in North Carolina because at least you can snowshoe or ski. The snow conditions here haven't been that great though, and we haven't had much snow. The local mountain conditions vacillate between ice skating rink and slush. I prefer the other seasons because some of my favorite activities are done then, like biking, gardening, and pretty much anything outside.

One of this winter's favorite indoor activities is playing cards. Jon and our neighbors taught me how to play cribbage a few weeks ago and now the cribbage board is a permanent fixture on our dining room table.

Whenever we have the time, we play a game, which takes about 20 minutes. We keep track of the games and the best out of ten games wins. I am 0 for 1 right now, but the first tournament I lost by only one game. Not bad for a beginner!

[photograph courtesy of www.shepshedgames.co.uk/cribbage.jpg.]

From Tucker, Cash, and Gus

Happy New Year!

Winter Playground

I found this picture of the homestead in Montana and thought I'd share it with everyone.

Kate and I have been doing a bit of construction around the Boise homestead since we returned from our Florida getaway. Our landing in Boise was uneventful even with 3 inches of snow on the runway! In the parking lot we were shocked to find 5 inches of snow covering Kate's Dodge Dakota. It snowed most days we we're away and has since snowed most of the days we've been back. Today was different though with 57 degrees most of our valley snow is gone. In the past week or so we've managed to do some snow construction in the front yard, snowshoe in the valley and at Bogus Basin. There has even been time for skiing and snowboarding! A bit of our handy work is pictured below.






We spent a few hours preparing for a snow battle that never happened. It's always good to be prepared isn't it?

The Year of Bad News

This morning we received word that our former neighbor in Raleigh, Dot Smith, passed away yesterday. This marks yet another death in our lives this year. We stopped counting when the numbers reached 10.


When I bought the house on King Charles in the Longview Gardens neighborhood of Raleigh in June 2004, the first neighbors I met were Dot and Henry Smith. Dot and Henry were a couple in their 80s that you couldn't help but meet; Dot and Henry were outside working in their yard every day. And when they weren't in the yard, they were busy with their children and grandson, delivering meals on wheels, and active in their church and the neighborhood association. Dot and Henry led very full, very rich lives, and were very proud of their family. Dot and Henry built their home in Longview Gardens in 1951 and lived in it ever since.

It wasn't long before I was out in the yard all the time, too, and often worked alongside the Smiths. We helped each other trim trees and bundle yard waste, Dot helped me identify plants in the yard, and they both shared stories about the previous owners and the neighborhood. My favorite stories were about the pony that the Smiths kept in their backyard while their girls were young.

As the renovations on my house convened, Henry would pop over every day or so to see what was going on. I took great pride in showing Henry the changes in the house because he seemed to be so proud of the effort I was making. One day Henry showed up with a gift for me: it was a Craftsman hand tool he called a maddox. It is a long handled yard tool with an axe blade on one side and another blade on the other side, turned 90 degrees. He told me it would become the most useful garden tool I owned and he was right. Every time I use it, I think of Henry. In fact, Jon and I just used it a few months ago to grub out gigantic crab apple tree roots here in Boise. I remember saying at the time, "it's a good thing Henry gave me this, huh?"

Henry passed away just a few months after Jon moved into the house and Jon too, quickly grew to love the Smiths. I think Henry was pleased to have another tinkering man around. Henry passed away shortly after stubbornly trimming crepe myrtle trees in the front yard...with a chainsaw. I was a wreck at the funeral, but the Smith family was calm and composed because they have a strong religious faith and were secure that Henry was in a good place.

I truly loved Dot and Henry. After Henry died, we really looked out for Dot and did whatever we could for her, which wasn't much. She was very capable. Jon would use the weedeater on her trees and bushes because her riding lawn mower didn't get close enough. She let us pick figs and cherries from her fruit trees and we were grateful.

Dot had an awesome, underutilized four-string clothesline in her yard that abutted ours. I asked her if I could use it and she agreed. It wasn't long before she was back to using the clothesline again, and we spent many moments chatting while hanging and folding laundry. Later on, when Dot sold her mother's house to a fantastic family with a gaggle of kids, the Culpeppers used the line too. Even our neighbors Jer and Selina on the other side of us, not even next to Dot, used it. It became the social hub of all our houses. Bored? Check the clothesline. Anyone out there?

Dot was busy, but every time we knocked on her door, she always said "come in, come in." At the time we were married, she still owned her mother's house directly behind her own and she let us use it to house seven of our family members for the week. Dot talked often of her mother, which in her Carolina accent she pronounced, "muthuh." I loved to hear her say it. I loved hearing Dot call to us from across her expansive yard.

As Jer said today, "She was an amazing person that just exuded life to everyone she met, if anybody deserves a place in heaven it surely is Ms. Dot."

Win the Wii!

Hello fans, hope all is well. Our fellow blogger has a Christmas Gift giveaway going on. Check out Los Angelista for details, and you might be able to win the Wii! This is not spam, or a joke. It's the real deal and I'm sure the odds are better for you to win it than to buy it this year.

Happy commenting!