Kansas Storms

I've always lived in Kansas...so thunderstorms have always been a part of my life. It's pretty normal for there to be a thunderstorm watch or warning everyday in the summer...and often the spring and fall. Even tornado watches aren't really a big deal around here because they happen so often. Luckily, actual tornadoes happen far less often.

Well, around 5am on June 23rd, Johnny wakes me up because the tornado sirens were going off. It's been years since I'd actually heard the tornado sirens. He turns on the news and they were saying something about a false alarm. So I laid back down to sleep. About 5 minutes later, Johnny comes back in saying the tornado sirens are going off again and this time it's not a false alarm. I grabbed Milo off my pillow and picked up my laptop and purse on my way to the basement. Johnny grabbed Angel and led Bandit downstairs. We put the kitties and Chihuahua puppies in Aubry's room...but Milo got out when Aubry went back in to grab something. Of course he ran right under the bed upstairs in our room. So while Johnny and the girls were waiting out the storm downstairs in the bathroom, I waited for Milo to come out from under the bed. He did eventually come out, though...right about the time the storm was over anyway. :P

While there wasn't an actual tornado, there was a lot of straight-line wind damage throughout the town...a LOT of broken branches and even entire trees were gone. We lost a tree in the storm. It was actually one we've lost branches from before...but this time the trunk snapped and the whole tree came down. Here's a picture of Ashlyn standing next to it to kinda give you an idea about the size of the tree. It was about as tall as the tree right behind it (in the middle of the photo)...they were both planted at the same time.

My parents came out the evening of June 24th to help us start cutting the tree up so we could get rid of it. We couldn't get it all, though, because my dad's chainsaw needed a new chain to get through the trunk of the tree. They came back over today along with my uncle to help us finish the rest of the tree. Dad was busy cutting while Ashlyn, my uncle, and I loaded the branches into my Dad's truck to take to the brush dump where the city workers will chip all the trees into mulch. We had three truck loads just for this tree! We still have to deal with the stump, but the bulk of the mess is gone now.

We still have a few months left of storm season to go...but hopefully we won't have anymore damage. I've had enough tree hauling for the year! :P

Beauty and the Beast!

So...back in 1987, I was 6 years old. One of my favorite TV shows was Beauty and the Beast. I'm not talking about the children's movie, I'm talking about the series starring Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton. I totally wanted to be friends with a nice, fair, and relatively quiet-tempered lion-man (I've always been obsessed with big cats). My parents really liked the show and my dad even had a black trench coat that reminded me of Vincent's. He also had one of those door-size posters of Vincent (Catherine may have been on it as well, but I just remember Vincent).

Johnny, Ashlyn, and I had watched the 2012 Beauty and the Beast TV series (still disappointed that Vincent didn't look like a lion, lol) and it kept reminding me of the old TV show I used to love. Well...I found it! Turns out, Amazon Prime has the 1987 Beauty and the Beast included with Amazon Prime Instant Video!

I started watching it today and...wow! What a trip! It's always interesting going back and watching things that were made in such a different world of technology and style. You don't find any cell phones or modern computers or anything. Even the quality of the video itself and the special effects are a lot different than what we have today.

Aubry was upstairs when I started watching it. The kids had heard me talk about the show before. Even after watching the 2012 series, Ashlyn wasn't interested in the 1987 version at all. Aubry is loving it though! She's my "vintage" kid anyway. She loves all things that came before her time...old cars, cassette tapes, vintage phones, and even old TV shows. So now I've got her hooked!

If anyone else is feeling nostalgic, you can check it out on Amazon!

Art Museum

This last weekend we went to the art museum with my family. They were featuring a Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit that we wanted to see. My great-aunt and I love to paint...and so do my kids. So we all took the day to check it out. It was an awesome exhibit.

I really like Georgia O'Keeffe's style. She paints a lot of trees, and I love painting trees! This painting called Dark Tree Trunks caught my attention...

It reminded me of some of the trees that I painted several years ago when I was a student at WSU. This one is currently hanging in our living room. I have several with this same kind of style...smooth branches against a relatively plain background.

There's also a really neat walkway on the second floor with a lot of decorative glass underneath. I took some pictures of the girls walking across it...

 

...much like I did in August 2010!

Recipe: Hibachi Chicken, Fried Rice, and Homemade Teriyaki Sauce

We have a restaurant here called "Hibachi Boy" which is very yummy! Unfortunately, ordering from there can get expensive with two adults and two teenagers. I decided to start trying to find a way to make it at home. Success! I've found a suitable substitute for Hibachi Boy that I can make here at home...which we had for dinner tonight. It's my oldest daughter's favorite dish that I make. :)

Hibachi Chicken

INGREDIENTS:

2 lbs	chicken breasts, cut in about 1" cubes
2 tbs	vegetable oil
2 tsp	teriyaki baste and glaze
1 tbs	butter
3 tbs	soy sauce
2 tsp	lemon juice
dash	of salt and pepper

DIRECTIONS:
1. Heat vegetable oil and teriyaki baste/glaze in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add butter, soy sauce, lemon juice, salt and pepper.
2. Add chicken in at least 2 batches and cook for about 6-8 minutes until done.

3. Remove the chicken from the skillet and keep warm. Do not drain skillet. 

Fried Rice

INGREDIENTS:

4 cups	long-grain rice, cooked and cooled
2 tbs	vegetable oil
1/2 C	white onion, chopped
3 large	eggs, beaten
4 tbs	butter
4 tbs	soy sauce
1 can	peas and carrots

DIRECTIONS:
1. I prepare 2 cups of rice according to package the night before or the morning of when I'm going to have dinner and then refrigerate it until I'm ready to cook it so the fried rice isn't mushy.
2. In the same skillet as you cooked the chicken, add vegetable oil. Add onion and saute 3-4 minutes until tender. Beat eggs and lightly scramble in the skillet with the onions.
3. Once eggs are scrambled, add butter and rice. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring frequently.
4. Add soy sauce and vegetables. Cook for another 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from heat.

Teriyaki Sauce

INGREDIENTS: 

1/4 C	soy sauce
1 cup	water
1/2 tsp	ground ginger
1/4 tsp	garlic powder
5 tbs	brown sugar, packed
1-2 tbs	honey
2 tbs	cornstarch
1/3 C	cold water

DIRECTIONS:
1. Combine all ingredients except cornstarch and cold water in a sauce pan. Heat and stir until dissolved.
2. Combine cornstarch and cold water, stirring until dissolved.
3. Add cornstarch mixture to saucepan, stirring constantly. Heat until you reach your desired thickness.

Then I just let everyone dish up how much rice, chicken, and sauce they want instead of mixing it all together...since we each like different amounts of teriyaki sauce and my youngest prefers to eat her rice separately from the chicken and teriyaki sauce. ;)

Recipe: Mayonnaise Chocolate Cake

I've been going through recipes in all the cookbooks we have here at the house. Once upon a time my grandma gave me the Best Recipes From the Backs of Boxes, Bottles, Cans, and Jars cookbook. There are 592 pages of recipes that come from...the backs of boxes, bottles, cans, and jars.
Disclaimer for all my recipes: I do not always follow a recipe exactly, so while it may have been inspired by the recipe in this cookbook, I may have altered it since then.  

When I was in the mood to do some baking, I went through all my dessert recipes and one in particular caught my attention. A chocolate cake that came from a Hellman's Mayonnaise jar. That's right... mayonnaise. :P You can't actually taste the mayonnaise...it just tastes like a nice, moist chocolate cake. And the frosting tastes like chocolate ice cream!

I'm much better with cookies than I am with cake...mostly because I'm more interested in how something tastes rather than how it looks. So the whole cutting cake layers to be level thing and pretty frosting isn't really my style. I just kind of wing it (with extra frosting in between the layers to level things out). :P

Speaking of winging it...
I don't really like frosting unless it's whipped cream. I thought I had a large container of Cool Whip in the fridge, but that turned out to be some sort of leftovers the girls' brought home. :P So not only did I not have as much Cool Whip as I thought, I also didn't have any that wasn't frozen. So I ran the container under some hot water, got impatient, and just ended up throwing it in the mixer to get all the lumps out...so it isn't as fluffy as it could've been. ;)

And without further ado...

Chocolate Mayo Cake with Chocolate Cool Whip Frosting

INGREDIENTS: 
2 cups - flour
2/3 cup - unsweetened cocoa
1 1/4 tsp - baking soda
1/4 tsp - baking powder
1 1/2 cup - sugar
3 - eggs
1 tsp - vanilla
1 cup - real mayonnaise
1 1/2 cup - water

DIRECTIONS: 
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease two round 9" cake pans. In a medium bowl, stir together flour, cocoa, baking soda, and baking powder. Set aside. In a large bowl with mixer at high speed, beat sugar, eggs, and vanilla occasionally scraping bowl for 3 minutes until light and fluffy. Reduce speed to low and beat in mayo. Add flour mixture in 4 additions alternately with water, beginning and ending with flour. Pour into pans and bake for 30-35 minutes until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pans 10 minutes then cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. Spread frosting in between cake layers and cover entire cake. Store covered in refrigerator.

FROSTING: 
(1) 4oz box - chocolate instant pudding mix
1/4 cup - powdered sugar
1 cup - milk
(1) 8oz pkg - thawed Cool Whip
Combine pudding mix, powdered sugar, and milk in a mixing bowl. Mix on low speed until blended. Fold in thawed Cool Whip. Spread onto cake which has cooled completely.

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A post shared by Candi Pride (@tinycandi) on Jun 6, 2019 at 7:18pm PDT

#birdwatching

My husband loves birds. He actually used to raise several different kinds of birds once upon a time. Now he just enjoys sitting on the porch with his morning cup of coffee and watching them.

A couple weeks ago, I saw a wren gathering things to make a nest. I mentioned it to Johnny, but then I didn't really think about it again because birds are more his thing than mine. I'm more of a "that's cool" and move on kind of person.

Then a week or two ago, we started seeing a male and female cardinals hanging out a lot in front of our house. One morning I heard the baby birds chirping away and realized the cardinals were going back and forth between our front tree and the bushes in front of the porch.

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A post shared by Candi Pride (@tinycandi) on Jun 3, 2019 at 8:18am PDT

We also saw wrens hanging out a lot in the bushes. Johnny figured out that a male wren was also feeding the babies in the nest...the same babies in the same nest! We spent way too long one day watching them all go back and forth and googling how often birds actually do things like that. :P
The picture below is the female cardinal and a male wren on our porch railing. I believe it's a Bewick's Wren? I don't know...ornithology isn't really one of my specialties. ;)

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A post shared by Candi Pride (@tinycandi) on Jun 4, 2019 at 1:47pm PDT

Then yesterday, the cardinals were with a baby up in our front tree while two other babies were still in the nest:

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A post shared by Candi Pride (@tinycandi) on Jun 5, 2019 at 8:14am PDT

Today, the nest was empty and there was a baby in a different bush in front of our porch and another in a bush off to the side and the male cardinal and wren are still hanging out with them (the female cardinal may have still been around, but I didn't see her).

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A post shared by Candi Pride (@tinycandi) on Jun 6, 2019 at 8:00am PDT

So...while birds aren't usually my thing, it has been pretty fascinating watching these cardinals and wren apparently co-parent these baby birds. :) Oh and just a side note, I have no idea if the babies are cardinals and/or wrens. Again...not an ornithologist at all whatsoever. :P