Saturday Night and All is All Right

Greetings and Salutations!
Whew…
ANOTHER full day of fun.

So as we left off, we did the whole “bicycle thing” that ended with the obligatory ‘blood trail’ through the Casa. We’d had a awesome time navigating the neighborhood, and the Redhead was her usual energetic self…

Alllll the way up until it was time to ‘head back to the barn’ so to speak. I’ll go into that in a minute… What we did do was rode all over Hell’s Half Acre I swear. Ye Olde Glutes and legs are notpleased with me, nor my ‘life choices’ right now.

Meh. I need to loose a bunch of weight… it’s time to saddle up again and get back down to bidness… Of course ALL of that hard bike riding weight loss profit went right-the-fuck-out the window when The Nuke needed ‘recharging’ in the form of a “Culver’s Ice Cream Stop”…

Now -I- was relatively well behaved… a single scoop of half-and-half (chonkolit and ‘nilla) with a wee bit of Hot Fudge. Sapper went ‘full retard’ as did the Redhead, as seen here:

We had to hose her off after as she ended up wearing quite a bit of the ‘nilla as it melted. As an FYI, Culver’s is like right up the street from me, and much like a Chik-Fil-A, the place is a license to print cash I swear… it’s always busy AF.

So a few other things happened on the way home as I started saying earlier… One of which was Red wiping out and ending up with the usual skinned knee or two, as well as her elbow. Thankfully it happened like -right in front- of the house. Sher attempted to brake on some dry leaves and the bike skidded out from under her.

Her being ‘new’ to the whole ‘no training wheels’ she ate the pavement. Not too badly, but enough to scare her (and myself initially) and get a lot of the Sympathy Voat from Gigi, i.e. Gretchen.

Many “Barbie” Band Aids later, she was good to go.

So in the end, it was a lot of fun. I then came home to cook dinner, which in this case I started prepping last night. I made a big ole pan of what is/was essentially Taco Beef. I took about 2.5 to 3 pounds of ground beef, added all the needed spices, as well as a well diced big ass onion, and simmered the whole thing up. Once it was done, I drained/strained out ALL the fat I could, let it cool, and then stashed it in the fridge overnight.

I did this knowing that I’d not have the time nor inclination to start dinner from scratch. Having the main ingredient ready to go, especially when making/using a versatile menu like taco-ground beef is a plus. This being as Red and Gretchen did NOT want burritos, which was on Sapper and MY menu. Instead, they wanted Nachos.

Too easy the way I had things rigged/preplanned.

I pulled the container of beef out, and started working. Thusly: A layer of nacho chips, then a thick layer the pre-made beef, then a layer of Queso (the medium-heat chip dipping liquid cheese), added some more chips, then some salsa, a wee bit more beef, and topped off with a generous helping of a 4 cheese Mexican blend cheese and in this case (as I was pressed for time) 3 minutes in the Microwave, and boom!

Restaurant Quality home-made nachos.

For the burritos, I made a serving of plain white rice in the rice cooker. About 3/4 of a cup. I then took the remaining beef, and threw it in my wok. Around this place my big-assed wok is the go-to pan just as an FYI. I set it to low/simmer, and then let it go for about 10-15 minutes to let it heat up without using the Microwave. I’d check on it every few minutes or so, and stir it up, and then, well…

I then went and threw the now-cooked white rice in with the beef. To assist in ‘flavoring’ it, almost a little OVER half a jar of the hot-hot salsa went into the wok. Then a full (but smol) can of Green Chilis were added to spice it up and ‘turn up the heat’ a bit more. I mixed all of that in together, and let it get nice n’hot on the stove. The rice was primarily to ‘thicken’ the amount of burrito beef filler we had, as the girls ate quite a bit of the nachos… it allowed me to make a nice fat set of burritos let me tell you.

A 3/4 cup of the cooked rice made a perfect amount to match up with the beef. Adding in all the hot salsa, and the can of chilis (with the juice from the can) allowed the rice to soak up the flavor, which added to the overall taste of the burrito filling.

Then I rolled out two heaping kitchen spoon sized servings to each Burrito/tortilla. I also added about 1/2 of the BIG kitchen spoon worth of the 4 Mexican cheese blend to each burrito.

Now, the tortillas? I used them BIG 12 or 14 inch across shells so to speak… And then, the stove setting… I forgot to mention, was set to 400 degrees at the beginning of this adventure… (sorry about that… I’m ALLLL over the place as I have Gretchen and the Redhead distracting the hell out of me as I -try- to write this, so forgive any lack of continuity to the tale)…

As I was saying, I set the stove at the get-go to 400 so as to bake the wrapped beef and tortillas when I got them all wrapped and stacked and prepped. Once I wrapped up all of them, I sprayed a bit of olive oil on the pan to make sure they didn’t stick to the baking pan, (which is an issue I’ve had in the past) and in they went for 15 minutes to get the final bake.

Needless to say, they came out great

ONE of them filled me up, as well as Sapper. They’re quite filling to say the least…

Now, on to other things… One was Red was digging into some of my crates before dinner, one of the ‘safe ones’ in this case as she is well aware and trained to not touch certain boxes and tool chests in Papi’s A.O…. (as an aside: It’s so nice to have a smart Gran who listens and understands when Papi sez “Dangerous!” and she genuinely listens and stays out of whatever I warned her about) Anywho… she was digging in a ‘good box’ and found something I forgot I had… namely a set of $5 “Fat Damon Civil War” sunglasses:

Got to love the snaggle-toofus grin…
I told her “finders keepers” so she’s all excited that she’s got some new shades LOL. I got them waaay back when that shytte-Civil War flick came out… Since I had forgotten about them, I told her she could have them…
However
I needed to use them for ONE picture:

Not my best work, but you get the idea.

And yeah, that -is- a Multicam Tricorn Hat. Beats the hell out of me where I got it unfortunately… I really need to start keeping track of those webpages…

Then lastly: The next project that’s non-weapons related (to a point). I’m making a boom box (I think) out of an ammo can, with the on/off switch being thus:

And yes, if I can manage it, it’ll fire up by playing that song first and foremost Hell.. I may even put it on a loop… I might label the can itself “In Case of SWAT Raid, Flip Switch”… Y’all will see as it progresses.

Otherwise, off to a Fun Filled Sunday!
More Later
Big Country