Beef Short Ribs Supreme

Most of you know that I love to cook but lately it has become a drudge. Probably cause the outside temps have been above 100 and the last thing you want to do is heat up the kitchen. Most of the time it's coming up with a recipe to cook. If you're like me I cook the same 10 recipes over and over. Boring. A few years back a friend of mine, Susan, shared a short rib dish that her husband made. It was memorable. The local grocery store had short ribs on sale and it prompted me to recall the recipe she had given me. I bought the ribs and proceeded to look for the recipe. Well I couldn't find it. I called her and she gave me a new photo copy of the recipe. The recipe comes from "Favorite Recipes from Friends", (Mary Stoddard)The Town Hill School; Lakeville, Connecticut.
So here's the recipe. It's really good and it's going to be a new favorite of mine. If you make it let me know how you like it. During the last 1/2 hour of cooking I added some water to make it a little more saucy. I served it with mashed potatoes and a salad. Hope you like it.

Beef Short Ribs Supreme

Ingredients:
3-4 pounds beef short ribs
2 Tbls. vegetable oil
4 stalks celery, chopped
3 medium carrots, scraped and chopped
1 (6oz.) can tomato paste
½ c. firmly packed brown sugar
½ c. chopped onion
½ c. water
½ c. red wine vinegar
2 Tbls. Dijon mustard
2 tsp. salt
1 clove garlic, minced
1 bay leaf

Directions:
Brown short ribs on all sides in hot oil in a Dutch oven.
Cover and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.
Drain; return meat to Dutch oven.
Add celery and carrot.
Combine tomato paste and remaining ingredients; stir well.
Pour sauce over meat and vegetables in Dutch oven; cover and bake 1 ½ hours or until meat and vegetables are tender.
Remove and discard bay leaf.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings.

Deb's Portugal Trip November 2008

Here are a few pictures of my trip to Portugal in November of last year. A few cities did not get published because I was having issues with my camera battery. Hopefully I'll update the blanks when my friends share their pics with me. If you want to get a map of Portugal out you can get an idea of our travels. Our Trip started in Lisbon. We stayed for 2 nights. The trip started off with me not having luggage for 3 days. Thankfully when my travelmate got her luggage she shared some of her clothes with me. To sum up our trip it was quite eventful. Lost luggage, a side trip down a runaway truck ramp. Couldn't find our hotel because our directions were screwed up. The Hotel was 120km in the wrong direction. Several road trips asking for directions and oh, Marta broke her tooth and ended up using sealing wax to fill the gap. Darla fell down what she thought was a ramp but there was a small step there that she didn't see. She screwed up her knee pretty bad. Thankfully we didn't have to go to the hospital but it made slow going for her. All in all the Portuguese people were jems. They don't look to friendly but they are the nicest people on the planet once you ask the first question. They will also go out of their way to help you out. From Lisbon we went to Sintra,Alcobaca,Obidos,Nazare,Coimbra,Conimbriga,Braga,Bucaco,Luso,Aveiro,Oporto,
Amarante,Pinhao,Sao Joao de Pesqueria,Penedono to Viseu,back through Coimbra then down to Tomar,Baleal,Peniche,Lourinha,Torres Vedras then back to Lisbon. We saw quite a bit on this trip and God surely had us under his wing. By the end of the trip I could manage enough Portuguese to eat, buy stuff and get us going in the right direction.
I hope you enjoy the pictures. Maybe it will encourage you to go on your own trip.

Safe Environment Training
This message contains information regarding child safety in regards to child abuse. There are parts in this message that may be difficult to handle but I feel very strongly about protecting our children.
As some of you know I sing at our church during the Life Teen Mass. It is contemporary music verging on christian rock at times. It was my way of still being a part of a band. The young teens love it and so do most young adults. Mass is packed just about every Sun. except when the Cowboys are playing.
Because my position is a volunteer post we are required through the diocese to take what's called Safe Environment Training. Because of the numerous accounts of innapropriate behavior with children and young adults in years past this training was required by all employees and volunteers of the church starting in 2002. I've taken the course a few years ago and was due to update my training. I was kind of putting it off thinking that it was a silly course for me to take since I really don't have any interaction with children or youths.
So I finally took the class. It was a 3 hour course which included lunch. All I have to say is that everyone I know should take this class. One of the reasons given for making this mandatory is that the more eyes and ears you have looking for stuff the better. Just because you don't interact with youth doesn't mean you aren't among them, especially during a church or school function. The presentation included video interviews from incarcerated sex offenders. It gave you all the things they would do to lure and gain trust in these young children. The second part included appropriate behavior when dealing with young people, boundaries, warning signs, how to teach our children how to communicate, monitoring, training and reporting. As you know abuses occur everywhere not just in our churches and schools. Abusers have many faces male and female alike. The statistics are staggering. The more educated we all are the less chance these people are able to abuse. Please teach your children the correct names of their body parts as soon as they can understand. How do you expect a child to tell you something bad has happened to them if they don't have a name for the part of their body that has been violated.
Maybe you don't volunteer at church or school but if it's possible consider taking one of these classes if it's offered.
In closing, 1 out of 4 females and 1 out of 8 males will be abused. While I was sitting in the room with all these adults I wondered which ones were the victims and how hard this class must have been. Well I got my answer. As I was leaving the church grounds I had a short conversation with a woman I know by face only. I told her how glad I was that they made me take this course and how much I had learned. She told me how hard it was to take the class because she was a victim of child abuse but was happy that this course was finally available.
Knowledge Is Power
Sermon over.

Dave's Montana Backpack trip to Glacier Park

Here's a few pics of Dave's trip with a couple of friends to Glacier Park. They had a great trip and as you can see there was snow on the ground in places. They packed Sun.- Wed. and were gone the week of July 19th -25th 2008. One thing Dave mentioned was that he had to sleep with ear plugs most nights. The campsites were surrounded by waterfalls and they made quite a bit of noise. That's one thing that doesn't get quiet when the sun goes down. The guys had to get permits for each campsite since there were limited campsites sites at each stop. The scenery is breath taking and rivals any set of mountains in the world. Fortunately the weather was agreeable. One night of rain but most days were in the 80's and 90's with nights in the 50's. Dave used a tarp as a shelter. He said it worked really well except for the night of rain when he left a boot sticking out a little bit.
Now Dave is cruising the internet trying to find a way to make his pack lighter.

Working for Peterbilt 25 Years

June 13th 1983 Dave started his first job after graduating Chico State University. We moved from Chico to Fremont California. We were married almost 1 year and I was pregnant 7 1/2 months. We didn't know a soul and the closest family was 3 1/2 hours away. So how do you get to know people? You join every sport that the Peterbilt employees participated in. That consisted of Bowling and Softball. Not the typical sports you imagine Dave doing. But it worked and we are still in contact with quite a few of those friends that he made during those first years at Peterbilt.
I still remember asking the apartment manager where the nearest lake was. Dave and I were used to Lakes like Shasta, Oroville and Butt Lake where we would going water skiing. The manager gave us directions to the lake that was just down the road. We were really excited. We thought ,"wow this is great we can get to a lake in 5 minutes." So off we go to the lake. I mean pond. It was only big enough to paddle a canoe or sail a 1 man boat. What a disapointment. So started our new adventure in a new town with a new job. Now we're in Texas and Dave's still with Peterbilt now 25 years. Great thing is the lakes here are huge and 20 minutes away.

The Scent of our Grandma

Living in Texas one of the first things you notice are the names they give family members here. I'm sure you've heard at least one of them Bubba, Nanna, Pawpaw, Grannie, Poppie. The list goes on. In our family it's always been grandma or grandpa, followed by whatever their last name was. I'm not sure how I will handle the name my grandchildren will give me but I think it will be hard for me to be called Grandma Neves. Or maybe when they do call me grandma the little darlings will just melt my heart. Hopefully by then I won't care what they call me as long as they call me something nice.
But Grandma McDonald it was and will be forever.
When I asked my girls some of their favorite memories of visiting Grandma and Grandpa McDonald they had 2 favorites and especially I share one of those memories with them as well. The morning after we would arrive in Mont. we would wake up to the smell of freshly cooked bacon. There were either eggs or pancakes or both to go along with that but bacon reminds the girls of Grandma. The other one was the mini bikes. Hours upon hours of mini bike riding with their cousins up and down the lane. I remember the male bonding going on in the garage as the men would fix the mini bikes.
For me smell is the thing that draws me home to Mont. memories. The smell of freshly caught trout cooking on a cast iron skillet. That stinky stuff Grandma used to put on every evening after her bath. I'm not even sure what it was called, maybe witch hazel. The smell of grease on grandpa after he had been in the old barn at the old ranch fixing a tractor. The smell of water running down a ditch after Grandma had put in a new dam. The smell of hay being baled while sitting on the tractor fender with Grandma. The smell of petunias and coffee grounds. Grandma would ask me to take the coffee grounds to the petunia bed and spread them around the flowers. The prettiest petunias you'd ever see. The smell of wet dirt falling off a carrot from the garden. And bacon. Thick juicy chewy bacon. The kind you have to go to the butcher for now with the rind. Whether it was for breakfast, lunch or dinner the house smelled really good when there was bacon cooking. So Grandma thanks for the memories and especially, Thanks for the bacon.
We love and miss you.

They're Back

Well Julia and Lee have been here now since the 16th of May. Plans are to return to England Jun. 26th. We took Lee to the lake so we could teach him how to wakeboard. That boy never gave up. He just kept saying "one more time". We must have pulled him up 60 times trying to get him up. Dave, Julia and Lee went out the following day and he finally got it. Where was the camera when you needed it? Left at home.
We went out again on Memorial Day Weekend and the wind was blowing pretty hard and there eventually were a lot of boats on the water making waves. Wake boarding was not a good sport that day but we tubed and knee boarded instead. I did get a water ski run in before the water got chopped up. We took the boat into a cove and just hung out for awhile and sunbathed. It really was relaxing and felt great to veg out and watch the big white puffy clouds go by. Lee is a little reluctant to hang out in the water. Someone has been telling him stories of huge fish that swim in the Lake called Gar.
This weekend we ended up going to College Station, Tx to watch Dave's nephew Derrick play baseball in the College World Series Regional Playoffs. His team is the University of Illinois at Chicago. The trick was trying to figure out which game to attend since you never know when a pitcher gets thrown into the lineup. His first game was Fri. night against Texas A&M. It didn't turn out to well and Derrick ended up pitching and A&M continued to hit and score. If you know anything about pitchers they usually don't pitch 2 games in a row sometimes 3 games go by before they pitch again. Lucky for us he only pitched 1 inning on Fri. so the outlook was good that he'd pitch again either Sat. or Sun. To make a long story short we drove to College station Sat. morning watched his team beat the #2 seed Dallas Baptist and got to watch him pitch 4 innings of the Univ. of Houston game Sun. which they lost in extra innings 14-11. It was a great weekend . Dave's sister and husband Terry were there so we had a family weekend after all.
The wedding invitation business is still busy and thankfully I've had a couple of breaks in between so I could spend time with Julia and Lee.
Adeena is busy with her boyfriend Will these days . She couldn't join us in College Station because she had a prior commitment to floating the Guadalupe river with friends. She just returned from a trip to Ca. where she spent most of her time visiting the Neves side of the family.
That's all for now. The kids are off to Fl. tomorrow so it'll be quiet for awhile.