Easy Steak Fajitas

I love peppers. I love the colors, the flavors and the added bonus of them being good for you, too. I grow them in my own garden in the summer. At the grocery store I often find packages for stir-fry that have steak strips and already chopped red and green bell peppers. That makes life easy when it starts to heat up around here and staying in the kitchen doing all sorts of prep is not something I feel like doing. So for this supper I pull out one of those stir-fry packages from my freezer stockpile and make an easy supper.

Just heat a couple of tablespoons of butter and a tbsp of olive oil in your skillet and then toss in your steak strips and chopped peppers. I also added in some chopped vidalia onion. I love vidalia onions! We see those in our Northeast stores in the summer.  Put a little brown on your steak and a little caramelizing on your peppers and get a little brown on the bottom of your pan.

Now take out some instant rice and see how many servings you want and pour the proper amount of water into your steak and peppers, deglazing that nice brown stuff off the bottom of your pan. Add in a package of fajita seasoning (or less if that suits your taste) and about a half a cup of some kind of cheese ( your preference). I use whatever I have in the fridge. Sometimes a blend like cheddar and Colby. Stir it up and bring the water to a boil, stir again and then slap on a cover and simmer until the rice is cooked. Eat it as is or roll it into a tortilla with some chopped tomato and enjoy all the free time you'll have left.

Note: You can use beef stock instead of water and add other good things like mushrooms or corn. What I love about recipes is that they can be changed to suit each individual cook. And if you want to make this even faster? Buy one of those packages of Lipton fajita rice.

Victoria Earns The Game ball...Twice

Congratulations to my daughter Victoria for getting awarded the game ball two games in a row! Both times it was for stepping in to pitch when the other pitchers were having a bad day. The very first time Victoria was brought in this season she pitched a 1*2*3 inning. Good work in the circle!  (The photo was Victoria pitching her first season a few years ago)

Making Pretzels

Ingredients:
1 cup water
2 pkgs yeast
2 teaspoon honey
2 1/2 cups milk
1 stick butter
1/2 cup honey
4 teaspoon salt
8 cups flour
 Extra salt for tops

Dissolve yeast in one cup of warm water + 2 tsp of honey.
Melt butter in a saucepan, add milk, honey and stir.
Add yeast mixture to warm melted butter mixture and stir to blend.
In a bowl blend flour and salt and slowly mix into warm butter mixture until a dough forms.
Kneed dough and then set aside to rise for about an hour.
Punch down dough and take about a baseball size portion and roll it out so it's long and thin and form it into a pretzel shape.
Brush each pretzel with an egg wash and then sprinkle with course salt.
Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes.

My New Ford Fiesta

For the first time in my life I have a brand new car! Not a new used care but absolutely new. Technically it's not *my* car since I'm leasing it, but so what? I think of it as mine, all mine!
I got to pick the color: violet/gray. And it has all sorts of great features, like it tells me how many miles I have left to go before the tank is empty. It even tells me what song is playing on the radio. It gets 38mpg on the highway, all the repairs and maintenance and property taxes are covered in the lease payments, and it just plain runs great! Time to head out for a drive

Holy Waxwings!

I put up a bird- feeder last spring and began to see an impressive variety of backyard birds. I'd seen pictures of cedar waxwings and started looking for them in my yard, neighborhood and local parks. No luck. I just never saw this particular bird around town. This morning my husband asked me to look at a bird that was sitting on a wire over the road beyond our driveway. He thought it was a jay but when I glanced out I suspected it might be the elusive waxwing. I rushed for my binoculars and was absolutely stunned. There were waxwings by the dozens!! What a sight! They were sitting all over the wires. What a way to start the day!

Enchiladas!

The Good Times of Summer

My friend and coworker when we visited another friend at her lakeside campsite last August. Another summer is just around the corner with the promise of evening sunsets, leaves rustling in gentle breezes, colorful wildflowers and fun times!