Smothered burritos

In other news, I finally figured out what to do with El Pinto green chile sauce and how to make New Mexico-style-tasting smothered burritos - two questions that have been afflicting me pretty much since I got married and left New Mexico. Afflicting, I tell you. And they're wonderful - the burritos, not the affliction. Anyway, this recipe doesn't even heat up the house in the summer, which is nice.

To make them, you will need:

1 mostly-full jar of El Pinto green chile sauce
1/2 lb hamburger
1/2 lb sausage (like Jimmy Dean, not like kielbasa)
1 onion, chunked
flour tortillas, fajita size
1 can refried beans
grated cheddar

Fry together the hamburger, sausage, and onion until cooked through. Warm up the refried beans so they're easier to work with. Spray a crock pot. On one side of a tortilla, layer refried beans, a spoonful of green chile sauce, and some meat. Fold in both ends, and then roll up the burrito from the end with the goody. Put it seam-side down in the crock pot. Repeat. After you've got a layer of burritos, spread a little more green chile sauce over the tops, and cheese if you like. Continue until you're out of meat, tortillas, or room in the crock pot. To finish, spread them very generously with cheese and turn on the crock pot until it's all melted.

As I said, they're pretty much wonderful. I bet this would be a good meal to take for a potluck, too.

An introvert goes to church

"I am fairly certain that even if you could give me a million years worth of Sunday morning gatherings, I would still never connect significantly with anyone in them."

I like the article by Rachel Starr Thomson. She's so right: Sunday morning meet-and-greet time is not conducive to meaningful fellowship for us introverted types. She's also right: doing a job, or going to a retreat, or making an effort in other ways is totally worth it. Personally, I like weekly small groups.

Which reminds me: I need to decide if I want to teach Sunday school this fall, or set up coffee, or what...

We rode the ferry from Jamestown to Scotland

We really did. You didn't know you could take a ferry from Jamestown all the way to Scotland in half an hour, did you? Of course, it helps if it's Scotland, Virginia. :-)














The birds congregated on the pier.













No consumption of alcohol. No smoking.

On the way to the ferry, we stopped at the beach. It was a wonderful beach. There were rocks and trees and sand, and pretty shells. I took lots of pictures and Jonathan built a sand castle, with a gate and towers and a White Tree of Gondor smack in the center.

We also rescued someone's orange Frisbee from the water and made an imitation sunset. If nobody claimed it, I was going to give it a good home; but somebody did.

It was a really lovely day.

True happiness, Meggie-style

Meg's new favorite toy is paper. Yesterday I had to rescue two sheets of guitar chords and a map from her cute little grasp. Today, as I was cleaning out my magazine pile, I tossed a couple her direction.

She picked up a photography magazine, selected the third page from the back, ripped it out, and started chewing. Bliss.

Mila's daydreams

This blog is just too fabulous. What is her baby dreaming about?

...Look and see.

Hat tip: Design Mom.

The smell of summer

Dad photographed this mushroom-stand just after a rain at Rabbit Ridge, across from the Valle Caldera in New Mexico. You can see droplets still trickling down that green leaf. Aren't they delicate, dainty little fungi? His photography impresses me.

Here in Richmond, just before dinner, we had quite the thunderstorm, with downpours, power outages, fried internet, the works. Meg (miraculously) slept through it all. Jonathan dodged dead stoplights and fallen trees on the road home, and I had to light a candle to find the peanut butter.

Summer smells like wet air after a rain, and it tastes like peaches, bacon, and coffee. I'm excited because for breakfast tomorrow, we actually have all three of those. The peaches are even sliced already.

Eureka - season 4, episode 3

In Eureka 4.2 last week, mostly we watched the characters grapple with their new situation. Deputy Andy (the robot sheriff from a previous season) figured out that they'd been in the forties, but his memory got wiped, so it was still a secret. The five travelers decided to keep it that way.

They posted Eureka 4.3 today. Spoilers ahead! Fargo got to celebrate his (parallel) ascension to lab directorship by dealing with an enraged zombie infestation, but unfortunately, he got zombified too. So did Jo, but she held it together quite well, considering. She not only didn't kill Zane several times, but her last action before losing her mind completely was to handcuff herself to a pillar so she wouldn't accidentally kill anyone else. I love Eureka. She did pull a gun on Jack, but no harm, no foul, I guess? Jack did, incidentally, save the world again, with Tess and Allison's help.

We got further confirmation that Henry's parallel wife is awesome. Grace pulled a really great prank on Henry and Dr. Grant and made all their tools disappear as they touched them. They were convinced they'd ruined time-space somehow and were sending pliers and screwdrivers back to the forties. It's hard to do, but every single scene she's in confirms that she's just right for him. I love it. Dr. Grant even teased him about developing a crush on his wife. Henry's in good shape if they never make it back.

I was so proud of Jack! He ended the episode by breaking up with Tess. I hadn't expected the writers would let him deal with that for several more episodes. He did it really well, and told her that they shouldn't move in together (so true, for so many reasons), that he knew that job in Australia would be perfect for her, and that she'd be really happy there. He may have even managed it so as not to have a mortal enemy for the next few episodes, but I wouldn't bank on it.

Scary things

Meg has officially reached mobility. She's been pretty active for a while. The other day, for instance, I was lying on the floor of her room trying to nap, and she would roll into the desk, wail, roll back my direction and kick me, roll off into a corner, wail, and come back and kick me some more. It was not a successful nap, though it was pretty funny. Then last night while we ate dinner, she amused herself by rolling around the kitchen floor and finding things she oughtn't have, like dryer sheets and paper towels, which she shredded very efficiently.

But today she showed off for Kay by sitting up - not remaining when put into a sitting position, but actually going from lying down to sitting up - and none of us even saw it happen. ("Jonathan, did you sit her up? Kay, did you? Well, I didn't either!") We think she went through a kind of sideways crunch and then rolling up to do it. And not ten minutes later, she made her first official hands-and-knees, forward-motion, crawl. It was only one step - but crawling it was.

So I had a mild meltdown this evening. She was sitting up, holding a plastic comb like a guitar, and chattering/singing away to herself, and I just slightly lost it.

To top it off, Wal-Mart was out of baby gates. Uh-oh.

Slimming my closet

Meggie and I went shopping yesterday with a friend, and I found an adorable blouse. It's tomato red with cream polka dots, short puffed sleeves, and a V-neck with a dainty Peter Pan collar. It looks exactly like a forties or fifties garden party. And it was on really good clearance - even better than the tag claimed. Happiness!

I was especially excited because it qualified as the "cute top I can dress up or down" that was on my List for the fall. Items like "khaki pants" might be hard to find, but at least they're straightforward, but a really great shirt is elusive. What with changing sizes post-Meggie, my small closet, normal wearing-out-as-garments, and just trying to be organized and thrifty, I'm trying to make my wardrobe streamlined and really awesome. I don't want fifty boring sweaters. I want a few perfect pieces so I'll look fabulous at all times!

In that context, I was interested to come across this article in the New York Times about "shopping diets" and the "six items or less" project. Basically, a bunch of people are deciding for one reason or another that they have entirely enough clothes. Some decide not to buy anything for a year, and others want to see if they can wear six items or fewer for a whole month. Not only can they... but their near and dear don't even notice!

I think this is culturally a very healthy impulse. Interestingly, they found that modern clothes don't hold up well under that kind of frequent wear. The lady interviewed mentioned that as a challenge to clothes makers. I'm reminded of Tom Sawyer, whose Sunday best was referred to as his "other clothes," from which you learned the size of his wardrobe.

Readers, do you have a wardrobe plan or fall shopping list? What's on it?

To think that I should live to see this day!

"A Christian endeavor of almost 2,000 years could be substantially completed by 2025. Protestant translators expect to have the Bible - or at least some of it - written in every one of the world's 6,909 living languages." Read the full Denver Post article here.

Talk about high adventure. Talk about projects worth doing. Talk about prophecies being fulfilled. Come soon, Lord Jesus.


Hat tip to Brandywine Books. They find the coolest news, seriously.