Company Girls Coffee

Reading about all the ice storms there in Texas with Rachel Anne and seeing these pictures that my aunt sent:










makes the fact that the ice cream truck came through our neighborhood last night seem a little extra odd.  It's weird enough that it was too hot in the summer for him to come through each day but that he comes through in the twilight evening of winter with such storms going on across the country--someone's a little confused. . .and it's not me this time!

We are a family of thinkers and philosophers and last night an interesting question came up.  Eddy was getting ready for bed and Heidi stole his jammie pants.  We couldn't find the pants.  And then it hit me:  why are they called pants?  It's not like socks or shoes--which obviously have two parts.  Or glasses which come as one but have two pieces of glass.  And if pants are pants why isn't a shirt shirts?  That last statement brings another point--pants are referred to as plural--always:  I say pants are pants,  go get the black pair of pants.  Why?  My husband says it's because we have two legs.  I reminded him that we also have two arms but that a shirt was still a shirt not a pair of shirts--because that would mean 2 shirts.  Then he thought of some other clothing items that were singular but could be plural and the conversation deteriorated rapidly after that.  So anyway, that was the highly intelligent conversation that you missed at our house last night!

This past week we had some delectable foods at our house:

This first one was originally intended to be dessert for Thanksgiving--yes, Thanksgiving!  But we ended up having so many other desserts that we never got around to putting this one together.  The inspiration for this dessert from Tidy Mom.  I forgot where I found the recipe and eventually ended up making the recipe from memory:  crumbled shortbread cookies, pumpkin spice pudding, cool whip, and caramel topping.  I found the pumpkin spice pudding at Walmart during Thanksgiving.  My mom who was buying ingredients couldn't find the pudding at her Walmart.  But now in February I can still buy the pudding at my Walmart--so I did and we had the real thing rather than mixing vanilla pudding and pumpkin from a can--our way to improvise the pumpkin spice pudding;-)   What we did not have was the caramel topping--what was bought during the Thanksgiving season has been eaten along with several desserts along the way!

So I got out the handy dandy Seasons of Refreshing cookbook and found a Caramel Sauce recipe:

Mix all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat.  Serve over puddings, crisps and fruitcake.

1/2 c. sugar

1/2 c. brown sugar

1/2 c. whipping cream OR half-and-half

1/2 c. butter

1 t. vanilla

In true me fashion, I didn't have whipping cream OR half-and-half but found a recipe substitution:  1 c. Cool Whip = 1/2 c. half-and-half!  Believe me, this caramel sauce recipe is so yummy!!!!!

I wasn't sure if the kids would like the pumpkin spice pudding so we had a chocolate option available.  Everyone LoVeD both!  And now that I've re-found the actual recipe, we are going to have this dessert again in the near future because the pecan topping looks out of this world!

Last night for dinner we had meat and cheese burritos, Mexican rice, and pinto beans. 

Here's a super easy recipe for the Taco Seasoned meat:

*brown 1 lb. hamburger with 1/4 c. chopped onion and 1 clove garlic

*drain meat

add and mix well 2 T. chili powder and several dashes hot sauce

*enjoy

and the Mexican rice recipe a friend gave me:

*saute 1/4 c. onion in olive oil over medium heat till translucent
*add 1 c. long grain rice and cook till browned
*add 2 c. water, 1 Mexican chicken bouillon cube, and 1/4 c. tomato sauce and simmer over low heat 20 minutes.

So that's it for yumminess, high falutin'-ness, and weirdness.  Now on to this huge project I'm working on for my husband.  It's taken up every morning for the past week and looks like this afternoon will be occupied as well.  All I can say is please pray for us and then pray some more and some more and some more. . .

Hope you all have a great weekend--'specially those of you with snow!  Wish we could come sledding with you!