My late husband, Chuck taught me how to make the best enchiladas ever. When he was a single parent he would make pans of these for his son’s football team. They are Tex Mex flavor as opposed to Mexican authentic.
Enchiladas
The ingredients I use are as follows: ground beef: Frwnch’s Chili Mix, corn tortillas, cheese, and onions. I also top the dish with green onions.
Brown the beef. Add tomatoe sauce and Chili mix
Roll shredded cheese and oniins in tortillas. Place on a layer of chili and then top with chili, cheese and green onions. Bake at 400 with pan covered by foil.
Eat them up. I serve with spanish rice. This is easy and good. Let me know what you think.
So, I did not create anything from my recipe books tonight. Wednesday is church night so I take myself out for dinner. Tonight, I ate chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, cream gravy and seasoned green beans. I then had a roll to sop up all the gravy. I do not know how many of you have ever had chicken fried steak, but it is the bomb. It is a very Southern food treasure.
Chicken fried steak is a tenderized steak that has been breaded and deep fried. The steak is very tender, and the crust is very crunchy and deep fried to a golden brown. The sides are usually always mashed potatoes and green beans and white gravy. It is plated with the gravy covering the mashed potatoes and steak. The beans are usually in a bowl, so they do not get the crust on the steak soggy.
Chicken fried steak holds special memories for me. My mother worked the night shift as a nurse at the hospital and on Sundays my father was responsible for taking care of us while she slept. He would take us to church on Sunday mornings and then out to lunch. One of our favorite places to eat was the Lone Star Drive Inn. It was a restaurant and they had miniature jukeboxes at each table. We would often get chicken fried steak for lunch. That was a sweet memory.
Another memory of mine is eating chicken fried steak at a BBQ joint in East Texas. The name of the restaurant was The Drip Shed. The chicken fried steak would cover the entire plate. They made a special gravy that I was never able to duplicate. I made friends with the owner, and she shared her secret recipe with me. She told me to add a teaspoon of white sugar to the gravy. Since that day I have added a spoon full of sugar to my cream gravy. Everyone tells me they do not know how I make it taste so good. I tell them it takes lots of practice. LOL
My sister would always order a DQ Dude at the Dairy Queen. It is a steak sandwich which is made with a chicken fried steak. I would eat steak sandwiches at Griff’s Burger Bar when I worked there during my high school years. When I was pregnant with my third child, I would visit the local Sonic Drive Inn and order the steak sandwich that I had a pregnancy craving for.
So, you see, a good chicken fried steak is a wonderful southern comfort food for me. I totally enjoyed the night off from cooking.
Welcome to the Overstreet Farm. This is a picture of my bull. His name is Cupcake. In December I had to purchase Cupcake because my old bull was unable to service my female cows properly. If a bull or husband for that matter does not perform his duties or hops fences to join other females, he is usually sent to the sale barn. The old bull had to go. Cupcake has been performing very well. The girls are always smiling.
This is a picture of Julia. She was the first cow born on the farm from my herd. Her coat is getting a little, gray or thin. I believe this may be her last season. I will miss her if she is sent to live at a better farm than this one. I tell myself this story when I take a cow to the sale barn. They are always going to live at a much better farm than this one. It helps me in my denial..
Say hello to Milky Way. She is Julia’s daughter. She is a sweet little thing.
Say Hello to Hershey’s Kiss. She is the daughter of Milky Way and granddaughter of Julia.
These are my three black cows. Their names are Bulla, Bertha and No. 42.
I have a great feeling that these ladies are with cow. (Get it, like with child. Hehe He) Gestational period on cows is like that of women, around nine months. If I am incorrect, please feel free to correct me on this. I am new to ranching and was raised in the city. That is probably why all my cows have names. I think the girls will probably be giving birth sometime in September. I am so very excited. Baby calves give new life to a place. I will keep everyone updated.
I love to cook. Recently I cleared out my study and found that I have shelves of cookbooks that I have never used before. I decided that I would try a recipe a day or every other day or once a week or something along those lines.
So, my recipe for tonight was Hot Crabmeat Appetizer from the cookbook, “Back of the Box Gourmet” by Michael McLaughlin. I had most of the ingredients but did have to make a special trip to the store for horseradish. I was so excited. I was fond of most of the ingredients. I came home from work and put the recipe together. I had been thinking about it all day at work.
Well, it was not as I had planned. I never thought I would dislike Crab dip. The texture was something that I could just not tolerate. Hot Crab dip sucks.
I gave my daughter this orchid a few years ago. I love orchids and can never get them to grow properly. I try to repot them, and they always die. They never rebloom for me. Her’s is thriving. She says to forget about it and let it do its thing.
My mother loved orchids. When she was in the nursing home, she asked me to always make sure she had a fresh blooming orchid. I did just that. When the blooms fell off, I would take them home and get her one that was blooming. She was a green thumbed woman if I ever met one.
My daughter is so much like my mother. She has things I see in her daily that remind me of my mother. I am proud to see the orchids blooming again.
I got up this morning around four in the morning. I got myself dressed and ready for the day. I went to the hospital to see Chuck. When I got there they turned me away. That was the last time a went to see Chuck until the day I held him in my arms as he took his dying breath
Hi guys. I am back. I had to take some time off to recompose myself. I lost my sweetheart of a husband, Chuck, to liver failure along with complications from covid. It was a very sad time. I still have moments of grief. I guess I always will.
Just like a good book, our lives have many chapters. I am here to start a new chapter. I am in a life stage of self-discovery. I am very excited to see what I find out about myself.
I have started a practice of keeping a top 100 list. I spend about 30 to 45 minutes writing down a list of 100 ideas of things I would like to do, see, have, be or accomplish. This list can be very random. It is brainstorming. The list can even include the impossible. I do not grade myself on the accomplishments. When I complete one, I add a new one to the list. My list forever changes. Life is always in flux. I guess you could say that my book is never ending. It is like my list has ADHD, just like me.
I also make a daily to do list. It would be great if my daily list helps accomplish my bigger goals. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. It’s not like I have anyone to answer to except for myself. One thing on my daily list was to start up on this blog again. I love it. I am not sure if my life is exciting enough for anyone else to read about but maybe it is. LOL.
I do not know why I wake up at 5 in the morning. I need all the rest I can get. The past three weeks have been very stressful. I am ready to start sharing my story. I feel this is a story that should be written down. It is full of emotions and I do need some form of an outlet. My audience shall be my counselor. I think that writers become very vulnerable when they express such raw emotions. That is what helps them be good at what they do. Taking that leap of faith is hard. My writing will be at times random and all over the place. That is because my brain is doing the same thing.
My husband Chuck is in the hospital. About three weeks ago he had a meltdown. He told someone that he knew I was having an affair and they better tell him who it was because he was going to go kill them. I have been going to work at my new job around five in the morning, I got this job so I could pay for Chucks medication. Chuck also feels a need to grocery shop every other day. He also consumes large amounts of Diet Coke. He also likes to eat out. The lifestyle is expensive. Chuck has become increasingly non-compliment with budget cuts in our home. I had a system. I would give him meds in the morning and he would be ok until I came home around 4 in the afternoon. One day at work he called me at work over 30 times telling me he was sick and needed to go to the hospital. He was threatening suicide. I am not having an affair. I adore Chuck. Even if I was tempted, which I am not, I have no time in my world for such a thing.
I did not take that lightly. I had taken him to the ER two days earlier for suicidal and homicidal comments. They did not have any available rooms and set us up in the hallway. After a while they found us a room. I was told that they were swamped and really did not have the facility to treat suicidal patients. With COVID their hospital was at capacity. A clinician interviewed Chuck via Skype and the iPad and it was determined that Chuck was not a threat to himself or to anyone else. We were sent home.
Two days later I took him to a larger hospital. They determined he needed care at a physchological facility. He was in there for two weeks. I was not allowed to visit him.He was not allowed his telephone. I would call him daily on a phone that did not work half the time. I noticed a decline in Chuck’s speech pattern. I was scheduled to get him out on a Thursday. That morning I went to work. I would work that morning and take off early to pick him up at 2 in the afternoon. I was excited to get my husband home. On the way to work I got a call from our daughter. She told me Chuck had been taken to the ER downtown Fort Worth. He had fallen and had been having seizures. That was the last day I worked.
Now Chuck has been at the downtown hospital for over three weeks. He has been put in restraints because he became aggressive with me and the nurses trying to find opportunities to escape. He is not allowed to get up to go to the bathroom because he may fall. He is on four different seizure medications. It is heart reaching.
They were ready to move him to a skilled nursing facility so he could get stronger. We tried removing the restraints because he could not go to a facility if they were on. He did not pass the test and became aggressive again. So they were going to move him to a physc ( I can’t spell) but he has to be medically sound to be able to do that. His ammonia levels are elevated. They are not able to get them down. This is an indicator of liver disease. Now I believe he is going to be treated for liver failure.
I put this all I God’s will. it is not like I have any control. I pray for God to make this easiest for Chuck and for him to either heal him or to take him. I do not wish to see him suffer in this manner. I am also selfish and do not want him to be taken from me.
So I am up at 5:30 getting ready to start another day of going to the hospital and seeing what God has in store for us. Chuck is the love of my life and I miss him terribly. Please pray for us to have strength through this trial.
Chuck has been in the hospital for almost a month now. He has been very depressed and has been having seizures. He is in a great hospital. They are trying to find the cause of all of this.
They are now realizing his ammonia levels are very high. He may have liver damage. This will be a journey. Please pray for our family.
