Horns and Dumplings

Today, after running some important errands (Lisa, your presents are on their way!) Noel took me on a field trip. Literally! We drove to a field! Because he had been telling me for WEEKS about the AMAZING COWS. They were so incredible and I had to see them. HAD to. So today, we drove off in search of the most exciting cows on the planet. Ever.

And we found them. He was NOT kidding about the amazingness of these cows.



I have never in my life seen horns like this. These things are like elephant tusks shoved onto a bull's head. I mean FOR REAL. Check this guy out!



He walked with his head lowered, probably because he had 498 tons of horn on top of it. The one on the right in the first photo has a wingspan (hornspan?) of probably 8 feet. WOW.

I guess these are official Texas Longhorns. We thought they were strange, because they aren't really big enough to be meat cows, and I seriously doubt anyone's gonna want to try milking one of these monsters. The horns can be mounted and put on your wall, on the front of your big white cadillac, etc. but they only cost about $300 or so a pair. Not really enough to compensate for the mass of food these guys have to consume. It's a mystery! A big bovine mystery!

(Ok, a quick google search just solved said mystery. Apparently they're Darwinistically naturally adapted to living on rough Texas plains, and provide a new strain of resilient cattle genes to the apparently suffering cattle industry. So there you go. Plus they look cool.)

(Also, yes, thank you, I know that you can't milk a male cow. I'm not that ignorant of farming, thank you very much. I'm just making a point. You wanna get within 10 feet of that beast?)

After our foray into cow culture, we drove home through the evening cool, under a very cloudy sky, and I made homemade chicken & dumplings from my Aunt Pat's recipe!



The recipe made a LOT of this stuff. Thankfully it's a really good recipe! I can put it in a post if anyone's interested.

Rachel (my sis) gave me the most awesome gift several years ago - it's a scrapbook/photo album that she took so much time to put together. She wrote to a bunch of our relatives and friends of the family, as well as my friends all over the country, and asked them to submit a few of their favorite recipes hand-written, along with a photo. So this beautiful book she made is full of photos and recipes going back several generations in my dad's family, my mom's family, even my brother-in-law's family, and friends' old family recipes too. One of the best things about it, that makes it a true family heirloom, is that several of the people in it have died since she put it together, but yet there in the book, preserved for posterity, are their favorite recipes in their own handwriting. Such a wonderful gift.

Anyway, this recipe is from my Aunt Pat (who is still thankfully with us here on Planet Earth!) It turned out SO GREAT.

Unfortunately Noel wasn't feeling well tonight and didn't feel like eating. Fortunately, we have enough leftovers to feed Saskatchewan, so we'll be well-sustained on comfort food for days to come.

After gut-filling comfort food, we had a perusal through a local sales newspaper. There were some real doozies of ads in this paper, and I had to include a few of them.



This ad isn't so strange, except where it was posted in the paper. In the Pets & Livestock section. Not sure what they're trying to say there.

This next one is just CREEPY:



Isn't this...um...sketchy? And skeevy? And....EEEW? And also kinda illegal?

This last one just raises one question: Uh...why bother?



We thought about placing an ad along a similar vein:

Free To Good Home: 11 year old Cocker Spaniel dog. Dead. Great with kids. Does not bite. Good with other dogs. Also free dog house. Just pick up!