Farm Girl Special

Farm Girl is now on sale, for the first time since it was released in 2007! Anyone who wants to take advantage of this price go to the WiDo website and scroll down until you see the Farm Girl cover. The sale price of $5.95 is available through Paypal.

And while you are waiting for your copy to arrive in the mail, you can get the tone and feel of the book by watching the Farm Girl You Tube video, featuring the music of Johnny Cash and Fiona Apple. And if you like it, I do hope you will leave a comment on the You Tube site :)

Enjoy!

The Six Hour Salad of Deliciousness

My mother in law had a Mexican Salad that she always made when visiting our home. Our kids loved loved loved it. So in honor of a special son's special birthday yesterday I wanted to make the Super Mexican Salad. As bad luck would have it, I went in and bought ingredients the day after produce prices shot through the roof. Never in my life have I bought a head of iceberg lettuce for $2.69. But I bought three of them this time because this son has been through some rough patches and I wanted to make this birthday dinner memorable.

This salad takes about six hours of preparation, most of which is in preparing the produce. Washing, cutting, chopping, peeling, yadayadayada. Are you just dying to know what's in it?

Grandma Gowen's Mexican Salad

1-2 lb. ground beef prepared with taco seasoning. Let cool while you mix up the vegetables, etc.

Iceberg lettuce, broken into pieces
purple cabbage, sliced fine
grape or cherry tomatoes
red onion slices,
black and green olives, whole
artichoke hearts
fresh sliced mushrooms
grated carrots
avocados, cut into rough pieces
red kidney beans
black beans
grated cheddar cheese
other options: baby corn or kerneled corn, sprouts, jicama, or anything else you think will go with it

Toss all these ingredients together. Right before serving add 1-2 bags Spicy Nacho Dorito chips, smashed in the bag into bite size pieces. Toss and pour in a bottle of Wishbone Italian dressing, amount to taste. I made a huge amount of salad for 12 adults, with 2 lbs. ground beef, 3 heads lettuce, 6 cans beans (you get the picture), 2 bags chips. I only used one bottle of dressing and wished I had used two.

Although everyone said it was delicious and snarfed it down fast. And the birthday boy had a smile on his face.

Just a little hint?

Looking through some paperwork from my mom's I came across this email she had printed up and saved. It was written back in Dec. 15, 1997 by my then eleven year old son. (I left in his original grammar and spelling)--

Dear grand parents,

how are you?

Mom and dad are trying to make us guess the Christmas presant you sent do you want to give me a little hint?

I hope you are having a good time in illinois. I like it there, do you?

Love,

sean

p.s. just a little hint

Scanning Old Photos into the Computer

You see the "swimming pool" photo from the previous post? This was taken from a tiny Brownie camera shot, a little 3 x 4 photo of the kind that goes into photo albums. It scanned beautifully and looks better than the original. Same with the picture at the top of my blog.

Currently my husband and his sister are on a scanning binge. She and her husband have brought boxes and piles of old family photos over to our house so that the three of them can spend all day in my husband's office scanning them into the computer. It's time-consuming but the results are pretty cool. With the click of a mouse, original photographs can be shared among those interested.

When Farm Girl was being put together, century-old photos were scanned in and became part of the published book. I've included a few on my sidebar here. They look good displayed like this, but the originals are much smaller and somewhat shabby after years of being saved in boxes. Being able to scan them preserves them for the ages. And it's a simple matter to then download them to a thumb drive and take them to Walgreens or Costco to get new prints made.

 Just one more way that computer technology enriches our lives!