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The crisp air, ever changing temperatures and moments of utter silence are among many of the reminders that I am home. It has been two years since I packed up my car and left for Austin, Texas and although I miss it dearly it is so nice to be back. I am looking forward to contributing more to our ranch and business. In the words of a cowboy, I am happy to be riding for my own brand.

For the past two weeks, I found myself in a familiar position, taking care of the ranch while the bosses were away. Craig and Liza Jane headed East to congratulate James in his graduation from Officer Candidate School. He is now Lieutenant James Nash of the United States Marines and we are proud and thankful for him.

Meanwhile back at the ranch everything was going quite well. I had quickly discovered that other than my whisking and stirring muscles, I had lost a lot of my strength in my time away from ranching chores. Chopping firewood and cleaning ditches proved to be a lot harder than I had remembered. I can only imagine what I looked like when I put all of my back, shoulder, hip, chin and fingers into lifting the one hundred pound grass hay bales onto the back of the pick up. There was sure a lot of huffing and puffing, but after day three or four I felt like I was back in action. It was around day six out of ten I began daydreaming about being the ranchhand hero who had taken care of all the various animals and land without any disasters, when disaster struck.

The second to last pasture I had to feed that morning was the pasture with the mature bulls. There were 26 of them and they get two bales of grass hay, I reminded myself while I hopped out of the truck to walk down and open the gate. The sound of gravel caused me to turn around and helplessly watch as the truck rolled quickly into the barrow pit. As I scrambled to jump into the vehicle I could hear Craig's advice in my head "be sure to push the emergency brake all the way down and even then don't count on it working." By the time I had stopped the vehicle, the damage was done. I had flattened a good portion of fence and caused a considerable amount of scratching and denting to the front of Craig's pick up.

So what does a girl do? I slammed it into four wheel drive and backed my way out of the ditch taking with me a certain amount of dirt and gravel. Then I drove through the open gate to feed to bulls in order to distract them from their most recent escape opportunity. Fixing the fence was something I knew how to do, given the right tools, and after a couple of hours it didn't look too bad.

To fix the truck, I made a pie. Delivering a fresh pie to one of the local mechanics got the bumper tacked back on and licence plate border straightened and screwed back in. It was not fixed but it looked much better. I used a similar tactic to tell Craig. I told him over dinner, a comfort food dinner. And? Well I am still here to tell the story. Never underestimate the power of a good meal.

The recipe is listed below.

Cheers!



Soothing French Dip



Start with a grass fed corriente sirlion roast, seasoned generously with salt and black pepper. Place the roast into an appropriate sized roasting pan on top of large diced vegetables that have been washed and tossed in salt water. I like to used one yellow onion, two carrots, two celery stems, three cloves of garlic and two stems of fennel stalk.

Place in a pre heated oven at 425 without a lid for 20 minutes. Turn the temp. to 200 and cook for 8-10 hours. After 4-5 hours add four cups of beef stock to the pan and add a lid to the pan.

Remove the meat and strain the vegetables while reserving the juice. This will be your au jus.

Thinly slice one yellow onion and add to saute pan over medium heat with one tablespoon of butter. Cook until golden brown, adding water to pan if onions begin to burn or stick to the bottom. This will take about 20 minutes.

Toast sliced french bread in the oven with a small amount of butter on each slice.

Add freshly grated horseradish and lemon juice to three tablespoons of mayonnaise.

Create the sandwhiches layering the bread, mayonnaise, meat, onions, mayonnaise and bread. Serve with a small cup of pan au jus.