The Breakfast of Champions

One thing that I particularly love is camping food. My mom taught me how to cook a really mean dutch-oven chicken, and I can create miracles with a sandwich/pie maker over the right coals. I am an appreciator of a perfectly roasted marshmallow, which in my book has a light tan color and occasional "heat dimples." No charred, flaming mallow for me... Not that I will deny you that if that's what you prefer. Last weekend found me, finally, in West Yellowstone, Montana. It was an overnight trip, too short, and really cold. We camped just outside of town, and bundled up against the freezing night. For some reason, on Saturday night when we got to the campsite, I had no stomach for camping food. What a waste. What a shame. But, after a chilly night, I was rejuvenated and found myself craving s'mores for breakfast. And why not? It does contain 4 major food groups: the carb group, the sugar group, the chocolate group, and the flambe group. So I had the most beautiful s'more for breakfast, shown here:





Please note the lovely, toasty coat of that marshmallow as it oozes out the side... Yummy. And to be perfectly honest, I am not really one for "sweets" and usually one s'more is more that I can handle in one sitting. However, having starved myself of camping food the night before, I developed and insatiable appetite for s'mores in the early morning Montana mountain mist. This led to the creation of what I dubbed "The Toasty Power S'More Breakfast Sandwich." I hereby place a copyright on this recipe. I demand full credit when you partake of this scrumptious treat and it changes your life. The ingredients are as follows:

2 Keebler Fudge Stripe Cookies
1 tablespoon Jif Extra Crunchy Peanut Butter
1 Perfectly Roasted Marshmallow
Optional: an extra slab of chocolate for the chocolate lover in you and for an extra sugar rush

Smear the Chunky Delicious Peanut Butter on the Fudgy Base Cookie, add Extra Energy Chocolate if desired, add the Toasty Tanned Marshmallow, and top with the Crown Cookie.
Your finished product may, if you are lucky, look like this:


The First-Ever "Toasty Power S'More Breakfast Sandwich"


Mmmm... I can't wait to camp again.

For My Wife

My "wife" is leaving RiverWoods at the end of this week. In preparation for our breakup, I have been trying to pick fights with her-- it is a defense mechanism, I suppose. Anyway, one way that I tried to make her mad was to play a few small jokes on her when I was dog-sitting. I chose very small, easily undo-able things (saran-wrapping the toilet, christmas decoration in the living room, moving pictures around). I could have done very mean things, but I didn't. My favorite, though, is seen here:




I think she should have left the antlers. But she didn't. So we are breaking up. Too bad. Divorce is an ugly thing.

Greener Patures

As crazy as the radio commercials make me, the words of the LDS Social Services adoption campaign keep coming to mind: "I'm not giving him up-- I'm giving him more." I have to keep reminding myself of this. Flash the Wonder Horse has moved to a new home. Since losing the property where my horses have always been kept, after entrusting my horses' care to someone who didn't love and attend to them as I would have, and after searching long and hard for the right adoptive home, I finally met April and Joe. Thanks to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, I was put in touch with this lovely family in Southern Utah who have a large pasture with no one to live in it. They wanted to rescue a horse or two, and I happened to have one who needed "more." On Thursday, I drove him to their place, where we all met for the first time. It was beautiful, with big, billowy Utah clouds and belly-deep grass. The pasture is right on a small river, and his new horse friend was there to meet him when he arrived, having arrived just before he did. Flash was excited to see the new surroundings, excited to see the expanse of his new home, and very excited to meet his new family and friends. He was quiet and gentle and the sweet boy that I know him to be. It was a bittersweet moment, knowing he was in "horse heaven," where he will live out the rest of his retirement in the situation I wish I could have given him. He was suddenly noble and beautiful, at peace. I will miss him. Terribly. But I know he is where he was always meant to be.

Enjoying an apple

Meeting his new Girlfriend

Going to the Pasture

Checking out the new digs

Looking towards his future...

A job is a job... Or is it??

I constantly struggle with deciding what to be when I grow up. I have too many interests. I have a short attention span. Lately I have tried to convince myself that a job is a job. It's not life. It's not who you are. It sure is a big part of it. Usually more a part of my life than I would like. If there was a way to NOT go to work every day so that my life could be filled with things I really love like riding my horse in the mountains, traveling, gardening... this list is much longer than the list of jobs I'd like to do. Don't get me wrong. I like my job. I miss it when I'm gone... most of the time. I try to convince myself that I could really do any job, anywhere, if I set my mind to it. I tell myself that as long as I know that I will go home to my "real" life, no day is too long or too hard. Then I wonder if doing the same job in a different place might make it better or worse. I don't know, to be honest. I found a picture from my recent trip to Venice that made me revisit this question. Is a job a job no matter where in the world you do it? I think I will ask our UPS guy next time he makes a delivery here in Provo. From his truck.

Venetian Delivery