Buddy's Ancestor?

Jerry enjoys reading True West Magazine. They always have interesting stories and really great pictures from the old west. I was looking through his latest copy yesterday and came across this picture in a story about Indian scouts in Arizona and New Mexico.

Our dog, Buddy, looks just like the dog on the left!! He would look even more like him if we hadn't been brushing him for the past two months trying to get all his extra winter coat off.

I thought that was pretty cool! :)

Gazpacho

The first time I had gazpacho I was in my early 20s and on a date with my soon to be husband (now ex). He took me to a nice seafood restaurant on the pier in Redondo Beach, CA. Being a girl from Kansas whose parents had pretty simple tastes, I had never even heard of gazpacho and cold soup, why that was just WRONG! Well, it was one of the best things I had ever eaten. :) Seeing as how it wasn't something that my now-ex would ever willingly eat, that was the last time I had gazpacho for many, many years.

Fast forward 30 years (yep, I'm getting old!). We stopped for lunch after the Farmers' Market a couple of weeks ago and it was so hot that all I wanted was a salad and maybe some soup. When the waitress told me they had gazpacho, I promptly ordered it. I gotta tell you, for our little town, we have some pretty good restaurants. The gazpacho was good but kind of reminded me of "thin" salsa. Since then, I've been on a mission to find a good recipe. I recently remembered that Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman, has a recipe for gazpacho in her new cookbook "The Pioneer Woman Cooks - Food From My Frontier" so I decided to give it a try. I highly suggest you give it a try too!!

I did a couple of things differently, I omitted the celery because I didn't have any, I used salad shrimp instead of grilled shrimp (the rest will be used for Cowboy Ceviche later in the week), I used Clamato instead of tomato juice which I thought paired well with the shrimp, and I omitted the chopped hard boiled egg as a garnish. You can find Ree's recipe here.

All of the vegetables I used came fresh from the Farmers' Market Saturday but if you are lucky enough to have a garden that is actually producing, it would be even better! And just so you know, Jerry thought this was excellent (after being initially skeptical) and just the thing for supper on a hot summer day! :)
Linking up with Heidi for The Country Garden Showcase.
P.S. My blogging buddy Nancy at Little Homestead In Boise is doing a giveaway to celebrate her one-year Blogiversary! Hop on over and sign up, she's giving away some really cool stuff!

Sunday Photo - Cactus Flowers

I took these pictures a couple of weeks ago. All the flowers are gone from the cactus now and the fruit are starting to ripen. If I have the time, and the javelina don't get them all, I will make some prickly pear jam this year from the prickly pear fruit. :)


Cholla



Prickly Pear



Cholla


I had a little fun editing this next one. I have been practicing the spot color technique in Pixlr. I lightened the desaturate overlay to 75%.

Linking up with Madge for Weekly Top Shot Jan for Straight Out Of the Camera Sunday and Nancy for Your Sunday Best.

Rural Thursday - 06/21/2012

Here is another nice old building from the Mescal movie set. The structure in front is a movie prop "well", there is absolutely no depth to it! ;-) This picture has been edited with pixlr-o-matic. Linking up with Lisa and Nancy for Rural Thursday.

Baking for the Farmers' Market has been taking up a lot of my time this week and I have fallen a bit behind in my blog reading but hope to get caught up with everyone here in the next few days! :)

Garden Update - 06/18/2012

The only exciting thing happening around here garden-wise is the Echinacea has started blooming! :)
In the vegetable garden, everything is doing okay. The tomatoes have started blooming, the pepper plants are doing well, the bush beans are growing, the strawberries are blooming again, the pumpkin plants are growing nicely, my last surviving eggplant plant is making a recovery from being munched on, and I FINALLY got some summer squash seeds to germinate without the birds digging them up first!
Linking up with Mosaic Monday, Macro Monday and The Country Garden Showcase this week.

Sunday Photo - Gladiolus

My girlfriend brought me some cut gladioluses?/gladioli?/glads? from her garden the other day. The colors were just so beautiful that I wanted to share them with all of you!
This picture was edited with Nancy's free Spring Fever texture. Thanks Nancy! :)
Sharing with Madge for Weekly Top Shot and Nancy for Your Sunday Best.

Gone Fishin'

Jerry and I went fishing today at Patagonia Lake State Park. What a beautiful place! It is our favorite fishing spot. It gets to be quite noisy and congested on the weekends and holidays but early on a Thursday morning, it was very peaceful and lovely. :)
We only caught two bluegill but it was still worth the drive of a little over an hour just to get away. I hate to admit it but I had never cleaned a fish before. When we got home, I found a wonderful YouTube video on how to clean and fillet small panfish here. I highly recommend checking it out! We had a few worms left over and some very happy chickens when we got home!

In addition to the peace and quiet and fishing, there were ducks looking for a bite to eat amongst the reeds.

A VERY cheeky squirrel with a broken tail. Jerry couldn't resist the little guy and gave him a piece of bread.

And it wouldn't be a proper fishing spot without the ever popular Bobber Berry Tree! We counted at least six. ;-)

I'm happy to report that we did NOT add to the decorations, at least this time!
Linking up with the Rural Thursday Blog Hop, stop by and check out what everyone is up to! :)