City Girl With A Country Soul

Growing up in the heart of South Philly, there was a LOT of opportunity to get into “street” trouble ..

My father was having none of that so from a very young age, my brother and I spent weekends and summers at his family’s 80 acre horse farm upstate. They were family in that “Italian” way .. not blood related but closer then close is close.

I LOVED the farm .. no matter how old you were, there was always something that had to be done and you did it from sun up to sun down.. and when dinner was finished *and if you were still awake* there were bonfires or night rides or fire works… you were outside more then you were in .. in fact, I remember not being ALLOWED IN the house until dinner time! .. some thing a lot of kids today know nothing about .. well, at least my step kids know nothing about that.. or hard work.. or making your own fun.. or a variety of other things that I don’t want to bring myself down thinking of..

I lived and breathed horses.

There’s nothing I loved more as a kid and well into adult hood.. then slapping on my Ariats.. turning the horses out.. mucking stalls.. loading bales of hay on the ‘gator’.. feeding.. grooming.. taking riders out on the trails..

You name it, I loved to do it ..

There were some real characters up there, let me tell you.. and my family led the pack.

ALL of them needed some type of Prozac.. and probably still do!

I’ve lost contact with them after I got divorced. For some reason, they sided with my ex.. probably because he was a mental head just like they are.. and I wasn’t welcome there anymore. It broke my heart and still does. My mother never understood why I would be upset .. she hated it up there. Loathed it. But funny that my mom brought it up a little bit ago when we were looking for a place upstate to move …

Yea.. it would have been nice but what are you going to do, right?

Anyway..

I started thinking about all those days at the ranch after having a convo with my Texas Rose Gfriend .. and how I always knew that my ass was meant to be in the country and not the city.

City life never appealed to me .. yea, I had my days at the clubs and running the streets when I was a teenager but it felt more like an anomaly more then a way of life. I’d much rather be in jeans, flannel and boots then panty hose and skirts.

Oh.. but the heels were ALWAYS near and dear to my heart!

Wasn’t giving up the heels! LoL!

Thankfully,

Chief feels the same way about living in the country .. he HATES the city. He’s a suburban boy by birth but his dad had had a piece of property further upstate that he had built a house on and that’s where he took Chief and his brother’s .. and where they learned to hunt.. fish.. a survive in the wilderness.

Unfortunately, his mother wanted half the property when she divorced his father so he had to sell it.

What’s with taking something you hate from somebody that loves it in a divorce? I’ll never understand that!

Again, anyway ..

When trying to explain ranch life to people, I always told them that is was as easy as it was hard .. no doubt it’s hard, physical work.. but it was easy because you didn’t have to think so much …

You knew what had to be done and you did it .. complete opposite from working in an office with figures and contracts and abstracts.

Get up.. Work.. Go to sleep

Doesn’t get much easier then that!

So my heart is kind of missing that life .. missing the horses, especially.. missing getting chased by the peacocks.. watching births.. chasing down the horses when they broke free from the pens.. being covered with dirt and hay and manure ..

It was my  life for a long, long time and there’s nothing wrong with missing..

Maybe one day I’ll have it back..

And when I do, I’m going to have a big ass cook out and y’all are invited!!

My Man’s Meat..

Smoked Pork .. Nummy Nums!!

Oh.. get you’re mind out of the gutter!!!

Those pictures are on my other blog!! LoL!! Just joking!

I was cleaning out my camera and found these pictures of pork butts that Chief was smoking.

We had a catering order back in November for a country line dance night at the local fire hall.

When we catered it last year, they wanted the standard stuff :: roast beef, meat balls, stuffed shells :: which were all good but when they came in this year, he talked them into a menu that was kind of related to country music more then stuffed shells were.

So he came up with Carolina Pulled Pork, Chili Braised Beef Brisket, Black Bean and Corn salad, Smokey Baked Beans, Spanish Rice and Home Made Corn Bread.

Oh. And salad.

Not having a real smoker didn’t stop him. He used our charcoal grill and some of the huckleberry wood from our tree out back.

NOTE: You can use any fruit tree to smoke but DO. NOT. USE. PINE. WOOD. like I had suggested because DUH! Where do you think Pine Sol comes from?? LoL!! THIS is why HE is the chef and I’m not!!

He let it smoke for something like a day.. going out every hour or so to flip them over and to baste them with a mixture of  cider vinegar, crushed red pepper, salt and water.

Oh.. before he even started to smoke it, he rubbed the meat down with brown sugar, cayenne pepper, salt and chili powder.. wrapped it up tight in plastic wrap and let it sit in the fridge for two days.

Let me tell you something, the aroma was AMAZING and everyone in our neighborhood was salavating!

Too bad it was for a catering gig, huh?

No worries, he had made another one for us!!

But seriously, it was really.. really easy to do and the meat just split right off of it with a fork.

I never had anything soooo good in my life!

So if you get the ambition to give it a try, let me know how you make out.

No.. in fact, invite me over for dinner and I’ll let you know myself!!