On summer weekend nights, we like to cook over an open fire with our
cast iron cookware. We have a nice fire pit at our house and it’s a fun
way to cook dinner with out of state family and friends. The trouble this
year is that it has been so dry in Colorado, the state has banned open fires
of any kind. If you have been watching the news, we now have 10 wildfires
in our state, so you cannot blame them. Summer isn’t quite the same without
the open fire cooking. It’s not as much fun on the BBQ grill, but at least that
gets you outside. Hopefully we will get some rain and things will change. If
we don’t get the rain, all 4th of July fireworks will be banned as well.

My horses name is Chance. He is a black bay quarter horse. At 14 years
old, I thought he was very smart. After all, I taught him everything he knows.
Last Saturday I was in the garage working and while working I was watching
Lonesome Dove II. My horse was just outside the garage eating grass. One part
of the movie was Captain Cull looking at a horse heard. On the TV, the horses
started making horse noises as the do. My very smart horse thought there were
other horses in the garage and started whinnying as he came in. I finally convinced
him the garage was empty. Since then, I have taken down my horse door knocker.
Every time the wind bangs it, my horse says “who’s there”.

When we had all the company here last week, we tried to shorten our cooking time down
so we could spend more time cleaning up after the kids. Here is a simple but delicious
breakfast.

Boil some potatoes in water until they are fork tender (peel potatoes first)
Set potatoes aside.

In your cast iron dutch oven saute some onions in olive oil. When the onions
are almost done, add some sausage and cook until it is done. Drain the fat.

In the same dutch oven with the onions and sausage, add the potatoes.
To that, add 18 eggs that you have beaten in a separate bowl.

Put it in the oven at 325 and cook until done. It should be solid in the middle
not runny.

It’s an all in one meal and with paper plates, the clean up is simple.

We had our niece in town for a week. She is 9 years old and is a really good kid. The
last 4 days and three nights, we also had our nephews at our house. They range in age
from 12 to 7. We had 4 kids in all. Talk about energy, I have never seen anything like it.
Once you think they are worn out, they get a another burst of energy. It’s a full time job
just keeping up with them. All the boys are big eaters, and they will eat anything. We
cooked pancakes on our cast iron griddle, had eggs, hotdogs, hamburgers and more.
They’re all gone now, and when they left, I was looking forward to the peace and quite.
Right now is seems strangely quite, but if I close my eyes, I can hear their laughter, the
laughter of children, possibly the best sound in the world.

Now that we are into summer, and the weather keeps getting hotter and hotter, it’s time
to stop cooking indoors and start cooking outdoors. Not only does it keep your house
cooler, there is less mess to clean up and it’s a nice change of pace. Anything you can cook
inside, you can cook outside. All you need is a BBQ grill and some cast iron cookware. With
your skillet on the grill, you can cook eggs, bacon, potatoes or anything else. And while that
is cooking, you can have some shrimp or a nice steak cooking on the grill right beside it.
Remember when it was winter and you said you couldn’t wait to get outside. Well, now’s the
time to do it. And if you really have to, you can hook up your flat screen TV outside as well.

Our Niece arrived yesterday for a weeks visit with us. She is 9 years old,
and full of questions and smart beyond her years. When asked what she
wanted for dinner, and we would have cooked anything, she wanted
Mac & Cheese. So off to the store she went with my wife to buy some.
My wife cooked the noodles in our small cast iron dutch oven, drained
them when they were done and added the cheese. When we asked Hannah
how it tasted, she replied it was much better than when her dad made it.
Now maybe my wife is better at boiling water than her brother, or maybe
it was just being here with us in Colorado.

First I complain it’s to cold and I cannot wait until winter is over and summer gets here.
That I can always take the heat. Now that summer is here, it’s to darn hot. 86 degrees
in the shade. A least we live so high up there isn’t any humidity. Sorry for all you folks
that have that. How do people in Arizona take it when it gets to 120 degrees. They can
take their cast iron tea pots and make tea on the hood of their car. Could probably fry
a couple of eggs on the hood at the same time. It must never be comfortable outside.
We are a least fortunate that it cools down to about 48 degrees at night. We were going
to take a trip this summer, but I think we will wait until winter so we can got someplace
warm and I can complain about the heat there.

We are going to have our niece here for 5 days as well as our three nephews.
Not only do we need to keep them entertained, but we have to feed them. I am
sure they won’t want to eat what we normally eat. Stuff like sweet potato fry’s,
salads and other healthy foods. I imagine we will be cooking them hot dogs,
mac and cheese and to keep them outside, grilled cheese on the grill. We put
our cast iron flat grill on top of the grill and cook them outside. To keep the
kids busy, we let them make the grilled cheese anyway the want. You can put
other stuff on a grilled cheese besides cheese. Bacon is good and some of them
will put on potato chips. To keep them busy after dinner, we try to get them to
clean up, but their not buying into that yet.

We like fresh flowers in the summer time. The trouble is with so many deer around
our house, they don’t last long if the deer can get to them. We cannot keep them on
tables or anywhere on the ground. We found a simple solution for this problem. We
took some of our cast iron coat hooks and screwed them into the trees around our
house. On those, we hung the flower baskets high enough so the deer could not get
to them. They are a little harder to water, but it’s worth the effort to have fresh flowers
for the summer.

When I was younger, I used to eat a lot of frozen Pizza’s. It’s been so many years since I have had one.
I got one at the store last week and bought a salad in a bag to go with it. The picture of the pizza on the
box looked really good. The pizza was horrible, not good like I thought I remembered. From now on we
will continue to make our own pizza’s on our cast iron pizza pan. Nothing beats homemade. I was just
trying to save time by buying a frozen one, and it wasn’t worth the time I saved. When I looked on the
back of the pizza box, it said there were 12 slices which wasn’t much, but eating 1/2 of the pizza, I filled
my quota of fat, sodium and everything else for 3 days. Not only bad tasting, but bad for me.