Cooking With A Ninja

Mama has been cooking with a Ninja.

Our Ninja

 A Ninja 3 In 1!  BOL!  

The first meal she prepared was a roast.  She browned it in the Ninja.

...and added some fresh mushrooms.

 She added a Campbell's Slow Cooker Sauce to it which she had not tried before. She thought the Tavern Roast Beef sounded really good.  Unfortuantely, she didn't really like the taste of it.  It wasn't Ninja's fault though.

The finished roast.

The next day, she decided to bake a chicken.  The recipe said to brown the chicken first in Ninja.

Yum, it looks pretty good like that.

The recipe then said to add chicken broth to the pan.  It was the first time Mama had used the Ninja to bake and didn't think about the chicken broth causing steam.  She then re-read the recipe and saw that this was a steam induced chicken.  It definitely steamed.  All our windows steamed up.  Mama was not totally pleased with the result of the chicken because she likes to eat the skin and the skin was no longer firm. The chicken was very moist though.  Scout and I gave it eight paws up!

The finished chicken is kind of wrinkled.

Today, Mama decided to fix baby back ribs.  She seasoned the ribs which were already cut up when she bought them.

Ribs being browned.

Mama then put the ribs on the baking rack and added beef broth.  Yes, this is once again the steam induced cooking.  They cooked for one hour and then Mama emptied the broth and baked them with BBQ sauce for 30 minutes.  The result was delicious!  Mama said they were some of the best ribs she has ever had.  We were not allowed to taste them.

BBQ Ribs

Mama is really liking the Ninja. The clean up is so much easier than using more than one pan.  The baking rack was a little messy today with the BBQ sauce, but it came clean with a SOS pad.

Tomorrow, we are going to have a visitor.  She is a follower of our blog.  We are supposed to be on our best behavior because she is interested in adopting a greyhound and we need to leave her with a good impression.  We were supposed to clean today, but decided we should enjoy the sunny weather.  We hope Miss Emily is not turned off by our home that is not as clean as it could be.

Joey,
The Greyhound Who Hopes His Sister Doesn't Embarrass Him Tomorrow...BOL!

Santa, We Are Ready!

We are ready for Santa to visit us.

It doesn't look like Christmas time outside though.  Just look at all those flowers.

Palm trees don't make you think it is Christmas time when you are pups from the Midwest.

  

Mud instead of snow?  Mama is not complaining.  Scout and I like snow though.

The recreation room is ready for Santa.

Are you ready to see our decorations?

Our tree has smaller lights this year and it looks cute.

 

We have our snowflake lights hung on the windshield.

  

The mirror behind the stove is decked out in lights.

 

We have two trees this year!

Gingerbread man and woman are in our kitchen window.

A few people have decorated their rigs. We will try and get photos at night.  We enjoy walking at night and seeing all the lights  It seemed like more people decorated last year.  We hope more people get into the spirit.

Joey,
The Greyhound Who Forgot To Make A List For Santa This Year

Passing Time In Texas

We haven't updated much because there is not much exciting to tell you.  Our weather has been gloomy, but we will take gloomy over ice and snow.  We are so glad we came here instead of Dallas.  Mama is not sure how she would have handled us with all the ice. We are happy we are here.

Yesterday, Mama got her new slow cooker.  She decided to order the Ninja  It gets good reviews.  She found it online at a good price. There was a mix up and she ended up with the "deluxe model".  It has a lot of nice features such as the browning of meat and it even bakes.  She is pretty excited about it. She is trying it out today with a roast.

Scout got a new leash yesterday.  It is a four foot leash.  Mama says she has better control now with both of us on short leashes.  Scout sometimes gets a little nervous when other dogs approach and a shorter leash helps keep her closer to Mama.

 Joey,
The Greyhound Whose Dad Calls Him Buckaroo

Fun Police Is Out Of Town

Yep, that's right, we call Dad the fun police.  He likes to break up our fun.  Well, he is back in Kansas City for 19 days, so Mama says we are on "vacation".  Vacations mean fun, right?   BOL!

Here I am watching Dad pack yesterday.  I was sad.

Scout and I were sad to see Dad leave yesterday.  Mama drove him to the airport in rush hour, Houston rush hour.  Yikes!  She said it wasn't as bad as she expected.  They did a test run the day before because she had not been to that airport. She doesn't like driving at night or in heavy traffic and she got to do both yesterday.

Mama tried to get a picture of me in front of the flowers today, but this is all she got.  BOL!

What? Look at the camera?  How is this? BOL!

I feel more comfortable not looking at the camera.

Mama went shopping this morning.  She bought a crock pot cookbook that she has been wanting.  She switched her Emeals plan to the crock pot plan a few weeks ago and has enjoyed it  She is finding that she can fix just about anything in the crock pot, even spaghetti.  It is less dirty dishes which is an added bonus. She wants to get a crock pot that browns the meat so she doesn't have to use her electric skillet.  The one she really wants is really pricey and she hoped to find it on sale for Christmas, but so far it hasn't been.  She is thinking she may buy one that Walmart sells.  It gets really good reviews and is less than half the cost of the Cuisinart that she wants.  It probably makes sense to go cheaper in case she grows tried of cooking that way.

Can you believe the weather that is sweeping across the country?  We got here just in time.  It is even going to get cold here, but not nearly as bad as other places.  We are happy to be here even if it will be colder than normal. 

Joey,
The Greyhound Whose Sister Is Happy That A Cold Front Is Coming Through Texas

Feels Like Home!

We have been busy traveling this past week.  We traveled to our hometown last week to spend Thanksgiving with the family.  Scout and I didn't see any family though.  We just stayed in the motor home while the folks visited.  We did visit the state park that is nearby.  We took a long walk on Thanksgiving morning. We enjoyed that.  We did partake in a few bites of ham and turkey.

We set out on Sunday morning for our long journey to Houston.  We were ready to leave at 7 a.m. but the motor home had other ideas. Our air brakes wouldn't hold air.  I think that is what they are called.  We ended up having to go back to our site while Dad tried to figure out the problem. We wanted to be at our site in Oklahoma City before it got dark and as time slipped away, we didn't think that was going to happen. Finally, the air brakes started working and we left at 8:45 a.m.  We think there may be moisture in the filter or something like that because when it heated up outside, the brakes started working.  We arrived in Oklahoma City a little after 5 p.m. and were able to set up before it was totally dark.  Dad did not put our jacks down or release the air from the brakes, so everything was in working order when we took off Monday morning. We thought everything would go smoothly on Monday, but there was a dense fog in Oklahoma City.  We waited to leave until 7:30 a.m., but it was still there.  We couldn't wait for it to lift because we wanted to be in Houston before dark.  We drove for two and half hours in heavy fog.  We stopped to get gas and we had a heck of a time finding the gas station. We knew it was there, but we were right on top of it before we saw it.  The fog suddenly lifted at 10 a.m.  The rest of the drive was pretty normally. We hit bad traffic in Houston due to construction, rush hour and well, just Houston traffic.  We pulled into the campground and we were greeted warmly by the park managers.  They remembered us!  We were given our old site.  The place is full, so what are the odds of that?  Scout and I immediately walked around and sniffed everything. We recognized several of the campers that were here when we were here earlier this year.  I am excited to be here.  Scout is not as happy as me as she says it is too hot.  It will be 80 today, but it will turn cooler later in the week.  She might be happier when it is in the 40's.  40's is cool for here, but it is better than what Missouri will have later this week.

Dad flies back to Kansas City tomorrow night. He will be back in 19 days, so that is not too bad and it looks like we will be together after that.  We will provided more details later.

Joey,
The Greyhound Who Is Happy To Be "Home"