There was no need to wake early as I was not needed to take the girls to school today but we were up by 4:45 am. I only got up as I heard Mark start the coffee maker and knew I had to guard it so he wouldn't steal a cup and get all the strong stuff. Joan's kids needed a ride to Co-op so they were picked up at 8:25 am. After dropping them off I drove right to church to return the towels from Family night. Meister Electric was there with their big boom trucks working on the parking lot light.
I stopped at Kroger on the way home to pick up dried split peas. On Tuesday I found a 3 pound boneless ham marked down to $3.00 at Sam's club and this morning decided to make split pea soup. That soup is a lot more work than some of the other soups but it is really tasty and thick once done. I only picked up 1 pound but hind sight should have picked up 2 pounds. The peas were poured into a pan and gone through then rinsed. Then 8 cups of chicken broth added plus 2 cups of water and set to simmer for an hour. That gave me time to dice a half of onion, 2 stalks of celery, a clove of garlic and the 3 pounds of ham. The vegetables were sautéed in butter until soft then the chopped ham added to that pan and just left to cook on low. After an hour the split peas were removed from the chicken broth and put in the blender with some of the liquid then once blended added back to the broth along with the vegetables and ham and left to simmer for another 20 minutes. We each had a bowl for lunch and Mark went back and got another bowl. It had good flavor, was thick and meaty.
We only had 4 quarts left to freeze after lunch but we both were pleased with the soup.
Once that was cooling I went over to the barn to get that cleaned up and ready for the company coming in tonight. I thought it would be easy to get the construction mess cleaned up but that sawdust was so ground into the rubber tiles it wouldn't come off with the vacuum I hauled up. I went downstairs and brought the broom up and that didn't work either. I finally got some all purpose Windex and the Swiffer mop and scrubbed. That worked (I think, I didn't wait for it to dry).
Even though our stallion Raven was the start of Horsemeister, our first Friesian mare Jenis was the start of publicity! We were only able to buy her as her owner was afraid of her. She was just 2 years old but acted like a stallion. She was born with male hormones but was still a mare. Dr. Hoerr checked into why she was acting like a stallion and found out if a pregnant mare is given twice the dose of regimate during pregnancy it can cause this. She wasn't the best mother but would tolerate her foals. Rhoda trained her and this mare had such presence everywhere we went people were in awe watching. Rhoda was the one who taught her to rear on demand. Below are just a few of her performance pictures.
She is the mother of Valiant. When she was retired from breeding and showing we found a wonderful home for her at a full service barn up near Chicago. She really was special.
No comments:
Post a Comment