A few years ago, right after I got married I ran across a recipe that called for refried beans, ground beef, and Jiffy cornmeal mix.  I have since stopped getting Jiffy in an attempt to not eat so much processed food, and the recipe is also long gone.  I thought about corn pudding and that recipe and decided to smash them together for a more "one dish meal" approach.

Mexican Casserole

1 1/2 pounds ground beef
1 envelope of your favorite taco seasoning mix (I use my own and will post the recipe at another time)
3/4 cup water
1 can of refried beans or 1 1/2 cups of your own
2 cans of cream style corn
1 cup of self rising cornmeal mix
2 eggs
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup cheddar cheese
 1/3 cup of sugar

Heat oven to 425.  Brown the ground beef and drain. Stir in taco seasoning and water.  Cook until most all the water is gone, but beef is still fairly moist. 
Spray nonstick spray in a 9 x 13 inch baking dish. Spread beans in the bottom of pan.  Spread cooked and seasoned ground beef over the beans. Set aside.
In another bowl, mix the remaining ingredients.  Pour over ground beef.
Bake for about 30 minutes, until the casserole is starting to brown and the corn pudding is set.

Serves 6 to 8

I am often told that I share what others may keep to themselves, for fear of mortal humilation.  I can't help myself.  Sometimes things are just too funny to hoard.  So, at the risk of being made fun of, I am going to tell a funny story about how you should, as a mother, always trust your first instinct, particularly if you are feeling too lazy to investigate further.  :)

My children often visit the "pond" beside our house.  It is not really a pond, but a good sized mud puddle that never seems to dry up.  It is about a foot deep and about 2 foot in diameter.  :-D  They came in the house with jars of the "pond" water and were all excitedly chattering about the tadpoles they found.  I looked and said, "I don't think it is tadpoles, I think they are baby mosquitos."  They insisted they were tadpoles, so I asked their dad about it.  He confirmed that they were not baby mosquitos, but some other kind of water bug.  Well, I briefly looked closer and saw a big head and a tail on the little jokers, and said, "Ok, they are tadpoles."  Made sense because we have numerous frogs and toads out here, they are literally everywhere, like a plague or something. 

Anyway, we put the jars on the mantle and then on the back of the sink in the kitchen.  The kids asked me to help them find out what tadpoles eat, so they wouldn't die.  So, I made a couple calls and looked up some web pages about the care and keeping of tadpoles.  A couple of pieces of lettuce in the freezer later and we had tadpole food.  The children enjoyed tearing off teeny pieces and threw them in the jar.

Yesterday, I noticed that there were a couple of mosquitos floating on the top of the water in jar. There were also a couple of dead tadpoles so I fished them all out and put them in the drain.  Mosquitos are very thick around here and we have to spray on bug spray and light citronella candles if we want to be outside at dusk, so it did not occur to me to think anything other than a couple of mosquitos got into the house and were thirsty. (Stop laughing at me.)

This morning I got up and noticed ALL the tadpoles were dead.  At this point I knew something was up.  I inspected it more closely and realized, they were not dead, they were empty shells. When a mosquito bit me as I was standing there by the kitchen sink, contemplating that I had been taking care of icky bugs all this time, I was not suprised, but I was pretty ticked.  How dare that mosquito bite the hand that fed it.

I killed it. 

Then I ordered a "grow a frog" kit for the children.

A secondary title for this post could have been, "You know you live in the south when......."  A member of my family/slash very good friend had the nerve to go out of town to New England.  God decided to punish them for leaving His country by sending a very strong wind to knock down the biggest, oldest tree in their front yard.  This tree provided the majority of the shade in their front yard and all the shade for their house. It was a Pin Oak of impressive size and girth.  It was a beautiful tree when it was standing and housing birds and squirrels but, laying over on the ground with its root ball standing straight up, it is just a big mess. 



That is my beautiful daughter perched on top of the root ball!


The local utility company came and cut up the tree where it had fallen across the road and kindly stacked it all up in their yard :) Thank you so much! 

I got a text a few days ago from these family members saying that there would be free food and beer for all those who came to help dispose of the tree mess.  Well, OK!  Giant tree! Chainsaws! FREE food! And umm beer?  Most people might shy away from beer drinkers using equipment that requires some what of a steady hand, else it could cut off a limb!  You know a limb - like an arm or something!  But not me.  I was raised a southern girl and have since turned into a southern woman.  We are tough, strong, and possess a sound mind that is not afraid of work (unless it is housework - but that is different).

I put on a pair of blue jeans with a hole in the knee, loaded up all the kids in the van and off we went.  After breakfast we set to work. There was a total of 15 adults and 15 children. We had to take care of the part of the tree that fell in the neighbors yard first.  The neighbor had told them earlier that he was in no rush to have it taken care of, and evidently he wasn't. He stayed in his house the whole time and did not even come out to offer a cup of coffee!  He was probably raised in Vermont or something and probably drinks coffee with sissy stuff like French vanilla creamer.  He probably even believes it is *actually from* France.
I won't sugarcoat it.  It was hard labor.  But I tried my best to do my share and earn my free lunch, just like my daddy taught me.  The beer made its appearance and everyone proved that this family comes with class and ethics, meaning no one got too sloshed to run the chainsaws.  On a side note, my husband suggested we would have a bad future should I choose to imbibe, so I abstained. But that is ok because he looked totally hot running a chainsaw.


My DH in all his hotness...

This was altogether a full body work out.  I have muscles that I did not know existed.    The satisfaction of taking apart this huge tree, branch by branch, and seeing it all in nice piles of brush or stacked wood, was entirely too gratifying.  But it was fun and I did figure out that I am more cut out to do that kind of stuff than I am to clean my house. And I don't feel near as guilty about french fries I ate today!

In September of 2005, my son was born. I can not tell you his birth weight or what his APGAR scores were or whether or not he was born with hair.  He was born to a woman that would later make an excruciating decision about their future. She would change the way both our families looked.  She would make it possible for me to have a son.  It was our miracle, a realisation of our prayers.  It was her sorrow, regret, and longing for a better life for him and her, all mixed up into one bag of emotion. 

My oldest daughters were born in March of 2000 and January of 2005.  They were born into neglect and abuse, to parents who were caught in the throes of addiction and poverty and seemingly could not find their way out before they lost their children to the bad choices they made.  I struggled to hold back my tears as I watched the juvenile court judge strip the birthmom of her parental rights.  When she appealed the decision, it seemed like I held my breath the entire three months that it took for the appellate court to issue the ruling that affirmed the lower court's decision.

I do not ever forget that my opportunity for motherhood came at the tremendous price of someone else's prayers not being answered.

I always wanted to be a mom.  I never wanted anything else.  When I got married at the age of 21, I fully expected to give birth within the first year.  (Frankly, everyone else thought it would be within the first 8 1/2 months seeing as how I married my spouse after knowing him for 17 short days.)  Instead, a month after our first anniversary I found out that we would not ever have children without expensive medical intervention.  Devastated does not begin to touch what I felt.  Eight years later, I adopted my first child, what would be my only son.  A year after that I adopted my two oldest girls. In between the adoptions, I got pregnant without medical help, and delivered my youngest daughter.  I get the pleasure of living the dreams of my childhood while I am still young. When the children are grown, I will pick a new dream, but for now I will just live the dream.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you who are mothers and to those of you that, for now, just dream.

A big hunk of beef - 3 to 5 pounds
12 to 15 ounces of hot pepperocini peppers
water or beef broth if needed
3 to 5 tablespoons of Itatlian seasoning
1 medium onion, chopped
3 to 5 cloves of garlic, minced
Crushed red pepper (optional)
plenty of salt and black pepper
Crusty rolls of some kind.

Put beef roast in slow cooker.  Pour in jar of pepperocini peppers, juice and all. Pour in enough beef broth or water to cover meat half way. Put in 1 tablespoon of italian seasoning per pound of meat. Thow in chopped onion.  Put in 1 minced clove of garlic per pound of meat.  If you want it hotter, put in some crushed red pepper.  Finally, sprinkle on plenty of salt and pepper.  Set the crockpot to high, and cook for 6 to 8 hours.  Cook it until it is shredded EASILY with a fork, and then cook slightly past this stage.  Meat that is easily shredded can still be a bit chewy on a sandwich if it is not super tender. 

Taste your broth. It should taste pretty good, if it is a bit bland, add salt. If it is too spicy, add beef broth.  Now, depending on how fatty your beef was, you may have accumulated a bit fat on the top of the broth. You can remove the meat, pour the broth into a bowl and let it rest for 15 minutes.  The fat will be on the top, just skim it off with a spoon if you want too. 

Put the beef on the rolls, and then dip the whole thing into the broth. YUM!!!!  or just place a small bowl of broth beside each plate for everyone to dip their own sandwiches in.

Do not make this recipe harder than it has to be.  None of the measurements have to be exact. :)