Succulent S'mores on Sunday

For about a hundred years now, I have been 'Going on the Hill'.  I have 'Gone on the Hill' on my family farm with my grandparents, my parents, my siblings, my kids, my grandkids as well as a parade of extended family and friends throughout the years.  We have extended the coming together for weddings and wedding receptions and even funerals by 'Going on the Hill' for a picnic.

'The Hill' overlooks the Yellowstone River valley.

I guess going on 'The Hill' became official when we permanently laid an old steel tractor wheel for our fire ring and things grew from there.  The tables wear out and get rebuilt.  The chairs (tree stumps) rot and get burned and more are made.

We eat and eat and eat. 

We play cards. 

We play games. 

We drink. 

We cook "The Hill" hamburgers and have even known to have flameless martini picnics when the season was dry and we didn't want to chance a forest fire. 

The rest room is somewhere beyond the bushes.  The horseshoe pit always gets used.  Nowadays, we have to have all 4-wheelers on deck for the young people to ride up to 'The Hill'.  The rest of us pile in the back of a pickup with the groceries, old sleeping bags softening the trip, beers in hand.  Great views and great memories and great conversations occur just coming and going from 'The Hill'. 

Sometimes, we can see the local volunteer fire department wandering our direction because in the dark summer evenings someone has seen, from afar, a flame on 'The Hill' and reported us.  Most often, we are home before that, dowsing our fire meticulously.

We've encountered a bear, lots of deer and a variety of other wildlife on 'The Hill', including ourselves.  We even shared our Hill picnic area with a teepee that my cousin set up there and left for a long time.

Hill hamburgers, Grandma's potato salad and potluck after that.  And s'mores.  Always s'mores.  I don't like them (not a chocolate person) but I love the marshmallows roasted just right.  But.....

just last week when we went on "The Hill" (this trip triggered by west coast nieces/nephews home for my brother's birthday), our s'mores rose to a whole new level.  Take a look.

The view from "The Hill" looks out over the chickenfarm where I grew up, and beyond that is my husband and my fields.  Beyond the horizon is land we used to own with my brother-in-law.

The S'more cooking crew

Our fire pit captured

by an old tractor wheel. 

We even have a hook

on which to hang a

bean pot or coffee pot,

concrete rebar holds

the cooking racks

over the fire.

It all happened by accident. 

My nephew saw the strawberries

sitting there as he was

about to eat his S'more.

The experimenting continued. 

Next were gluten-free S'mores

(no graham crackers);

the strawberries and chocolate

stuffed inside the roasted marshmallow.

One of the gluten-frees and

her masterpiece. 

So, what do you think?  Shall we patent?

See other Sweet Stories at

Riding the Ranch

I work at a 20,000 acre ranch in Montana. It is beautiful, especially in May. Especially with friends.  and cheese and wine and thou. Sit back and take tour of my world. My work world place.

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT

HAY MEADOWS

BREATH-TAKING, EVEN TO THE NATIVES

SHARING SPACE WITH THE CATTLE

HARD TO SEE BUT WE PUSHED A BROWN BEAR, HER BLACK CUB AND GOLDEN CUB OUT OF THE THICKET THAT WE WERE RIDING THROUGH.

THE CRAZY MOUNTAINS

THE BEARTOOTH MOUNTAINS

 

A STEP BACK IN TIME

OUR 'WINE AND CHEESE AND THOU' LOCATION.

KNOWN AS THE 'STONE HOUSE' NOW.  BUT OUR FAMILY USED TO OWN THIS BEFORE MY EMPLOYER RANCH BOUGHT IT FROM US.  I KNOW IT AS THE 'HOLTEN HOUSE'.  MY GIRLFRIEND'S FATHER GREW UP IN THIS HOUSE.

THE CLOSEST LEVEL LOCATION FOR THE WINE GLASS WAS.....A COW PIE!

  OH POOP!

TIRED HORSES. BACK TO THE BARN.

(and you thought it was going to be 4-legged horses!  :)  )

Time to check out some other 'rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr' posts at

Quiche and other personal egg trvia

Try feeding 30,000 mouths every day.  Well, actually I didn't do it alone.  My dad was in charge. 

You see, I grew up on a chickenfarm.  Laying hens.  Baby chicks.  Vast array of responsibility and opportunities and experiences - too vast to expand on here. 

From daily chores
to weekend work - (I was always working while my friends hung out together)
to moving day (moving chickens)
to 1000s of day old baby chicks peeping together inside one building until your ears hurt
to manure (oh the manure)
to making the hens cooooo by crowing for them just like the ol' rooster (I was good at it, too)
to egg gathering contests
to skunk shooting sprees
to baby chick debeaking days
to marketing old hens with crazy people as buyers (that could be a story in itself)
to picking mites off of me before I went to school (chickens frequently got mites on them and then so did I - ick, you're right)
to eating eggs and stewing hens in more ways than you can imagine.  Including QUICHE.  and angel food cake.  and custard.  and jelly roll,  and egg noodles.  Eggs poached, eggs over easy, eggs hard boiled, eggs softboiled, scrambled eggs, eggs benedict, eggs fried, egg sandwich, egg salad.  Sorta sounds like Bubba Gump, huh?

I certainly gained a work ethic through this rural life in Montana.  My dad had to decide whether or not he would go to town to work (because our rural acres were not enough to make a living for a family) or figure out something on the farm.  Figure out something, he did, building all 5 chickenhouses himself and managing the operation from day old babychicks to marketing and placing eggs into grocery store display cases all over the area.  (I could tell you about every alley, every restaurant or institution or grocery back door, and I could definitely tell you which restaurants you'd want to eat in and which ones you would not want to eat in from that back door exposure).

We were known as 'Pepper's Eggs'.  My dad's nickname was Pepper.

And here's the big news:  As a teenager, I even made the front page of an egg magazine, sitting on the back of a convertible car on the Rimrocks overlooking Billings with....you guessed it....baskets of eggs!

There are fascinating stories being told this week using the letter 'Q' for inspiration.  Go check it out with Jenny Matlock:

Pretty Funny!

Just hours before flying into the wild blue wonder to check out our kids’ new life in Kansas City, I got a call from a friend, “Do you want to go through my girls’ old clothes before I give them away to the community giveaway site?” Uhm, sure, I need one more thing to do before getting up at 3 am to catch a 6 am plane! Sheez, there were so many, I just took tubs and tubs and bags and bags of little girl clothes home and spread them all over my basement for sorting.


Over a movie, I went through them piece by piece and finally sorted by spring/summer, winter and baby. Winter and baby stayed home. Spring/summer got to come to Kansas City with us in an extra suitcase.

And what a kick that all was. Our fashion reviews grew in strength and excitement with each day.

Day 1: Kitchen: little girls cautiously and orderly tried on new clothes – capris, tees, shorts, jeans, skirts, tops, swimming suits

Day 2: Family room: little girls, with excitement, tried on new clothes, learned a model routine from their Gwamma and tada’d for Gwampa’s camera.

Day 3: Basement tv room: little girls, with reckless abandonment tried on new clothes, traded clothes, found mama’s and gwamma’s sun glasses and posed with exuberance for Gwampa’s camera. They stretched the event out as long as they could.  Mama realized that these 3 and 5 year old girls were already at an age where they can trade clothes.

Day 4: Big sister cleaned out her drawers to give her old clothes away so that her new clothes would fit.

All Days: Never saw the grandgirls in their own original clothes after Day 1’s fashion review.

PRETTY FUNNY!

And just think. I get to do this again when they come to visit me next month – We’ll do winter clothes then.

Check out other great "P" stories