Carrying on with my prepared salads reviews:
This one is by Marketside and is called Spinach Dijon.
Ingredients: spinach, eggs, shredded Monterey Jack-Colby Cheese, chow mein noodles, almonds, sweetened dried cranberries, and sweet onion dressing.
The dressing is just sweet enough to cover the earthy taste of the spinach.
This salad is one of my faves in the line. If you like raw spinach, you’ll love this one!
Once every year, King Ranch – the biggest working ranch in the USA, hosts a breakfast for the public. All monies collected are donated to local charities. This is the only day all year that private vehicles are allowed on the ranch proper.
Hubs and I have attended the breakfast twice since 2019, once by ourselves, and once a couple of seasons ago, with friends from home who were ranchers at one time. This year, along with these same friends, we skipped the breakfast, but did the bus tour of the ranch.
The bus tour is open year round and is a great way to spend 1.5 hours learning about this 825,000 acre (in South Texas) massive ranching operation.
On the same weekend as the ranch hand breakfast, the city of Kingsville hosts a festival, complete with vendors, food and art demonstrations, rides for kids, entertainment, and lots of opportunities to get to know the locals. We decided to do the bus tour on the morning of the festival, so we could spend some time checking out the happenings in town, and then head out for the tour after lunch.
Unfortunately, just as the bus tour was about to begin, the rain started. We went anyways and, with the exception of not many photo ops through the bus windows, we didn’t regret it.
After my post Steamroller Blues? , I promised some of my followers that I would explain the festival in greater detail.
… Not just for the many flavours of ice cream, like the fellow in the mural, but to get everything done that I want to in a day.
This time of year is usually busy for me, as I prepare for Christmas.
Either this year is busier than usual, or another year added to my age has slowed me down a bit. Hmmm – I wonder which is true.
My goal for tonight and tomorrow morning, is to try to get caught up with the bloggers I follow.
I’m out of sync with my regular post times this week.
This is a busy week, so today will be my only post.
On Saturday, we made the two hour drive to Kingsville, TX to take in the Ranch Hand Festival.
This was our third trip to the festival and our second trip there with good friends from home who winter in a park near here.
One of the demonstrations that was new to all of us was the one by TAMUK (Texas A & M University Kingsville) arts department Javelina Printing Club.
Their printing press was a steamroller! My feature photo is a screenshot from a movie I found about them on Facebook – not my own.
The process: Designs are carved into a block of wood, and then ink is rolled over the whole slab.
Once this step is complete, the slab is laid face up on the ground and a large sheet of paper placed over it, and then thick matting is layered on top of all.
The steamroller then drives over and backs up over the lot.
And voila!
It was fun and interesting to witness this unique process!
There were many prints done over the course of the day, and this was apparently their 12th year at the Ranch Hand festival.
I don’t know how we missed it on previous visits, but am happy we found it this time!
This salad, by Marketside (a WalMart brand), and very likely sourced from Taylor Farms has a fresh, and only slightly sweet flavour, despite the sweetened ingredients.
This one has: Spring mix (leaf lettuce and arugula), feta cheese, herb seasoned flatbread strips, sweetened, dried cranberries, candied walnuts, and raspberry vinaigrette dressing.
Although arugula isn’t among my fave greens, the sweet bits in this salad nicely mask it.
Yesterday, I finally found enough time to get back into my macaron groove again.
I especially enjoy making them when we’re in Texas because there are so many special occasions we’re here for, so I can make a great variety. Our friends here also enjoy them, so there are several birthdays to make them for as gifts.
I wanted to make these for Halloween but we’ve been extremely busy since we arrived, so, because I brought the candy corn with me from Canada, I decided to make them anyways. Hopefully they’ll be acceptable as my dessert contribution for our table at the big Thanksgiving pot luck here in our park.
For two days last week, Aurora was extremely strong and extended as far south as central Texas (almost four hundred miles north of us here in the RGV)
One phenomenon that can accompany extreme solar storms, is known as STEVE – a term coined in 2016 in Alberta Canada (our neighbouring province).
STEVE is an acronym for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement and usually appears as a diagonal thin band of purple with sometimes green accompaniment across the night sky on a night when Miss Aurora is showing off farther north.
I like to think “Big Steve” visited us last week.
My nephew (a geologist) passed my photo along to his friend (a geo-scientist) who concurred that this was indeed STEVE.
Below are photos of Aurora (from both nights) that our grandson sent to us from his home in central Saskatchewan, Canada.
The first three were Tuesday night and the last three were from Wednesday night.
I’m so pleased, that at age 19, he appreciates nature as much as he does.
This mural, on the side of a roadside service station in Saskatchewan, Canada – although weathered, depicts some history of the pioneers and farming in our province.
Each winter, we eat far more salads than in the summer.
Why? It’s because prepared salads are abundant here in south Texas.
Taylor Farms makes a variety of single serving and double serving salads.
The part we enjoy the most, is that we can enjoy a variety of salads without having to buy all of the ingredients separately and then risk them going to waste if not used in a timely manner.
For the next few “foodie Friday” posts, I’ll feature and review different pre-made salads that we enjoy.
My feature photo is of the single serving Everything Chopped Salad from Taylor Farms.
Ingredients: Romaine lettuce, grilled white meat chicken, carrot, red cabbage, sharp white cheddar cheese, cheese and garlic seasoned crouton crumbles, everything bagel seasoning, and ranch dressing. *No synthetic colours or high fructose corn syrup*
These salads, available at WalMart, come in a disposable plastic bowl, but I prefer to plate them.
My review: I love that all of the ingredients are separated in the packaging, so nothing is soggy. This one had great flavour and crunch. Although they contain some cooked chicken, don’t expect more than a tablespoon or so of small cubes of meat in the single serving size. The cheese adds extra protein.
At under $3 USD, it’s good bang for your buck.
This past summer saw an unusual amount of rain here in the Rio Grande Valley.
As a result, some plants are confused as to when to bloom.
This hedgehog cactus is an example.
Whereas it usually would bloom in the spring here (March and April), it was in full bloom last week.
Radically Retired 