Friday Friend Recipe #165 - Mandarin Almond Salad

My Friday Friend Cookbook Countdown #165!

(#willreallyfinishthissomeday)

My Mandarin Almond Salad

and you know all the whys and wherefores of this countdown, right? Homemade cookbook, friends contributed, Handyman said I couldn't/wouldn't do it, I'll show him, yadda yadda yadda....

...and the rest is cookbook history!

Mandarin Almond Salad

Debbie Stone

Winnemucca, NV

Torn Romaine & leaf lettuce and torn spinach

1 11oz can drained mandarin oranges

1/2 c. sliced almonds

water

2T sugar

1/2 t salt

dash pepper

2 T sugar

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

1/2 cup olive oil

Mix a combo of 8 cups of greens. Arrange oranges on top. 

Spread almonds on baking sheet; sprinkle with water and 2T sugar. Broil till golden.  Sprinkle over salad.

Combine the rest of the ingredients in a jar and shake well.

Pour on salad and toss to coat.

Our Easter dinner last year consisted of the past few FF recipes I've posted in the countdown! 

There's that Red Top Jello and the Sour Cream Mashed Potatoes.

Thank goodness my family put up with me and my countdown.

If you remember....

Whenever it's my turn, a recipe I've turned in, instead of talking about myself AGAIN,  I've decided to tell a story about each and every Friday Friend who didn't turn in a recipe for the cookbook.  There are a handful or two of them and they either came to the Friday Friend Forum late (this cookbook was made 18 years ago) or they think they are not cooks or something silly like that.

My friend Jolina came to the Friday Friends late, and the cookbook was over and done by the time she started answering questions. 

This morning I grabbed a notebook/set of questions, dated 2010,  from the Friday Friend Forum (yes, I kept notebooks and notebooks full of answers.  I need to toss them, but it's hard)

Big notebook, but only two questions which Jolina answered. One was a question about Sesame Street  and breast feeding (one of these things is not like the other? )   and the other one was about - if you had been in Girl Scouts or Camp Fire Girls when you were younger.

(it continued--- United States, it's good enough for me!)

Jolina's answers were:

She never did get around to answering  what she thought of breast feeding in public, but at least we know she liked the Muppets and was never allowed to be a Girl Scout. 😞

So...Jolina.

I lived across the street from Jolina  when our kids were little--still in elementary school.  Our children played in the neighborhood together.  Back when you could still play outside and it was okay.

They spent hours and hours outside doing all kinds of kid stuff,  but Jolina and I barely waved at each other. 

For 3  years, we only waved.

Then we moved away to California for 5 years, then moved back and all of the sudden we became FRIENDS!

NOW

We're in book clubs together (2 of them)

 I've never been to a birding weekend without her.

She drew this California Quail for the Bird Nerd Herd (that's what we call ourselves. We love the California Quail and they run thru our yards during the summer and fall. They travel in extended families, a bevy, and many times have 12 or more babies following along behind them.

I have this drawing hanging on a wall in my house. I love it.

If you look closely you can see the proper collective noun for each of our favorite birds and of course, us; a gambol of Nevadans)

 I am showing our logo (Bird Nerd Herd) not showing off Mitzi's breast. ( it's okay if I say breasts--it's good enough for Sesame Street, it's good enough for me, remember?)

Jolina and Mitzi look at birds.

Once on a birding weekend, we took a class on Lamas and Alpacas.  We fell in love with them.

 She's an important part of Weinerfest!

(my summer hotdog party)

We just got back from a trip to Minnesota together to visit our good friend Mitzi.  Shelly and April joined in the fun!

One of my favorite memories tho is during one of my Soup Suppers (in the bleak midwinter--inviting friends over and they bring a soup. We get to taste 10 different soups!)  when we played a game called "Battle of the Sexes".  

Jolina drew the card  "Empire Waistline" and while trying to get us to guess it,  she put her hands under her breasts (Notice how the theme keeps coming back around to breasts?) to give a more visual clue.  No one could figure it out, no matter how many  verbal OR visual clues she gave, so then it was the guys turn to try and guess --steal our card, if you will -- and none of them had a clue, EXCEPT the Handyman!
He knew what an Empire Waistline was!

He's the man!

The man who worked in retail for 26 years!

Jolina and I now wonder why we wasted so much time only waving at each other?!

We could have been having all this fun so much earlier.

Go figure.

Jolina did give me one recipe for my soup supper. The same one where she and the Handyman are showcasing their chests:

Mandarin  Almond Salad is 

Recipe # 165.

Only 129 left to go!

Birding Weekend

Last year, while birding, we were discussing  collective nouns and how funny they are.  Especially when it comes to the animal kingdom/birds.

A Murder of Crows?

A Gaggle of Geese?

  A Hedge of Herons?

An Exaltation of Larks?

We got a kick out of them all.

So this year, our friend Jolina (fellow bird nerd extraordinaire!  and apparently an artist too)  made these shirts for us.  (T shirts with this drawing on them)

She drew the Quail.  

We see them in our backyards around here every day. 

We love them.

They are our backyard birds.  (even tho they are California Quail, we here in Northern Nevada claim them as our own)

And in this drawing she put collective nouns of some of our favorite birds.

Plus... a collective noun to describe us:

A Gamble of Nevadans. 

[oops!!  This just in from Jolina:]

Hey Debbie - our collective noun is "gambol of Nevadans" which I was worried that I'd misspelled it - but I had copied it from the book!!  But the definition of gambol is "to leap about playfully; frolic"

Yup, that's what we do. 

It is beautiful! 

We will treasure it always!

At one of the dinners on our birding weekend, a woman asked here she could buy our shirts.

Jolina won't sell them... but she could.

We LOVE our Quail bird nerd herd shirts!!!

And now, a few pictures from our birding weekend.

and then later, a recap on it . 

We saw  10,000 geese.

These are Ross's Geese.  

With a few Snow Geese mixed in.

On their way back to Canada.

The Sandhill Cranes are flying in.

This would be the "lesser' Sandhill Crane, because the 'greater' is not at the peak of their migration. 

????

Birding British Style!

Our tour guide, Duncan.

He served us tea (with milk) and toast with Marmite.  (he's a big fan...as I'm sure you can tell)

YES,  you can really find birds here.  Lots of them!!

And here too!

a familiar sight---every year on all my birding trips with these girls!

Very familiar.

I almost forgot the Pintail!!  Duck that is.

Isn't he beautiful?   Photo taken by our friend Gina's husband, Mark.  

He has a great scope and camera lens.

Cattle Auction

Yesterday I posted a couple of pics from the  Livestock auction... my friend  Shelly said it is like QVC for cattle.   And she works there at the convention center, so she knows.  It's EXACTLY like that.

I was a bit disappointed because they were not having a raffle for  "sperm" this year.  Or if they did, I missed it.   It's high quality sperm.
I don't mean the cowboys....I mean the  bulls.   (I'm feeling like a rebel--a bit naughty talking about  sperm. It's not your everyday blog conversation, is it?)

You didn't think they let these cattle do 'it' naturally, did you?  Pfffttt!!!   No such thing.  (well, I guess if there is a will there is a way, but...)  if you want really high quality stock, artificial insemination is the way you go.

But enough of that  (I had really wanted to take a picture of the sperm raffle tho, since I didn't get it last year)  this weekend, we are trending out of cattle auctions into   Fifties Fever!  A car show and fun filled 50's style weekend around town.

For now tho... a few pics of  hats.   I don't know if this happens anywhere else, but  cowboys here wear different hats and I want to know why.  I should have just asked someone last night....but the mystery and intrigue is more fun than knowing I guess.

(I'm just kidding about mystery and intrigue---maybe it's just a style thing)
I found this in  cowboy hat etiquette:
"Do not interfere with anyone else's cowboy hat. A hat is a prized, personal possession, and should be treated with respect."

I don't know if you can see this very well, but it's a regular style of cowboy hat. He was showing the kids how to use a lasso.

Let me see if I took a better picture of a regular cowboy hat.... a bunch of them!
Starting to wait in line for supper.

And then you see the 'flat top'  kind of cowboy hats.  I've heard this described as a "buckaroo" hat.  They use that word, Buckaroo, a lot around here.  In fact, the Buckaroo Hall of  Fame is in the building my office is.
I don't really understand the difference between a buckaroo and a cowboy, but THEY DO, and that's the important thing.  I guess.
I think this might have been the first cowboy hat, and the creases in cowboy hats came later.

Pay no attention to our friend Nate in the fuzzy visor hat in the background.  That's not his real hair--he doesn't have much. 

Then, once in a while, you'll see a cowboy in a tall hat like this one.  I guess that's a  Ten Gallon Hat. 
It's still interesting to me to see who wears what.

They grilled 1200 steaks.

And made lots and lots of salads, beans, bars.

It was our job to let the crowd in. All 1200 of them, 

according to when and how many steaks were coming off the grill.

The cooks told us to let 20 people in every 5 minutes.

We synchronized out watches.

(Okay, I took pictures, but I made sure all the door keepers, the Handyman included, synchronized their watches)  

(notice that none of our door keepers are wearing  any cowboy hats nor cowgirl bling--we are boring---and not really cowboys)

And then, we just had fun.

People ate and later danced.

This band was from Louisiana--the bomb!  

Shelly got locked outside with all the cowboys!

Jolina had to fight her way in!

It was very fun.

At the end of the evening...

we were very tired.

My birding weekend

This is where I live.....

The wild, wild west.  NO kidding.  Remember the TV show Bonanza?  Filmed just a couple of hours from here.  And the Ponderosa was open for tourists up until a few years ago.  (sigh.....)
But, back to me.... Nevada is a puzzle.  Because I was standing in the same exact place in the road when I took this picture above...then turned around  180 degrees and took this:

It was a grove of trees!!
see the baby owlet?  It's a Great Horned Owl, owlet.

I don't exactly live here,  right in this exact spot where the picture was taken, but this is  still in Northern Nevada, just a mere two hours from my house.    Who knew that  the dry  'high desert'  is a stopping point for so many species of migratory birds?  Not me!  Not until I discovered bird watching a few years ago and started attending the Spring  Wings Festival with my friends.

The Spring Wings Birding and Outdoor Festival celebrates International Migratory Bird Day, as well as the return of thousands of migrating songbirds, shorebirds, raptors and waterfowl to the Lahontan Valley.

THOUSANDS!  That's a  lot of birds!!  Altho, this year  was a lot dryer than it was last year, so while we saw over  45 different species of birds, we didn't see the concentration of them like we did last year.  We had a great time, we laughed a lot and ate too much and  spent time in the hot Nevada Sun,  I got pulled over by a policeman (no comment.  But I didn't get a ticket),  ate more, shopped a little, and as always, found a bird or two we hadn't seen before.

I'm going to share a few of my pictures tonight, and then write up another 'birding' post to share in a couple of days.

These are some old  (and maybe young) coots taking off from the water.  I know a coot, isn't technically a duck, but to me it is.  They look exactly like Daffy Duck! 

They work really hard to take off  from the water.  I love watching them.  It's almost like they can't make it, they flap and run and flap and run and then.....FLIGHT!

A bird...NOT, a duck or a water fowl.  A Yellow-Headed blackbird.

This workshop was a class on how to photograph wildlife.....

and the cows were as wild as anything I came upon.
(I kinda like cows for some reason)

In other news....I just thought this shot was funny....the first thing we all did when we got out of the van, was set up our cameras on our tripods.

This guy flew overhead during our photography workshop.  They really are a pretty bird.
The Pelican

and I just liked the reflection of the russion olive trees/bushes in the water

and finally, before I hit the sack.... a picture of

my friends!

Bird Nerds.