A Jeanne in the Kitchen

I don’t see many killdeers around, but I do see them every now and then. But I had never seen a momma looking for her nesting spot until now. Momma was trying out different locations, I guess trying to find the best views and schools for her new family and what was the best fit.

I hope she found the perfect location for her and her new family.

Have a great day and make everyday great.

This is the last of my Portuguese series for awhile, that is until I cook more Portuguese food. I have a feeling it won’t be too long again before that happens. 🙂 I made some Portuguese roasted chorizo & potatoes, or batatas com chourico assado.

Batatas com chouriço assado (roasted potatoes with smoked sausage) is a traditional Portuguese comfort dish rooted in rural peasant cooking and a long Iberian tradition of pork curing, designed to make hearty, flavorful meals from pantry staples. This dish reflects a history of survival, resourcefulness, and the celebration of pig slaughtering (matança) as a community event. This dish, along with many others, grew out of a need to feed large families using available, humble ingredients like potatoes and cured sausages, often enhanced with olive oil, garlic, and onions. While popular nationwide, this style of dish is particularly tied to regions like Alentejo, Trás-os-Montes, and Beira Interior, where cured pork is central to the diet. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Historically, in rural Portugal, families raised pigs, which were slaughtered at the start of winter to provide meat for the entire year. Smoking and curing allowed them to preserve meat, making chouriço a staple ingredient available during winter months.

Unlike Spanish chorizo, Portuguese chouriço is typically smoked, fully cooked, and less spicy, providing a smoky flavor and a savory sauce as it cooks. It is commonly sliced into thick chunks or added whole into dishes. Portuguese chourico and Mexican/Spanish chorizo are both spiced pork sausages. However, Mexican chorizo is fresh and not fully cooked, and Spanish chorizo is cured. Portuguese chourico is a smoked sausage, so it is fully cooked and ready to eat.

Roasted Chourico and Potatoes

When I made my batatas com chourico assado, of course I added a little of my own personality to it, and made it my dish. That’s just what I do. 🙂

1 lb sausage or cooked chorizo, or chourico if you can find it

4-5 large potatoes, peeled and sliced thin

6 oz tomato sauce

6 oz beer

1 tsp kosher salt

*1/2 tsp Portuguese all spice

2 red chili peppers, seeded and diced fine

1 TBSP minced garlic

1 onion, sliced very thin

3-4 medium tomatoes, sliced or diced

fresh basil and/or parsley, chopped

*Portuguese all spice

1 TBSP orange zest

4 TBSP paprika

1 TBSP granulated garlic

1 tsp turmeric

1 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp white pepper

Mix everything together well. This will make about 1/2 cup and is good to store and use again later.

Preheat the oven to 375* F or 190-191*C.

Spray a 9×13 baking dish with cooking spray.

Mix the beer, tomato sauce, salt, peppers and Portuguese all spice together and set aside.

Add a layer of the sliced potatoes on the bottom of the baking dish.

Then add a layer of onions on top.

Add the tomatoes.

Top with the sauce.

Add the sliced chourico. If you have enough left over of all the other ingredients, and room left in your baking dish, feel free to repeat the layering process.

Cover with aluminum foil and bake for between 2-2 1/2 hours, or until the potatoes are cooked. Remove the foil and continue to cook for another 15 minutes. Top with the chopped basil and or parsley and serve hot, with any of your favorite Portuguese side dishes and a Portuguese red wine. Enjoy.

Have a great day and make everyday great. Live life to the fullest and enjoy. ‘Til next time.

I know some people don’t like squirrels, and that’s fine. We are all entitled to our own opinions. I personally love them. They are natural characters and are always acting silly for attention. They always make me smile.

Have a great day, and make it squirrely. 🙂

We liked the Portuguese food so much, I am still making Portuguese food here at home. They love their cod, and so do we. And I just happened to have some cod in the freezer, so I cooked it Portuguese style. 🙂 The Portuguese like their cod so much that there is even a Portuguese cook book called something like 1000 ways to cook cod. I have to try to find that cookbook. 🙂 The funny thing is that, even though cod is a large part of the Portuguese diet, they do not have cod in their own waters. They have to import it from the colder waters of Scandinavia.

Portuguese Cod with Garlic & Onions

The ingredients are simple, but the flavor is large. If you are using actual salt cod, soak it in water for 24 hours. If using frozen, or fresh cod, skip this step.

1-1 1/2 lbs cod

1-2 cups flour

oil for pan-frying

The Onions & Garlic

2 TBSP olive oil

2 TBSP red wine vinegar

2 tsp chopped parsley

2 cloves garlic, sliced very thin

2 red chili peppers, seeded and diced fine

1/2 onion, sliced very thin

dash cayenne pepper

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes, or to taste

kosher salt to taste

lemon verbena, chopped, optional

Mix the red wine vinegar, salt, cayenne pepper and red pepper flakes together, then set aside.

Get a large skillet very hot and add about 1/4 cup of oil to pan-fry the fish. You want a good oil that won’t burn, with a high smoke point. Or you can do what I do, and mix olive oil and butter together.

Pat the fish dry with a paper towel, then coat completely with the flour. Add to the hot skillet and cook for about 4-5 minutes per side, or until browned on both sides.

In another skillet, again, get it very hot, then add the oil, onions, garlic, and red chili peppers. Cook for about 4-5 minutes, or until the onions just begin to caramelize.

Once the onions start to caramelize, add the red wine vinegar mixture and cook for an additional 2-3 minutes.

Once the fish is browned and the onion/garlic mixture is cooked, serve the fish over a bed of cooked rice or couscous and top with the garlic and onion mixture. Add the chopped parsley and lemon verbena if using and serve. Right now, my backyard is once again being overtaken by lemon verbena, so I am using it as much as possible, for a lot of different dishes. 🙂 I served my fish with warmed bread and more of my Portuguese carrots on the side Portuguese Sweet & Sour Carrots, with some Portuguese white wine to complete the meal. !Deliciosa!

Larry and I love to travel, but we also love to bring those travels back home with us too, and enjoy them from our own kitchen. You can too. 🙂

Have a great day and make everyday great. Live life to the fullest and enjoy. ‘Til next time.

I love the rich green colors of malachite. Malachite is a vibrant green copper carbonate hydroxide mineral (\(Cu_2CO_3(OH)_2\)) renowned for its banded, botryoidal (grape-like), and fibrous structures. Commonly used in jewelry and as an ornamental stone, it is popular for its intense green color and is historically significant as a pigment, used since 3000 BCE. Significant deposits are found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Russia (Ural Mountains), Australia, France, and the USA (Arizona).

I also love anything with pearls. I love pearls of all kinds and all colors. I used natural fresh water pearls for my earrings.

My latest creation was a pair of earrings made with malachite and fresh water pearls. I just started making them on Friday and I finished (mostly) them yesterday. There is a still a little bit of minor tweaking left to do, which I will do today at home, but those are minor little things that won’t take too long. For the most part though, they are finished. Just in time for Mother’s Day too. 🙂 This is my first pair of earrings that I’ve made. I think they came out really nice. I got a lot of compliments on them too, from both my instructors and from friends, and coming from my instructors, who make gorgeous pieces, that was very high praise.

I have lots more good ideas, coming your way, from all kinds of sources and inspirations, from food, to jewelry, and beyond. You have to stay tuned so you don’t miss anything. 🙂

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the mothers out there, even if your only babies are fur babies (like me). Have a great day and make everyday great. Live life to the fullest and enjoy. ‘Til next time.

Escabeche is a historic, vinegar-based sauce and preservation method originating from ancient Persia as sikbaj (vinegar stew). It was brought to Spain by the Moors in the 8th century, evolving into a marinade for fried fish and vegetables that spread throughout the Spanish and Portuguese empires, becoming a staple in Latin America and the Philippines. Recipes using escabeche first found their way into Spanish cookbooks in 1324. As you can see, it’s been around for a long, long time.

The United States celebrated Cinco de mayo a few days ago, but Larry and I have been celebrating all week. We love Mexican food, and all the Latin flavors in all their context, from all the Latin countries. One of the other “cinco de mayo” dishes we celebrated with was pork in escabeche sauce.

Pork in Escabeche Sauce

I marinated the pork in the escabeche for about 4 hours before roasting it in the oven. But you can grill it too. I cut my pork into pork chops rather than marinating the whole pork loin.

2 lbs pork, either chops or the whole loin

1 TBSP garlic

2 TBSP orange juice

2 TBSP white wine vinegar

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp of each allspice, cloves, cumin and coriander

salt & pepper to taste

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper or ground chili or to taste

Mix everything together well and pour over the pork. Like I said, I marinated my pork for about 4 hours before roasting it.

Roast in in the oven at 450* F or 232*C for about 30 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 140* F or 60*C. Then check every few minutes until it reaches an internal temperature of about 155* or 68-69*C. Don’t over cook or it will come out tough and dry. Ours came out just perfect. It was so tender and juicy and full of flavor.

I served it over a bed of rice, with black beans, corn and Peruvian peppers. !Esta mui rico!

Have a great day and make everyday great. Live life to the fullest and enjoy each day. ‘Til next time.

Thank you Mike from melsar93 at https://mikenmitch.wordpress.com/2026/05/06/digital-vitamin-d/for nominating me for the Sunshine Blogger’s Award. It’s been a long while since I was nominated for one of these. It is always an honor. Mike said he nominated me because “[he] started following Jeanne for the great recipes, but also enjoy[s] the nature walks and slice of life posts she does”. All I know is I am just having fun and I am glad so many people like what I do. 🙂

Mike’s questions to me:

1. What’s a hobby you picked up as an adult that you wish you’d started earlier? There are quite a few actually. Scuba diving is one of my many passions, but I didn’t start diving until I was in my 40’s, despite the fact that I grew up in the ocean. Another late hobby is my newly started jewelry making. I just started it in January 2026, and am having a blast with it. I’ve been told I have a good eye for it and am pretty talented at it too.

2. If you could invite three fictional characters to dinner, who gets a seat? I like adventure and I like quirky. So, let’s see,how about Captain Jack Sparrow, Sherlock Holmes, and James Bond. That would be a lively dinner table. 🙂

3. What’s the most ridiculous thing you believed as a kid that you maybe… held onto a little too long? HMMMM! Well, rumor has it that Santa Claus isn’t real, but I don’t believe that. Not for one minute. He is real.

4. What’s a movie or show you can quote without trying? Shrek, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Love Actually, to name a few.

5. Describe a habit you’re proud of building over the past year. I try to blog everyday when I’m home. I treat it like it is a job, and I take it seriously and try to make it the best that I can. That takes work, dedication and effort.

6. What’s a small daily ritual that genuinely makes your life better? Spending as much quality time with those that I love, and that definitely includes all my fur babies; doing good things and always striving to be the best version of myself that I can be.

7. Share a memory that still makes you laugh, even years later. I think I was still in culinary school when I made a cake for some friends of mine who were moving. I tried to make a real fancy cake from scratch, but it just didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to, so I made the cake portion from a mix, and then decorated it real fancy from scratch. My mom was in on my secret, but no one else knew. So when we got to the party, there was a lady who just raved and raved about my cake and how she could always tell when a cake was made from scratch, and she just knew mine was too. My mom and I couldn’t even look at each other as she was saying this, because we both knew we would bust out laughing uncontrollably.

8. If you could have a blog post go viral, which one would you want it to be? This is best left to the powers that be. It’s out of my control.

9. Is there a meal you can cook from memory without a recipe. You can just walk into the kitchen and create something. I do this all the time. I use recipes solely as a guideline, and do the rest on the fly. That’s just how I roll, or in this case, cook. 🙂

10. Tell us about something you’re looking forward to in the next few months. We are always on the go, traveling somewhere. We have a couple more fun trips already on the books coming up soon.

11. You’re invited to my house for dinner. What should I cook? As long as it is made with love, no matter what you make, it will be just fine. 🙂

I like so many different blogs. I am an information junkie, and am interested in so many different topics and ideas. I never know who to nominate for these awards because I like and follow so many different people. This is always the hard part for me. HMMMMMM! Let me see here. WHO????? It’s always fun to nominate friends, so how about starting with these friends of mine: my good friend Dolly from Kool Kosher Kitchen @http://koolkosherkitchen.wordpress.com/; my friend Thomas Wikman from http://superfactful.wordpress.com/ and Leonberger’s Life; my friend Gail from http://snapshotsincursive.com/; and my friend Sheree from https://viewfromtheback.com/. Same questions to all of you. They are fun, good questions.

Thank you again Mike. You made my day. 🙂

Have a great day and make everyday great. Life is always better when shared with friends. 🙂 ‘Til next time.

I went to go purchase more jewelry supplies from my supplier, and stopped in at a near-by antique store just to see what they had, plus I was looking for some specific pieces to make more jewelry with. One thing lead to another, and we got to talking. One, they said my supplier is their neighbor. Two, they really complimented me on my pieces. Three, I told them I had just sold my first piece to a friend of mine, and they asked the price. They said I way undersold it to her. Then they showed me comparable pieces, that sold for, are you ready for it ….. $300-400 a piece and up. When I said I was just a beginner jewelry maker, they said they would have never known. So far I have only made 5 pieces, but I just found out that if I wanted to sell them, they would collectively be worth about $2500. Say what???????? I just might be going into business soon. Who knows???? 🙂

So far, all of my pieces are made out of sterling silver and semi-precious stones, in the old Hopi Indian traditional ways.

Red jasper pendant

Lightning bracelet

Red jasper box ring

Floating rope bracelet

Chinese turquoise pendants and necklace

I had NO idea the value of the jewelry I am making. Now I do. I have a whole new perspective on things. 🙂 I guess it is never too late to teach an old dog new tricks. This just may be my new trick. 🙂

Have a great day and make everyday great. NEVER underestimate yourself. You’d be surprised at your own value. ‘Til next time.

I have been busy in the “silver mines” again. I made not one, but two new pendants. I started one, and showed a picture of it to my friend Roberta, and she said she wanted one too. No problem; or so I thought. I thought, they are basically the same, just a different shape, it should be easy-peasy to make two instead of one. WRONG. Both pendants proved to be a lot more challenging than I expected. But through many trials and errors, they are both now completed. And if I do say so myself, I think they came our pretty nice too. I think all my hard work eventually paid off.

Both stones are Chinese turquoise. Part of the challenge in making these pendants was that they are irregular shaped stones, so that made making the bezels and ropes a bit tricky. I was working on both at the same time at first. I thought that would be easier. WRONG again! When I soldered the bezels together, I had no idea that there was a right way and a wrong way to attach them. No one told me that part. I found out the hard way. I soldered them both on backwards. My stones wouldn’t fit unless I put them in upside down, which defeated the purpose of having such pretty stones. So with the help of my instructors, we carefully removed the bezels by adding a lot of heat, making sure we did not burn them in the process. Once they were removed, I had to reshape them slightly, then flip them over. That worked. This time, both stones fit perfectly. From there, all I had to do was sand, polish, sand, polish and sand and polish again, set the stones and mold the bezels around the stones and polish once again. And now, they are both completed.

I finished mine last week and have been wearing it ever since. I just finished Roberta’s last night. I am sending it to her today. Hopefully she will receive it a few days, and she can proudly wear it soon as well. (The dog hair in the picture is a bonus. Dog hair is part of our normal attire here in our house). 🙂

I actually have something else I will be making with Chinese turquoise too, but you will have to wait awhile for that piece. 🙂

Chinese turquoise is a diverse, historically significant gem mined for over 2,000 years, primarily in Hubei province and areas like Ma’anshan and Xinjiang. Top-grade Chinese turquoise is characterized by a dark blue color with intricate, fine-veined spiderwebbing. It can range from light blue to deep green and yellow, often with a smooth, porcelain-like texture.

Have a great day and make everyday great. Sometimes things are harder than we like them to be and take more time than we expect, but in the end NEVER GIVE UP! The end results will definitely be worth the efforts. ‘Til next time.

Two days ago, I was in shorts. The skies were bright blue and it was about 80* F or about 27*C. It was a beautiful day. I noticed my first little iris that had popped up in my front yard, with another bud about to open. It was a perfect birthday present for my mom, who is in Heaven. Irises were her favorite flowers.

And then …. All that changed. Our sunshine disappeared and was replaced by SNOW. In May! We got about 8 inches, and it is still snowing now. It is supposed to continue snowing until about noon today. We didn’t get a winter when we were supposed to, but we are are sure getting it now. It just goes to show what a difference a day makes in our wacky unpredictable state. 🙂

It is still snowing a bit, but the sun is also beginning to come out, which means, our south facing areas are already starting to melt. And yet, somehow, through these massive temperature changes, my little irises survived.

Believe me when I say Colorado has some of the wackiest weather around. 🙂 🙂 🙂

Have a great day and make everyday great, no matter what gets thrown your way. 🙂 ‘Til next time.