Beans, beans good for your heart...

how to cook beans

1lb beans
1 onion
spices like bay leaf, dried garlic or garlic clove, salt and pepper.
Optional: celery, carrot  (for soup)

You will need
large 6 qt crock pot for cooking and large stock pot for soaking

1lb bag of beans (any type), pick beans so no rocks, sticks or leaves are left. Rinse beans by placing beans in stock pot and rinsing with warm tap water, fill and swish, drain and repeat until water runs clear. This is important even with pre washed beans.

fill pot with clean water to cover beans by 2" and place on stove, heat to boiling and turn off heat, cover and let sit for a few hours or overnight. Water will be cloudy, Drain and rinse beans a few times again

Transfer beans to crock pot, tuck 2 smoked ham hocks or ham bone or ham trimmings down into beans, add 1 large diced onion or onion powder, 1 tsp black pepper, bay leaf (a few if they are small) about 1 teaspoon salt, and either a clove of crushed garlic or 1/2 tsp garlic granules or powder. Fill with water to second knuckle, about 1 1/2 inch and give a good stir to mix all the ingredients. Set crock pot to high until mixture comes to a simmer then turn down to low. Cook overnight.

By this time the beans will be tender but have a soupy runny consistency and onions will be dissolved and ham hocks will be falling apart or meat will fall off hambones, taste the beans and see if it need any more salt, pepper or garlic. If thicker beans are wanted leave to cook another day on low. Beans do require a lot of salt but most of the flavor and salt will come from the ham, a hambone will probably need more seasoning, ham hocks probably not. Country ham is very salty so no added salt is needed. Unfortunately this varies wildly so I can't give a precise measurement.

From this you have many choices, this mixture freezes well and reheats in the microwave, and can be flavored with BBQ sauce, brown sugar, maple syrup, or eaten as is with some crusty bread to sop up the broth (my favorite).

Avoid mixing or stirring beans other than a few times each day, stirring tends to mush them up and you will end up with refries.

You can also make refried beans with the leftovers of this too, add lard and mushed up beans to cast iron skillet, heat until warm.

To make a bean soup do all the above using great northern beans, cook beans only 8 hours and add carrots, celery, and potatoes at last 3 hours cooking time. (this is also how to make split pea and lentil soups)

Doin' donuts and native fry bread.

So, my dad has gone to his reunion, I think it was his 55th. He stayed at his childhood home on Lake Osakis and I think that made him whack nostalgic, because he sent me a coffee canister full of homemade donuts. No kidding, a bit greasy and they do have more texture than anything store bought so freaking delish and loaded with calories. Now looking at this recipe it seems to have its roots planted firmly in humble frybread beginnings. Legend has it that frybread was what the natives came up with using the government commodities that were given to them after the relocations to the rez, for their vegetables, wild rice, and beans did not like to grow in the deserts and wastelands where they were relocated to.  The US government gave them relief in the form of wheat flour, lard, salt and sugar.

frybread recipes can be found here...  http://www.snowwowl.com/recipes/recfrybread2.html

My mom has collected a couple others and my sis has created her own but that is about the jist of it, dough that is fried. Some crisp, some bread like, some cake like. Never really cared for it so it is not something I collected a recipe for. This donut recipe is the nearest that I have tasted to original frybread... and it is not for everyday consumption. My chairs will never forgive me if it was.

Now to modern times (circa 1960's) donuts. This is my family recipe.

Cake Doughnuts

Makes 30 servings

3 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup crisco
1 cup milk
4 cups sifted flour
5 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla
oil for deep frying

Cream sugar and crisco, add eggs.
In one bowl mix flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg - In second bowl mix milk and vanilla.
Add liquid and dry ingredient mixtures alternately to creamed mixture - stir after each addition only until dough is smooth.
(start and end with dry)
Roll dough to 1/2 thickness on a floured board - dough should be soft- cut with floured doughnut cutter.
Fry doughnuts in oil heated to 375 degrees-turn when brown and fly on both sides until golden brown (1-2 minutes on each side)
drain on paper towel while still warm sprinkle with powdered or granulated sugar. (but I like mine plain)

I know I have mentioned gluten before, less mixing means less gluten will form and result in a softer finished product, so go easy on the stirring. The finished result is firm and slightly chewy enough. Enjoy.

Ceasar Dressing, a Tasty Grilled Chicken Salad, and using fresh raw eggs the safer way.

Before I start here there is something you should know, and this is very important. I know most people can eat raw and undercooked eggs and have absolutely no problem in doing so, but that is not always the case.

The risk of salmonella in the summer months is very high in uncooked egg products, and that is probably why eggnog is a traditional winter beverage. There is an alternative. Pasteurized Eggs. There are the egg beater types that are a liquid in the carton but this will not work as well. You will need to buy fresh pasteurized eggs in the shell for the best results.

No, these are not from pasture raised chickens, the eggs have been pasteurized like pasteurized milk to kill harmful bacteria. I am not that crunchy when it comes to food safety.

So, this is a easy, very quick and refreshing Caesar Salad to serve on hot summer evenings as a full meal.

First component: Caesar Dressing ( this recipe is an old recipe from the Nugget)

whip together
~4 eggs (pasteurized eggs please)
~3t. red wine vinegar

Add very slowly, mixing constantly
~1 cup olive oil

Add:
~1t. fresh minced garlic
~1t. cracked black pepper
~2t. dry mustard
~1/4c. parmesan cheese
~1/4t. salt
~2t. worcestershire sauce
~3t. fresh lemon juice

Grind and add:
~6 fillet anchovies

Chill for 2 hours minimum.

Then the chicken breast filets, boneless, skinless, thawed ... sad really but stick with me here.

Marinade how many breast filets you think you need, be it two, four or a dozen... depends on how hungry you are and how many you are feeding but one filet per person is usually enough. I like to put them in a large zip lock freezer bag then add in enough of the cheapest you can find italian dressing to marinade them in, and toss and turn the bag every 20 minutes or when you remember to so everything stays  nice and coated with the dressing. A half bottle should be plenty for the marinade. Keep this in the fridge while marinating on a deep tray or shallow bowl in case of any leaks. These can marinate overnight so feel free to start this on the night before. When it is just about time to eat just take them out, slap them on a hot bbq grill and cook through. it does not take long so keep an eye on them.

And finally the salad itself. Get a ginormous bowl, rinse, shake dry and slice Hearts of Romaine lettuce into bite sized morsels... or just get a bag of prepared hearts or romaine, I won't judge. Toss the salad with the dressing prepared in step one in your huge bowl.

Plating: place a generous portion of the dressed salad on the plate, slice one grilled chicken breast and lay it over the salad so it looks pretty, top with croutons and parmesan and romano cheese if desired. Toast some garlic bread and enjoy.

But who am I kidding right? most people have never tasted an honest to god authentic caesar salad in their lives, so a commercial prepared dressing will work just fine but why not give it a try?

Bobbie Jo’s Daisy Dew Sipper Melon Daiquiri

Bobbie Jo’s Daisy Dew Sipper Melon Daiquiri 
In memory of Daisy of the Daily Pippin by Bobbie Joe the philosopher kitty.

Ingredients: 
4 Parts Light Rum 
1 Part Lime Juice 
1 Part Melon Liqueur 
Simple Syrup To Taste 
1 Slice Honeydew Melon 
1 Slice Peach 

How to mix: Fill a shaker with ice cubes. Add all ingredients. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with honeydew melon and peach.

Another From Kimon, Vintage Dip? hahaha.

(this one sounds delish)

One more "vintage" recipe from Vegas. The alpine Village Restaraunt. This was an icon in Vegas for decades. Fine German dining upstairs and a ruckus downstairs in the Rathskellar.

Alpine Village House Seasoned Cottage Cheese dip

2 lbs cottage cheese, small curd
1⁄2 teaspoon caraway seed
1 1⁄2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon Accent seasoning
1⁄2 teaspoon white pepper
1 tablespoon dried chives
1⁄2 teaspoon celery salt

Mix all ingredients together and chill for several hours before serving.

Serve with crackers, or fresh bread, and assorted veggies for dipping.

A Recipe From the Legendary Kimon Brown, Salsa!

For my Vegas and Arizona peeps - These two are a little different than mine. I use tomato sauce, and cayenne, granulated garlic, onion powder, kosher salt, and a little cumin. But these two sound like they are worth a try. Most important is to use real tortilla chips and not the store bought ones. Fresh fried and lightly salted in a brown paper sack.
None of these are salsa recipes that are so popular but for those of us that grew up with Macayo's sauce it is like liquid crack. Bowl of chips two cherry cokes and a TCT perfect high school date night.

Macayo Sauce from the 70’s
(2) 28 oz. can stew tomatoes or (1) 46 oz. can
1 med onion – cut in 4ths
3 small guerro jalapeno peppers hot
Put in sauce pan cook low for 1 ½ hrs covered. Pour mixture in a hand ricer or blender
Chips – use day old corn tortillas cut into 8ths in a regular deep fryer.

Macayo Sauce NOW
1 46 oz. tomato juice
1 1/2 tsp granulated garlic
1 TBSP and 1 ½ tsp cumin
1 tsp salt
For Mild sauce – 1 ½ tsp crushed red chilies
For Hot Sauce – 1 TBSP crushed chilies
Put all in the blender and blend in high for at least one minute. Refrigerate – serve with chips.

3 bean salad

This is one of my Grandma Gert's recipes, and a favorite for picnics. Perfect for keeping on hand during the summer months to serve as a topping for a green salad or alone as it is.

2/3 cup vinegar
1/2 cup good salad oil
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon celery seed.
4 cans of assorted beans-drained ( I know it says 3 beans but... well don't ask)
1 medium onion-sliced thin or Frenched
1/2 cup green pepper-sliced ( for me this is optional, I don't really care for raw green pepper)

Mix all together, chill for 6 hours.

This bean salad lasts a long time in the fridge, because of the vinegar, oil and sugar it has a pickling effect so bacteria or mold will not grow. Sorta like a refrigerator pickle. Double the recipe and add all the beans from the list below to be super festive, remember it keeps very well and just gets better.

Beans I like the best are green (string) beans, black-eyed peas, garbanzos, butter (lima) beans, great northern beans and Kidney beans. beans need to be packed in water so no chili seasoned beans here, and I give the beans a light rinse with cold water when draining.

What is up with bitter beers and Spicy Food?

That is a question posted by a childhood friend of my husband's on Facebook today. I am not much of a beer drinker, Tecate from the imported menu if i got a preference, other than that I can do without beer.

Spicy food does not have to be a challenge of one's manly manlyness. I got a recipe to show you how delicious (and cheap) spicy can be. The only previous requirement is experience in making fried chicken.

Hot Wings

Yeah, another hot wings creation from the interwebs, like we need another. We don't. But here is an easy, cheap, and delicious way to do it yourself. When wings go for a buck EACH in restaurants and take out joints... you are saving a fortune over an appetizer menu here. I have tried many different recipes and this is my version, adjusted for maximum crispiness and sauce soakabilty.  (is that a word?)

4 lb bag of frozen wing sections. (Aldi)
1/3rd cup red hot Sauce (the Aldi's label is very much like Louisiana or Texas Pete hot sauce... very good for this)
2/3rds stick Butter
2 cups flour to coat wings, seasoned with 1 tsp. season salt. (put in wide bowl or pie tin, do I need to include this?)
Oil for frying.
Deep cast iron cookware (see previous posts) or deep fryer.
Prepared dipping sauce of buttermilk ranch or whatever... homemade or from a jar does not matter much, but this is important to have.

Thaw wings, rinse in water, shake off excess water and while still damp roll in seasoned flour to lightly coat, fry in preheated oil till done turning halfway through. (about 7-10 minuets@300 degrees) set aside on wire rack to drain. Chicken is done when juice runs clear when pierced with a fork. This usually takes me 2-3 batches to fry the entire bag of wings.

Melt butter (microwave works fine) and mix with hot sauce. This is usually enough sauce to coat all the wings. This should be a 50/50 mixture of hot sauce and butter. This mixture will separate so give it a good stir before pouring on wings.

When wings are cooked and drained place in large bowl and drizzle half the wing sauce over the wings, toss, then drizzle the rest of the sauce, toss again.

Serve immediately with the dressing on the side and garnish with celery sticks. Everyone needs fiber.

Tecate beer is optional. Enjoy!

So cheap, so easy... the miracle of the casserole

Casseroles... the bane of many families to use up leftovers. There was once a joke I heard about the layer casserole, where all the leftover meals for the week ended up in the casserole as layers... then one day it happened, the leftover casserole from last week was at the bottom layer of the dish.

There is a little more to making casseroles than just tossing in your leftovers for the week and calling it good... because it probably won't be. The casserole is more of a formula of balanced and complementary component flavors based on a theme than a recipe. In other words, experiment and see what happens, once you get the formula down and stick to a theme there is very little that can go wrong. I love casseroles.

There are the basic building blocks of the casserole.
Meat - leftovers or canned are good but fresh is fine as well ~ only a small amount is needed ~ a cup or so,  a single leftover grilled chicken breast is enough for a tasty casserole. This can be fish, hamburger, roast beef, pork, sausages, chicken.

Starch 'filler' - one of my favorites to use is the tri-color spirals, but any pasta shape or noodle is also good as well as rice. This component is the bulk of the casserole. It is best to leave this a bit under cooked so it can finish cooking during baking time, if it is overcooked you will end up with a limp starchy mess.

The sauce - This is what brings it all together, you can easily use any cream soup like cream of mushroom or cream of celery or even cream of potato, but if you would like to cut down on expense and salt a thin white gravy (bechamel sauce) is also wonderful, and it is a neutral background for the other flavors. Other choices include alfredo sauce, spaghetti sauce, tomato sauce... it all depends on the theme and what you have available.

The seasonings ~ think of your theme ~ onions, salt and pepper, powder soup mixes like onion or vegetable, garlic, soy sauce, celery, other herbs and spices to enhance the theme.

The vegetable ~ this does not need to be in the casserole itself but it is a good way to use up the small amounts of vegetables left over from previous dinners. even if there is only a small portion of canned vegetable left over at each meal collect them in a small dish and add to it during the week when there are leftovers, you can also choose to open a can or even use fresh or frozen vegetables (my favorite). Of course in some "themes" you may just want to serve a side salad instead.

Cheese ~ optional but baked ziti would not be the same without it.

Topping ~ Now I hardly ever use a topping, some older recipes use corn flakes, bread crumbs and even smashed crackers but I don't find they are really necessary at all, they are more for appearance than flavor.

Your casserole dish ~ a 3 quart or larger round or oval deep baking dish with a lid, this prevents dry corners and over cooking as well as room for leftovers.

Baking ~ about an hour at 350 degrees. easy!

Some of my favorite combinations...

Tuna noodle casserole ~
2 cans tuna, drained
1 can cream soup - mushroom or celery with 1 can water added
egg noodles
peas
seasonings include onion, salt, pepper, celery seed

Baked Ziti~
hot italian sausage, browned
ziti or similar pasta
spaghetti sauce or marinara
ricotta and mozzarella cheeses
This is layered like a lasagna in the casserole dish - cheaper than making a lasagna and reheats even better!
serve with side salad and garlic toast.

Mock Lobster casserole~
Imitation crab chunks
bechamel sauce
broccoli -cooked
shredded cheddar cheese
season sauce using lemon juice or zest, salt and pepper.
This one is layered, broccoli, then cheese, then crab meat, seasoned bechamel sauce, top with bread crumbs, this one does not have a starch filler but feel free to experiment.

Chow mien casserole~
brown 1 pound hamburger in fry pan
add 2 bunches celery, chopped, saute until just bright.
then add to meat and celery about 1/2 cup soy sauce and can cream of mushroom soup and 1 can water.
rinse 1 cup uncooked rice and drain, add to bottom of casserole then pour meat and celery mixture on top of rice, do not stir. top with chow mien noodles.

Wild rice and chicken~ crock pot
1 cup wild rice, rinsed, place in bottom of crock pot
pour over can of cream of mushroom or cream of chicken soup mixed with 1 can water
place raw chicken pieces over rice, sprinkle with powder onion soup mix over top.
cook for about 8 hours on high add small amounts of water if needed.
this is not exactly a casserole but close, an easy way to fix wild rice. The chicken fat drains into the rice while it cooks making it very tasty. Wild rice has a bite and chew even when well cooked, that is just the way it is.

Chicken and garlic pasta~
canned chunk or leftover chicken, cubed
noodles (spirals)
chopped garlic
alfredo sauce
top with mozzarella and Parmesan cheese near the end of cooking time.

My dad's hot dish~
hamburger, browned
macaroni
canned mushrooms
tomato sauce
salt and pepper
onion
a few squirts of ketchup

I hope this gives some inspiration to your casserole night, feel free to experiment.

Amazing Caramel Sauce

Recipe yields 1 1/2 cups 

1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream
4 tablespoons butter
Pinch of sea salt
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Melt butter in pot, mix in brown sugar, cream and salt.
Cook over medium-low heat and whisk gently
for about 7 minutes or longer if you doubled.
I remove the pot from the heat, add vanilla and return to
cook for another minute or so to thicken a bit more.
Take it off the stove and pour into a jar then pop it into the
fridge.

Best Ever Back-country Cornbread. ~not the dry southern style they seem to serve round these parts.

There is more to cornbread than just using the recipe on the back of the box of jiffy mix. This cornbread is a sweet and tasty moist cornbread from scratch. I am so very disappointed in the 'southern' style of cornbread served in restaurants and bbq joints... it is dry and crumbly and just plain terrible. Avoid those cornbread 'mixes' they sell alongside the flour and cornmeal, get just plain ol yellow cornmeal for this recipe.

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup YELLOW plain and strait up corn meal .. the white stuff just is not the same.
1/2 cup sugar - adjust to taste if you want
2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons dry buttermilk (find it next to powder milk in the store)

combine all dry ingredients in large bowl

create a bit of a 'bowl' in the dry ingredients then add in the center
1/4 cup oil - vegetable, corn or canola.. whatever you prefer
1 cup cold water
1 egg

take a fork and mix the egg around the wet ingredients till mixed, then gently stir into dry ingredients untill just mixed, excessive mixing will cause gluten to form and will result in a hard dry cornbread. do not use an electric mixer.

use a 10 inch cast iron skillet, cold greased liberally with shortening or lard, pour in prepared batter and bake at 400 degrees for about 20 to 25 minutes, until wood pick inserted into center comes out clean.
Or... fry up like a pancake on cast iron griddle for a fried cornbread.

Serve hot.

Note: if you don't own cast iron I suggest getting some as soon as possible, but use a round pan to avoid dry overcooked corners.

You can use fresh buttermilk in this recipe instead of the mix + 1 cup water but I never keep fresh buttermilk around, I just don't use it enough.

After years of nothing... I feel the need to blog again. Not sure why. Today's topic is food. Growing up in a catholic family frugality was always on the menu.. in fact I could never understand how my parents liked steaks so much when I was served a dry hunk of chuck steak meat with no fat or flavor whatsoever... no there was flavor, a ton of pepper. That is just the way my dad cooked. I grew up thinking I did not like steak. When I would ask what was for dinner and my mom would say "steak" I would just groan, yuk. You see my parents insisted I 'clean my plate' when I was growing up and having to choke down a dry overdone steak that burned my throat with pepper was next to torture, I learned to hate steak. One day, in my mid 30's no less there was a rib eye steaks in the markdown bin, now being on a budget and not really caring for steaks anyway I got the meat expecting to make a meal for my 5 kids. Needless to say I grilled the steaks on a little electric indoor grill and they actually tasted very good. It occurred to me that my parents were buying the better cuts of steaks for themselves and giving me the cheap meat to save money, thanks Mom and Dad.

So this brings on my reason for blogging again. my recipes, some I taught my kids, some just never had the chance for me to teach them... so here it is. I have always been on a grocery budget so this is a very skinny gourmand way of cooking great nutritious food on the cheap, I hope you can get some use out if it. I will try to add pictures when I get a chance.

my first blog post, aka: poppin this blog's cherry

hehe ok, enough of that.

I had a blog on livejournal at one time, but I quit doing that. I got a bit parinoid. 

I have got so much to say, whether you find it interesing or not I don't know.

My blogging idol is Casey Serin, and he is the inspiration for why I started blogging in the first place. I have kids his age, and I just hate to see him screw up the way he does, but it gives me insight to the mind of a young person with dreams (or illusions) if grandour. But the reason he keeps on blogging is so people can learn from his mistakes, or so he says. 

But I am 20 years his senior, so I have made nearly twice as many mistakes, I learned some lessons.  Now if I could go back and do it all over again knowing what I know now I would jump on the chance. 

Now as I search the internet wayback machine for this tasty morsel, my first online essay written nearly 10 years ago:

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Welcome weary traveler  
Come inside, sit and be comfortable. There is a love story that will either break your heart or give you hope to go on. Let me show you what I have found.


so far 4251 Weary travelers have stumbled across my threshold.


"The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why." "The truly valuable thing is the intuition." -Albert Einstein-

I read somewhere about a truly gothic birthday was not sending out smurf invitations and having a big party with all your teenie bopper friends but a truly Gothic Birthday was you alone in you room sobbing uncontrolably in the dark because everyone either forgot you existed or no one cared it was your birthday. This is simmilar. You will not find any fancy wedding cake with a Gargoyle on top or a snazzy Get-up for the groom Or a picture of the 250 Year old church.
This is a true Horror story with a peaceful new begining...





True love isn't easy to find.

One heartbreak after another.

My first marriage fell into a nightmare.

A nightmare most cannot relize and if there is a god most could not experience. My sacrifice and loss goes beyond material things.

It is said that a first marriage is the victory of Love over common sence but a second marriage is the victory of Hope over experience.

There is still hope in my heart...


I lived in Reno, Nv for most of my life. I left my abusive husband for the last time in Feburary 1997. I moved into a crappy subsidized 2 bedroom apartment in the 2nd worst part of town. I tried to remain civil and let my ex see the children whenever, to have access to his family. For the next 2 years my life was hell, I was stalked... My mail was stolen, my home broken into when I was at work and any pawnable items were stolen. I was attacked and beaten daily in my own home and was helpless to do anything about it. The perpetrater was my Ex-Husband. TPO orders has no effect, When I called the police they were usless because this was a 'domestic incident'. Besides when the police would go to arrest him he would say 'I invited him over' or 'she started it' even though I was defending myself in my own apartment. When you get married to an abuser the Law does not apply anymore. You are his property to be toyed with and victimized untill he ceases to be amused anymore. Any thought of personal happiness is obliterated, all you can do is try to survive and hope your Ex does not get to pissed off that day. He finnaly went to jail for assault in late June 1999. He attacked one of my neibors who came to help me. He was relesed 6 weeks later and he was pissed.


Here is a Gothic Love Story...
The Night Things Changed - Gothic Male Seeks Soulmate

Well that title caught my eye. Yes, I met Dale at Excite online Personals. The Date was August 26, 1999. I was 33 Years old. This was a man who seemed more in a personal hell than I was. I was browsing through the Classifieds using keywords and this personal ad poppd up in my search results. I went on to read it- I replied- in hopes of having a pen pal to pass the time. He replied- I called Him- He told me to call him collect- I did- we talked - the first time we taked we talked for about 3 hours. We found a common ground. There was the past heartache, we had both learned well from it. The past did not bother him, he was not being haunted and stalked by it. That brought a amount of respect that did not exist in my life. He knew what he wanted, I did not feel I fit his expectations. The Phone calls were schedualed to fit when we would both have free time. Then the phone calls became daily, then twice a day. I worked the graveyard shift and would call him to wake him up in the morning , I would call him in the evening before I went to work. Every waking moment would be spent on the phone.
The Meeting..

This is where it gets sureal. He wanted to meet me in person. I did not belive he would send me airline tickets. But they were there when I picked them up at the airport. One round trip ticket from Reno to Nashville, TN. I stayed 1 week with him. I was finnaly at peace with myself. I was not afraid when I was with him. My parents told me that Kelly broke into my apartment when I was away, that did not bother me anymore. It is then that Dale asked me to move in with him.

I returned to Reno and immediatly Prepared to move.
I move 2000 miles

If there can be a force so strong as love, that is hard to explain. I felt a love so strong I moved 2000 miles away, gave up the home and life and family I knew, my new furniture, my apartment, just about all my clothes and other personal items. I packed up my kids and bare nessecities and got ready to go. My ex tried to take the kids by picking them up at school the friday before Halloween 1999 and no one told me. He moved form his mothers house into a motel and I had no idea where they went. That was true fear and panic . Once again the police could not do anything because he was their father. The children returned on their own one by one, First Amber, then a few days later Sean, Then we ran into them down the street and Sky came up to me and said she wanted to come home. I took her hand and walked away with her. We were leaving in less than a week so I then took my children out of school and I the school why I did this. The school reported this to Kelly , My social worker and to the Police. The police and my social worker said there is nothing they can do to stop me. They understood what was going on. All went well that last week and things were going smoothly then the night we were to leave the Police came. They had an order submitted to the courts by my Ex Husband saying that I cannot leave the state of Nevada with my children. I was given full custody of my children in the writ but I could not leave Nevada with them. This was a last ditch effort from my ex to destroy my freedom. My sister called Dale in a panic, Dale finnaly relized just what abuse can do. I drank a couple of Southern Comfort on the rocks , I ignored the order and left at midnight on December 6th 1999.
The cycle of abuse does not end when you leave the abuser

You can run away, you can hide, but you cannot hide for long. You have to lie to get your children into Public school, you have to be afraid he will find you agian and again. And if you do run away to escape your hell, you will lose your children. it is a simple fact, You took His children 2000 miles away - he does not have access to control you anymore so he will do what he can. He will get custody of his children. No matter how happy they are, no matter how well adjusted your new family is. The courts do not care if he is a violent criminal, for god sakes he is their father. Who cares if he lives in a Motel - He can't see his kids without beating up their mom so hey- let's solve this problem by taking her kids away. He is a criminal and he has rights by god. More rights than his 5 inocent victims. And if Mom loves her children she will follow them and return to Him Right?

Wrong.

The most heartbreaking Day of my life was when I handed my children over to him and then silently walked away. These are the only children I will have, I exchanged them for my freedom. I refused to go back to my Hell waiting for me in Reno, NV. I have not seen my Children since that day April 22, 2000.
But through the Gloom There is a dim light shining

I had Dale, the man who would just hold me when I was upset and not ask why. He reminded me how My Ex was trying to control me and he would get upset fearing I would leave him and return to Reno where my children and family are. His fear was unfounded, it did not make much sense to return to Reno, I tried that before. The more I tried to make things right the more I failed. It did not work. Besides we still have Joel. My oldest son. We have a beautiful house in the country and I have someone who I have lived with for 2 Years now, someone who has never lied to me, who has never raised a hand to me, someone who has never said a cruel word to me. One who I am at peace with. The way to cope was to focus on what I had left, not what I lost. Dale and I were married in a simple ceremony on Halloween in Lebanon, TN.

No was is invited. There was no reception. There is Love between us and that is all we need.

Do not marry the one you can live with, marry the one you cannot live without.

 Subject: Sorry, but you inspire me
From: TamaithandDale@aol.com
Date: Thu, Oct 14 1999 8:05:46 PM EDT

To Tammy, 10-14-99
Deep Thoughts
Deep thoughts of you and I constantly run through my mind,
Because of you my world is a better.....brighter place.
You are all that I have ever dreamed of a unique precious find,
A true gem that could never be replaced.
I have searched an eternity for a perfect love like you,
You bring balance to a life filled with lies and pain.
You create light in what was forever dark.....you can't realize the things
you do,
Your love heals the wounds that time has brought, your sunshine cancels all
the rain.
I wish to spend my life showing you that true love does exist,
You do not know how special you are...and the hope you have given me.
I wish to dedicate my life to you, and give you all the love you have missed,
I promise to hold you in my arms and be beside you eternally.
Somehow....someway I will prove my love and it will stand the test of time,
You inspire me to be my best and to do things I'd never do.
Always remember the deep thoughts of you that are in my mind,
And that I will forever be deeply in love with you.
All my love,
Dale