Our life is busy these days. Along with working full time, I also teach Zumba two nights a week, teach Bible study on Wednesdays, my husband works odd hours, and I’m pregnant and exhausted. Getting a delicious home-cooked dinner on the table can be tough.
One way I make life and dinnertime a little easier is slow cooker recipes. We love making taco meat and using it different ways. The first night we might have traditional tacos. Then I might make enchiladas or quesadillas with some of the meat. Then we might make a pasta dish with the final leftovers. Using the slow cooker is a great way to cook a bunch of yummy protein at once.
I’m sure you’re familiar with the salsa slow cooker tacos, but using My Brother’s Salsa puts a tangy spin on it. Created in Bentonville, it’s a fresh, delicious alternative to other jarred salsas. I like that they are smoother and almost act more likea sauce. My house smelled AMAZING while these were cooking. In fact, I tried to nap on Sunday afternoon while they were cooking, but the smell was so good that my stomach kept growling and I couldn’t nap! My Brother’s Salsa has a big variety of options to try. I used fire-roasted salsa for my tacos, but I think the traditional or tomatillo would be great options.
I enhanced the salsa flavor with a few spices and added a can of tomatoes and chilies for some texture.
You can use frozen or fresh roast. While I used beef, I’m sure you could use pork or chicken.
Brittney Lee: Slow Cooker Beef Tacos with My Brother’s Salsa
Ingredients
Beef Roast. Mine was a 3 lb. top round roast and it was frozen.
1 jar My Brother’s Salsa
1can Rotel, undrained
2 tablespoons dried minced onion
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon chili powder
½ to 1 teaspoon chipotle powder (depending on how hot you want it!)
Instructions
Top the roast with all the ingredients and set the slow cooker.
If frozen, cook 6-8 hours on low or 4-6 hours for fresh roasts.
Cook until the meat is tender and shred it with a fork.
Mix the shredded meat into the sauce.
Use the meat however you would for tacos.
Notes
We like ours on corn tortillas with cheese, Cholula sour cream, and guacamole.
They would also be great with just onions and cilantro, like a street taco. Or you could make taco salads, nachos, or enchiladas. Go crazy!
Brittney is a native Arkansan with a love for bright lights and big city. She often escapes her 20-acre home in a small town to shop, eat and catch a concert in the big city nearby. She blogs about her life, her faith, her adventures, her dogs and her country home at Razorback Britt.
My Brother’s Salsa was founded by ARWB member Helen Lampkin.
I grew up in Searcy, Arkansas. I have lived in Searcy for decades. I have seen Searcy grow from the population of less than 10,000 (13,000 when Harding College was in session) of my youth, to the current population of nearly 23,000 (30,000 during the school year). It has more than doubled in size since my Junior High years in the early seventies.
There have been a lot of changes in these years. Gone is my favorite store of my childhood – the Ben Franklin $0.05, $0.10, and $0.25 cent store. There were thousands – or at least, it seemed that way to a young child – of toys, and few of the toys cost more than a quarter. Sometimes dad would give me a dime to spend. I can remember standing in front of my favorite tray of toys and trying to decide – did I want two nickle toys, or one dime toy. I could get a slingshot for a dime, or two bags of peas and a pea shooter, or a doll, or a coloring book and crayons – the choices seemed endless.
Then there was Allison’s, at the corner of Holmes and Highway 16. If dad gave me a dime there, I was rich, indeed! Usually, he just gave me a nickle. But that was OK. With one nickle, I could get five pieces of candy. They had a huge selection of penny candy. If I chose my candy just right, I could end up with twenty pieces – Kits taffy had four pieces for a penny. For two cents, I could buy a BB Bat – which was taffy on a stick. Or I could spend the entire nickle on one big piece of flat taffy – I think it was McGraw’s Country Store brand. I remember that if you gave the candy a sharp hit before you opened it up, it would shatter into small pieces. If the candy got a little bit warm, however, it wouldn’t break, it would stretch. I remember when the penny candy became two cents, and then a nickle, and then a dime. Nickle taffy cost fifty cents. Today, that same type of taffy can still be purchased, and if you are lucky, you can find it for a dollar. Allison’s is still in existence, across the street from the original location, but penny candy is just a memory.
Another favorite place from my childhood was the County Courthouse.
Construction on the Courthouse started in 1850. The Civil War intervened, and it was not finished until 1871. It is the oldest courthouse in Arkansas still used for its original purpose. It is smack dab in the middle of what used to be the main part of town. I remember brick roads going around the courthouse. I loved those brick roads. They have been paved over for years. I wish they were still there. As of this writing, some of the brick road can be seen, as they have taken a lot of the asphalt off while they are working on the roads in that area.
One Saturday my whole family went down to the courthouse. There was some kind of festival going on. I was little, but I remember that blue grass music was being played on the porch and steps going up to one of the entrances. Other events were held at the courthouse as well. Decades before Dinner on the Square was started, the then new local arts council sponsored several plays and musicals. One of them was Night of January 16, by Ayn Rand. The play takes place in a courthouse, and this play was actually held in the courthouse.
Across the street from the courthouse is an old movie theater, the Rialto.
My friends and I would affectionately call it the “rat hole.” There was a show on PBS that was about old classical movies. The opening scene showed people going in and out of a movie theater, and my dad told me that the theater depicted was our very own Rialto. I remember in the 60s, the theater was segregated. White people sat in the bottom, and black people, with a few whites, sat in the balcony, which had a separate outside entrance. My family usually sat in the balcony. In the late 70s, necking couples would sit in the balcony (don’t ask how I know). One of the things that I remember from those days gone by was that the Rialto wasn’t just for movies. I also saw live plays and variety shows at the Rialto. I was so happy when they started work to restore the neon lights.
Unfortunately, that restoration project never got finished, and the lights that were repaired no longer work. There are very few people who work on neon lights anymore. I do hope the restoration efforts continue – I would love to be able to see a movie from the balcony again.
Searcy wasn’t always the name of my hometown. It used to be called White Sulphur Springs. What many people do not know is that at one time, White Sulphur Springs rivaled Hot Springs for its springs and spas and by 1834 the area had many people coming to “take the waters” for its therapeutic healing. A number of hotels were built around what is now Spring Park. The town was officially renamed in 1838, after Richard Searcy, a prominent legislature who had passed away in 1832. As a kid, I remember a special water fountain at Spring Park. The water tasted really odd to me, and it had spigots where people could fill up jugs of water.
My favorite place and memory from my past hometown, however, is of Searcy Pioneer Village.
On the grounds of the White County Fairgrounds was a special section. That area was fenced off, and wasn’t usually open. But during fair week, it was open, and sometimes it was open for other special events or occasions. There was a dogtrot cabin, a one room school house, a black smith’s shop, a woodworker’s shop, a pole barn, a jail, a covered bridge, a general store, an old moonshine still, and lots of fascinating things to look at and talk about. There were carriages and tools, and sometimes people demonstrating old traditional crafts. I loved that place as a child, and I loved it as an adult. It was a pioneer hometown within my hometown. All of the buildings had come from White County. I still have a ten volume set of “The Best 100 stories in the World, printed in 1927. My boyfriend at the time bought for me at one of their special fundraiser events.
Pioneer Village is no longer at the fairgrounds. A parking lot sits where once people cooked over an open fire, or gave a lesson to students in a one room schoolhouse. A lot of people have told me that they miss Pioneer Village. What they had not known, and what many still do not know, is that it is not gone, it has only moved. When the Fair board decided they wanted the space for something else, they went to the White County Historical Society and asked them if they wanted to move the buildings. The Historical Society decided that they wanted to maintain the village, and the city of Searcy found a spot that the buildings could be moved to. Pioneer Village now sits at 1200 Higginson Street, just north of the Searcy Soccer and Ball fields. It still has the dog trot cabin, one room schoolhouse, and the original Pangburn jail.
There are a lot of stories about the buildings. The sheriff of Pangburn supposedly said that he wanted to build a jail so uncomfortable that no one would want to spend more than one night in it. The Gordons were friends with the James boys, and on the wall of the jail a pair of chaps are displayed that are supposedly from Jessie James. Not all of the building could be moved, so a new pole barn with blacksmith shop has been built, and a new woodworker’s area has been built. There is also a new gazebo for musicians that was finished just last year, a trapper’s cabin furnished from a description from the early 1800s, and a train depot that was donated to the village after its move to its current location. Master Gardeners keeps up the grounds, and they do a wonderful job.
Open house is traditionally held on the first weekends of May and November, with crafters selling their hand made items and historical demonstrators in period clothing. There is also a one day Christmas event in December, weather permitting, and for the last couple of years the village has been open for tours on Saturdays during the summer.
There is so much more that I could say about my hometown, both past and present. I could talk about the industries, the factories, farmer’s market, Harding College and its transition to a University. I could talk about integration in Searcy. I could talk about the Cobbite cult of the 1870s, and the civil war ghosts that are supposed to haunt houses on Park street, and the ghosts at Harding. I could talk about the churches, the people, the schools, concerts and plays – I enjoyed living in southern California for fifteen years, but I missed Searcy. I’m glad to be back in my hometown. I hope, where-ever you live, that you have good memories of your home town – but come on over and visit mine! I think you’d like it here.
Melinda LaFevers is a creative, imaginative, renaissance woman with a wide variety of interests. She is a substitute teacher, an Arkansas A+ Fellow, and a writer. She is also on the Arkansas Arts in Education residency artist roster with two programs, Life in a Castle?and Life in a Log Cabin,that she presents in schools around the state. She has speculative fiction stories in several anthologies, writes a column on traditional and modern herbal use for The Renaissance Magazine. Her first non-fiction book, Meditations of a Hoarder, was released last June. She likes to imagine the day that her house is completely organized. More of her writings may be read at https://melindalafevers.wordpress.com/ and https://hoardinglife.wordpress.com/
Jodi Coffee, who blogs at The Coffee House Life, is the mom of three beautiful and energetic little girls that ALWAYS give her something to blog about. She loves to try new things — food, travel and adventure. In her spare time…wait a minute. What is that? She enjoys training for triathlons, and is currently chasing a lifetime dream of crossing the finish line of her first IRONMAN. She is a backyard farmer, a farmers’ market manager and enjoys helping bring healthy opportunities to her community.
Hi. My name is Carmella. I’m excited to represent my favorite group of women bloggers this month. Thank you to Julie at EGGS & HERBS for extending me the opportunity and for keeping me and all the other gals corralled.
I started blogging in 2008. I was in a transition phase. I had recently gone from busy, corporate mom to instant stay-at-home mom to better meet my son’s needs. I enjoyed being able to have that time with my sweet boy and I will forever cherish that time with him. However, I would be fibbing if I didn’t admit that I missed having a keyboard at my fingertips, being able to creatively solve problems and connecting with other adults.
As the boy napped each afternoon I jumped online to search for fun projects we could do together, new recipes and whatever else I was obsessing over that day (diy projects, bug bites, fashion trends, etc.). These searches led me to blogs – a new concept for me. I bookmarked a few favorites. Bookmarking turned to lurking. Lurking turned to engaging and before I knew it I had connected with several new friends across the country. This filled my need to exercise my brain and to connect.
But something was still missing.
Due to the loss of income from leaving my career, I needed a way to supplement our income. I had previously joined a home décor and entertainment company as a consultant to have one girls-night-out a month and score a few free products for my home. I enjoyed leading the parties, connecting with other women and sharing easy ideas for home décor and entertaining. Their reactions of awe and delight as I shared what I found to be simple ideas became addictive. Hosting more parties was not a practical option. I needed to find a way to share my creativity and reap the reward of inspiring others.
Enter Southern Fried Dreams.
In fall 2008 I decided to get outside my comfort zone and launch a blog initially titled Southern Fried Dreams which was later changed to Southern Fried Gal. I’ve been reaping the rewards since day one. In the early days it provided an outlet to meet my disparate needs as my identity was morphing. It provided a platform to creatively grow my at home business from in person and local to online and nationwide which led to a little more income and a lot more self-confidence. It provided a hands-on education that extended my credibility when I decided to re-enter the workforce years later. Even more importantly, it connected me to really cool people, like the women in this group, that I now call friends.
My journey has changed.
In December 2014 I decided to say goodbye to Southern Fried Gal. I didn’t have the same amount of time to contribute as I did in the past. My journey had changed and I no longer identified as strongly with that brand. It was a hard decision to say goodbye.
Still needing a place to connect, I launched Uncommonly Connected, a little knockabout place to bring together people and ideas. It serves some of the same needs as before and a few new ones. I have a vision to grow this little corner of the digital world when the time is right. For now it’s a place for me to slow down, a place to reflect and share, and most importantly a place to continually connect.
Speaking of connecting, besides my blog here are a few other places I like to hang out, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and sometimes Twitter. If we haven’t already, let’s connect!
Healthy fast food is an oxymoron, but making healthy food convenient from nutrient-dense, whole foods from home takes on a whole new meaning. My choice of healthy fast food happens to be in the form of a Green Smoothie. It’s easy to make, store and grab on the go.
Drinking a green smoothie is a quick way to consume optimal nutrition in a single serving. Everything you need is at your local farmers market, the produce section of your grocery store or your back yard.
The best part of making green smoothies is there are no rules. No real measuring. If there is an ingredient you prefer over another, simply adjust. You can see one of my basic recipes in the video below. I saved it from a story I had made for my Snapchat friends.
So how do we make a Green Smoothie? Use any blender. The key is blending in stages.
I add fresh ingredients from what I have on hand. My process of selecting ingredients is more like a simple mental checklist.
Below are the categories I check off in my mind when I create a smoothie.
Select one or more greens from the ingredient categories and blend them together with your liquid. Feel free to use more than one type of greens. Once blended, add one or more choices of fruit as well as vegetables. Blend again. Add an ingredient from the fourth category to enhance the texture. To boost the nutritional profile of my smoothie, I add items from the Add-In list. Fresh ginger is very common in my green smoothie.
Fruits: Pears, Green or Red Apples, Melon, Grapes, Peaches, Cantaloupe, Pineapple, Mango or strawberries
Veggies: Cucumber, Parsley, Carrot or Celery
Texture: Banana, Avocado, Frozen Fruit (Smoothie Blend is available) (There are many frozen fruit options blueberries are nutritious)
Add-ins: Ground Flaxseed, Chia Seeds, Spirulina or Fresh Ginger
Depending on which ingredients you have blended, the color of your smoothie will vary. If it appears not as green as you had anticipated, be reassured it will still taste good. Think of it as mixing colors on a palette.
If you are new to drinking smoothies, I recommend serving one to yourself in the fanciest glass you have. There’s something to treating your body and mind.
In this world, where our busy lives seem to be in a state of entropy…you know that feeling of chaos and utter disorganization? Am I the only one who experiences this? What helps me is my choice for nutrition by treating my body to a green smoothie. Will you be giving it a try? What is your choice for a nutritious meal?
Please let me know in your comments.
In 2007, Arkansas Women Blogger member Kellee Mayfield and her family moved to Lake Village. Kellee was quickly given the nicknamed “Kelly Jo” and the name stuck. As an Oklahoma native, Kelly Jo writes about living in very southeast Arkansas and the Mississippi Delta which has been penned the most Southern place on earth. She also shares her art as well as the art of resourcefulness as being the key to really small town living. Kellee is a mother, wife and is in sales representative and clinical specialist for a medical device company. And she has a Southern drawl. Catch up with Kellee Jo at Delta Moxie,Instagram, Twitter, Periscope and Snapchat.
I entered a new season this past year when my husband, Dan, retired. So, I decided to record a few of those moments in my blog. I call it “Life in the Gray Zone.”
I hope you’ll join me as I share some of our stories from the “Gray Zone.”
The weather is just starting to warm up.We are free of the frosts and freezes.Well, we hope we are! Fingers crossed.But we are ready for our gardens and to start enjoying those fresh homegrown or farmers market vegetables.
The first fruits from the garden that we can get our hands on are greens.Mustards, Collards, Kale, Chard.I love a mess of greens.But truth be told I did not grow up eating them.I didn’t learn to cook greens until after I was married.I looked questionably at the dark green leaves boiling with chunks of salt pork looking very much like a swamp witch’s brew.
I plant my greens early in the year under hoop houses.This helps keep them a bit warmer and protect delicate leaves from any heavy snow.When I cook my greens, I don’t boil them.And there is always bacon involved.
Jeanetta Darley: First Fruits From the Garden {Greens}
Ingredients
2 gallon bags of greens (mustards, collards, kale, and or chard)
1 medium onion
8 slices of bacon
Minced garlic, salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
Wash and dry greens. Remove the tough vein and stem of all but the chard. The stem is very tender when cooked and adds texture and a bright accent color to the dish. Chop or tear greens into 2 inch strips or pieces.
Slice the onion.
Cut the bacon into half inch pieces.
In a large stock po,t cook the bacon and onion over medium high heat until everything starts the brown.
Add the greens. You may have to do this in stages as the greens cook down.
Add garlic, salt and pepper.
Stir and cook for 20 minutes until greens are tender
Jeanetta is an artist, blogger, and sometimes homesteader. She’s addicted to coffee, her garden, and chickens. You can see her art and read more stories at JeanettaDarley.com. Or follow her on social media @jeanettadarley.
My life changed dramatically this past year—my husband, Dan, retired. And retirement life did not turn out quite like I expected. In fact, I don’t know what I thought it would look like. But I’m adjusting.
“How’s retirement?” One of Dan’s friends asked.
If you know Dan, you won’t be surprised at his quick humor and pithy comebacks. So, don’t say I didn’t warn you. But if you dare to ask him that question, he’ll just smile and repeat his canned response, “Every day is Saturday.”
The first time I heard Dan reply to questions about retirement, I thought, Maybe for YOU every day is Saturday. But I haven’t retired yet!
Bottom line—we’ve entered into a new season of life at our house.
EVERY DAY IS SATURDAY!
If you happen to drop by our house, you’ll also see some subtle changes in the décor—like the two new recliners in front of our big-screen TV. But we might not even be at home. We might be walking some farmer’s field, looking for arrowheads. Or we may be enjoying a day trip, driving through the Ouachita Mountains.
Then again, you might find me hiding out in my office, trying to finish an article or book by the deadline.
“What’s the big deal?” you ask. “Why do you need to ‘hide out’ in your office to work? I thought you said, ‘Every day is Saturday.’”
Do you know how hard it is to focus on a writing project when “every day is Saturday”?
Yet the first eight weeks of Dan’s retirement, that is exactly what I needed to do. Why? I had a deadline to meet to turn in my first book manuscript.
Yes, I am a late bloomer. Just when my ‘baby boomer” decides to wind up his career, I’m stepping into a new role as a book author. And my first book, Words That Change Everything, releases in June 2016.
“What a great time write! a writing friend suggested. “Maybe you can finish some of those other projects you stated earlier.”
Right now, I’m also working on another book now about grandparenting with another writing friend and blogger, Mary Larmoyeux. So, I am writing a few of the stories that matter most to me. And I do hope to complete some of the other projects that I haven’t finished. But I’m also preparing to launch my first book. And it can be a challenge at times to fit everything I need to do into my daily schedule.
Jodi Coffee, who blogs at 
I started blogging in 2008. I was in a transition phase. I had recently gone from busy, corporate mom to instant stay-at-home mom to better meet my son’s needs. I enjoyed being able to have that time with my sweet boy and I will forever cherish that time with him. However, I would be fibbing if I didn’t admit that I missed having a keyboard at my fingertips, being able to creatively solve problems and connecting with other adults.
In 2007, Arkansas Women Blogger member Kellee Mayfield and her family moved to Lake Village. Kellee was quickly given the nicknamed “Kelly Jo” and the name stuck. As an Oklahoma native, Kelly Jo writes about living in very southeast Arkansas and the Mississippi Delta which has been penned the most Southern place on earth. She also shares her art as well as the art of resourcefulness as being the key to really small town living. Kellee is a mother, wife and is in sales representative and clinical specialist for a medical device company. And she has a Southern drawl. Catch up with Kellee Jo at 
