Hamburger Soup

We are soup people at our house. Partly

because it is cold in Montana a good part of the time, and partly because, well, we just like soup!

In another lifetime, I was married to a man from New Mexico. Whenever I got a cold, he would make me Hamburger Soup. It is a concoction that is both comforting and tasty, leaving you all warm inside.

Start by melting butter in a gallon-sized

pot. Sauté a chopped onion (some green onion, too, if you wish) and about half a finely chopped jalapeno, until they begin to brown a bit. Mash up about 1/2 pound of burger (my niece gave me this Nifty Burger Masher I highly recommend) in with the onion and cook it until all the pink is gone. Add a can of beef broth and about a quart of water. Then dice up some potatoes and add to the mix. Salt and pepper to taste. Then let the soup simmer for about 30 minutes. That's all there is to it! You have Soup!

Hamburger Soup Ingredients

2 Tbsp butter

1 onion, chopped

1/2 jalapeno, chopped

1/2 pound burger

2 potatoes, cubed

1 can beef broth

4-6 cups water

salt & pepper to taste

Old Stuff

I love old stuff! Not particularly valuable, not particularly antique....mostly just old - like the old stuff my grandma used to have. Stuff from the 1930s and 1940s. I used to call the stuff I love 'antiques', but our French friend, Remi, laughed at me when he heard that, and clarified the difference between 'antique' and just 'old' as about 400 years...lol...so I stood corrected!

One of the things I hope to do in the not too distant future is sell some of my great vintage finds on this website under 'Terri's Treasures'. We will keep you posted on that!

For the time being, I just want to be able to share with you some of what I consider to be Great Finds. Here in Montana, we have all sorts of places we can find vintage items. There are always garage sales, estate sales and second hand stores to rummage through. Every June, the Bitterroot Valley has a 50-Mile Yard Sale that I try to never miss.

Many of the things I purchase are very much still useful. My kitchen is full of them. Here are some of them:

Some Things Take Time...

I grew up in a family of very little means...we were not poor, mind you, just tight. So entertainment was not something you wasted money on. In the summer, when you were not working, you played outside. In the winter, we read, did puzzles, played board games and did a lot of coloring. When I was about 10, I got a beautiful animal-themed color-by-number book and an extra-large box of crayons, which I guarded very carefully from my other four siblings. The summer I was 14 and so very bored, Mama introduced me to embroidery and bought me a printed pillow top, decorated with birds and flowers and that said "Sweet Dreams" in fancy lettering. Grandma expanded my repertoire of stitches and took me to Woolworth's to buy a handful of colored thread. And I was off...

I like to keep my hands busy in the evenings while we are watching a movie. If you have ever done cross stitch or embroidery, you know that it takes hours to complete just a few inches of work. Usually, I persist and finish projects within a reasonable amount of time. I do admit that there are two projects in my basket that I (for whatever reason) gave up on and left sitting there...for someday??

This winter, while cleaning out my stash of needlework projects (most of them garage sale finds) I came upon a small tablecloth and decided to have a go at it.

Just to give you an idea of the time you need to invest on a project like this...one mushroom took me two evenings to finish--about two hours of handwork. The project came with floss, and I used that up, only to realize later that I could not

find a color match! So there ended up being subtle differences, in the blues especially. But, this morning, I finished the final stitches...and here it is!

A little tablecloth that I hope one of my grandchildren will treasure.

Good things take time...in this case, about nine months!