Thursday 13: Hot, Fun, and Productive

1.    I just want to start off by saying thank you to everyone for your awesome comments on my post about growing up as a JW and leaving the cult.  I appreciate all of your kind words, and you’ve made me feel good about having written it.

2.    I finished with a fairly large project at work.  The deadline got moved up it, so I ended up working late a couple of days, but it’s finished now, and it went well.  The coworker I worked with was very kind and very adamant about making sure my name went on the finished product.  They said I’d worked really hard and deserved credit.  It’s always nice to get good feedback at work.

3.    My sister, Gabby, and her girlfriend, Amy, came to visit.  They arrived Saturday just before lunch and stayed until late Sunday afternoon.

4.    Amy got some good pictures of the cats while they were here.  Here’s one she took of Frankie.

5.    We had a great time.  Gabby and Nick get along well, and Nick and I both get along well with Amy.  Gabby recently referred to me as the founder and CEO of the We Love Amy Club.  She’s not wrong.

6.    We went to an awesome local restaurant for lunch on Saturday.  Gabby had been before and loves it, but this was Amy’s first time eating there.  She says it’s one of her favorites now.  We grilled out for dinner Saturday night and stayed up late talking and playing trivia games.

7.    Gabby and Amy both went out to give the chickens snacks with me.  They didn’t realize that some of the chickens are free-range and thought there had been a chicken escape when they pulled up in the driveway and were greeted by chickens.   Fortunately, no free-range chickens were captured, and Gabby and Amy enjoyed feeding all of the chickens their snacks.

8.    It seems like sometimes, with a long weekend, we end up feeling like we’ve wasted it by not doing anything productive, or we vastly overestimate how much we can do with the extra day, and it feels like the weekend wasn’t at all fun or restful.  This time, though, we actually hit a good balance.  We had a lot of fun visiting with Gabby and Amy on Saturday and Sunday.  We spent Sunday evening reading instead of our usual, getting ready for the week.  On Monday, we went to the gym in the afternoon and spent more time than we usually do, went out for an early dinner, went to the grocery store, and spent some time getting ahead on things for the week.  It was a nice balance. 

9.    Mortimer spent most of the weekend chilling out.  Amy took this picture of him.  He was completely zonked out in this position.  It doesn’t look very comfortable to me, but he was happy.

10. It has been HOT this week.  We’re back in the high 80s and low 90s, with high humidity. 

11. The air conditioning was out at work on Tuesday.  By 10:30, it was 85 degrees in the building, and efforts to fix the air conditioning thus far hadn’t worked.  Since we hadn’t even hit our high temperature yet (and it was hotter in the building than it was outside), my boss sent us all home to work from home for the rest of the day. 

12. It’s supposed to cool down to the mid-70s over the weekend, which everyone is very much looking forward to.

13. The immortal tomatoes (also known as cherry tomatoes) are back.  It has been years since we’ve planted any of these, and we never planted them where they’re currently growing.  Yet, every year, they come back, so I’ve taken to calling them the immortal tomatoes.  

So, how has your week been? 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  I hope you’re all spending the day with the people you love the most, and will be enjoying a wonderful meal today. 

Safe travels, happy cooking, and best wishes for a truly wonderful day. 

Skipping The Gift Tags

I know it’s still a little early by some people’s standards to be sharing Christmas related posts, but I wanted to go ahead and post this one in anticipation of the Christmas shopping so many people will be doing at the end of the week.

I enjoy wrapping Christmas gifts, but I’m very slow at it, so I’m all for skipping a step when possible.  I tend to have cat “helpers”, too, so it’s nice not to have constantly take the pen for writing names on tags back from them.   Or go get another pen when they take off with the one I was using.

I tried this for the first time last year, and it worked incredibly well, so I’ll be doing it again this year.

Rather than putting tags on the gifts, I just designated a specific wrapping paper for each person we were spending Christmas with.  It was really easy to do since I had found paper that was perfect for each of our recipients.

Nick’s mom, Susan, is an extraordinary baker, so she got the cupcake paper.

Nick’s step-dad, Alan, is very into cars; buying old ones and restoring them, so he got the car paper.

 Everyone else we spent Christmas with had their own specific paper, too, but you get the idea.

It was super convenient not having to look for tags, or worry about them falling off, or the cats taking them off.  And I felt like it made the gift wrapping go a little faster.  It also made it really easy when it was time to open presents since we knew exactly who each of ours was intended for just by looking at the paper.

I think everyone liked having their own kind of personalized wrapping paper, too.  I’d like to think it added an extra little layer of happiness to the day.

Our friend Alex took a similar approach.  She used the same paper for everyone’s gifts, but we each had our own color of ribbon.  All of my gifts had green ribbon, Nick’s had red, etc.  That also worked really well. 

Have you found an easy way to keep track of which gifts are for which person?  Or a way to convince your cats that you don’t need their help wrapping?

I’ll leave you with Julie Andrews and My Favorite Things, since it references packages.  I know it’s often played as a Christmas song, but I don’t consider it to be.  What about you?  Do you think of it as a Christmas song?

Music Monday: Mary Chapin Carpenter - Thanksgiving Song

I think we’ve definitely established that Thanksgiving is absolutely my favorite holiday.  I also think Thanksgiving doesn’t get nearly the love it deserves.  This is the only Thanksgiving song I’ve been able to find.  Fortunately, I love this song!  I love the lyrics, and I think Mary Chapin Carpenter has an incredible voice.  If my favorite holiday only gets one song, I’m glad it’s this one.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, and I hope things are coming together for you to have a wonderful Thanksgiving. 

Thanksgiving Questions & Answers

I think we’ve established by now that I will never pass up an opportunity to talk about Thanksgiving.  I’m sorry, I just love it.

I also love America’s Test Kitchen.  It’s one of my all time favorite cooking shows.  This month the test kitchen experts are sharing their Thanksgiving favorites and traditions.  It’s a nice little peak into your favorite test kitchen expert’s celebrations. 

I thought it might be fun to borrow their questions for a blog post.  I hope you’ll answer at least some of them too.  If you don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, feel free to use Christmas or any other food centric holiday.

Home or away?

Home.  Until last year traveling for Thanksgiving wasn’t an option for us due to Nick’s work schedule.  Now that he’s off for Thanksgiving we enjoy taking the meal to the hospice house for lunch, and then hosting at home for dinner. 

When do your festivities kick off?

Really only on Thanksgiving Day.  I take off work the day before, and spend the day in the kitchen.  I enjoy it, but I doubt most people would call it festive.

Any special diets to consider?

Not really.  Pretty much everyone we invite is very low maintenance when it comes to food.  I try to make a wide variety of dishes so even if someone can’t or won’t eat a few things they still have plenty of choices. 

What’s your favorite recipe?

For me it’s probably a tie between the pumpkin pie and the sweet potato casserole.  And I really love the turkey.  It’s really hard to choose, though.  Other than the green bean casserole, I love all of the traditional Thanksgiving foods.  That’s one of the reasons it’s my favorite holiday.

What’s your family’s consensus pick recipe?

We don’t actually end up celebrating with either of our families.  My parents don’t celebrate.  My sister lives three hours away, and doesn’t get the day after off of work.  Nick’s mom and step-dad are six hours away, and come to NC for Christmas.  Nick’s favorites are the green bean casserole, macaroni & cheese, and sweet potato casserole.  Last year the mashed potatoes were a big hit with most of our guests, and so was the ham.  Our neighbors are coming again this year, and have mentioned the ham from last year, so that was probably the most popular dish last year.

Any new recipes this year?

Nope.  I’m really not sure Thanksgiving Day is the time to test out a new recipe.  I am all about trying new recipes, and experimenting in the kitchen.  But I also believe in keeping the cooking low stress.  I cook two separate meals on Thanksgiving, which means the timing is pretty tight.  I don’t think that’s the time to try out something unknown.  It always takes me much longer the very first time I make something, and I just don’t have that extra time, or the extra attention to devote to a new recipe.  It’s not unusual for me to have a full oven, all four burners on the stove in use, a slow cooker or two going, and the roaster.  I’m not sure I’d have the mental space to devote to keeping track of something new.  Also, it’s always a little bit of a gamble to try out a new recipe.  You just don’t know if it’s going to turn out right, or if you’re going to like it.  There’s something to be said for sticking with the tried and true on Thanksgiving.

What’s your must-have gadget for Thanksgiving cooking?

The ZYLISS Lock N Lift can opener.  Last year and the year before cans were my nemesis.  In 2016, I very nearly lost it trying to open cans of green beans (using the electric can opener) for green bean casserole.  Last year I ended up going next door to ask our wonderful neighbors for help in opening the cans of pumpkin and evaporated milk for the pumpkin pies.  Their 10 year old opened the cans for me!  I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I struggle with electric can openers, and the regular manual ones.  A friend of ours gave me this one for Christmas last year, so I wouldn’t have to enlist the kids next door to help me with cans.  It has been a real game changer!  I highly recommend it if you’re looking for an easy to use can opener. 

What’s your pie preference?

Pumpkin!  I’m not sure it would be Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie!  I do make sure to have other desserts, though, to keep everyone happy.  Usually we have something chocolate, and at least one other dessert that’s not chocolate or pumpkin.

When will the first turkey sandwich get made?

Friday morning.  I LOVE Thanksgiving leftovers, and eat them for breakfast on Friday morning.  My Friday morning breakfast is usually a turkey sandwich made on a dinner roll, pumpkin pie, and cranberry sauce.  We kind of graze on the leftovers for most of the weekend.

Will anyone be watching football?

Nope.  Nick and I aren’t football fans at all.  We usually don’t even turn the TV on since we’re pretty busy that day.  We may try to break out a board game after dinner this year, but we’ll see what everyone wants to do.

Now it’s your turn.  Feel free to answer any and all of the questions.  I’d love to hear about your celebrations. 

Christmas In July? August?

Don’t worry, I’m not trying to rush Christmas.  I think we’ve established that I love Thanksgiving way too much to ever do that!  I have noticed, however, that I never post very much between Thanksgiving and Christmas, despite my best intentions.

There are a few Christmas posts I’ve wanted to do for years now, and just haven’t gotten around to, so I’ve decided to start writing and scheduling some Christmas related posts now.  It’s part of my plan of doing things this year.

I start my Christmas shopping really early.  In all honesty, I actually had a few Christmas presents for this year purchased before Christmas Day last year.  I’m not sure if that makes me prepared, or a little too obsessed.  When do you start your Christmas shopping? 

So how soon is too soon for Christmas related posts?  A few of them are gift wrapping ideas, and a few DIY gifts that take a little time.  I don’t think they’d be particularly helpful or useful posted a week or two before Christmas. 

 There seems to be a core group of you who regularly read and comment, so it makes the most sense to me to just ask you.  After all, you’re taking valuable time out of your day, so I’d like to make sure it’s a pleasant experience for you.

The main ideas I’m tossing around are:

• A few, maybe two or three, Christmas posts a week, starting the day after Thanksgiving.  

• One Christmas post a month starting in August, and probably finishing up around the beginning of December, most likely with a few posts during the first week of December.

I don’t have an exact number of posts yet since I’m in the early stages of writing them.  I’m also not a math person, so probably wouldn’t break it down into exact numbers even if I did.  And I’m certainly open to other scheduling ideas.  Like I said, I’d like for them to be useful. 

So what say you, visitors to my little corner of the blogging world? 

Thrifty Thursday - The Valentine’s Day Edition

Yes, I know it isn’t actually Valentine’s Day yet, but talking about a holiday on the actual holiday usually feels like I’m late for blogging about it.  I also feel like I need to preface this post by saying that I am not at all anti-Valentine’s Day.  I absolutely believe that we’re all allowed to choose our favorite holidays and celebrate them in ways that make us and our loved ones happy.

When I was single I had this idea that once you were happily in a relationship Valentine’s Day was this magical day full of hearts and pink flowers.  I thought it was incredibly romantic, and that of course anyone who was truly in love would go all out for it.  I was sure if you were happily in love it had to be your favorite holiday.

I’m not sure where I got those ideas from.  Maybe it came from years of working in offices that looked like a flower shop on Valentine’s Day, reading so many romance novels, or watching too many romantic comedies.  I’m really not sure.  As usual, reality has turned out to be very different from how I thought things would go.

I really think that Nick and I are just bad at Valentine’s Day, and I’ll freely admit that I’m definitely worse at it than Nick is.  I’m not sure what it is.  We’ve tried.  We’ve really tried.  It’s not that we don’t like holidays, and I think we’re fairly good at most other holidays.  Nick is great at birthdays.  Nick’s mom is great at Christmas, enough so that the rest of us can just kind of follow her example and be pretty good at it.  I like to think I’m fairly good at Thanksgiving, which, for the record, remains my favorite holiday of all time.  Valentine’s Day is just a completely different story for us.

It seems that most years at least one of us is sick on Valentine’s Day.  We’ve both had the flu on Valentine’s Day.  One year Nick left work with a stomach virus, and I ended up going to get the frozen bananas I’d had delivered to him at work.  Some years the weather has wreaked havoc on our attempts at Valentine’s Day celebrations.  There was the year that Nick sent me a gardenia plant at work.  It arrived right after they closed my building ahead of a major snow storm, so it sat in its box in the security room for four days.  It was a dead, crusty lump by the time I got it.
Emma’s birthday was the day after Valentine’s Day, and we always made a big deal out of her birthday, so last year was a little hard since it was our first year without her.

Over the years we’ve lowered our expectations for Valentine’s Day.  For a few years we just did cards, but it seemed like even that was a hassle that had at least one of us, usually me, out buying a card on the actual holiday.  Again, I don’t know what it is with Valentine’s Day.   I have several Christmas presents for this year already.  I’m capable of cooking two separate Thanksgiving dinners on the actual holiday and having them both ready on time.  I’m not usually the person running around trying to do things at the last minute.  I don’t know why I can’t seem to get it together for Valentine’s Day.

This year, we’ve agreed that we’re not doing anything for Valentine’s Day.  We have no plans for going out to dinner.  We’re not sending each other flowers, candy, fruit, or anything else.  We’re not even planning to exchange cards.

We briefly considered cards, but then decided against them.  Honestly, it felt more like yet another thing on a to-do list than something we were excited about doing.  We don’t save cards, so they just would have ended up in the recycling bin in a few weeks anyway.  That seemed like such a waste, especially since Valentine’s Day cards seem to be anywhere from $5.00 and up.  That’s admission to some museums or state parks, and since we’re trying to make more of an effort to do things this year we thought we’d be better off putting our time, energy, and money into going to a museum, state park, or even just trying a new coffee shop.  Obviously not on Valentine’s Day, though, since our plans on that day never seem to work out.

It doesn’t sound romantic or exciting I know, but it has taken away a lot of pressure to plan, to spend, and to try to live up to expectations.  It’s not that we’re anti-holiday.  I’m sure that we’ll do our usual big events for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Everyone has to choose how to spend their time, effort, and money.  We’re just choosing to acknowledge that Valentine’s Day isn’t the holiday that’s worth it for us to go all out for.

So what about you?  Is Valentine’s Day a big event for you?  Do you have better luck with it than we have?  Or is there another holiday you prefer to make a big event of?

November Wrap-Up

It’s hard to believe that tomorrow is going to be December 1st.  The last few weeks of November seemed to fly by, but was actually mostly good.

I’ll start with the best news first.  We finally got rain!!!  I’ve never been so happy to see rain.  We had a tiny bit of rain in the early hours of Thanksgiving morning.  Then we had a little rain Monday night.
We’ve had lots of rain today, and it has been wonderful.

The smoke got really bad last week.  Because of the way the wind was blowing we were actually getting smoke from two different fires.  There was a haze of smoke inside at work last week, and at home it smelled like a bonfire.  I was convinced we would be evacuating.  Once again, Nick was the voice of reason, and was right, no evacuation for us.

I ended up going to the doctor to get medications for smoke-related breathing issues.  I’ve had a terrible cough that just won’t go away.  It turns out that it’s due to inflammation caused from the smoke and all of the coughing.  I’m two days into the medicine, and already feel so much better.  Being able to breathe is a wonderful thing!

Our cat, Joey, has asthma, and our vet has had us increase all of his medications, and even added in a few more.  Hopefully now that we’ve had some rain, and the smoke seems to finally be clearing, we’ll be able to taper him back down to his normal dose.

We celebrated my parents’ 42nd anniversary with them the weekend before Thanksgiving.  We brought a cake, and Nick made calzones, which were incredibly delicious.  It was a little weird, because we had to check on the status of three different fires burning near us before we felt comfortable leaving to go that far from home.  Fortunately everything was fine, and we had a good time with my parents.

Thanksgiving went really well.  I got the food to the hospice house on time.  I was really worried about running behind.  I told them I’d have it there between 12:30 and 1:00, and made it about 12:50, so I’m counting that as a win.  Bonus win, I had very minimal spilling on the drive there; just a little green bean juice spilled in the trunk.  Considering the amount of food I took there, I’m counting that as success.  I’m fairly proud of myself for packing it up efficiently.  I saved shipping boxes for a while, so I’d have boxes to put the pans in.  I put everything in disposable pans so there would be no worrying about getting dishes back, and labeled everything to make it easier in dealing with leftovers.  We even remembered to buy paper plates, etc. to take.

I ended up bringing turkey, dressing, gravy, mashed potatoes (made to stand alone, so they wouldn’t necessarily need gravy, and could be a vegetarian option, per Victoria’s suggestion), sweet potato casserole, macaroni and cheese, green beans, rolls, jellied cranberry sauce, whole berry cranberry sauce, two pumpkin pies, a cherry crunch, and a chocolate cake.  I ended up scaling the menu back a little bit, just to make sure I got everything there on time, but I think there was still plenty of food.

The staff was so nice, and kept thanking me over and over again.  They made me cry (in a good way, just by being so nice).  I told them they had just been so kind when GrandMommy was there, and that we really appreciated them.  I cannot imagine doing their job.  They kept saying they’re happy to do it, especially when people appreciate it.  I didn’t stick around very long.  I didn’t want to intrude on anyone’s grief, or get in the way of people trying to work, or eat so they could get back to work.  And I wanted to get out of there before I turned into a total crying mess.  I called Nick’s mom on the way home, and cried to her instead, Like, I said, it was mostly a good cry, though.

Once I got home from hospice, I started cooking smaller batches of Thanksgiving food for us for when Nick got home from work.  I started the desserts on Wednesday afternoon.  I have pictures of the desserts, but somehow managed not to take a single picture of the food before I left with it on Thursday.  We figured out that out of about a 30 hour period I cooked or baked for all but about eight hours of it.  It was fun, but I totally crashed on Friday.

On Friday, the most ambitious thing I did was a little online Black Friday shopping.  I’ll admit, I never even got out of my pajamas.  We ate leftovers, watched a few movies, and did a little online shopping.  It was nice to have such a low-key day.

We put the tree up on Saturday, and had a friend, Cathey, over for some apple cake.  She had gone out of town for Thanksgiving, and we started talking about how everyone had spent Thanksgiving.  We told her about taking food to hospice, and she loved the idea.  Her first husband was sick off an on for years before he died, and she has ended up taking care of a lot of different people over the years.  She has spent pretty much every major holiday in a hospital or similar place at some point.  She said one Christmas when her husband was in the hospital someone had brought in some Christmas goodies, and it just made such a difference to her that someone did that.  So she came up with the idea for us to take Christmas goodies to the hospice house.  We won’t be able to go on Christmas, but we’re planning to go a few days before and leave some Christmas foods.  Cathey makes a lot of the traditional candies and fudge, so will do that.  I haven’t figured out what I’m going to make yet.  I’m open to suggestions.

The tree looks good, and so far Frankie is the only cat really messing with it much.  One of the presents is in a fairly large box, and he’s using the box to stand on to access some of the higher branches (where we put the ornaments we really don’t want the cats messing with), so I think that box is going to end up being moved away from the tree.

We’ve finished most of our Christmas shopping.  I think we have about four more things to buy, and then we’ll be completely finished.  I’ve also finished shopping for Nick’s birthday (he’s a Christmas Eve baby), and am just waiting for a few more online orders to come in.  I’m hoping to finish up all, or at least most, of the wrapping this weekend.  I enjoy wrapping presents, but it seems to take me forever.

I can’t go into details because most of the people I shop for read my blog at least occasionally, but I’m really excited about a few of the presents.  I also know what some people we’ll be celebrating with have gotten for each other, and I think everyone is really going to love their gifts.

So what about you?  How was your Thanksgiving?  How are your Christmas preparations going?  I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and that you aren’t dealing with smoke!

Pumpkin Pie

It’s November 1st, so I can finally talk about pumpkin pie!  I love pretty much anything pumpkin, and I especially love pumpkin pie.  I happily eat it all year long, but I know most people consider pumpkin pie to be more of a Fall or holiday dessert.

I’ve never met a pumpkin pie I didn’t like, but my maternal grandmother, Granny, made the best pumpkin pie.  I have her handwritten recipe for it, and we included the recipe in our wedding cookbook.  It’s delicious, and for me, it’s total comfort food.

Try it.  I’m pretty sure you’ll love it!

Granny’s Pumpkin Pie:

3/4 cup sugar
½ tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon, plus more for sprinkling the crust and pie
½ tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cloves
2 eggs
1 can (15 oz.) pumpkin
1 can (12 oz.) evaporated milk
1 un-baked 9 inch deep dish pie shell

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix sugar, salt, 1 tsp. cinnamon, ginger, and cloves in a small bowl.

Beat eggs in a large bowl.  Stir in pumpkin.  Stir in sugar/spice mixture.  Gradually stir in evaporated milk.

Spread the pie shell in a pie dish and generously sprinkle the pie shell with cinnamon.  This isn’t the time to be stingy with the cinnamon.  Pour the pie mixture into the pie shell, and generously sprinkle the top with cinnamon.

Bake 40 - 50 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Allow to cool/set before slicing.  (Honestly, you might want to leave the house, or at least find something really good to occupy yourself with for this part.  It smells so good, it’s fairly torturous waiting to dig in!)

Enjoy!!!

So what about you?  Are you a fan of pumpkin pie, or pumpkin things in general?