NaBloPoMo Day 25: 5QF

 

 

1. Is there a special dish you prepare that you are famous for?

 

Nope. I'm a pretty good...cook I guess you could say. I can follow a recipe like a champ. But I'm not that creative so I don't really have a signature dish. The family (the Mister and my kids) really like my marinara sauce which is, in fact, my own creation. I don't have a special holiday dish though.

2. Are you (did you) go Black Friday shopping ?

 

We just got home from Black Friday shopping. I'm not one of those crazies (no offense) that goes out at midnight (Midnight?!?! Really?!?! Wtf is up with that?!?!) or gets up at 4 am though. I got up at 8 this morning because I decided I wasn't tired anymore. Showers, clothes, hair and makeup. Then the Mister and I hit a few stores, had lunch, and came home. And you know what? We were still able to take advantage of some really fabulous Black Friday deals and we didn't have to do this or this or get up at an ungodly hour to do so.

3. What are your strangest holiday traditions? 

I don't think we have any strange holiday traditions. We do Chinese food on Christmas Eve a la A Christmas Story though. The Mister makes a pumpkin cheese cake for dessert instead of a traditional pumpkin pie. I can't think of anything else that would qualify as weird.

4. Pecan or pumpkin pie? (She actually asked "Apple or pumpkin?" I just T-giving'ed it!) 

I hate pecan. Ick. I like pumpkin pie but like I said above, we have pumpkin cheese cake every year. It's way superior to pumpkin pie.

5. When will you put up your Christmas tree?

 

We like real trees so we wait until it gets a little closer to Christmas to put up our tree so that it won't be all dried out and needle-less on Christmas morning. So, we'll probably get a tree the second week of December or so. 

Happy Thanksgiving

Our Last Thanksgiving in NC

We had a pretty decent Thanksgiving this year. For the first time ever, we  had a fresh turkey instead of a frozen bird. I didn’t think there would be very much difference between the two but I was way wrong. A fresh turkey is juicier and tastier. Honestly. Fresh birds only from now on. The only thing was that we got a 12 pound bird which was big enough for dinner but didn’t leave enough leftovers. Part of our Thanksgiving tradition is to make a turkey potpie with the leftovers. We had to go out and buy a turkey breast in order to have our potpie! And it did NOT taste like turkey at all. I heard on  some Thanksgiving Day special on TV that it’s the dark meat that gives turkey its flavor. I’m guessing that explains why the turkey breast didn’t taste like a normal turkey. Still, the potpie was good and it made leftovers in and of itself!

This year, the Mister and I did some Black Friday shopping. I do believe this is the first time we’ve gone shopping like that since 1995 or 1996. It was fun and other than a few odds and ends, I’m pretty much done with my Christmas shopping. Woohoo!!!!! I’m pretty proud of myself being done so early. Basically, I just have to figure out what I’m getting the Mister for Christmas. He is absolutely the hardest person in the world to shop for. If I was only going to get  him PS3 games, I’d be set but I like variety and PS3 games are pretty much expected. Too bad I don’t have the money to buy him the airplane he’s always wanted.

We have most of our indoor Christmas decorations up. Kinda. We buy fresh trees so we’re waiting a week or two before we get one so it’ll last until New Years. We have two smaller artificial trees up though. One we bought this year that’s pre-lit and the other is older than dirt but still looks nice on my grandmother’s table. My mantle is done up real nice too. I bought a cranberry garland to go across the front and we also bought some really nice stocking hangers. Today, we’re starting on the outside decorations. It’s about 70 degrees here today so it’s perfect weather to put up outside stuff. I just need the stuff, lol. I tried out my lights and all but one long and two short strands are broken. I have no idea what happened to them. They worked last year. I’m too impatient to figure out what’s wrong with them so I trashed them and I’m going out later today to buy new. I can’t wait. I also need to buy my Christmas cards. Yep. I’m sending them out this year. I hope I have everyone’s correct mailing address!!

Still loving the holiday season!!!!!! We bought Andrea Bocelli’s new Christmas CD on iTunes (It’s really good!) and I’ve watched The Santa Clause about 3 or 4 times already, hehehe.

Odd Behavior

I don’t know what’s gotten into me this year, but I’m so excited about the holidays. Usually, I’m a real bah humbugger about holidays. I don’t know what’s gotten into me!

We have all of our Turkey Day food ready to go. We’re not having anyone over this year but that’s okay. Not to be inhospitable, but I enjoy the time with just my family. Maybe next year will be different though. ;)

I’m also totally into Christmas already. I’m itching to put out my decorations. I saw someone yesterday with their yard already done up and it was nice to see. I also stop to listen to commercials with Christmas music in them. Hmm.

Maybe I’m in a good mood about the holidays because things are so good for us right now. With San Diego on the horizon, I’ve been taking things in stride a lot more than I usually do. There was a freakazoid in the carpool lane at the oldest’s school last week and instead of flipping my lid, I laughed at them instead. I only have to deal with that craziness for 4 1/2 more months. Yep, yep!

Well, I gotta meeting in five minutes, so I’ll stop my blathering now. I hope all of you are in the holiday spirit this year too!!

Enjoying Our Weekend

When’s the last time I posted? It’s been a few days, huh?

We had a fabulous Thanksgiving. Nice and quiet. LOVELY! All the food turned out great. The turkey was juicy, the gravy was flavorful, and the pumpkin cheesecake was light and creamy.

Yesterday we didn’t do any Black Friday shopping. We got the bill from our lawyer in the mail which put a damper on the day. It must be pretty great to be a lawyer and to charge $25.00 to read an e-mail. In all, she spent 2 hours and 40 minutes on our case at $125.00 an hour. You do the math. AND, we’re not even done with her yet. Oh well. She was a necessary evil because without her, our tenants would have gotten away with even more than they already have.

Today, the Mister and I are going to check out a health food store we’ve never been to. No, we’re not health food nuts, but I like those stores nonetheless. They sell offbeat stuff you can’t find other places.

Oh. And I think my monitor is going out on me. I have these very faint bouncy lines that move down the screen and everything has a little shadow-like trail to the right of it. It’s annoying but not enough to where I’m going to spring for a new one yet. I’m going to do my best to deal with it until after Christmas. The weirdness is only a little hard on the eyes. I’ll have to make sure and wear my contacts or glasses whenever I’m working to minimize the eye strain but I think it’ll be okay. If anyone has any suggestions as to what could be causing this or how to fix it, I’d kiss your feet in gratitude. See?

You can click on the picture to make it bigger. The lines are at the top over the tool bar and the shadow trails are pretty obvious.

Anyway, I gotsta get ready to check out that store. Yes. That’s right. It’s 12:28 pm and I’m still in my pajamas. Deal with it.

Holiday Prep (Added a Pic)

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. I really enjoy cooking all the food and then, of course, eating it. I like being able to eat leftovers for days. I like the low to no pressure that goes along with it as well. No presents to buy and wrap. Love it. I also can’t think of a Thanksgiving that has any bad memories attached to it.

The first Thanksgiving dinner that I cooked by myself for the Mister, the girls, and I was in 1999. We were living in our base housing in Lakeside, CA and it was just the four of us. I was extremely nervous about cooking a turkey and the stuffing too. Turns out that turkeys are hard to screw up and the stuffing was sensational since it was a family recipe. I also made green bean casserole, scalloped corn, rolls, mashed potatoes and gravy, a fresh veggie plate, deviled eggs, and pumpkin pies for desert. Everything tasted great and the Mister and I ended up in the typical tryptophan coma afterwards. The oldest child was three at the time. Gosh!! Three years old. I miss those days sometimes. The youngest child was only 9 months old and harmless. The oldest child, not so much. When the Mister and I came out of our coma, we discovered that the oldest child had aerated the pumpkin pie, lmao!! She had taken her fingers and poked holes in the entire thing. Luckily, I had made two so we still had pie for desert. We still laugh about that to this day. It’s one of my favorite Thanksgiving memories.

The infamous pie is in the back.

Happy Thanksgiving/Thursday Meme

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving to all my family, friends, and blogger friends. I hope you all had a wonderful day.

From Booking Through Thursday...

Joanna and Brad are asking about “connecting words,” and they don’t mean conjunctions like “and” or “but.” No, what they’re looking for are unique, or treasured words that we’ve found out and about in our daily travels, words that might not be common usage, or often heard, but which struck a chord for some reason.

I've come across some strange uses for words but not really words that I've never heard before or since. In Vermont, they say wicked for everything. It's wicked cold. That's wicked neat. My friend Jennifer S. told me that in Wisconsin they call a water fountain, of the variety that you drink out of, a bubbler. In Ohio they call Pepsi or Coke, pop, whereas in California we called it soda and I also heard people call it Coke no matter if it was a Pepsi, Mt. Dew, or Sunkist. Another Vermont-ism is that they call soft-serve ice cream creamies or creemies. For the longest time I thought they were talking about Krispy Kreme doughnuts, lol. They also say "going to camp" when they mean that they're going camping in a tent or RV. Took me a while to figure that one out too. I just thought that an awful lot of people went off to camp for the summer, heheh.

That's all I can think of right now. My brain is still in a tryptophan haze.

Still Recovering

If the brain were a muscle, mine would be so sore that it wouldn't be able to move off of the sofa. After a three day marathon of intense paper writing, I'm still having a hard time with wanting to sit at my computer.

In a few minutes, I'm going to be abusing my feet. I always make my Thanksgiving meal sides the night before so that all I have to do the day off is pop everything into the oven. It makes the day much more enjoyable for me. What's weird is that we managed to not have any guests for the holiday. We usually have either Marines that don't have anywhere else to go over or family. This year, the Marines are going to another house and the family is eating at their houses in Ohio. Maybe next year.

What's on the menu? Well, we're having turkey (ham is for Christmas), stuffing, green bean casserole, scalloped corn, rolls, mashed potatoes and gravy, deviled eggs, a veggie plate, jellied cranberries (You know the kind that come out of the can holding the shape of the can. It's a tradition.), and pumpkin cheesecake. Can we say YUM?? And our turkey is a nice 20 pounder so if you're hard up for somewhere to have dinner, come on over. We'll have plenty to go around.

We had to do some last minute grocery shopping for our dinner. Yesterday, C hit the commissary on his way home from work and they were out of EVERYTHING. They didn't even have 1% milk. He bought what he could then we went to the Harris Teeter this afternoon for the rest. And that was a madhouse too but they had everything we needed including some stuff we didn't, heheh. We have a nice bottle of Merlot to go with our bird (Emeril recommended it) and all the trimmings. I couldn't be more excited. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. All it is, is good food and good company without the pressure of gift giving or costume buying or anything else. Me likes.