Thanksgiving 2010

11-25-2010 - THANKSGIVING DAY – Happy thanksgiving to everyone who reads this even if it is a little late. I have so much to be thankful for this year – for one thing, I am still alive, when it was a little iffy at the beginning of the year. My house, my kids, my dogs – just everything. I know there are troubles in our lives – but I am just thankful we are able to be together.
Have been trying to get as much as I can done toward Christmas while I wait to go into the surgery. Surgery day is set for Nov 30. Yep! I have my first batch of sugar cookies made and most of them in the freezer. Did give some to neighbors and some to kids – and some went into me. Have my fudge done and in the freezer. Made peanut brittle – so far I have made it TWICE!
First I got the sugar syrup all cooked up and poured in the peanuts – but instead of 2 cups I poured in the whole bag. I could tell right away something was very wrong – I had a pan full of peanuts with some sticky stuff mixed in. Re-read the recipe! Scooped peanuts into colander! Ran hot water over peanuts until they were rinsed – then drained two cups until they were almost dry. Put rest of peanuts down disposal. Jammed up disposal. Dug some of the peanuts out and restarted disposal. It jammed again! Dug the rest of the peanuts out – disposal is fine and I know peanuts do not go down well with disposals! NOW I know!
Washed the pan and started all over – got sugar syrup cooking away and realized I had only put in one cup of sugar. Added the other cup and continued cooking. So far so good – it is cooling on the slab and hopefully it will be brittle and not peanut caramel. We will see.
Tomorrow I will try to get my annual poppy seed braid done and in the freezer for Christmas breakfast. Will not do the pralines until I get out of the hospital and Christmas is closer. If my oldest son even had a hint that pralines were in the house – he would tear it apart looking.
My neighbors are going to keep my dogs while I am in the hospital – that is so sweet of them and it will be so much better than having them in a kennel. I still do not know how long I will be in – I know the hospital four days, but I do not know if he is going to put me into rehab or not. I guess I will find out.
Let’s see – I think I have been telling you about the trials and tribulations of trying to plant little bushes with the “devil” dog running around. I have decided that she is not part terrier – she is part terror! She tore up the two new honeysuckle bushes – still one in the ground. I managed to rescue one of them and replant it into a large pot in the house. So far it seems to be doing ok. Then I took a tomato cage and surrounded the one remaining bush with cage covered in chicken wire. So far so good!!!!
I even have a sort of chicken wire cage in the house with my herb garden. She tore up the first set of little plants – so I wrapped chicken wire around my shelving unit and the top two shelves are pretty much inaccessible to her. I can get in but there is a secret and she is still a dog so she cannot figure it out. So I have herbs and some foliage plants growing in my sunny kitchen window. Hopefully they will keep growing!
I have hollyhocks up in my little side garden – BUT – we got a freeze last night so I do not know how they are faring. We are supposed to get another one tonight. It is chilly here! I have only been out to take out the trash – yes our trash men do run on holidays. It sort of threw me for a loop the first year I was here to find they picked up garbage on holidays, but I have gotten used to it now.
We start a new recycling program in a week. They brought out trash cans – one for trash and one for recycling. The cans reached my shoulders and were about as wide as half of me. (If I laid down across them – half of me would be covering trash can.) I called – four times – and finally someone called back. They have three sizes – so now I have medium sized cans that I can actually get to and from the curb – they are only chest high! Still just as wide I think. Trash will only be picked up once a week – but if you have extra you can pile bags beside the can, the trash men will throw the trash into the can (after they empty it the first time) and then the automatic truck will pick up the second load. Hmmmmm – somehow that does not seem overly efficient to me. However, if there are people who routinely have that much trash – they need to look at what they are throwing into the land fill. I probably will not even have a half a can except maybe for holidays. Even then – it is amazing what can be recycled.
This is a strange Thanksgiving – first time I can remember not cooking in years. I am going to my son’s girl friend’s family for dinner and they only wanted me to bring a vegetable. Not much cooking on frozen almond green beans or buttered corn. Sigh.
Well I will make up for it at Christmas when I am cooking here.
11-26-2010 – Well it was not peanut brittle but it also was not edible as peanut caramel. Ugh – even the dogs would not eat it. So I scraped it all into the trash and went and got more peanuts etc – started all over today and this time it worked. I made pecan pralines, but had to download a recipe from the internet – supposed to be original New Orleans style from Emeril – but it tastes nothing like any praline I ever got in NO – and nothing like any I ever made. I will have to search again for my own recipe.
I took down all the fall decorations today and sort of started on Christmas – really half hearted as it is not much fun alone. The kids and Joely’s mom all went to Big Bear for the weekend – Joely’s uncle has a cabin there. I do have my angels up and they look good. Need to get another one but I have not found one I like yet this year. Well I don’t NEED to get another one, but I want another one. The dogs are warming up my feet as I type – good for them. It is in the 30’s today. I am not sure it ever even got up to 40. Brrrr.
I did not go out shopping for Black Friday bargains. Did go online and find the iPod my grandson wants at a reasonable price. I think it is the one he wants anyway. My granddaughter wants an iPod touch, but she is going to have to wait on that one. Way too expensive for my budget this year.
I am trying my best to get everything done before Tues – well actually before end of day Monday as Tues I will be pretty much unable to do much.  It would help if people would give one a list – do you have that problem too. “What do you want for Christmas?” Reply “IDK” – which I am assuming means I don’t know. I told my granddaughter they were fresh out of I don’t knows and she had better come up with some better ideas or she was going to get nothing.
Actually for my oldest granddaughter I am about half done. I made her a blanket – the ones of fleece that are tied all the way around. She wanted zebra stripes on one side and lime green on the other. I told her I could not find the lime green and she would have to make do with aqua. She knows she is getting that but she has not seen it yet. (It does have lime green and zebra stripes.) Then I am taking pictures of her from when I first met her at four months old (she was born in Guam) and putting together a photo album. I think she will really like that. It will go up through now – and as she finishes high school, I will add to it until the graduation photo. Then she will have it. I made each of my sons one of those and they liked them a lot.
Let me tell you – if you have a lot of prints you need printed from digital files. Walmart is the best place to have it done. They were only nine cents a print and I had them in about four days. I had about 150 pictures to be printed and I cannot buy paper and ink that cheaply. There were a few that I printed at home because they were oddball sizes and I had to scan them in and then print them, but anything I had on record as a .jpg file – was sent to Walmart. Took me about 20 minutes to upload all the photos, set up the order and have it winging away. Would not have taken me that long, but I had to edit a few of the pictures once they were uploaded.
Later today or maybe tomorrow I will put together the breakfast bread we always have for Christmas. It freezes and reheats well so I always make it ahead. I will admit this is a little bit more ahead than usual, but it will be fine. It is a poppy seed braid that I started making when the kids were small and they almost demand it every year for Christmas breakfast. I am hoping that my youngest son can get here this year since the 26th is a Sunday and he might not have to work. It has been awhile since we have all been together for Christmas. Of course my granddaughter will be in OK with her mother and I will miss her a bunch, but it is good for her to visit her mom. That has been a sort of soap opera over the past year with lots and lots of drama and I am delighted to see that the relationship is getting better. At least I pray it is.
OH-the first batch of sugar cookies – well they are gone! Once everyone knew they were made – they were gone. This is a recipe that I have used for years – it is a family favorite. They are very delicate and almost melt in your mouth. If you like them, there are not enough in the world. If you do not like them, send them back to me – I am out! My mother loved them and I used to mail them to her from overseas. They are so delicate they would arrive in crumbs and she would put them on ice cream. When my sons were out to sea at Christmas, they wanted them too and they ate the crumbs with the spoons I included. I will probably make at least three more batches before the holidays are over. I give out cookie plates and they are always on the plates – and of course with family and friends around I want goodies out. I will probably take some to church too when we have our cookie exchange – assuming that is that I am driving by then. I live so far from the church I hate to ask anyone to pick me up.
I am going to get off this computer and decide whether I want to make bread tonight or not. Nope, I do not want to. It is chilly in here and all I really want to do is wrap up in my fuzzy blanket and watch TV. I think I need a break – two kinds of candy today is enough. I will shop tomorrow and do the bread and maybe by then I will have found the real praline recipe.