You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2008.
Readers who are going back to work tomorrow can go read another blog because this comment is going to sound mean. There’s no way I can say this and not make it sound like “na-nuh-na-nuh-na-nuh”. So if you’re still reading, I apologize.
But- I’m SO GLAD I’m not going back to work tomorrow! When I was working I loved those four day weekends and especially one that includes my favorite holiday. But – then comes the Sunday night/Monday morning dread of getting back into the old routine. I always hated that feeling.
Do I feel left out, like everybody else is getting to do the fun stuff? No, that only happens to me on the first day of school. Now that I’m retired, tomorrow will be one of those mini-celebrations where I can shout “I’M RETIRED!”.
If you have to get up and go to work tomorrow and you’re still reading this, again I’ll say I’m sorry. I should say something like: “Someday your retirement will come.” or “Look on the bright side” or “Find something positive about the day” or blah, blah, blah. You know those phrases. Oh, and Have A Good Day. It’s okay to think about me tomorrow.
Got any turkey leftover? Turkey Tetrazinni is a dish we like almost as much as the big bird just out of the oven on Thanksgiving Day. Leftover turkey is great on nice crunchy rolls with all the other goodies. But my husband usually requests this dish if I have at least two cups of leftover turkey. Here’s what you do:
Into a pot of boiling water add 8 oz. of spaghetti that you have broken into small pieces – thirds or fourths
While that is boiling:
- melt 3 T. butter in a skillet
- Add 1/2 c. chopped onion
- and 1/2 c. chopped green pepper.
Cook until soft. Stir occasionally.
- In a big bowl:
- empty one can of cream of chicken soup
- stir in 1/2 c. milk until smooth
- add 2 to 2 1/2 c. chopped, cooked turkey
- add the onion and green pepper thats been cooking in the skillet
Drain the spaghetti when it is done and rinse it. Add it to everything in the big bowl. Mix all together. Then add and stir together 2 c. shredded Monteray Jack cheese.
Put into a lightly buttered casserole dish and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. I hope you enjoy this dish. Let me know how it turns out.
I believe this is my favorite holiday. Except for the grocery stores, there aren’t any big retail or advertising pushes. No special movies or TV specials. The emphasis in our culture is on families and friends getting together. The focus is on being thankful for our blessings.
I have so many fond memories of past Thanksgivings. I was fortunate to be born into a huge family. My father was one of four sons and his father was one of seven. So Thanksgiving would always be at one of the uncles. Of course all the wives and aunts would come with two or three side dishes and two or three desserts each.
And, there would always be a kid’s table. No babies, just the grown-up kids. I remember vividly the first time I was allowed to sit at this table. I sat across from my older cousins Jimmy and Bobby. They were allowed to fill their plates in such a way as I had never seen. First they filled their plates completely with mashed potatoes – to the very edges! On top of that they put all their other food. I was in awe of them. I’ve always been one of those people who does not like my foods to touch. So, I thought, this is what it’s like to be a grownup kid?
How will it be at your Thanksgiving table? Will the kids have their own place? Or is the gathering a little smaller this year. Either way, may your holiday be blessed. Here’s something else from my childhood. I don’t hear it much anymore but I can’t imagine Thanksgiving without this song.
Come, ye thankful people, come, raise the song of harvest home;
All is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin.
God our Maker doth provide for our wants to be supplied;
Come to God’s own temple, come, raise the song of harvest home.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
I’ve decided to participate in a monthly book carnival sponsored by 5 Minutes For Books. I love reading what other people are reading and it’s a great way to get ideas for new books to read or old ones to re-read.
Here’s my list of what I’m reading this month:
1. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. This one is going in my bag on a 12-hour Amtrak trip to visit my mom. Gx, my son’s girlfriend, is very, very high on this book. She knows I love good children’s book and claims, once I start, I will not be able to put it down.
2.There’s a Bird on Your Head by Mo Willems. This one is for my youngest granddaughter, Lou. Really. I do love children’s books. Lou, her mommy and I love the Pigeon books by this author but the Elephant and Piggy books are new to us. It looks fun.
3. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I’m reading this for Casual Classics. I’ve only read about 20 pages in and I’m already sorry I’ve never read it before. I always watch it in movie or play form but never the actual book. The author’s use of words is magical.
4. Pigs In Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver. I’m reading this one just because it’s fun and I like Barbara Kingsolver. This is the book that followed Bean Trees and continues on with the story of Taylor and Turtle.
5. American Pie: A Slice of Life (and pie) from America’s Back Roads by Pascale LeDraoulec. I’m reading this book for the Books About Food Challenge. This is the story of the author’s travels around the country looking for good pie makers. In today’s take-out culture she is searching for some old fashioned, homemade goodness.
What are you reading? For more lists go to www.5minutesforbooks.com
Cheap. Fast. Good!
By Beverly Mills and Alicia Ross
Workman Publishing, 2005
This is my new favorite food book. Yes, there are tons of recipes in here but it’s so much fun to read that I won’t call it a cookbook. The basic premise of the author’s is that good food can be inexpensive without spending hours every night working from scratch. The authors come to the book with many years of home food preparation and years of writing a food column for various newspapers.
This is a big book (475 pages) with eleven chapters and an interesting appendix. The chapters range from “Super-Saver Soups and Stews” to “Delectable Desserts”. Beside those two subjects they also cover main dishes, sandwiches, side dishes, pasta, salads, breakfasts and sauces.
One other chapter is special to me because it covers the way I like to prepare food: batch cooking. Here’s an example of the concept: Buy a large quantity of a common food when it is on sale – like chicken. Cook the chicken all at once, cool, cut and put measured amounts (like 1 cup) in freezer bags. Then let’s say sometime in the next week or so you want to make Chicken Burritos or Chicken and Broccoli Lo Mein. You pull out your already cooked chicken and the rest of the ingredients and you have a great meal in short order.
The rewards of retirement are shown in this picture. This is my husband, Jay, with his 25 pound King Salmon caught on the Gulkanna River in Alaska. We couldn’t do this when we were working back in the midwest with only two weeks vacation each year. Thank you Lord for these retirement years.
For my mom’s 88th birthday this past May I made this shawl for her. I know it seems strange to make a shawl for someone just as the summer is beginning. But my mom seems to be cold all of the time. She’s especially cold in the mornings and in the evenings when she goes to the little league baseball games.
So I decided she could use a light weight, yet warm, wrap of some kind. I had recently purchased a new book: Knitting Designs by Sharon Turner. I began pouring through the pages to see what I could come up with. I found a stitch pattern and decided to try making up what I wanted.
For the yarn, I chose Knit Picks Andean Silk. It’s a blend of alpaca (55%), merino wool (22%) and silk (23%). It is so soft that just one touch and you want to wrap it all around you. Just perfect for a shawl. The color was a no-brainer because my mother is what we call The Queen of Blue. Everything in her house is blue as well as her clothing. In her life the only things not blue are her beloved roses, her gold Honda, and all her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. My mom always says “she is one blessed lady”. And that she is.
The stitch pattern is a simple lace. It’s very easy to do. I just cast on stitches until it seemed long enough
- about 72 inches. The stitch pattern calls for an even number so I added two on each end for an edging. I kept knitting until it was 20 inches deep. This was not a hard project at all. It went quickly.
The book I bought last spring. Except for this project, I haven’t used it much. But I plan to. It has all the basics from simple scarfs, hats, bags, socks, mittens, vests and sweaters. The premise is to give a basic master pattern for an item and then show lots of ways the knitter can design her own project.
I hope you’ll set off to do your own thing. It’s fun and will give you lots of confidence. You know you can always rip it out and start over again! I’d say that’s the fun of knitting, but that’s not really true. Let me know your knitting experiences.
One of the top perks about the Fulltime RV Lifestyle is that we can live anywhere – well, as long as there is a road to get there. We are currently in Windsor, California where our son, Cx, lives. He and his girlfriend/life partner, Gx, have just purchased a house on nearly an acre of land. The favorite phrase used by everyone to describe this property is “it has potential“. Most people would run away from a place like this. Not these two. This is exactly what they want. For my husband, Jay, this is just up his alley, too – a handyman’s heaven! So we’ve come to Windsor to help them out. I’ll share their progress and some before and after pictures in upcoming posts.
Today I want to show you the simple beauty of Windsor. This is a town of about 25,000 people north of San Francisco. I don’t know the exact miles. This is California so people talk in terms of how long it take to get somewhere. Windsor is somewhere between 90 minutes and two hours from the big city. If you are looking at a map, it is on highway 101 just 15 minutes north of Santa Rosa.
The center of town has been established as a village green. They allowed plenty of room. You’ll see people walking, playing frisbee or just sitting and reading a book. The library is on one of the adjacent streets along with the other city offices. The green sets just the right tone for the town.
The business buildings surrounding the green have that old traditional Village Green look although they are really quite new. There are no mega-businesses that attract people to work here. It is more like an excellent place to just live. There are some gourmet-level restaurants, a few fast food places, small shops and no major department stores.
The major attraction here is that this is wine country. Windsor is in Sonoma County so that means any spare acre is turned into a vineyard. In addition to all the beautiful vineyards, Windsor is surrounded by low hills covered with stately oak trees. All of that plus the usually bright blue sky makes this a great place to live, and to visit.
Is it possible to do Thanksgiving Dinner on a tight budget? I just scanned the turkey prices at the supermarket andit didn’t look like a place for bargain hunters. The stores will need to have some really good sales for it to be affordable for many of us. I have a another problem: we are traveling the country in our RV and there is no way turkey would fit into the refrigerator or my oven. So, What Works For Me?
Turkey Legs. I see turkey legs in stores all over the country – all year round for usually less than a dollar a pound (79 cents a month ago in Oregon). There is a lot of meat on those legs and usually four to five legs is enough for four to eight generous servings. You could also buy a turkey breast if you have white meat eaters, but it is more expensive.
Are you worried that turkey legs would spoil that picture of dad carrying the big bird into the dining room and carving it in front of everybody? That Norman Rockwell idea is way overrated. The bad part about carving the bird at the table is that the carver doesn’t get to sit and eat with everyone else. For most people Thanksgiving means turkey, including that delicious smell, no matter that it comes in pieces.
I know there are people, especially this year, who will skip Thanksgiving Dinner because they don’t believe they can afford it. But we all know that the important part of this holiday is to give thanks for whatever blessings we do have, and not to celebrate the size of the turkey. This year give turkey legs a try.
For more ideas head over to Works For Me Wednesday: www.rocksinmydryer.com
