End of year updates and random other stuff

Here's something really nifty that I found on YouTube.


(If that doesn't play, check it out here.)

The mid December turkey dinner was a success. We used the fancy china. Twitch and a friend came, and also another couple, C&A, friends of ours, who are about a decade older than we are. After dinner we played Cards Against Humanity and it was hilarious! I have told C about CAH but she hadn't had a chance to play. Oh, we had fun! C's husband, A, is in the early to mid stage of Alzheimer's: still looks mostly functional but conversation can get a bit odd. He played with us but didn't really understand what was going on. When it was his turn to choose the best answer card he was pretty random about it, but that's OK. It worked. And he felt included, which is important. He's such a sweet fellow.

Christmas was a quiet affair. Twitch came over for gifts. I bought three pairs of jeans for Superman because his midsection has expanded a bit since he last bought jeans. Oops. I'm tired of seeing him in sweatpants all the time. For Twitch I got a handful of smaller possibly useful things, a couple of things he'd mentioned he wanted over the past year. An 18 inch steel straight edge ruler, a flexible whisk (those things are awesome!).

If you don't have one and cook often enough, you should get one. They are particularly good for mixing eggs and for stirring sauces. 

Did I get distracted again? I was telling you about Christmas. Nobody got me anything to open on Christmas Day, but I'm OK with that. Superman bought me a fancy new KitchenAid stand mixer plus a couple of attachments which I got a couple of weeks before Christmas. It's aqua blue and SO pretty!! Works great, too. 

Christmas dinner was lasagna and garlic bread. We  made two; one with Italian sausage for the guys and one without meat for me. Both included spinach. Quite yummy. More pumpkin pie for dessert because I love my pumpkin pie. Had considered making a lemon meringue, one of Twitch's favorites, but he seemed to like the pumpkin well enough. 

Superman has been off work since the Wednesday before Christmas. It's wonderful! I (mostly) love having him around. He goes back to work on the 3rd day of 2018. (Trying to practice writing/typing the new year) His Christmas break project is a cabinet for my sewing/craft supplies. I'll need at least 2. He's got a lot done on the first one and so far it looks fabulous! I need to take some pictures. 

I bought myself a journal notebook. Two, actually, because I couldn't decide which one to choose. The spiral bound one, 6 by 8.5 inches, has three sections: 160 pages each of lined paper, grid/graph paper, and blank paper. I get so excited about new office supplies!!  The cover is plastic, pink and white horizontal stripes, and says "Express Yourself". You betcha I will! 

The other is a faux leather bound - oh, it says "Leatherette Journal" on the wrapping. Ruled paper, with date options at the top of each page. By "date options" I mean it has the numbers 1-31 across the top, and Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, ... Dec below the numbers. My plan with this journal is to make a 5 year journal kinda like this but more personalized. It's 7.5 by 10 inches, big enough theoretically to use for 10 years. For me, though, five is probably more realistic. Parsimony isn't my strength. Some of the specific five year journals say One Line a Day. Like I can write about a day in one short sentence. Most days, nope. Anyhow, the leatherette cover is debossed (opposite of embossed*) with the phrase "The Best Way to Predict the Future Is to Create It". I think that's a pretty good phrase for a journal that has five years of potential future. 

And speaking of office supplies, we got ourselves a new printer. Finally! We'd had the other one for probably 10 years. It doesn't like to print the first few letters of each line in the first paragraph (or comparable area of graphics). It had been wireless, but didn't know how to talk to these contemporary computers. The new one does, though. Fancy thing, all-in-one print, scan, fax (if I had a land line to link it to, which I don't), and something else. Craziest of all, the printer HAS ITS OWN EMAIL ADDRESS!! I'm blown away by this modern technology. 

That's all I can think to say right now. I need to go bake a cherry pie. My friend C brought a pie to our mid December dinner, so I'm going to return the pie pan with a cherry pie in it. :-)

*I thought the opposite of emboss was etch. But Dictionary.com doesn't agree. Also, etching might be slightly different. This thing is kinda like stamped. 

It's a busy week

I am beyond thrilled that you guys showed up. It's been a long dry spell here on the blog, and yet here you are, ever-faithful.

Mimi: You asked if I still use the appliance repair site you sent me to all that long time ago. I used Repair Clinic - is that the one? Very helpful! And it's great to see you in my comments. :-)

Turkey news:
So the thawed turkey is ready to cook. It's Tuesday night as I write this. Superman had a work thing to go to this evening (holiday get-together?) so tonight isn't a good day to serve a turkey dinner. There's another work thing, holiday related, that he need to attend Thursday night. Friday I'm afraid might be too late for this turkey, and Superman is leaving to spend the weekend with his family again so that's just no good. Wednesday it is, then.

Wednesday update - continuation:
I'm preparing the dinner. We'll use the electric roaster for the turkey. In addition I'm serving roasted Brussels sprouts, sweet potato casserole, bread pudding (like dressing, kinda), dinner rolls, and gravy. Oh, and I'll throw in some carrots and red potatoes with the turkey. Dinner is at 7-ish. Come on by if you're in the neighborhood. :-)

The good china, at least the pieces we'll need for dinner, are washed and waiting on the china cabinet. Oh! I need to get down the wine glasses, what few we have, and wash them too. They're kinda dusty.

Other stuff:
There is other stuff, deep stuff, that I don't want to get into just now. I need to vacuum. Think I'll put this up now, mull over other things to share on a day I'm not busy preparing dinner for guests.

Appliance Malfunction Saga: Part the Second in which other food-related appliances quit working

Part the First is here.

We survived Thanksgiving, somehow. We muscled our way through the visit to the in-laws, the saving grace there being Superman's brother and his wife. They're the sane ones in Superman's family and we stayed at their house. Superman spent Friday afternoon and much of Saturday with his parents. I "had plans" with my favorite sis-in-law. I won that round.

Home again after Thanksgiving weekend, and our bottom oven has a burned out element. Complicating factor #next, I promised to bake a bunch of cookies for the bake sale our Hospice Care organization holds in conjunction with one of their biggest annual fundraisers. Cookies due at 3:00 p.m. Thursday. My top oven is fully operational, and its size works wonderfully for baking cookies. I'm spoiled. I want to bake two sheets at a time. In two ovens. I asked Superman to order a replacement element once we were hooked up to the internet at his brother's place, but of course one needs the make, model, serial number, oldest child's SSN to order the replacement. No go ordering it Friday. But I remembered. As soon as we got home Sunday evening I asked again. After pulling the oven out from the wall, finding frightening things underneath it, and finally locating the necessary numbers, my wonderful husband ordered the replacement elements. He ordered both, though only the bottom element was burned out. A few months ago the top element in the top oven burned out. Since these things seem to be happening now at the oven's advanced age, we figured better to replace both top and bottom elements for the bottom oven. But will they arrive in time for baking day Thursday?!?!?!?
  via GIPHY

Yes. The package arrived Wednesday and my wonderful Superman installed them Wednesday night. Thursday I made 5 batches of cookie things. It was thrilling.

Oven repair achievement unlocked.

But wait, there's more! No, not the oven. It works fine now. But remember all the turkeys from the previous post? When Superman got a great deal on turkeys and bought four? Because we like turkey and we have a nice upright freezer in which to store food, shopping wisely when prices are low and all that good responsible stuff? Well, we had a freezer.

Thursday afternoon (iirc) I snuck into the freezer to get myself a bowl of Great Value Low Fat Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream.* I like to keep it in the deep freeze so it's good and hard (giggle) rather than in the smaller refrigerator freezer. I opened the carton, positioned the scoop preparing to fight for a chunk of hard frozen dairy delight, and the scoop almost fell through to the bottom of the carton. Oops. And Oh Shit.

I keep a lot of water bottles in my freezer. We like the Bolthouse juices, and the empty bottles store water well. Frozen water bottles are useful when packing coolers, for instance, or to use at the beach/park/lake/hike/mowing the lawn. They also provide thermal mass to help keep the freezer cold. Good thing, too.

I filled our 'fridge freezer with as much of the food from the deep freeze as would fit. We got one of the turkeys in there. The other three I put in the refrigerator and surrounded them with frozen water bottles, then turned down the temperature in the 'fridge. Thursday night when Superman got home we debated our options. We needed a freezer SOON. The current one is a few years old, but is kept in the garage that gets super hot in the summer; not an ideal location for such an appliance but it's what we got. No idea when a repair person might be able to get here. The freezer still has power. The light inside works. The electronic display on the front still has something on it, but not the 5 indicating its cooling level. The internet was vaguely helpful, telling me how to run a diagnostic using those buttons on the display panel. Two buttons, up and down. Hold both for three seconds, then the display will blah blah blah blah blah. Some kind of code signs. I don't know. They mean nothing to me and I haven't the tools to do anything with it.

Thursday morning, and also Wednesday morning at about the same time, the power in the house did one of those BLIP things, where everything shuts off and restarts immediately. Makes my refrigerator beep, resets the settings on my dryer, blanks out the clock on the microwave (but not on the coffee maker or the stove, interestingly). Is that a power surge? Anyway, I suspect that might have knocked out the capacitor on the freezer. Where is the capacitor on the freezer? How does one get to it? Where does one get a replacement? Oh fuck it. Why not just buy a new one? We have the money for a modest freezer, and don't need a huge one.

By the time we figured this out, Lowe's was closed. Lowe's and Sears Hometown Store (only appliances and lawn care equipment) and one independent store are our local options for freezers. Lowe's opens at 7 a.m. and has the best prices, so there we go. Seven o'clock on Friday morning is a good time to go to Lowe's, in case you're wondering. The freezer selection was minimal, but we found what we need for a reasonable price. And Superman has a pickup truck, so Bob's your uncle and we have a new freezer at home. The tricky part now is getting it off the truck by himself. He had help getting it up there. I tried to call Twitch to come help, but he was unavailable. Superman, being Superman and an engineer, got it done without hurting himself. I'm so proud. (No, really)

We got it in place (I helped without hurting myself, too!) but can't load it up until it pre-cools** for 24 hours. The only thing I'm concerned about is those damned turkeys. I did all I could, so I let it go. When we were finally able to load up the new freezer, all but one of the turkeys was still frozen. There's another turkey thawing in my refrigerator now. Turkey dinner this week! Again! After we finally finished off the turkey soup my dear husband made from the disastrous Thanksgiving debacle. Good thing we like turkey. Perhaps we'll have Twitch over again.

Freezer replacement achievement unlocked.

And this afternoon, because this is my life, or something like it, the microwave died. More detail in the previous post. I've lost track of how long we've had that microwave. We've lived in this house for 11 years? 12? It moved in with us, and was old then. No question about whether to repair it. Can microwave ovens be repaired? Ours sits in the bottom shelf of the upper cabinet to the left of the sink. Superman measured the space and heigh'd off to Walmart (again) for a replacement. He found one the exact size of the old one. The light in this one works so now I can watch my food cook again! Finally! Gotta find some Peeps for a jousting match. Are there Christmas Peeps?***


YES!! I figured out how to embed a YouTube video!

Microwave replacement achievement unlocked!

*A bowl full of this delicious ice cream with a generous shake of chocolate Ovaltine powder applied to the top - Yum! Don't stir it in much, though, at least not at first, but be careful not to inhale the Ovaltine powder. That hurts.

**The opposite of preheat?

***There are!!

I can't stand the taste of Peeps, though, so I doubt I'll get any tbh. 

Then there's this:  

OMG

OK, I'm done. 

OMG! You mean people still stop by here to check for new content?! OK then, I'll tell some stories

I have stories about turkeys and appliances. Where to begin?

I just now, not 10 minutes ago, broke our microwave oven. It's an old one, doesn't owe us a thing. The light burned out years ago; I haven't been able to see my food cook or watch Peeps joust.
(Damn, I've forgotten how to post video on here. Follow the link.) I was trying to melt chocolate chips in the microwave. It got hot at first, but with the chips partially melted, all of a sudden no progress. So I put the bowl on top of our fireplace stove insert and melted them old school. Score one for Fire.


The microwave is the third appliance that's gone bad in a month. Allow me to tell you about Thanksgiving. We were planning a simple affair already. Superman and I are living here alone now. (I know, right?! Sproing was the only one left, and he got put in jail, so it's just us now. We LOVE it! Long time coming, believe me.*) Twitch lives with roommates in an apartment a few miles away. Light is still in western Pennsylvania. Diva is in Greenville now, fifty-odd miles north, and we don't have much to do with each other. We invited Twitch, of course, to join us for Thanksgiving dinner, and encouraged him to bring along a few friends if any were hanging in the wind without plans. One of his coworkers came along, but that's all. So, four for dinner.

Superman did the turkey shopping. We had one already in the freezer; he got four more. At 59¢ per pound, yeah! We like turkey. He pulled out the biggest, a 16 pounder. It thawed in the refrigerator for a few days and was ready to roast by Thursday. In preparation I mixed up the sweet potato casserole the night before. It's good to do these things.** Thursday morning I baked the pumpkin pie in the bottom oven.

I love my range. Four burner flat top and double ovens. Bakes cookies in half the time. So for Thanksgiving, with only four for dinner, I decided that one pie would be enough. And it was. Superman fixed the dressing, which is really a modified bread pudding recipe I got from a Hobbit inspired cookbook. Lots of mushrooms and super tasty. But I digress. Planning to serve dinner around 6:00, we didn't need to start the turkey until mid afternoon. Late morning I had an influential nap attack and went to bed.

So about 3:00 Superman woke me up with a panicky tone to his voice. "I need some help with this turkey!" The recipe we use (Alton Brown's) calls for 30 minutes in a 450°F before reducing the heat for the rest of the roasting. Well, the bottom oven wouldn't get that hot. The display said 335° but I think it wasn't that hot. So we lowered the setting to 300°, if I recall. Superman had the turkey on the rack, in the roasting pan, stuffed with aromatics and greased up as if to swim the English Channel. (Not really. It was cooking oil, not whatever kind of fat they use for swimming of the Channel.) He put the pan in the oven, hoping for the best. Nope. This time the display showed something just above 200°F. So he took it out of the oven again, and didn't even need hot pads to hold the pan. What else to do but cover it and stick it back in the refrigerator.

What about a back up plan? you ask. Yes, I called Twitch to see if I could use their oven if it was available. It was available, in that no one was using it, but not available in that it's broken too. "Son, you live in an apartment complex with maintenance people for that kind of problem." Yeah, he'd called, the guy came and "fixed" it but didn't fix it. So no oven there. Most of my other friends, my real true friends, I met through this blog. They live all over the country and beyond, but not in Greenwood, SC.

Here's another spanner in the works, so to speak. First thing Friday morning we had to drive to the Chattanooga area to visit the in-laws for the weekend. Father-in-law's birthday is November 24th. His 86th, possibly his last.*** If we didn't cook the turkey on Thursday, it would go to waste. It wasn't going to survive three more days in the refrigerator, especially having been cleaned and prepped for cooking. Superman was in a tizzy. I was more or less amused, because Of Course. This is my life, or something like it.

We had the sweet potato and green bean casseroles ready to go into the big bottom oven, in dishes too high for the top oven. Superman transferred them into shallower pans, of course messing up the neat toppings, though he tried to keep the tops on top. Twitch and Friend showed up about then. Friend was super cool with whatever, and I don't think Twitch cared that much, either. By this time I could definitely see the humor in the situation. Poor Superman, though, was still hung up on the original Beautiful Thanksgiving Dinner. He was stressed.

So we had a vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner. The casseroles were hot, though the dressing had cooled down too much. Superman put it in the small oven to reheat, but didn't leave it long enough. Tepid dressing/bread pudding is ... not that good.

I had planned to use the fancy china I got from my Mama this summer when I helped her move out of her condo and into a retirement community apartment. That's another good story perhaps I'll relate soon. (Don't hold your breath. I tend to forget to do stuff like that.) But if the oven couldn't be arsed to cook the turkey, I wasn't going to use the fine china.

Dinner over, company gone, it was time to address the raw turkey situation. I had a trick up my sleeve, a bit of knowledge Superman didn't have. There are such things as counter top electric roasters.

And because Christmas is too commercialized and corporations are greedy and some people are suckers for a deal, the stores were open the evening of Thanksgiving Day. Which I think generally is a travesty, but am nonetheless thankful for in this instance. I informed Superman of the electric turkey roaster's existence. I checked the interwebz for their availability at Walmart. Ta-da! Being the super man that he is, Superman braved the crazed hordes of shoppers to procure said turkey roaster, first at the closer Walmart, but coming up empty there, at the Walmart across town. Good thing we live in a small town. He was gone a long time. He claims there were 13 million people at the other Walmart. One of the few Walmart Associates™ on the floor helped him find the one single turkey roaster in the store, bless her heart (and I mean that in the nicest way). He stood in line for 75 minutes to check out. He timed it. He'll tell you about it if you ask.

By the time he got home it was nearly 9:00 p.m. Checked the operating instructions - gotta preheat the thing for 20 minutes. He plugged it into the extension cord that reaches to the far counter because our kitchen is an old piece of shite with insufficient electric outlets. Twenty minutes later the thing is still cold. Oops. I forgot to plug the extension cord back in when I used the hand mixer to prepare the sweet potatoes. Yeah, I felt really bad for that. So, plug in the extension cord, preheat the roaster for real this time, and FINALLY cook the damned turkey.

Turns out that the electric roaster cooks a turkey faster than the oven will. That's cool. It was midnight when Superman finally got to bed. I'd been asleep for almost two hours by then. He put the turkey back in the original roasting pan, now clean of course, covered it with foil and stuck it in the refrigerator. We got up at 6:00 a.m. and drove five hours to northwest Georgia (avoiding the interstate highways, because Holiday Traffic). Nope, no turkey for breakfast. Ain't nobody got time for that. We got home after dark Sunday night, too tired and wired from the in-law visit (another frustrating experience) and the long drive home, to bother with heating up the dinner. Monday night, though, we reheated everything and finally had our Thanksgiving Turkey dinner.

Man, I'm exhausted from telling that tale.

There are a couple more failed appliances to tell you about, but dinner's ready now and this post is long. I'll put this one up and finish the story in the next post.

*Long time coming for us to have the house to ourselves. Not (necessarily) a long time coming for Sproing to be in prison, and yes he's in real prison now. Although considering his history, perhaps being incarcerated follows logically.

**If you're interested, I have a really good sweet potato casserole recipe that's low in fat and sugar and tastes really good.

***Last year his 85th birthday fell on Thanksgiving Day. We were there. Sis-in-law hosted the big family dinner that was a surprise party for Dad that looked suspiciously like a Thanksgiving dinner, but wasn't. It was a birthday party. He said that was probably his last birthday. Actually, I believe he's been predicting his imminent death for close to a decade.

Hi. I needed a place to put this. I think it's hilarious.

Add a dozen eggs and you've got yourself a French Toast Emergency Plan.

Euphemisms

I just listened to a podcast from Mike Rowe. You may know him from the Discovery Channel show Dirty Jobs. He does podcasts now, among other things. His latest podcast, number 38, is entitled "Self Abuse" in which he discusses the early 19th century masturbation scare. The podcast is only 10 minutes long, the first couple of minutes are a commercial. But the rest of the piece is funny if only for the sheer number of euphemisms he uses for masturbation.

I wrote them all down. Some I'd heard before, some were new to me, and I know a few more that he didn't use. But because I love you all, I have decided to share the list with you, you know, just in case you need a good masturbation euphemism. Let us begin:

self abuse
manual gratification
spilling the seed
shaking hands with the false prophet
burping the worm
kindling Satan's wood
rubbing the Buddha's belly
one-handed spear cleaning
slamming the ham
holding the sausage
flogging the bologna pony
beating the bishop
auditioning the hand puppet
the one gun salute
pounding the pulpit
badgering the witness
beating around the bush
corking his own bat*
pulling the golden goalie*
And after you've committed the act, you are covered in heathen stew.

*I may have misheard these. It sounded like he said "quirking his own bat" but "corking" makes more sense to me, and I'm not sure about that golden goalie.

P.S. I find it hard to believe that I didn't already have a label/tag for masturbation! I try to be so sex positive, another term for which I had to make a new label/tag.

The 2016-2017 Winter Holiday Gingerbread House

The original plan was to have it finished by Christmas. Turns out it was a much bigger endeavor than anticipated, and I finally finished it on January 2nd.

The construction process:

 I got half a dozen little battery operated tea lights to put inside the house. They've now been in there for about a week and aren't flickering much, but I'm impressed they lasted as long as they did.

This was the first plan for the back of the house. It didn't survive "contact with the enemy". 

 So I redesigned things and built it in five pieces

 The windows are made of clear hard candy. I put small pieces in the window holes and it melts together in a 350F degree oven. 

 Construction complete...

 See the little lights in the windows? 

Now to the decorations

Chimney details

 Front door and rainbow path to the door (that was Twitch's idea)

 The shrubbery is rice krispies with green food color and little red hot candies. The red hot candy also appears as a door knob. 

The back of the house

Details from the back

 This is a Cheeto snowman, in mockery of our president-elect.

 And there you have it. Happy New Year! 

Christmas Day 2016

Merry Christmas!
We're having a modest Christmas. We bought one or two things to give to each of the sons and the gay pseudo-son, and Twitch gave us a marble mortar and pestle. I had amazon.com send a thing to Light and her boyfriend, and to my Mama. And that's it for Christmas. We finished a delicious early afternoon feast, most of which Superman cooked. Ain't he wonderful? I made the sweet potato casserole and pumpkin and pecan pies, and he made everything else.

I have this wonderful cookbook on my Kindle, An Unexpected Cookbook: The Unofficial Book of Hobbit Cookery.* I bought it about this time last year but hadn't yet made any of the recipes. Well, I chose a few to make side dishes for our Christmas feast. We had braised carrots, rosemary skillet peas, and the most wonderful savory bread pudding! Savory bread pudding is pretty much the same thing as dressing (or stuffing if you prefer) but this recipe has ingredients I've never used in dressing. It was the hit of the day, if you disregard the turkey and the pies. Really, all of it was delicious.

Superman has had a marble mortar and pestle for years, but the pestle broke a few years ago. It's hard to use that pestle when it's only half as long as it should be. One's fingers are in danger of being mashed against the side of the mortar. So Twitch gave him a new one. And there was much rejoicing.

The gingerbread house is on hold until after Christmas. I'll probably start playing with it again tomorrow. I made a few of the pieces but the big one fell apart when I tried to take it off the cookie sheet. Then I looked in my old recipe book and realized the recipe I printed off from my computer files is the wrong one! This cookie is actually easier to eat, softer and more fragile. The other recipe makes a very hard cookie which is superior for construction. So bully for me, I'm going to use that tomorrow. I'll post a picture when it's finished. My new goal is to have it finished by New Years Day.

*This book can be had from amazon.com in Kindle edition for $5.99 as of this writing. It's also available in hardcover, but I suspect it's out of print, since the hardcover edition sells for $139.96.

Well that was interesting

In an effort to exercise my creativity, please my family, and holiday this shit up, I've decided to build a gingerbread house. This is no small feat. I go big for this shit. For instance my gingerbread house windows look a lot like glass because I use hard candy melted into the window spaces. In past years (and it's been years since I made one) I used butterscotch candies. This year I want to do something more transparent so I decided to make my own hard candy. It's not really that hard, except I just messed it up. You're gonna get a kick out of this.

Looks great, no? I melted together sugar, light corn syrup and a little bit of water and boiled that cauldron to the hard crack stage, approximately 300F degrees. A little bit hotter than 300, actually, and it's too hard. Also that's way too much. But that's not the kicker. Candy has flavor, right? The recipe called for 1 tablespoon of extract flavoring, recommending anise, lemon, orange, or peppermint. Don't like anise or peppermint, didn't want lemon, don't have orange. But I do have some cinnamon oil, and wouldn't that be good!?

As I pour the cinnamon in I think to myself "Self, cinnamon oil is a lot stronger than an extract." As I pour it in the pot. All the full tablespoon. For your edification, let me say that one tablespoon of cinnamon oil is a lot. The pot of candy is steaming pretty hard, and the oil, wow! Goes right into my sinuses. And my eyes. And I think to myself, "Shit!"

I poured the goo onto the prepared pan. Damn, that's a lot of candy. It puddled thick on the pan. I don't know if you can see from the picture, but those chunks of candy are probably 1/4 inch thick. Cory came into the kitchen and said "Wow, it smells like Big Red in here." Somewhat fearfully I tasted it. The stuff tastes strong, but it didn't kill either of us. Superman just returned from the supermarket and had a bite. He likes it.

Superman brought me some more ingredients so I can make another batch, this time smaller and much less flavored. Think I'll use vanilla. Vanilla candy sounds good, no?

We don't celebrate Christmas much around here. We eat a modest feast, exchange a gift or two, nothing extravagant. Years ago when we were active in the church Christmas was a big deal. Now that I don't worship regularly and the kids are grown Christmas doesn't seem so important. I just don't care much. My brother Mike shares similar sentiments. Talking to him the other day, he told me he actually decorated this year! He provided proof.

I hadn't planned to decorate (the gingerbread house being categorized as "holiday baking" not decorating) but he inspired me. Today we decorated. Here's proof.

I've had a rest now, so I'm heading back to the kitchen to try again. If I'm successful I plan to post again with the results. 

UPDATE: The second candy batch worked much better. Smaller batch, subtle vanilla flavor, and lighter in color. The actual gingerbread house is next, and that will take a while to figure out. When and if I get it finished I'll post about that in a few days. 

December 4th

It's about time for another haircut. I just noticed my picture in the sidebar here and I'm wearing my hair shorter than that now. If it's long enough to need a brush, it's too long.  Right now it's too long.

Happy National Cookie Day. I baked cookies. If I wasn't so lazy I'd go take a picture of them for you. Transferring a photo from my phone to the computer... I'm not exactly sure how to do that. Anyway, I modified a recipe for Hermit cookies to make them fortified with extra protein and other healthy stuff. Want the recipe? Here it is!

Fortified Hermit Cookies

Ingredients:

·         ½ cup butter, room temperature

·         ¼ - ½ cup brown sugar, packed

·         ¼ cup un-sulfured molasses

·         2 large eggs

·         1 tsp. vanilla extract (or more, to taste)

·         1 cup all-purpose flour*

·         2 cups uncooked rolled oats (old fashioned)

·         ½ - 1 cup non-fat dry milk powder

·         1 tsp. baking soda

·         ½ tsp. salt

·         1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon

·         1 tsp. allspice

·         1 tsp. nutmeg

·         1 cup raisins (golden raisins, sultanas)

·         1 cup chopped dates

·         1 cup chopped pecans (or nut of your choice)

·         1 Tablespoon flour

Directions:       Preheat oven to 350°F

With electric mixer at medium speed, cream together butter, brown sugar, and molasses. Add eggs and beat until thoroughly mixed. Beat in vanilla extract.

In separate bowl combine dry ingredients: flour, oats, milk powder, baking soda, salt, and spices. At low speed, gradually mix dry ingredients into wet mixture until they are thoroughly mixed. In a small bowl combine the fruit and nuts, stirring in 1 Tablespoon flour to coat. Then stir the nuts and dried fruits into the dough.

Drop cookies by tablespoonful onto a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet, about two inches apart. Bake 10-12 minutes until edges are set but centers appear moist. Cool on baking sheet two minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

Store in an airtight container.

*If using self-rising flour, omit the baking soda. 

This might work pretty well. I've made some adjustments on the amounts of powdered milk, flour, sugar, and oats. Quick cooking oats (but not instant) will work fine, I think. Leaving out the powdered milk entirely will also probably work. I keep powdered milk in the house all the time, as I like to drink it. No one else around here does, and I suspect many people don't have it on hand. But it does add nutritional value to these cookies. Also, probably any dried fruit will do. 

But that's not really what I came to talk about. Today is Diva's 19th birthday. I haven't communicated with her at all today, or for the last several months. I'm not entirely sure where she is. Last I heard she lived in Greenville, about 50 miles or so north of our town. But I don't know where in Greenville she lives, or even for sure if she lives there. I think she's still in South Carolina. 

Here's the thing: she's crazy. I gave her the nickname "Diva" for the blog many years ago, and she has continued to exhibit these dramatic qualities, more so every year it seems. Our relationship is toxic. Or was, since we don't seem to have a relationship now. She's not good for me, and as much as I wish things were different, I'm not really good for her either. So here we are. 

We adopted her because we wanted another child. We wanted her. She was only 14 months old when she came to live with us. As she grew, and especially into adolescence, she was more and more difficult. Not normal "difficult adolescent" difficult, but crazy difficult. Violent, uncontrollable. Perhaps we could have handled things differently, but we did the best we could with the knowledge and abilities we had. Things didn't go well. The older she got the worse it got. She lied all the time, stole from us... there are a lot of details in the archives of this blog. I don't want to think about the details because it stresses and depresses me. 

And here it is, her 19th birthday. I want for her to be a pleasant person and for us to have a loving relationship. I'd love to call her up and have a lovely chat and wish her a happy birthday. The reality is that if I contact her at all, I'll be caught up in the Diva Drama Tornado. Superman is over it. Sooo over it! I've contemplated this for a few weeks and decided that the best course of action at this time is inaction. So I haven't looked for her on Facebork (she unfriended me years ago) or posted anything there about her. She doesn't know where this blog is, I think. 

I mourn for the loss of the ideal. And I wish her well. I hope she's doing well, hope she is successful, staying out of trouble, learning good lessons about the world. 

Happy Birthday, Angel.