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December 24, 2006
Relaxed
A rare feeling for me, especially during the holidays :) Leslie and Adam will come over tomorrow, we'll have good food (but low fuss), and we'll hang out and have fun.
My shopping is done (for the most part), and the house is looking good. I have a few cooking tasks to do today, and tomorrow will mostly be a fair amount of reheating stuff. The only thing I added to the menu list was a smoked turkey, mainly because I've been hankering for one for the past few years :) I just need to dig out my electric knife so we can slice that really thin.
This morning I decanted the bottle of port that I bought for the Cumberland Sauce. Since I'll only be using about 1/2 cup of the port for this sauce, I found another recipe to use up the rest of the bottle. Roast Pork with Port Jus and Chipotle Apples sounds nummy, especially with cilantro mashed potatoes. We'll have that later in the week -- maybe for New Year's for good luck.
On the agenda for later today is: Creme Anglaise -- just generally good to have around with the desserts we'll be having. The Cumberland Sauce. A lemon sauce for gingerbread and anything else folks might want to throw it on. Baking the sweet potatoes so I can be sure they're at that wonderful caramelized point. Leslie's Mom's Cheesecake which is just so good. The fried cinnamon apples -- those will definitely be better tomorrow. I'll probably also make the gingerbread tonight and then reheat it tomorrow. The flavors will have a chance to develop overnight. I'll also mix up the garlic butter for the Cheddar Bay Biscuits, and maybe even do the twice baked potatoes through the first step.
We're skipping the red and green jello with bananas since we have what I'm sure will be an outstanding Bourbon Walnut pie from Mom's Apple Pie Company. I really can't get over what a nice gift those pies were!
Posted by jodikins at 2:06 PM | Comments (0)
December 21, 2006
Victory is mine!
Viva Pinata: 50 out of 50 achievements.
Posted by jodikins at 6:40 AM | Comments (1)
December 18, 2006
Lots o cleaning
In preparation for Christmas, Richard spent this evening cleaning house and basking in the glory of our Dyson. The carpets look so much nicer, and we're much happier. I'm working on what configuration we'll have the living room in for Christmas so we can all actually sit at a table and enjoy the meal :) Preparations are going very well actually -- the vacuum cleaner is a good motivator. I actually might go get some more containers to organize some of the effluvia around here.
Posted by jodikins at 12:42 AM | Comments (0)
December 17, 2006
Christmas Menu 2006
I finally got around to figuring out what I might want to make. It's nice to be able to take a look at what I did last year, and weed out the hits and misses. So, here's what I'm planning:
homemade honey baked ham
cheddar bay biscuits
baked sweet potatoes
twice baked potatoes
broccoli
green beans
corn
sauteed apples
cumberland sauce
gingerbread with lemon sauce
leslie's mom's cheesecake?
red and green jello with bananas
Subject to revision and all out laziness, of course.
Posted by jodikins at 12:07 PM | Comments (0)
December 16, 2006
I wish I was Amish...
Then the power outages wouldn't be a problem :) The big storm blew through Thursday night creating some spectacular scenes locally. Many, many large trees down, pulling power lines with them, and in some cases, suspended by the power lines themselves. Roads were closed all around. Power was out for 1 million customers in the greater Puget Sound area, a large portion of those on the good old Eastside. We lost power around 1am Thursday night/Friday morning, and power was restored this morning at 10am. So, 33 hours of outage. Unfortunately, the cable modem's outage extended beyond that, and continues to be spotty. I'm definitely not complaining about the 33 hours of outage -- we're one of the lucky ones to have power so soon. A lot of people will have to wait at least a few more days, and temps are going down to freezing at night.
As we drove over to Bellevue tonight, the air was heavy with the acrid stench of idiocy. Apparently, the survival skills of the typical Eastside resident are not that strong, because the acrid stench was the smell of fresh conifer branches burning in fireplaces. I'm very thankful to have grown up in NH, and to have been endoctrinated with certain cold-weather life skills. Like: don't burn soft woods, especially fresh soft woods, because they will emit a TON of creosoate, which will in turn, cause chimney fires. Now, granted, I don't know how long it takes to start a chimney fire that way, as Yankees aren't ones to try that kind of thing out. Judging by the haze hanging over everything, we might get to see it happen here.
Posted by jodikins at 10:34 PM | Comments (0)
December 10, 2006
Baking, holidays, writing
Work is changing, but it keeps me very busy during the week.. and the weekend... and nights. No further comment.
The holidays are rapidly approaching, and much like many recent years, I'm not ready for them. It's funny how much more I understand about my grandparents the longer Richard and I work together. My grandmother would say would say that Christmas was early this year -- which might have been early Alzheimer's -- despite the fact that a large part of their ceramics business revolved around Christmas. It's so difficult to think of anything else but your business, and there's never any time to go do holiday things.
I'm using some of my writing skills to wind through some emotional minefields with various folks. Not much I can say publickly right now, but so far so good.
Baking: brioche dough is in the fridge. I was inspired by the slightly bitter chocolate covered orange peel I got from Fannie May -- it's okay on its own, but a little too strong to enjoy out of hand. I've been inspired by some pannetone recipes floating around on the web, but in the end I decided on the Middle Class Brioche recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice. The recipe was really easy to put together (brioche is notoriously difficult for bakers); so we'll see how it behaves tomorrow. Right now I'm reading through the rest of the book and figuring out what I'd like to try next.
I'm hoping this week is less stressful and busy.
Posted by jodikins at 10:54 PM | Comments (0)
December 2, 2006
Birthday fun and excitement
It's 8:24am and Gbic certainly did not recognize it is my birthday, or else she would have let me sleep in :) I'm still feeling a little crappy, so I'm going to start some laundry and head back to bed for a while. Leslie's working today so we might do something tomorrow, but at this point it's less about doing something and more about just hanging out. 35 actually feels better than 34 and 33 did -- I think I'm over the whole panic about getting older thing... at least until 38, 39 and 40 roll around :D
Posted by jodikins at 8:21 AM | Comments (0)