I tried making gluten free practice pies for the first time today -
Other people in my family are trying to go gluten free for their health; I am following along because, at this point, I really have no idea what causes anything in my body, and the food in my house is the food I am going to eat.
I have done gluten free before, so I'm not holding out a ton of hope - I have, in fact, gone everything free - literally, for a time I was almost hospitalized because everything I ate caused a reaction. One summer I lived on Gatorade and Saltines. Another, while I was supposedly 'clearing' my allergies with a very sketchy acupuncturist, I lived on fruit and french fries, because I was apparently allergic to every other food in creation. I've been allergy tested for everything - but my test results - as always - come back in some form of completely screwy "I can't decipher this" gobbledygook that the allergist generally just throw up their hands and say "I'm not really sure what to tell you to avoid, because ... well... you have to eat food." Whatever; I'm used to it. I can only say that the reason I started drinking bottled water in college was that the allergist said to me - "You are so allergic to so many things, I wouldn't be surprised if unfiltered water was causing half of your problems." I don't know if it was or not (obviously not because I have developed 65,000 other problems since then), but I still drink bottled water. Tap tastes funny.
Anyways, the point of this post was supposed to be about making GF-pie crust for the first time, and how, really, pie crust is my baking nemesis in the first place - It's so... temperamental. And the butter has to be chilled and the real rolling pin is too heavy* and why can't the crust be as easy as the filling!!! Also: note to GF-companies: you start producing some of that ready made pie crust and you might as well be printing cash come Christmas, I promise you. Because pie crust is hard, man.
I made two mini-pies, one for here, one for my sister's house, just to see how they came out... I'm going to try it in a few minutes, but it's not as pretty as normal crust (not quite as golden colored or flaky, somehow). As long as it doesn't taste like sand, I'm going to go with it.
If you guys are GF and want to share some of your favorite recipes, please, feel free. And if you're not, that's ok too, I'll take them (my brother is so not going to go for this, so I'm going to have to stick to some of the regulars).
Also, I did not know that turkeys could have gluten in them - that is very strange and makes my brain hurt. Apparently, they can inject gluten-y substances into the birds for... flavor? I don't know; looking at it made my brain go, whaaa? Just a little something I learned today that I'm passing on to you.
(Insert The More You Know star and ding here)
*Spoonie tip - I use a pretend-play rolling pin now; It used to belong to the kid's playdough/pretend kitchen sets, but it is the right size and weight for me, so now it's mine.
Showing posts with label Cooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cooking. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Friday, May 25, 2012
"Some heavy ammunition on your side..."
Just before Christmas, when everything was going
berserk with Grandmother (again) and me (as usual) and Mom (which was new) and all the usual
December craziness (birthdays and shopping and Christmas and doctors, oh my), something happened that hasn't happened to me in a long time, and I've been trying to write about it since, but the words didn't come till now.
I hope getting it out there will stop making it so important in my mind. I write about everything here, so (even though it feels raw still) it'll be worth saying it 'out loud', as it were.
----
Mom & I were driving out to see Grandmother at the rehab (like we were doing every day at that point), and I'd spent the morning chopping up all the ingredients for beef stew and thrown them in the crock pot and turned it on low before we left. And I'm sitting in the car and mom makes some random comment about leaving things on and fires, and blah blah blah, and instead of just being a piece of our normal everyday conversation, it was like SPARK! and that tiny little off-hand remark managed to ignite an instant fire in my brain.
Immediately I started to worry about the crock pot, to reanalyze ever step I'd taken in making the stew - had I really turned it on low, or had I set it to high and it would burn the meat so quickly that it would catch fire? Was it safe to turn it on and leave the house at any setting? Have we ever done this before, even though I read about it all the time on the internet, that people make crock pot stuff and then go to work with it cooking, have we ever personally tried it before? Are we too far from the house to go back and turn it off? Just a constant stampede of 'could I be setting the house of fire' thoughts tumbling around in my brain, while I'm attempting to still chat with mom and seem like everything is ok.
Meanwhile, I know that what I'm worrying about is stupid: We leave all sorts of things - computers, cable boxes, the fridge, the dryer - on at home by themselves all the time. Nothing has ever happened, nothing is going to happen. House fires are rare, and I was careful and made sure the crock pot wasn't near anything and was on low, and I know all of this, and yet, I can't stop worrying. Some fifteen minutes later, it's still in my brain, still rolling around in there, maybe even picking up speed, because it's loud enough now that I've said it out loud, trying to make it seem casual, trying to act like we're still joking. Ha ha! we laugh, as I say "but that wouldn't really happen, right?" Big laughs all around.
Still, 25 minutes into the ride, and now I've been muttering about it and obsessing about it for our entire ride, and my next deliberately casual "It's not dangerous to have left that cooking, right?" pops out of my mouth and Mom says sharply "Oh my god: just let it go already!" Which is the normal response, if a person is just being stupid about something, and it's driving you crazy. But this wasn't just normal "oh, gee: random thought - let's giggle about this some more!" comment.
Nope, by this point I was full steam ahead into my first real anxiety attack in years.
I've had minor ones here and there - during other people's drunken fights, mostly, when I would swear some sort of PTSD part of my brain kicks in and I have to excuse myself from the tension of the current screaming match to go throw up before I can wade into things (either as peacekeeper or firebrand). Sometimes just the sound of the cork popping out of the wine bottle in the kitchen is enough to have my shoulders creeping upwards with tension. But for the most part, I've managed them, and managed to avoid them (which is even better). I wouldn't even say that anxiety is one of my top 20 CFIDS symptoms, probably because I was never not a slightly apprehensive person: it's just part of my genetic make up, I'm afraid.
But these huge panic attacks - of which I've (thankfully) only had about 6 - these huge, really full blown, tornado brain of worry, hold your shit together or you'll lose it monstrosities. When those mothers come, it's so frightening, because you know you don't have to be worrying about the thing, or that worrying about it won't help the situation at all, but you just can't stop yourself. Your brain is a runaway worry train, and you're just along for the ride.
So she snaps at me, semi-facetiously, and I burst into tears. 'It doesn't help,' I tell her 'to tell me that the thing I'm worrying about is stupid. I KNOW IT'S STUPID. Now I just feel even more anxious because I'm ashamed that I'm freaking out over something so dumb."
But here's the thing that people who don't have anxiety don't get. To people without panic attacks (those lucky bastards), it's just like regular worry: "Oh I feel like maybe that wasn't the best choice," but it's not a big deal, because Oh well, shrug. People will worry. It happens. I'm a champion worrier, and that's not what a panic attack is - for me at least. Worry is one thing, panic attack is a whole 'nother level of worry, combined with an astronomical confidence level - confidence in the truth of the fear, that is.
A panic attack is not just dread, but certainty. It is an absolute conviction of doom. I may know full well that whatever has set this off is a ridiculous thing to be worried about, but I am still 1000% sure in my gut that it doesn't matter that the odds are astronomical that something could go wrong: something is telling me that it's not right, so it must be so. Something is warning me to fix the situation, and I'm not heeding the warning, and that goes against every instinct you have. In this case, all the signs are all pointing to the idea that the house will have burned down by the time we get home, and I'm supposed to blithely ignore that and continue on with our day as if nothing is wrong? Impossible: it feels WRONG.
That's when the logical part of my brain shrinks down to nothing, and instead I remember all those news stories about people who 'listened to their gut' and saved their families. Or I replay all the times my feeling that something wasn't right was an accurate representation of the situation, and try to convince myself that this time it's ok to ignore all the DANGERDANGERDANGER signals my brain is trying to send me.
I dripped tears for the remainder of our ride, playing the tapes in my head that I know work to calm me: 'This is just a panic attack, it will pass. This is SO not about the beef stew chica: you're life is feeling more than a little bit out of control right now, don't ya think? Let's just ride this one out, and things will get better. You are not psychic, and the house is not burning down while you ignore all the warning signs - this is not a real threat.' But because it feels like a real threat, it takes me the whole ride to calm down.
I'm not shaking by the time we get to the rehab, but I'm still so ashamed - of the panic attack; of the tears, of not handling things like a grown up and instead breaking down into something useless; of the fact that I've broken a streak of panic! attack! free! years! over something so ridiculous - that we cut short our visit and go home relatively early. I know that this is mom's way of apologizing for snapping at me (which, was nice but I'm not sure it was necessary), and reassuring me all at once.
We arrive home to stew - nothing more. Once I calmed down enough, 99% of me was sure that was all we'd find. But the whole ride home, there's that one percent, that one embarrassed, fear-soaked percent, that's trying to get me ready to deal with the fact that I've failed to save all of our worldly possessions, just because I didn't trust myself enough to say "let's go home and I'll shut that off, and then we'll go." And because of that one measly percent, I'm not reassured, because once that panic genie is out of the bottle, I don't know if I'll be able to stopper him up again.
-----
That's why it took me five months to write this post: because god forbid that I tried to tap back into that feeling enough to write about it, and it exploded all over me again. I had to be sure enough of where I was, emotionally, to write about that, and even that feels like a weakness to me: to be so scared of remembering how scared I was? Panic attacks are ridiculous.
And I was right, about the genie part - I've felt him trying to creep up on me a few times since, but I'm better at recognizing it than I used to be, so I've been cutting them off before the fear can blossom on me (for the most part). And some pretty stressful shit has gone down since then, so I'm feeling like I've got a handle on managing it right now, which is good.
Because the next time I let something out of a bottle, it better be granting wishes, not paralyzing me with fear. (Look: wish number one is all ready!)
I hope getting it out there will stop making it so important in my mind. I write about everything here, so (even though it feels raw still) it'll be worth saying it 'out loud', as it were.
----
Mom & I were driving out to see Grandmother at the rehab (like we were doing every day at that point), and I'd spent the morning chopping up all the ingredients for beef stew and thrown them in the crock pot and turned it on low before we left. And I'm sitting in the car and mom makes some random comment about leaving things on and fires, and blah blah blah, and instead of just being a piece of our normal everyday conversation, it was like SPARK! and that tiny little off-hand remark managed to ignite an instant fire in my brain.
Immediately I started to worry about the crock pot, to reanalyze ever step I'd taken in making the stew - had I really turned it on low, or had I set it to high and it would burn the meat so quickly that it would catch fire? Was it safe to turn it on and leave the house at any setting? Have we ever done this before, even though I read about it all the time on the internet, that people make crock pot stuff and then go to work with it cooking, have we ever personally tried it before? Are we too far from the house to go back and turn it off? Just a constant stampede of 'could I be setting the house of fire' thoughts tumbling around in my brain, while I'm attempting to still chat with mom and seem like everything is ok.
Meanwhile, I know that what I'm worrying about is stupid: We leave all sorts of things - computers, cable boxes, the fridge, the dryer - on at home by themselves all the time. Nothing has ever happened, nothing is going to happen. House fires are rare, and I was careful and made sure the crock pot wasn't near anything and was on low, and I know all of this, and yet, I can't stop worrying. Some fifteen minutes later, it's still in my brain, still rolling around in there, maybe even picking up speed, because it's loud enough now that I've said it out loud, trying to make it seem casual, trying to act like we're still joking. Ha ha! we laugh, as I say "but that wouldn't really happen, right?" Big laughs all around.
Still, 25 minutes into the ride, and now I've been muttering about it and obsessing about it for our entire ride, and my next deliberately casual "It's not dangerous to have left that cooking, right?" pops out of my mouth and Mom says sharply "Oh my god: just let it go already!" Which is the normal response, if a person is just being stupid about something, and it's driving you crazy. But this wasn't just normal "oh, gee: random thought - let's giggle about this some more!" comment.
Nope, by this point I was full steam ahead into my first real anxiety attack in years.
I've had minor ones here and there - during other people's drunken fights, mostly, when I would swear some sort of PTSD part of my brain kicks in and I have to excuse myself from the tension of the current screaming match to go throw up before I can wade into things (either as peacekeeper or firebrand). Sometimes just the sound of the cork popping out of the wine bottle in the kitchen is enough to have my shoulders creeping upwards with tension. But for the most part, I've managed them, and managed to avoid them (which is even better). I wouldn't even say that anxiety is one of my top 20 CFIDS symptoms, probably because I was never not a slightly apprehensive person: it's just part of my genetic make up, I'm afraid.
But these huge panic attacks - of which I've (thankfully) only had about 6 - these huge, really full blown, tornado brain of worry, hold your shit together or you'll lose it monstrosities. When those mothers come, it's so frightening, because you know you don't have to be worrying about the thing, or that worrying about it won't help the situation at all, but you just can't stop yourself. Your brain is a runaway worry train, and you're just along for the ride.
So she snaps at me, semi-facetiously, and I burst into tears. 'It doesn't help,' I tell her 'to tell me that the thing I'm worrying about is stupid. I KNOW IT'S STUPID. Now I just feel even more anxious because I'm ashamed that I'm freaking out over something so dumb."
But here's the thing that people who don't have anxiety don't get. To people without panic attacks (those lucky bastards), it's just like regular worry: "Oh I feel like maybe that wasn't the best choice," but it's not a big deal, because Oh well, shrug. People will worry. It happens. I'm a champion worrier, and that's not what a panic attack is - for me at least. Worry is one thing, panic attack is a whole 'nother level of worry, combined with an astronomical confidence level - confidence in the truth of the fear, that is.
A panic attack is not just dread, but certainty. It is an absolute conviction of doom. I may know full well that whatever has set this off is a ridiculous thing to be worried about, but I am still 1000% sure in my gut that it doesn't matter that the odds are astronomical that something could go wrong: something is telling me that it's not right, so it must be so. Something is warning me to fix the situation, and I'm not heeding the warning, and that goes against every instinct you have. In this case, all the signs are all pointing to the idea that the house will have burned down by the time we get home, and I'm supposed to blithely ignore that and continue on with our day as if nothing is wrong? Impossible: it feels WRONG.
That's when the logical part of my brain shrinks down to nothing, and instead I remember all those news stories about people who 'listened to their gut' and saved their families. Or I replay all the times my feeling that something wasn't right was an accurate representation of the situation, and try to convince myself that this time it's ok to ignore all the DANGERDANGERDANGER signals my brain is trying to send me.
I dripped tears for the remainder of our ride, playing the tapes in my head that I know work to calm me: 'This is just a panic attack, it will pass. This is SO not about the beef stew chica: you're life is feeling more than a little bit out of control right now, don't ya think? Let's just ride this one out, and things will get better. You are not psychic, and the house is not burning down while you ignore all the warning signs - this is not a real threat.' But because it feels like a real threat, it takes me the whole ride to calm down.
I'm not shaking by the time we get to the rehab, but I'm still so ashamed - of the panic attack; of the tears, of not handling things like a grown up and instead breaking down into something useless; of the fact that I've broken a streak of panic! attack! free! years! over something so ridiculous - that we cut short our visit and go home relatively early. I know that this is mom's way of apologizing for snapping at me (which, was nice but I'm not sure it was necessary), and reassuring me all at once.
We arrive home to stew - nothing more. Once I calmed down enough, 99% of me was sure that was all we'd find. But the whole ride home, there's that one percent, that one embarrassed, fear-soaked percent, that's trying to get me ready to deal with the fact that I've failed to save all of our worldly possessions, just because I didn't trust myself enough to say "let's go home and I'll shut that off, and then we'll go." And because of that one measly percent, I'm not reassured, because once that panic genie is out of the bottle, I don't know if I'll be able to stopper him up again.
-----
That's why it took me five months to write this post: because god forbid that I tried to tap back into that feeling enough to write about it, and it exploded all over me again. I had to be sure enough of where I was, emotionally, to write about that, and even that feels like a weakness to me: to be so scared of remembering how scared I was? Panic attacks are ridiculous.
And I was right, about the genie part - I've felt him trying to creep up on me a few times since, but I'm better at recognizing it than I used to be, so I've been cutting them off before the fear can blossom on me (for the most part). And some pretty stressful shit has gone down since then, so I'm feeling like I've got a handle on managing it right now, which is good.
Because the next time I let something out of a bottle, it better be granting wishes, not paralyzing me with fear. (Look: wish number one is all ready!)
Friday, November 11, 2011
Late in the day, again
I keep putting it off and pushing it back - "Oh, I'll write at 7 o'clock, when this show is over, at 9 o'clock..." And somehow now it is after 10 o'clock, and I haven't put two words together. I know you all are shocked at my procrastination skills.
I do have good news to report, however: Mom is home from the hospital, and, while pretty exhausted (anyone who thinks a hospital stay is restful and recuperative has obviously never had one), she's doing pretty well. Got some stuff to follow up with in the next couple of weeks, but definitely a lot better than she was. (She ate food. Voluntarily. Twice today that I know of. It has been weeks since that happened, so that's a big step forward.)
Also, I didn't procrastinate all day: I did in fact make cookies today. Hooray for following through on something. I made two batches of cookies, froze half and baked half - because we honestly don't need five dozen cookies on just any regular day, like today, and because there's nothing better than knowing that all I have to do is cut a chunk of the frozen batch and I can have a couple of warm cookies any old time I please. Plus: I am already there doing it, all of the ingredients are out, I might as well throw it together. It doesn't take very long, the second batch, and I can do it while I'm waiting to pull the first round out of the oven.
I also attempted to make a no-roll pie crust, and froze that as well. I'm hoping for homemade pie crusts for my Thanksgiving pies this year, and meant to start two months ago, trying to settle on a recipe I like - and then things (my body, other people's bodies, the world at large) kept going wrong, so here I am just starting. I am not a huge fan of the crust part of pie, for some reason, and pie dough rolling is nearly impossible for me, strength-wise, so it's hard to make my own. I usually resort to the store bought, but I know it's not the best ever. (And I like to make best ever pies, so it's a conundrum.) I found a recipe on the internet for no-roll crust, and I'm going to see how that turns out. It was wicked easy to make, but the recipe doesn't say anything about freezing it, long term, so I'm sure there will have to be a practice run on the pies before Thanksgiving rolls around. (And I am not even thinking about the fact that that only gives me two weeks. IGNORE.)
Still, although I am currently sore as all hell, I love baking, and wish it was something I could do more often. It takes a lot out of me, partly because we don't have a table at the right height for me to cook on, so I have to hop up and down from the counter in order to see into the mixer and make sure I'm doing things right. (Oh, standing: why are you so difficult?) And the hopping is exhausting, but I haven't figured out a better way yet. (Recently, they put a long table in the kitchen for me to try, but someone must not have liked it there because before I even got a chance to try it, it was quickly moved back into the dining room. That's ok, because I think it is still too high, but I kind of wish I could've tried it first.) But hopping and soreness aside, I do have a bunch of mini-chocolate chip or butterscotch cookies to nibble on for my snack tonight, and that certainly tips the scales in favor of baking, however I accomplish it.
Pro tip: I realize that some of you probably already know about this, but it is my favorite cookie-related tip in the universe, so I'm passing it along anyways. When you're storing your cookies, like in a tupperware container or something (we use old takeout containers: reusing for the win!), put a piece of bread in there with the cookies, to keep them soft and moist. For whatever reason (and I know I am a geek, but I am not a science geek, so I can't explain it), the bread will get hard and stale, but the cookies will not. Change the piece of bread every couple of days - if your cookies last that long - and the cookies will stay nice and fresh longer, which comes in handy if you are mailing baked goods as well. (And the bread you can use for homemade croutons, if that appeals to you, but I don't like croutons, so I just toss it.)
Time for that snack I was talking about... Thanks for all the well wishes for my mom; they are much appreciated.
I do have good news to report, however: Mom is home from the hospital, and, while pretty exhausted (anyone who thinks a hospital stay is restful and recuperative has obviously never had one), she's doing pretty well. Got some stuff to follow up with in the next couple of weeks, but definitely a lot better than she was. (She ate food. Voluntarily. Twice today that I know of. It has been weeks since that happened, so that's a big step forward.)
Also, I didn't procrastinate all day: I did in fact make cookies today. Hooray for following through on something. I made two batches of cookies, froze half and baked half - because we honestly don't need five dozen cookies on just any regular day, like today, and because there's nothing better than knowing that all I have to do is cut a chunk of the frozen batch and I can have a couple of warm cookies any old time I please. Plus: I am already there doing it, all of the ingredients are out, I might as well throw it together. It doesn't take very long, the second batch, and I can do it while I'm waiting to pull the first round out of the oven.
I also attempted to make a no-roll pie crust, and froze that as well. I'm hoping for homemade pie crusts for my Thanksgiving pies this year, and meant to start two months ago, trying to settle on a recipe I like - and then things (my body, other people's bodies, the world at large) kept going wrong, so here I am just starting. I am not a huge fan of the crust part of pie, for some reason, and pie dough rolling is nearly impossible for me, strength-wise, so it's hard to make my own. I usually resort to the store bought, but I know it's not the best ever. (And I like to make best ever pies, so it's a conundrum.) I found a recipe on the internet for no-roll crust, and I'm going to see how that turns out. It was wicked easy to make, but the recipe doesn't say anything about freezing it, long term, so I'm sure there will have to be a practice run on the pies before Thanksgiving rolls around. (And I am not even thinking about the fact that that only gives me two weeks. IGNORE.)
Still, although I am currently sore as all hell, I love baking, and wish it was something I could do more often. It takes a lot out of me, partly because we don't have a table at the right height for me to cook on, so I have to hop up and down from the counter in order to see into the mixer and make sure I'm doing things right. (Oh, standing: why are you so difficult?) And the hopping is exhausting, but I haven't figured out a better way yet. (Recently, they put a long table in the kitchen for me to try, but someone must not have liked it there because before I even got a chance to try it, it was quickly moved back into the dining room. That's ok, because I think it is still too high, but I kind of wish I could've tried it first.) But hopping and soreness aside, I do have a bunch of mini-chocolate chip or butterscotch cookies to nibble on for my snack tonight, and that certainly tips the scales in favor of baking, however I accomplish it.
Pro tip: I realize that some of you probably already know about this, but it is my favorite cookie-related tip in the universe, so I'm passing it along anyways. When you're storing your cookies, like in a tupperware container or something (we use old takeout containers: reusing for the win!), put a piece of bread in there with the cookies, to keep them soft and moist. For whatever reason (and I know I am a geek, but I am not a science geek, so I can't explain it), the bread will get hard and stale, but the cookies will not. Change the piece of bread every couple of days - if your cookies last that long - and the cookies will stay nice and fresh longer, which comes in handy if you are mailing baked goods as well. (And the bread you can use for homemade croutons, if that appeals to you, but I don't like croutons, so I just toss it.)
Time for that snack I was talking about... Thanks for all the well wishes for my mom; they are much appreciated.
Monday, November 29, 2010
"Thanksgiving is a time to get together, and none of you are taking it seriously! None of you!
So, as slap bet commisioner, I institute a new law: at Thanksgiving there will be no slapping!"*
I promised a picture, and a picture you shall have. Here is the mock Thanksgiving dinner Lil Girl and I made out of Playdoh last week. I know it is totally not to scale (please note how the corn kernels are bigger than the blueberry pie), but when you're working with a four year old, things like scale aren't exactly that important matters. We worked diligently on this plate, with Lil Girl rolling all of those blueberries and corn kernels by hand, and Auntie NTE "carving" the turkey into an (not too shabby if I do say so myself) approximation of a real bird.
Clockwise, you've got cranberry sauce ("the kind in the can that goes Plop!"), the previously mentioned turkey; some carrots and baked potatoes ("because we don't have white for mashed potatoes and the gray ones look yucky"); corn (that's not Green Giant, but obviously should be) and two pies - a blueberry with no top crust (we made some, but she didn't like covering up all that hard work, so it was discarded) and an apple with a top ("because I am not making a lot of more little apples").
Our real Thanksgiving feast was pretty low key this year with just 8 of us: Mom & Dad, SisterJ and BrotherInLaw K, Me, Grandmother, UJ and SisterK. For us, that's pretty small. We had a good day, and there was very. little. drama., which, for me, is about all I'm asking for at this point. There were some laughs, and stories, and lots of food (pies, pies and more pies - five pies for eight people means pie for breakfast for the next week).
But I thought you all might get a kick out of our Fauxgiving, which we served to Mum at Lil Girl's request = "Because Grammy LOVES turkey, and because she doesn't have to cook it this day." Since tomorrow's going to be our last day for leftovers (hopefully), I hope Lil Girl is still in the mood to see the real thing.
----- Off Topic - -
Yes: I think the nicknames/code names have gotten out of hand and confusing too. When I was typing that last entry, I had to check it like three times to make sure it was even making sense. I will try to think of a better system, since I still don't want to use people's real names. I guess I should just stop adding letters (and words) to the names they already have, but poor Youngest Nephew really is No Longer Youngest Nephew (poor planning NTE!), so it would be even more confusing to keep calling him that. So I will come up with something, I promise.
Also, you might want to stay tuned this week for posts on the following topics: My hives are not really hives. Harry Potter 7 was sold out when we got there, but we didn't just turn around and come home. Christmas shopping and why I think grown ups should make wishlists. (hint: because some people are hard to shop for!). What I have been doing for the past 139 *and counting* days. And finally, how I am going to make my living space livable, so help me god.
*How I Met Your Mother
I promised a picture, and a picture you shall have. Here is the mock Thanksgiving dinner Lil Girl and I made out of Playdoh last week. I know it is totally not to scale (please note how the corn kernels are bigger than the blueberry pie), but when you're working with a four year old, things like scale aren't exactly that important matters. We worked diligently on this plate, with Lil Girl rolling all of those blueberries and corn kernels by hand, and Auntie NTE "carving" the turkey into an (not too shabby if I do say so myself) approximation of a real bird.
Clockwise, you've got cranberry sauce ("the kind in the can that goes Plop!"), the previously mentioned turkey; some carrots and baked potatoes ("because we don't have white for mashed potatoes and the gray ones look yucky"); corn (that's not Green Giant, but obviously should be) and two pies - a blueberry with no top crust (we made some, but she didn't like covering up all that hard work, so it was discarded) and an apple with a top ("because I am not making a lot of more little apples").
Our real Thanksgiving feast was pretty low key this year with just 8 of us: Mom & Dad, SisterJ and BrotherInLaw K, Me, Grandmother, UJ and SisterK. For us, that's pretty small. We had a good day, and there was very. little. drama., which, for me, is about all I'm asking for at this point. There were some laughs, and stories, and lots of food (pies, pies and more pies - five pies for eight people means pie for breakfast for the next week).
But I thought you all might get a kick out of our Fauxgiving, which we served to Mum at Lil Girl's request = "Because Grammy LOVES turkey, and because she doesn't have to cook it this day." Since tomorrow's going to be our last day for leftovers (hopefully), I hope Lil Girl is still in the mood to see the real thing.
----- Off Topic - -
Yes: I think the nicknames/code names have gotten out of hand and confusing too. When I was typing that last entry, I had to check it like three times to make sure it was even making sense. I will try to think of a better system, since I still don't want to use people's real names. I guess I should just stop adding letters (and words) to the names they already have, but poor Youngest Nephew really is No Longer Youngest Nephew (poor planning NTE!), so it would be even more confusing to keep calling him that. So I will come up with something, I promise.
Also, you might want to stay tuned this week for posts on the following topics: My hives are not really hives. Harry Potter 7 was sold out when we got there, but we didn't just turn around and come home. Christmas shopping and why I think grown ups should make wishlists. (hint: because some people are hard to shop for!). What I have been doing for the past 139 *and counting* days. And finally, how I am going to make my living space livable, so help me god.
*How I Met Your Mother
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Today is pie day
and I have just two things to say -
1_ Baking pies is a LOT easier with a stove that works. *I will try to take pictures before they get eaten tomorrow.
and
2_I am in need of a hot shower and a warm bed.
Happy Thanksgiving Eve, peoples. Wish you all the best tomorrow.
1_ Baking pies is a LOT easier with a stove that works. *I will try to take pictures before they get eaten tomorrow.
and
2_I am in need of a hot shower and a warm bed.
Happy Thanksgiving Eve, peoples. Wish you all the best tomorrow.
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