Last-Minute Christmas Rush! Pt. 2--My Middle Child Turns 4 And Has A Party

One December family event that always threatens to be overshadowed by Christmas is Celeste's birthday; it's on the 13th. This year, she turned the Big Four. On one hand, it's hard to believe that she's four already; on the other, she has always acted pretty "worldly" and "knowledgeable" for her age, so it sometimes feels like she's been four for some time already!

Since Celeste had a birthday party for her third birthday, we didn't go too crazy this year; we made pink cupcakes (at her request; however, I was not a fan of the strawberry flavor! Maybe I'll just try food coloring next time), and handed out the cupcakes at her dance class and amongst her family members. We also took her to Peter Piper Pizza's, and she got to invite one friend (she chose Alex, a preschool buddy, who brought along most of his family). A good time was had by all, and much pizza was consumed.

All the girls LOVED this whirly-gig thingy

Daddy and Celeste enjoying their pizza

Celeste's buddy Alex gave her a Barbie for her birthday!

 And when the "big day" arrived (a few days after the pizza party), we put Celeste's birthday presents under the tree--we try to get the birthday presents out before any Christmas presents, to make her birthday stand out:

Awww...isn't she cute??

However, Celeste did get the honor of opening the first Christmas presents as well (you can see one in her hand in the above picture)--Grandma Nash sent us our Christmas tree ornaments for 2011!

Thanks, Grandma & Grandpa Nash!!

Celeste also got to be the first kid to hang up the new ornaments!

And here's the birthday girl, beaming over her special birthday cupcake:

Celeste is probably least like me, personality-wise, of all my children. But that is turning out to be a good thing; she is just so laid-back and charming and sweet (and pretty sharp; she can recall details of conversations held months ago!). Plus, she is growing up to be a very beautiful girl inside and out. I love you, kid! Here's to many many more great birthdays.

Last-Minute Christmas Rush! Pt. 1--More Christmas Cookies, and a Piano Recital

This veery Christmas-y house belongs to a nearby neighbor. It's not on our way home, but our kids still want to drive next to it every single night! Ah, Christmas.

I haven't blogged in a while, but that was partly due to events out of my control...I had a Very Crazy Week, and then our internet was out for several days. Sad face. But all that's in the past now, so it's time to get caught up! I'll probably knock out several short posts over the next several days, including our family 2011 Christmas letter ('cause I'm cheap like that; don't check your mailbox!). However, I have a lot of other holiday (and birthday) stuff to cover first. So, without further ado...

Shortly after my last blog post, I had to "go dark" for a while--mostly because I was in the kitchen, baking a lot of sweet treats for many many people. A few friends have asked for recipes, so I'm posting a bunch of pictures here in the hopes that they can identify the cookies involved and send me requests. So here are a few of the things I made (not including your "standard" stuff like fudge). Also, I realize these pictures are not the greatest...sorry. I have been pretty rushed the last couple of weeks, and I don't work for Our Best Bites, so what can ya do??

 First were these terrific cookies (admittedly, they don't look gorgeous, but trust me--they're great!). These are butter cookies with a cranberry-pecan-brown sugar "swirl" pinwheeled inside. Oh yeah, and there's orange rind in the cookie dough, which makes it just a bit tart. Sooo good.

Another holiday standard at the Barrett home are the peanut butter blossoms--although I think I made these cookies too big! The poor Hershey's Kiss seems a little lost inside all that cookie. Well, I have more Kisses left over--oh, darn, time to make more cookies!!

Here's another "cookie" I've been making for the last few years; it's a peppermint meringue. There are only four or five total ingredients, but it still takes kind of a long time to put them together (plus two hours to bake!). However, it's worth it! I love the flavor; it's like taking a bite into a soft cloud of peppermint. Mmm...

I also make jam thumbprints every year as well; I find them a nice nutty alternative to some overly sweet cookies (even if the jam might make them a little messy). I didn't have any walnuts left (my usual nut with these cookies), so I used a combination of peanuts and pecans, and they tasted great! (The jam is my homemade raspberry jam)

Here's a new cookie I tried this year (I finally got brave enough to use food coloring!). It's mainly a three-layered sugar cookie, but the pink "chunks" are actually ground-up maraschino cherries! I thought they looked very pretty, but I found the flavor milder than I'd hoped for. I'm trying to think of ways I could heighten the cherry flavor; maybe more almond extract? Maybe try a bit more sugar next time? It'll come to me, I know it! At any rate, I definitely want to try them again next year. And (by way of experiment), these cookies taste very good dipped in hot cocoa!

So, long story short, I made lots of cookies. And I have enough raw materials left over that I can see myself making a few more batches in the weeks to come (my kids have three weeks off of school for the Christmas holiday; I've got to fill the time somehow!!). The vast majority of these goodies, however, were sent out to family & friends--including several very talented piano students I know...

That's right, I had my semiannual piano recital on December 10th, at our church building. I'm now teaching seven students, which has been a lot of additional work but which has also been very rewarding. They are all very sweet, very talented, and (as you can see above) very cute!! After playing, there was great applause and much rejoicing (especially by me, since I had been stressing about putting this together), and then everyone went to the kitchen & ate a bunch of yummy goodies. Because that (among other things) is what Christmas is all about.

Christmastime Is Here...*cue "Charlie Brown Christmas" music*

I'm back already! It's been very enjoyable putting up our holiday decorations in our new home. Our beautiful Nativity was set up on the piano, as usual. However, I'm a little more nervous about it being there now that our stairwell is right next to it; as you can see by the picture, it would be all too easy for curious/destructive little hands to reach through the bars and wreck havoc on some of our beautiful breakables. For now, I will cross my fingers and trust my luck. My kids are not normally destructive people; well, not most of the time.

And here's our tree! Our ceilings are "only" eight feet high, so our tree (which really isn't huge) certainly looks tall in our front room! Another problem we faced--apparently both our strings of lights decided to die sometime over the previous year. Not cool. Anyway, we took the opportunity to do something we've been meaning to do for a while--we upgraded the tree lights to the energy-efficient LED lights. They burn just as bright, but they are much cooler (reducing fire risk), and they use less energy to boot. They also include purple and blue bulbs, which means that our whole front rooms has a very bluish glow when the tree is turned on at night.

Before you ask: yes, I am aware our star is "listing" a bit. What can I say? We aren't professional tree trimmers; I also think it adds to the tree's charm! Also: this is a REAL tree; I realize they are a lot more hassle sometimes, but I just can't resist that wonderful smell in my house!

As many of you know, Christmas is also the time when I make lots (lots) of cookies, fudge, and other sweets and give them out at various occasions. In years past, I have made dozens of batches of stuff, and handed plates out to everybody I could. This year...well, I'm a lot busier than I was at this time last year, so we'll see if that actually happens. I may try to ease up on the baking by only doing a few batches when I get around to it, and giving them out when I have a moment.

However, that hasn't stopped me from cooking a few things, and trying some new recipes out. Here's what I've made so far this Christmas season:

First I whipped together a batch of one of my family's favorites: chocolate scootcheroos! Basically, it's Rice Krispie Treats made with corn syrup and peanut butter instead of marshmallows, topped with melted chocolate & butterscotch. Soo sugary and yummy.

I also made these very easy pecan/Rolo/pretzel snacks, which is just as simple as it sounds. First, you put a Rolo candy on top of a pretzel; repeat until the bag of Rolos (or pretzels!) is gone. Second, you put them all into a 350-degree oven for about 5 minutes. Then, you remove them from the oven, press a pecan half into the Rolo, and let them cool completely. That's it! If you like caramel, they are a must; plus, they're a nice salty alternative to many of the ultra-sweet Christmas treats out there.

Here's a recipe I tried for the first time this year, but it was fun to make! Basically, they are gingersnap "logs" (although I think I'll shape them into balls next time). I take crushed-up gingersnap cookies and mix them with sweetened condensed milk and a few other things. Then I roll that dough into shapes, then cover it with the white topping (a combination of canned store frosting and white chocolate for baking). It tastes sort of like a high-powered gingerbread cookie; I liked it, but think one is enough!

What else did I do last week? Shopping, shopping, and more shopping. The good news: I think I'm done shopping for my family. Yay! However, I've still got some extended family to take care of; plus, Celeste's birthday is just around the corner, as is my piano students' winter recital. Hopefully I'll survive (and be alert enough) to fill you in on all that later.

I Made It!! What I've Learned By Blogging Every Day

Way back at the beginning of this month, I decided to try something suggested by the Web consortium BlogHer. As part of National Blog Posting Month, I set a goal to write in the blog every day for the month of November. And I can proudly say that, minus a few hiccups (I started a day late, and posted one entry a day late due to Internet problems), I was able to blog every day this month! Hooray! It's so nice to actually accomplish a goal for once...

Here's what I've learned this month:

1. I probably can't blog on an everyday basis...I just don't have it in me! There were a few days when I felt I was "reaching" for things to say. I want the writing and the ideas on this blog to feel organic and natural. Plus, blogging can be somewhat time-consuming (especially when I'm uploading a bunch of photos and videos), and I'm just too busy to sit in front of the computer for hours each day. There's also the matter of having to share our (so far) one & only computer with the rest of the family.

However,

2. Blogging every day has reminded me how much I enjoy writing. I have really missed that! Back in my youth, I dreamed of being a famous writer when I grew up. I have always loved writing, and I like to think I'm pretty good at it (though certainly not the best around, of course). I even majored in English and Journalism in college to hone my skills...and since I graduated, all my paid jobs have been in accounting. Hah...the eternal dilemma of an English major! Then, life, marriage, and kids all happened, and as it has for so many, some of my dreams have been put on the back burner.

However, those dreams still exist--and I'm starting to realize that any writing is a good way to keep those dreams attainable. Writing frequently tends to keep my mind limber & flexible. Besides being a good way to record my family history and keep in touch with family & friends, blogging has proven itself useful in giving me new writing ideas of all kinds. Even if some of them aren't the most exciting subjects (I can't wait to share pictures of my Christmas cookies!! *yawn*), they are subjects that matter to me and my family right now--and as far as I'm concerned, that's the primary function of this blog. All the other opinion pieces (and movie/book/TV reviews, even though I love to write them) are just the gravy. Who knows? Maybe I'll feel confident enough in my writing that I can (finally) plunge into fiction writing again. That would be awesome (for me--don't know about for the rest of you :) )

So, my "early" New Year's resolution is to take this momentum into the next year, and blog more often and (hopefully) more meaningfully. Even if I won't write every day, I hope to post something at least once a week. I know life gets in the way sometimes, but if this month has taught me anything (besides my first two points), it's that

3. The sacrifices I make in blogging are worth the rewards I get from writing it!

So, stay tuned; I'll be back soon! I really mean it this time; we're about to celebrate our first Christmas in our new home and I don't want that to pass by undocumented. Plus, I have Celeste's fourth birthday and Nathan and my tenth anniversary coming up in December. Lots coming up!

Deck The House With Lights And Duct Tape...

Until this year, Nathan & I have been an "indoor Christmas lights ONLY" kind of family. We always decorate the tree with lights, of course, and we usually have some small white lights framing our Nativity set. But for the first half of our married life, we lived in apartments--and when we moved to Sahuarita in 2008, we lived in a rental house for a few years and didn't want to bother with outdoor lights.

But now we have our own house, and that brings with it possibilities! Better yet, earlier this year my parents bequeathed us several rolls of white icicle lights they no longer needed--a "starter kit," as it were. Suddenly, decorating our house with beautiful white lights no longer seemed like a pipe dream, but an imminent reality! Since my "Christmas" juices have been flowing since after Thanksgiving anyway, I just couldn't wait; yesterday I pulled out all the lights and got to work!

However, if I've learned anything over the last two days, it's that wanting to decorate your house and actually decorating your house are two different things. For one thing, your house looks a whole lot bigger when you're actually un-stringing lights and contemplating how to stretch them across lots and lots of awning/overhang/what have you. For another, now that we have a two-story house, it has gotten a lot more complicated to fully "maintain" its exterior; in other words, we don't have a ladder high enough to reach the second story!

Still, I thought it would be good to at least try to hang a few lights. Luckily my parents were well-prepared; they sent along tons of hooks along with the light strings, so we could hook them to the house more easily. The awning over our front door also has a wood trim, which made it a simple matter to hammer in a few nails and attach some hooks.

A trickier proposition was stringing lights over our garage, since there was no wood trim there. I managed to force a few nails into the stucco (is someone going to chime in now, saying, "That's a terrible idea!!"?), but it was not much fun. I hammered my fingers a number of times, and bent up several nails trying to force them into a substance they probably had no business being in. I ended up throwing away several hopelessly bent nails in disgust. However, I managed to stick a few far enough in that they are holding firm, even with the weight of the lights. Here's hoping they stay put through the holidays!

And now, in the "tempering my expectations" department: some of the light strings are probably a few years old, and not working as well as they used to. One of the strings is about 2/3 dead, while another has about 4 or 5 icicles that just wouldn't light up (I tried to change the fuses and wiggle with some of the dead lights, but my patience gave out. I'm not much of an electrician). I set the first light string aside, and will probably give it up for dead. The second string, however, I ran above the garage. Luckily, the dead section was on an end of the string, so I was able to tuck it up into a corner with duct tape, (presumably) out of sight in the evening.

Well, Aurora seems to like them!

So, with one and a half strings out of commission, I realized I didn't have enough lights to do the upper section of the house this year (I don't have a proper extension cord yet, either). Hopefully this won't make the house look too strange, but I am confident that white icicle lights are pretty enough by themselves to forgive a few mistakes! Besides, there's still the matter of not having a ladder big enough to reach the top of the house. Some friends of ours do have a tall enough ladder, and I might consider borrowing it sometime soon to hammer in some nails along the top roof, even if I won't be needing them this year. Hey, I've got to do this while the manic mood is still upon me!

Ooh...pretty!! It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, isn't it? I'm sure I heard a song about that somewhere...

Fun at the Tucson Children's Museum

We had to send this Thanksgiving weekend out in style! (Nate's actually taken more time off for Thanksgiving than he will be able to take at Christmastime, due to his still-accumulating PTO at his new job). So, we decided to take the kids to one of their favorite places...the Tucson Children's Museum. It didn't hurt that we had a free pass for four people, so the fun was all "on the house"!


We've never had a membership at the Children's Museum, but we've still visited it several times this year, since this is their 25th anniversary and they've been having several promotions for that. Overall, it's a decent enough children's museum; I've certainly seen better, but what's important is that the kids love it, and it's a decent way to kill an afternoon (especially if it happens to be really hot outside!)

Here are a few things the girls liked best on this trip:

There's a "bug floor" which projects various types of creepy crawlies onto the ground, and kids have to feed them & identify them as facts about them appear on a wall monitor. However, most often, the kids just like to stamp their feet on the "bugs" and watch them "scatter" away. Our girls get a kick out of it!

There's also a projector which records your shadow and plays it back on a neon-checkerboard wall. Sometimes it can be disorienting, but whenever Lorelai finds the silly dance she was just doing repeated in one of the squares, she always gets very pleased with herself. (By the way, that is Lorelai in that picture; she's just dancing extra hard so you may not be able to tell!)

There were also all the usual attractions the kids have come to love: dinosaurs; laser-light walls; a miniature train; an art table; a musical instrument room; a play "grocery store"; a fire engine & police motorcycle; and more! However, there were a couple of new additions as well on Saturday; the grocery store was reduced in size, and much of it was replaced with this mini-orchard:

The fruits are all magnetized, which meant you could hang them from the trees and then pluck them off again! You could also choose which kind of fruit tree you wanted to create, from the comfort of your own tree-house!

I thought it was a very cute exhibit, but the kids seemed a bit underwhelmed; I think they missed some of the old exhibits in that room (there used to be a green-screen wall to create music videos, and a climbing wall as well). The "doctor's office" was also gone, replaced by these alarmingly large facial features...

...complete with boogers!! Gross. I couldn't resist looking deep within these jaws, only to have this giant mouth yodel at me when it sensed I was inside!!

I guess we all acted pretty childish on Saturday. But hey...I'd been holiday shopping the whole morning, and it was good to just sit back & watch the kids go crazy! Today, though, reality (in the form of school, piano lessons, exercise, Nate's job) has reasserted itself...along with a desire to string Christmas lights. We'll see if I survive either one of those.

Post-Thanksgiving Leftovers, Day 3

Well, friends, Thanksgiving weekend is drawing to a close...we've been pretty busy over here, what with hosting the meal, doing holiday shopping, and going on a few family outings (including the Tucson Children's Museum...more on that tomorrow, I hope!). I hope all of you had a wonderful, meaningful experience this weekend with your family and/or friends. I'm running on fumes a bit tonight, so bear with me...this (obligatory) blog post is just to keep me on track to post daily this month!

In other news, Christmas season has "officially" begun in the Barrett household--yay!! Pandora is already streaming Christmas carols, and I'm already planning the holiday goodies to be baked over the next couple of weeks. I'll be getting out the decorations in a day or two, and hopefully we'll have our tree by the weekend. Maybe I'll even blog about it, even though it won't be November anymore, hee hee! We also inherited a bunch of icicle lights for the outside of our home from my parents; however, we don't have a ladder tall enough to put them up! Plus, Nathan & I are kind of intimidated by the prospect of putting up all these lights. We'll see if that comes to pass or not.

In the meantime though, I've got more immediate concerns--like finishing off all our Thanksgiving leftovers. We had six adults over, and four kids, and for that group I bought a 21-pound turkey. Overkill much? Anyway, our fridge is jam-packed with Thanksgiving leftovers, including several that I may have to finish off all by myself!

Like cranberry sauce, for instance. I still can't figure out why no one in my family is very interested in cranberry sauce (at least I got Celeste & Aurora to eat a little), but Nathan & Lorelai won't touch the stuff. I can't say I'm sad about having to finish it off, though...mmm.

Another dish that wasn't a huge hit was this squash gratin vegetable medley. Maybe it was just one more fancy dish that was easy to skip over; maybe the flavor of leeks was too strong, as one of my guests implied. Either way, I've been the only one eating it for three days now; and although I really love zucchini & summer squash, I'm not sure I can finish it off!

There's also the famous green bean casserole...I'm not going to lie, I love this stuff. I'm not sure why, since I'm only lukewarm about green beans the rest of the year. But some combination of the beans, the cream of mushroom soup, and those yummy French-fried onions just keep me eating & eating!! Again, I'm the only one in my family who is really into this, but I don't care; I just make myself a double batch and eat it all myself!!

Here's another dish, but my family actually enjoys this one--it's a sweet potato souffle. I am not a fan of the candied yams with marshmallows on top; it's just sooo sticky and fake-tasting. This souffle is made from fresh sweet potatoes, and has a crunchy sugary nut topping. Yum!! However, it's not the healthiest meal in the world; it uses evaporated milk and lots of butter; still, it's darn tasty. The only drawback is that my recipe makes so much! As a result, we're always eating it for days afterwards, and it gradually loses its "fresh out of the oven" flavor. However, it reheats pretty well; plus, it's so sweet, you could almost use it as a dessert for future meals!

I haven't even included the usual suspects: turkey; dressing; mashed potatoes; gravy; and rolls, rolls, rolls. All of these things are chilling in my fridge as well. So yeah...I made too much food, as I always do. But I like it because it saves me having to cook for days afterwards!! Plus, I have a couple of recipes in my collection that make good use of Thanksgiving leftovers (including a turkey pot pie that uses up turkey AND mashed potatoes!).

Another post-Thanksgiving tradition at our house is to take our leftover turkey and make it into mole (pronounced "MOLE-ay"). It's a popular dish in Mexico, where Nathan developed a taste for it, and it's traditionally made with either turkey or chicken. So, since I am not a Mexican abuela, I go to my friendly neighborhood grocery store and pick up the handy jar of mole shown above. From there, it's pretty easy to make; pour the contents of the jar into a large pot, add your turkey and a cup or two of water, and bring it all up to a boil, until the mole sauce is bubbling & warm. You scoop it up with tortillas and it's so good!! It is an acquired taste (there is cocoa in the mole sauce, which gives it an almost chocolate-y taste, but it's spicy and not sweet at all), but I have grown to absolutely love it over the years. Our mouths are always watering the day we cook mole at Casa Barrett.

So what about you, gentle readers? What Thanksgiving dish hangs around your house the longest? And what meals do you like to make with the leftovers?

"The Muppets" Satisfies Children & Man-Children Alike

photo from teaser-trailer.com

Yesterday, Nathan and I took the kids to a movie we'd been looking forward to for several months; the new Disney/Muppet Studios production, The Muppets. Like many of our generation, Nate & I grew up with The Muppet Show on the television; the Muppets (and their Sesame Street cousins) were an integral part of our childhoods. I was a huge fan of the kooky physical humor, as well as the clever musical numbers and, of course, the genuine emotional sweetness at the core of everything the Muppets did.

We watched The Muppet Show faithfully, of course, and I had VCR copies of The Great Muppet Caper and The Muppets Take Manhattan on regular rotation in our house (we finally got the original The Muppet Movie when I was a little older). My favorite Saturday morning cartoon during my tween years? Muppet Babies, of course!

Then Jim Henson passed away in 1990, and even though I was a teenager, I remember being really shocked and depressed by the news. I feared for the future of the Muppets without their "founding father." True, the Muppets had some good moments over the next couple of decades (I may be in the minority, but I really enjoyed both A Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island). However, I still felt the Muppets were slowly but surely fading into the past. The franchise seemed directionless as the Muppet Studios passed from one owner to another (they're currently owned by the Walt Disney Company). In the last few years, it actually made me a little sad to see the Muppet characters shilling for Pizza Hut and car companies; I thought they'd lost their soul.

Well, with this new film, I'm happy to say they've found it again! I thought The Muppets was funny, edgy, heartfelt, and touching in the "classic" Muppet tradition. I have seen it described as "a love letter to Generation X," and I think that's right on. This film is the brainchild/passion project of actor Jason Segel, who like many of us, grew up as a huge Muppets fan. He apparently pressed the studios hard to get the movie written and made the way he wanted it, and the script definitely reflects his real-life struggles (Walter, a new Muppet & audience surrogate, is the driving force behind the scattered Muppets reuniting and putting on one more great show). Luckily, Segel stayed very true to the tone & themes of the original Muppet Movie, and this new film very much feels like a companion to the Muppets' first feature.

I'm glad to see the original, idealistic earnestness of Kermit & Company is very much on display here. Frequently throughout the film, the characters wonder if the world has grown too cynical and "dark" for their particular brand of entertainment. But they continue to press on, as they've always done, in the firm belief that their work is valuable, and meaningful, and that it still entertains and moves audiences. Kermit gets to give a couple of motivational speeches, while Miss Piggy provides backup. And (**SPOILER ALERT, but probably not that surprising**) their basic decency and goodness pays off in the end.

And you know what? I ate this all up. I enjoy my dark, edgy, cynical Hollywood pictures as much as the next gal, but when a movie radiates positivity like this (and does so in such a confident, hard-working fashion), it's impossible not to get a big cheesy smile on your face. My smile just kept getting wider with each new musical number, each of which was its own kind of awesome. We particularly liked the opening number, "Life's A Happy Song," which is very very cheesy in a good way, and pretty much sums up the mood of the whole movie. Take a listen above!!

So is the movie perfect? Not quite...it definitely starts to sag a bit in the middle and lose its focus, and it feels almost too self-aware for its own good at times. But these are really minor quibbles. It's a movie that wears its heart on its sleeve, and it's really funny too! It has covers of contemporary rock and R&B songs. It has Chris Cooper, Oscar-winning actor, rapping(!) with Muppets(!!). It has characters who realize what they are truly capable of, if they just believe in themselves.

So yeah, I give it a B+ or maybe an A- . And Nathan & I are definitely seeing this again...maybe without the kids next time, who did get a little wiggly toward the second half. If you are (or ever were) a Muppet fan, this movie will not disappoint. Go check it out!!

My First Black Friday: Oh The Humanity!!

WAAAAUGH!! All I wanted were some Barbie Princess dolls!!!

Okay...that's not entirely true. Backing up a bit...

We are getting a trampoline for our backyard this Christmas (shhh...don't tell the kids), and several months ago, we reasoned that the best trampoline deals would be found on the day after Thanksgiving, aka The Infamous Black Friday. We also thought that in the future, we would do well to shop for all our major electronic purchases (HDTV, Blu-ray, game consoles, etc.) on Black Friday, since that was the most reasonable option on our budget. So hey...why not test the waters this year and see how the whole thing worked?

Of course, this reasonableness on our part was entirely academic and in no way based on actual experience. Because, now that I've had my first taste of the cyclonic fury of Black Friday, I have learned two things:

1. I am really, really bad at shopping Black Friday-style; and
2. I cannot see myself shopping on Black Friday again for a long, long time!

My first mistake (besides deciding to go to Wal-Mart at 10 pm on Thanksgiving in the first place) was to go to Black Friday as a "tourist." I thought, "Well, I'll buy the trampoline online. So tonight, I'll just go see if I can find those $5 Disney princess dolls I saw advertised. And hey...maybe I'll get an interesting glimpse of Black Friday social behavior while I'm at it!" I went with my friend Amber (who was a Black Friday virgin as well), and both of us had the same goals in mind.

So...we definitely got a glimpse of Black Friday behavior (even if we never found those $5 Disney princess dolls--sob! More on that in a minute). To be fair, all the shoppers I saw (and believe me, I saw a lot of them!) were quite well-mannered & good-natured. I didn't see any of the fabled stampedes for new products, no fights broke out, and any bumps or elbows to the face I received were completely accidental and the perpetrators were quick to apologize. Considering what a seething, boiling cauldron of humanity occupied that Wal-Mart last night (it was a fire hazard waiting to happen; so of course several fire trucks were parked outside and policeman were crawling everywhere inside), everyone was polite enough.

But! I am pretty sure that Amber & I were some of the few "tourist" shoppers at the store. Because, for all their civility, these people were dead serious about shopping/door-busting/deal-making/what have you. Black Friday shopping was clearly a sport for these people, and they are just as passionate about it as others are passionate about their favorite football team, golf game, or (a better analogy) their hunting season. I saw people grab literally handfuls of Wii games and stagger towards the register, teetering under the weight. I saw one little toddler asleep in a shopping cart, buried underneath a precariously stacked pile of toy boxes. I saw tiny infants being held by their bemused fathers while mothers desperately rifled through piles of $3.88 pajama sets (hey, nice deal!). I heard a babble of several languages swirl around me as people kept in touch via cell phone. And of course, there were lines upon lines upon lines snaking through the store, waiting for who knew what, while several departments were taped off altogether.

I knew almost at once I was no match for this craziness. At first, we had trouble even finding a parking spot; we ended up parking about a quarter-mile away and walking to the Wal-Mart in a nice late-night drizzle (this proved beneficial afterwards, when we needed some "airing out" after inhaling the store's stagnant, sweaty atmosphere for over an hour). We ran into another problem right away: there were no shopping carts left (of course), so we had to carry everything we wanted to buy in our bare hands. This becomes surprisingly difficult after grabbing just a few toy boxes.

Amber and I often found ourselves swept up in the ebb and flow, and it took all our skill to swim through the masses of shoppers (Amber, being more petite & graceful than I, was able to do some pretty nice jukes & jives that any running back in football would envy). And worst of all, nothing was where I was used to it. This Wal-Mart is not my favorite place to shop even on a normal day, but at least I knew the layout of the place--or so I thought. Instead, I found myself fighting inch by inch upstream to find toys in the fabric section (or was it the seasonal section??), most of which were completely picked over. When I thought to go the actual toy section of the store (because "Hey, that's where the Disney Princess dolls should be, right??"), I found not a single doll on sale for the advertised price. Apparently the princess dolls were somewhere else in the cavernous store, and since it had taken me 25 minutes just to get to the toy section, I felt my hopes fade away. I instead picked out a couple of the regular-priced dolls (I had to come out of this ordeal with something, I thought), feeling that I had failed at Black Friday.

Having Amber come along was a huge benefit for many reasons. First, she is really funny and fun to be around, and it was fun to laugh at the craziness with her as a fellow "first-timer." Second, she was a much-needed extra pair of arms, as she graciously helped me carry several toy boxes (all she ended up getting was a pajama set for her son!). And last but not least, her keen eyes managed to spot a $5 Barbie Princess doll lying abandoned on a clothing pile! Hey, it wasn't a Disney Princess, but it was something! We snatched it up eagerly, and suddenly I felt a little better...but only for a moment, because then we realized the checkout line extended 2/3 of the way back into the store. Ugh. My feet were pretty sore by the time we reached the barricades in front of the registers 40 minutes later. It felt like I was doing my shopping in a battle zone!

For an hour and a half last night, I felt like a trapped observer of American consumerism in its most virulent, concentrated form. If I hadn't been claustrophobic before this trip, I'd have been flirting with the notion by the end. When all was said and done, though, I have to admit I was pleased with my purchases. I got a Princess doll for each girl, a T-shirt for Nathan, and a couple of other small toys for Celeste's & Aurora's birthdays (one advantage of having my daughter's birthdays in December & January...good toy sales!). So it wasn't a total loss of my time--I got to just about finish my family's Christmas shopping, plus have fun hanging out with my friend while doing all this.

As for that phantom trampoline purchase, however, it was not to be last night (I barely got a look at the roped-off sporting section anyway). I was so pooped by the time I got home, I didn't think to go look at the online "door-buster" for one of Wal-Mart's trampolines. When I saw it this morning, the $168, 14-foot trampoline & enclosure I'd had my eye on was "sold out online"--of course. I cursed myself for my sloppiness & resolved to pay a little more for a trampoline this year.

But hey--Cyber Monday is just around the corner, so I still have a chance! And I have faith I'll find some kind of trampoline deal then (because faith is all I have right now). And the more I think about it, the better Cyber Monday sounds for future holiday shopping seasons. So, lady warriors of Black Friday--could you please explain to me why you love doing it so? I am not trying to be critical, I'm just honestly baffled how staying up all night (sometimes in terrible weather) and battling insane crowds in claustrophobic conditions could be preferable to a few clicks of your mouse, at home, in front of your computer, preferably with a cup of hot chocolate in hand. At least, that sounds preferable to me. Any thoughts?

Stuff It Up!, AKA, Getting the Turkey Ready

As I always say...it ain't Thanksgiving if you don't have your hand up a turkey's butt at some point!!!!

I was up late last night making our stuffing and preparing the turkey. Which reminds me...how many of you still stuff your turkey? It's something I've always done, and never really thought to do otherwise. Nowadays, I hear people fretting about salmonella, etc. from ingesting stuffing cooked inside a bird. All I can say is: I've eaten stuffing from inside a turkey for 30-plus years now, and I've never ailed from it in the least. Take from that what you will.

Anyways, for those who only know the Stove Top variety, here's what I do to make my stuffing and prepare my turkey (i.e., give it the best chance to cook well; turkeys have a nasty habit of drying out while cooking).

Keep in mind that our bird this year was 21 pounds, and the stuffing filled it pretty much to capacity, so this is a pretty large stuffing recipe. However, it's also fairly forgiving; you can fudge lots of the ingredients if you're worried about having too much!

I like to use wheat/whole grain bread for the stuffing. It just tastes so much better when you do! Our family often participates in Bountiful Baskets, a grocery coop that gives you good-quality, cheap produce, as well as some other items, like the yummy nine-grain bread shown below. It's very versatile bread, good for sandwiches, French toast, and (as it turns out) stuffing!

(Note: I only used two loaves from the picture above, not all three). The bread is pretty soft, so it was time to crisp it up by dicing it and putting it in a warm oven for a while...

...then letting it sit on the counter for the rest of the day to dry out!


In the evening, I got out the rest of the ingredients for the stuffing, pictured below:

1 lb bulk sausage, preferably sage-flavored
2 c chopped red onion
2 c chopped celery
2 tbsp minced garlic
2 tbsp dried thyme
2 tsp dried sage
1 Granny Smith apple, diced
1/2 c dried cranberries
salt & pepper to taste
1 - 2 tbsp vegetable oil (not pictured)
2 c chicken broth

First on the agenda was to brown the sausage in a deep pot:

While the sausage was cooking, it was time to chop up all the vegetables, then add them to the cooked crumbled sausage along with a little vegetable oil and the seasonings:

The apple and cranberries followed shortly after that:

By now, as you can imagine, our house was smelling very good.

At last it was time to add the bread (not all at once, but handfuls at a time, stirring frequently until it all blended together and started to "melt" together with the other ingredients).

 Adding the chicken broth (little by little) at this stage helps reduce the bread and moisten it. By the end of all the stirring, I got a beautiful "mess" of stuffing inside my pot!

At this point, I had to let the stuffing cool for at least an hour, so it would be easier to handle (and so it wouldn't adversely affect the bird).

But then it was time to shove the stuffing into the turkey. As you can see, handling a large dead turkey may not be for the squeamish. Heck, it's not my favorite thing in the world to do either. But the way it tastes when it's all done...mmm! It's worth the effort!

This can sometimes require some brute force, and often requires the use of your hands (another reason to let the stuffing cool a little bit!) I was barely able to fit it all in the lower body cavity; I managed to get a little bit into the neck cavity, but not much--this was a particularly "fat" bird! Here's what it looked like, post-stuffing:

A big worry for many cooks is overheating your turkey. If that happens, the meat often ends up quite dry and loses a lot of taste. There are many methods to keep your turkey meat moist and flavorful; here's the method that I use, and it usually works pretty well for me:

First, I cut little slits in the outer layer of skin in several spots along the turkey breast (keeping the breast meat moist is crucial, since that's where all the white meat comes from, and white meat has the tendency to dry out the fastest).

Then, I take a small pat of butter (use real butter for Thanksgiving dinner everyone, there are no substitutes!), and slide the pat into the slit in the skin you just cut, tucking it in nice and tight. Repeat that step with all the remaining slits.

Another yummy tip is to sprinkle some sage or poultry seasoning into the skin slits along with the butter; when the butter melts, it not only moistens the skin, it carries the flavor throughout the meat.

So here's what our bird looked like this morning, as I set it into the roaster pan to cook!

Oops. I forgot to take a picture of the finished turkey. Well, I think the results were above average. The white meat was a little dry, because I accidentally cooked the turkey a little long. Incidentally, you've probably noticed the little white button inside this turkey. Supposedly, it "pops up" when the turkey's done. I can tell you that thing doesn't always work very well! This particular button never popped up, but when I took a reading with my meat thermometer, it read 170 degrees! This is actually a little higher than the 165 degrees recommended for optimal results. So lesson learned: time your cooking carefully judging by the weight of the turkey; don't use the heat button to judge your results!

However, I only "missed the mark" by a little; it was still a pretty tasty bird! The dark meat (which I prefer to white meat anyway) was sublime; it just fell apart on my fork! So I'm willing to overlook a bit of (slightly) dry breast meat. What's more, we have tons for leftovers! Here's our great feast below:

(Grandma Barrett made all the pies this year, except the chocolate banana cream pie in the lower-left; I made that one! It was a hit with the kids.)

And here are the people that made all the work worthwhile:

Celeste and Aurora look just a bit hungry, don't you think? Not in the picture are our friends the Perry's (Brad, Amber, and their son Kent), who also brought lots of food along and were great company.

It was truly a day to celebrate; Nate's dad Glenn is recovering wonderfully from his surgery and it was nice to see him so healthy & happy. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving; we have much to be thankful for.