Tomorrow (the first) starts this year’s round of 31 Days of Baking.
With any luck, my oven won’t die this year-or if it does, it doesn’t take a month to get a new burner element this time.
Month: November 2014
[Insert Seasonal Title Here] The Annual Seasonal Post Round Up
Forgive me the accidentally snarky title. It’s not intended.
I did intend on writing you a new post for today but I’m exhausted. Between the holiday and the broken sink and a promotion at work and trying to deep clean the apartment (sorry Mom, I know you’re coming here tomorrow but this apartment will not be to your standard. I’m still working on the Purge), I’m just tired.
Somehow I doubt I’m going to be seeing sugar plums tonight, though.
Whiskey Scented Cranberry Sauce
This was a complete and utter accident. Or at the least it was very unplanned.
But I’m seriously considering always making my cranberries like this.
This makes a fairly small amount of sauce-it was only the two of us this year, and I’m the only one who eats cranberries. But it’s insanely simple to scale up-just remember that liquid and sugar are always half of the volume of the berries (so 1 cup juice to 2 cups berries).
You could make this plain, and I have that recipe listed in the archives. However, there’s something about the combination of orange juice and whiskey that makes these berries amazing.
Roughly 6 ounces whole cranberries (about half of an average sized bag)
1 cup orange juice
Roughly 1/2 shot whiskey
1 cup sugar
Over medium low heat, cook all until the berries start popping.You might want a splatter screen. Once the berries start popping, let cook down about 20 minutes more or until it’s reduced by about a quarter.
Place in a bowl and cool in the fridge. The sauce will thicken as it sits as the pectin in the berries starts to gel.
*This is a variation of the Ball Blue Book cranberry sauce, and should be safe to BWB can if you wanted to, but the recipe written to this scale probably won’t produce enough sauce to make it worth it.
2014 Gratitude List
Every year on Thanksgiving, I write a list of the first 50 things I’m thankful for. This started from an idea posted by The Frugal Girl.
They’re given in no particular order, and they don’t have to be ‘huge’. They just have to be the things that you’re glad to have had throughout the year.
Feel free to write and post your own list (though crediting The Frugal Girl would be nice).
1. Kindles
2. Coffee
3. Opportunity
4. Growth
5. Hardship
6. Family
7. Change
8. Busses
9. Friendship
10. The military
11. New beginnings
12. Endings to situations
13. Healing
14. Hope
15. Netflix
16. Advantages
17. Steady work
18. Mid finding new steady work
19. Safety through the snow
20. Housing
21. Adequate food
22. This neighborhood
23. Reliable vehicles
24. Chocolate
25. Clean water
26. Body scrub
27. Stability
28. Education
29. Sleep
30. Overtime
31. Financial advances
32. Paying off one of my two student loans and a car loan
33. Freedom
34. Travel
35. Yarn
36. The Internet
37. Blog readers
38. New blog networks
39. Social networking
40. A solid support base
41. Finding a solid medical team
42. A treatment plan
43. Finding a support group
44. Cooking
45. New cookware
46. Indoor plumbing
47. Junk food
48. Warmth
49. The ability to help
50. The gift of a new year
Horror Confessions: December is for The Shining
I just downloaded The Shining back onto my Kindle.
I’m not telling you this just for blog fodder. If I wanted to just talk, I’d tell you about the week I’ve been having-because while the net result is positive, it’s been eventful (including discovering the length of my kitchen pipe has been cracked for who knows how long and dumping into the basement).
Next month is December, and December is for The Shining.
There are certain books I read at certain times-the big two being American Gods in May and The Shining in December. I don’t really have a good relationship with winter, though I think that may change this year. I don’t know why I say that other than a lack of my normal brooding angst headed into the month.
Somehow The Shining has come to stand for all of my darkness towards winter. Maybe you’d have to live in Buffalo to get it, I don’t know. The only other book that may touch it would be Storm of the Century. I don’t know what it is with Stephen King and snow. There is also something about the madness that runs through the novel. I don’t want to say that I recognize it…but maybe I do.
I just walked in on Mid watching the Kindle light go on and off when he closed the cover, like when you discover that the fridge light goes on and off when you close the door. He might have been standing in a dark bathroom at the time.
Maybe this madness really is a Buffalo thing.
Fall Into the Holidays #10
Time to start thinking autumn, holidays, and changing seasons! Feel free to share your seasonal recipes, diy, crafts, and other related material. Link up as many new or archived posts as you would like.
We didn’t get the storm, but the entire city was rattled last week. I’m working on getting things pinned, but I have a backlog of things that didn’t get done last week because of changes to both Mid and my schedules.
I’ll be pinning all entries linked up to the Fall Into the Holidays board-please let me know if you want to be removed.
Features will be stumbled.
Please link to entries, and not your blog main page.
Featured Links
The Gracious Wife’s Stuffing Remix
A Mother’s Shadow 3-D Pumpkin Card
A Return to Simplicity’s 6 Ways to Simplify Thanksgiving
Click on the button that looks like a blue frog at the bottom of the page to view the collection.
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Thanksgiving 2014
free use via Pixabay
I love that Mid has started doing some of the grocery shopping. I can’t get him to do full loads but he’ll stop when I ask him to pick something up.
I was going to do scratched stuffing, but he informed me he only eats stuffing from a box. I’m trying to make things simpler on myself, so I’m not going to go through the hassle of cooking a dish he’s not going to eat.
But our shopping conversations, they go something like this:
Me, this morning: Mid, would you eat homemade stuffing on Thursday?
Mid: No, I only like stuff out of a box.
Me: Okay, well, then stop and get a box when you get home-and some eggs. Also, just grab a box of stuffing. Any box of stuffing. There’s going to be like 15 kinds.
Mid: makes noises that he understands and will get some random stuffing.
Tonight, on the phone: Mid: OMG YOU DIDN’T TELL ME THERE WOULD BE 15 KINDS OF STUFFING AND WHY ARE THERE LIKE 10 KINDS OF EGGS?
Me…Just get the stuffing that’s on sale and the cheapest eggs.
Which is what he ended up doing, but I should have just texted him photos.
As far as I can tell, we’re having Thanksgiving here by ourselves this year. So it’ll be the two of us. This menu will be overkill for us, but we an have leftovers.
Cheese
Crackers
A turkey breast (I still haven’t decided how I’m going to cook it)
Squash, pureed and baked with cinnamon and butter
Mashed potatoes
Stuffing
Whole berry cranberry sauce
Green beans, probably Chinese restaurant style (I need to post that recipe)
Bread
Butter
Scalloped Corn
Pumpkin pie, probably traditional
The Haunted Elf on the Shelf
I know it’s a little early to the start the Christmas seasonal stuff, but I’ve been sitting on this story impatiently for months.
Close enough.
I know full well that this story is [most likely] completely made up, I mean, if you think about this for thirty seconds it has to be.
I don’t care in the slightest.
Cursed objects aren’t exactly new. What they’re cursed with, why they’re cursed, and what they’re supposed to accomplish vary from object to object, but there’s not a lot of question that it is an established folklore trope.
Are you familiar with those Elf on a Shelf things? I hate them-which might be why I love this story so much. The basic idea of the elf, if you are unfamiliar, is that the elf appears nightly and monitors your children. The elf is supposed to report back to the child’s parents and to Santa about what the kid is up to. The elf has a name, but I honestly can’t remember what it is. It’s irrelevant anyway. I find the whole thing creepy but my dislike of the Elf on the Shelf is fodder for another entry.
According to an Ebay listing, the cursed elf was purchased at an estate sale. The seller brought the elf home and set it up. The traditional ‘strange things’ began to happen but the buyer didn’t make the connection to the elf until she tried to put it away. But she also, you know. posed the elf with a kitchen knife. The doll would move by itself, the doorbell would ring at odd hours, and shadow people started appearing in the home.
The seller does not state how she came to understand that the doll was the issue, but the listing included the original packaging.
Are Elf on a Shelf(s) even old enough to come in vintage?
http://ghostsnghouls.com/2014/01/12/haunted-items-ebay/#more-5099
November Housekeeping
There isn’t much to report this month.
The blog’s been pretty quiet-I’ve started reading my way through my book back log so hopefully I’ll have book reviews up soon. I have multiple projects on my needles and my wheel. The northtowns didn’t really get the snow, but you can’t be in this city without feeling the ripples from the snow so a lot of this week was spent dealing with the storm.
31 Days of Baking
I’m going to attempt this project again this year. Hopefully my oven won’t die halfway through the month during this round.
Fall Into the Holidays and Inspired Weekends
Through at least the first of the year, Fall Into the Holidays will be open sometime on Tuesday. Inspired Weekends is open occasionally as well.
2014 Gratitude Lists
My traditional gratitude list will be posted on Thursday. You are welcome to link up a list on that entry.
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