Blogging chicken

Okay, it's been two weeks since I submitted my first blog and I'm just now getting back to posting. I hate to write and I am a big chicken about blogging; but I am going to just do it. This blogging thing is going to be about a whole lot of nothing. Just like the Seinfeld show.

I'll start with the Thanksgiving dinner. I made the usually kind of stuff. We had a small group just my immediate family and my mother-in-law. That's makes five of us. We had invited a couple of my kid's orphan friends but they were both taking naps in their respective apartments. I put a turkey on the grill. Cooking it the indirect way produced a very moist turkey. Just delicious. I did brine it for a couple of days, so I'm sure that enhanced the moistness. We also had dressing, (this year I made it with leeks instead of onions and liked it better) cranberry relish, roasted butternut squash with green beans and those little saucer Italian onions with a nice soy and sherry vinegar butter sauce, watercress, pear, walnut salad with poppy seed dressing, some really great mashed potatoes that my son put through the ricer and then added butter and cream; yum..yum.., some smooth and silky gravy and we also had pumpkin pie with whipped cream. Lots of wine and beer. Good Dinner! While I was cooking we listened to the Last Waltz. It's been a tradition on Thanksgiving in our home for a number years to either listen to the CD or watch the DVD. The concert was given on Thanksgiving Day 1976 and is the best music video ever made.

On Friday after the big eating adventure we just kind of hung out. Actually we washed clothes and took them to the laundromat. We did a complete remodel on our house about 3 years ago and purchased all new appliances. We bought an Asko washer, dryer and dishwasher and have had nothing but repair bills on these appliances; mostly the washer and dryer. The washer doesn't digest dimes very well so we have had a few repairs getting dimes out of the system. I guess, the coins in Sweden are bigger than dimes. Our most recent repair has been on the dryer. We are still waiting for the second belt to be installed. We have not had a dryer in 3 weeks.

On Saturday my husband, my daughter and myself decided to go the movies. We wanted to see Sideways so we set off to the only movie theatre in our town that was showing it. We went to a 4:10 showing and got there just about the time the movie was to start. The theatre was packed the only seats available were the first couple of rows in front. We live in a town of over 1 million people and only one theatre was showing this movie. The theatre that was showing this movie also was showing many other movies with multiple showings. Sideways was showing in one of the smallest venues (probably about 200 seats) at this big movie house. I was really pissed. We got a refund and decided to try our luck with the Motorcycle Diaries which was also playing at the same theatre. We had brought homemade popcorn and put beer and wine in empty coke and ginger ale bottles. So we had the goods and wanted to see a movie. The Motorcycle Diaries is a great movie.

I'm been cooking a lot of good recipes out of my new cookbook (Gourmet Cooking) that I got for my birthday and I am still retracing the recipe titles. I am now on about page 200.

We are starting to get in the Christmas mode. We went to get the tree on Friday and decorated it on Saturday. This is the first time since 1983 that we did not have the Volvo station wagon with the roof rack to put the tree on. We purchased the Volvo in 1983 and it was the family car until my daughter used it when she returned from Elon College and finished her last two to three years of college in our town. Last January, actually on my son's 22nd birthday the Volvo met it's demise when a women ran a red light and crashed into the car and totaled it. My daughter was driving but was not injured. So this year was the first year in 21 years that we did not bring the Christmas tree home on top of the Volvo. It's hard to break tradition, but it's a good feeling to have your children safe.
r.m.