Do you know what day it is? Why it’s corned beef day! Ahh you thought it was St. Patrick’s Day didn’t you? In keeping with our theme of totally bizarre holidays I thought I’d rename it corned beef day.
I’ve written about St. Pat’s before (here, here and there’s a recipe here) so there isn’t anything earth shattering. We are having friends over per usual and adding an informal whiskey tasting this time around. This way I don’t have to do wine club and St. Pat’s in the same month. I am sure a good time will be had by all.
Happy St. Pat’s to you all.
Would you look at that. Nary a Christmas letter to be found around here. I’m rather disappointed in myself about it. Um, not really.
The whole trusty family arrived in Washington on the 22nd and we have been on the go ever since. We haul the dog with us (she’s finally getting adjusted to riding in the car) and between her and the no-nap-kid it’s pretty much been a whine fest around these parts. This week isn’t looking much better.
So that whole Christmas wrap-up thing.
Visited the old people (my grandparents). We spent Christmas Eve at the trusty in-law’s house. We ate food and opened gifts. I think the boy was a little confused that his cousin received more gifts than he did. What he didn’t realize is that she got all of her gifts from her parents in addition to the stuff from the aunts and uncle and grandparents. The boy also didn’t take into account that his biggest Christmas gift was laying on the floor next to him snoring.
On Christmas Day we went to my parent’s house. Talk about the best Christmas ever. For the first time all three of my parent’s kids were in the same room. Little, Leo and Brian came. My step-brother Zac showed up and it was like we were a real family. Ok, we are a real family, but one that is so mixed. I think Zac got a kick out of these “new” sisters of his. Zac and I have been together at Christmas for the past 7 years or so, but this is the first time he’s seen Little and I together. What a riot. The old people joined us for dinner and I had the best time.
Christmas morning was quite magical for the boy. Amazingly, he slept until 7:20. The dog was up earlier than he was. We heard his bedroom door open and then feet running down to the family room. A few minutes later the running was coming back to us and he ran into our room and said, “MOM DAD! Santa brought me a new scooter!” Best Christmas moment evah. Especially since I had forgotten to put the scooter out the night before and did it when I put the dog out at 6:00. Santa also brought the boy a new guitar so he and daddy can jam. Derek and the boy gave me a new scarf, a sherpa hat and the third season of The Tudors. There was also a gift for me from Santa. The envelope said:
To Lisa:
For all your hard work to help those who have none. Thanks for working in my spirit.
All my best, Santa
I cried. Not because of what was inside, but because I spend so much time to raise all of this money for children who have nothing and I don’t ask for anything in return. This year I have felt like such a failure. I had planned on sending the money to Russia on the 18th or 19th of December. As of this moment, it still isn’t sent. I have never had such an issue with trying to give away money. The bank has given me problems, paypal wouldn’t confirm our account and when we tried to transfer the money into our personal account it took almost a week. The good news is the money is now accessible and we will go to transfer it this afternoon. I only hope that it will get there in time for the children to have a good New Year.
So what was inside the envelope? Tickets to the Cake concert on New Years Eve.
Our world has been overwhelmed with chocolate and animals, but that isn’t all that’s has been going on. Besides Thanksgiving.
Look how beautiful that turkey is
The Trusty Mother-in-Law celebrated her birthday. I would tell you how old she is, but I’m not mean. It doesn’t matter because she’s beautiful. See…
This is one of the only photos we have of her with her eyes open. And they are even slightly closed. You could take a totally candid photo of this woman and she would have her eyes closed. I “favorite” family past-time at restaurants is to take photos of each other. This just so happened to be the trusty MIL’s birthday lunch. We often need to entertain the small child so we whip out the camera (which I always have with me) and take photos. It is a great way to capture fun family events.
The same day as the trusty MIL’s birthday, my own mom retired from working in her horrifically craptastic job. She’s worked at a grocery store since time and it isn’t even that nice of a grocery store. It is full of meth heads, thieves and gypsies. It’s a rather skeevy place. We brought mom some roses for her last day and to officially say our good byes to the hell hole. Because she pretty much had free reign to do whatever she wanted she let the boy check out someone’s order. Which I’m sure the customer just loved the day before Thanksgiving.
Congrats Moms!
I had a meeting at church yesterday afternoon so the trusty husband and the boy went home while I caught a ride with a friend. I walked in the door and the trusty husband said, “so I had an interesting phone call.” My response was, “should I get a drink first?” To that he said, “um, maybe… no… maybe.”
While I was at my meeting the trusty MIL called to ask if we were serious about actually getting a dog. We’ve been talking about getting a dog for well over a year now. We’ve searched almost daily on the Humane Society website for a dog that would be a good fit for our family. We found a Jack Russel mix that we thought was going to be a good one, but it was claimed by two people and there was a court case pending about it. We didn’t want to be involved in that. Then we did some researching and thought we had decided on rescuing a pit bull. We were working with a local pit bull rescue and were matched with a 7 year old female who was just a love. We did some thinking about it and realized that we were 3 months away from our last post placement report and didn’t know how biased our dumbass social worker was about dog breeds. While the Russians could not repossess our child, they could make it difficult for future families. Pit bulls have a bad enough rap, I didn’t want a family missing out on having a child just because our social worker was stupid. We also got to thinking about the dog’s age and how the boy would react to potentially only having this dog in his life for a short period of time. Back to the drawing board. A few months ago we found a boxer mix puppy on the Humane Society site that I thought would be perfect. The trusty husband had his heart set on a Boxer (me on a Pit Bull). I went to check out the puppy and some slack jawed yokels took her right out from under our noses.
We put dog finding on the back burner.
One of the trusty sister-in-laws works with a lady who breeds show boxers. Sis talked to the lady and they had a litter of puppies being born at the end of November. This particular breeder has some sort of agreement system if you adopt a show dog. I was going to contact her last week, but got distracted by something shiny and forgot. We also didn’t want to spend $800 on a championship line show dog.
Last week the trusty MIL mentioned that she saw boxer puppies in their paper. Really, was our response. Thus prompting the call on Sunday.
The trusty in-laws drove to the owners house because she had 2 little girls left. If we were serious they would get one for us. As we were approaching the Christmas Tree Farm (did I mention yesterday was Christmas tree day?) the phone rang. ”When you are done getting your tree you need to come pick up your new child,” the trusty FIL said. Um, ok.
Last night this little girl joined our family.
She is a brindle Boxer Mastiff mix. She is 8 weeks old and has no name yet. When I’m not totally sleep deprived (not because of the dog, but rather the wind) I will tell you a little more about her and our first day together.
In the mean time… anyone have any suggestions on a name? We are having a rough go of it. The boy suggested Gemma (with a hard G) and the trusty husband said Bella. I don’t like either of those.
Wow, I now realize that last year was the 10th year I’ve cooked Thanksgiving dinner. It all started because in 1998 we lived in Las Vegas and the trusty family said they thought it would be fun to have Thanksgiving in Vegas. The trusty MIL thought we’d just go to some restaurant for dinner. I would have no part of that. Then the trusty aunts and uncles and vegetarian cousins decided they thought Thanksgiving in Vegas would be fun too and I am stupid and said SURE! come on over. Tracy, you can eat cranberry sauce. And thus my adventure with cooking Thanksgiving dinner began. It beats the heck out of running around from house to house eating 1400 turkey dinners.
I’ve been using the same turkey recipe for about 7 years now and I get rave reviews. Of course it is the same 5 people eating the turkey every year, but they wouldn’t lie to me… right? 3 years ago I switched to buying a fresh turkey. It takes the pain in the ass work out of hoping your turkey is defrosted in time. The trick is brining the turkey. Evidently, this is the hot new thing (as of last year). Guess I’m just a trend setter. So here is how you go about delicious turkey.
Take 1 preferably fresh organic turkey and pull out the bits that come with it (save those). Rinse it off and place it in a 5 gallon bucket (that is hopefully brand new and labeled “for poultry use only”). Add to that the brine. DO NOT buy your brine. You don’t need to. Brine is simple. Take 1 cup of kosher salt, 1 gallon of vegetable stock, 1/2 cup brown sugar and a bunch of peppercorns and bring it to a boil. Then cool that down to at least room temperature (refrigerated is best). BRINE! Place turkey, brine and a gallon of heavily iced water in the bucket and snap on the lid all the way. If you live in a colder northern state place the bucket on the back patio the night before Thanksgiving. If you live in a warmer state, well… invest in a 2nd fridge.
Thanksgiving day take the turkey out of the bucket and rinse it again. Put it in your roasting pan, tuck the wings behind the breast so the turkey looks like it’s lounging about. Make a shield for the breast out of double layer aluminum foil and set that aside. Put a sliced apple, 1/2 and onion, 1 cinnamon stick and 1 cup of water in a microwave safe bowl and nuke it for 5 minutes. Put the cooked apple and onion inside the cavity of the bird. Add 4 sprigs of rosemary and 6 sage leaves to that and then slather the whole bird with grapeseed oil. Have your oven preheated to 500 degrees and open every window in your house and turn on every fan. It will get smoky. Take down your smoke alarms if you have children with sensory issues like mine. Throw the bird in the oven. Cook it at 500 degrees for 30 minutes. Don’t open the oven. After the 30 minutes put the thermometer into the thickest part of the breast and place the previously made shield over the breast. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees and set the thermometer for 161 degrees. A 14-16 pound bird will take about 2 to 2 1/2 hours. Now you may have a martini. Let the bird rest about 15 minutes when it’s finished and reward yourself with another martini.
You have now successfully made Thanksgiving dinner. Who needs the rest?
