Scattered Thoughts . . .

We had a very nice and peaceful Thanksgiving yesterday...  well, the best any Thanksgiving Day can be anyway...  truthfully, Thanksgiving has always been my least favorite holiday and, actually, perhaps in the Top Three of my least favorite days of the year...  regardless, we had a nice, peaceful and relaxing Thanksgiving during this pandemic. We were able to video chat with the family...  Adam and Joi, in California while Adam is in Air Force Leadership School...  Whitney and Ellie, at home, with Ellie being the physical comedy comedian she is...  and, of course, some video time with Liza, Kenzie and Lukey.  Video chatting is an everyday occurrence here anyway but it was nice to see all the grandkids yesterday.  Somehow we missed video chatting with Will and Sue so we'll need to attempt that sometime this afternoon. Dinner was nice for a turkey dinner.  The weakest dish of the dinner, by far, was the turkey breast and Sheila agreed.  I'd definitely prefer a nice grilled steak

Yesterday afternoon, while Sheila was making a cheesecake for today's Thanksgiving Day of overeating (although, I do want some of that cheesecake even if it does over-stuff me later today) , she dropped the entire canister of sugar on the floor and it suddenly shattered into pieces with a loud crash and even a few choice words.  Now we had no sugar in the house yet we both needed sugar for things that each of us was making for Thanksgiving.  This meant we would need to venture out of the house to go to the virus-laden supermarket.   As any sane person would expect, we've been avoiding the market as much as possible in an attempt to stay as healthy as possible so we weren't too happy about having to head into a place that could be referred to as 'viral headquarters'.   Instead of making ourselves vulnerable to this viral pandemic, we always have our groceries delivered to the house.  Unfortunately, it was too late in the day at this point to have anything delivered t

We ordered a few prints this past week so we can hang some nice photos in Sheila's home office.   Lately, we've been ordering prints mounted on wood called Gallery Mounts and we've been happy with them.  Since the wood that the prints are mounted on have beveled edges, these Gallery Mounts don't really need any frames so it is nice no-fuss option.  They look nice and the quality is high.   I keep saying I'm going to put together a few photo books...  in coffee table size...  but I just never seem to get around to starting a project this large.  With the number of good photos that I have, I could easily create an entire bookcase of photo books.  At this point, the idea of this project is a bit overwhelming but if I never start, I'll never get anything done.  

This morning was a Thanksgiving prep morning.   I made some fresh cranberry sauce.  Sheila and I like this freshly made cranberry sauce so much that we can't eat canned cranberry sauce anymore!  It has maple syrup in it... allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon...  freshly squeezed orange juice...  lemon zest...  and a little more maple syrup.  Usually, I add some fresh blackberries or some other fresh fruit to it but we skipped that this time around.  That would have required a trip to the supermarket and we are not exposing ourselves to the supermarket while the pandemic is still in full swing.   Once the cranberry sauce was cooked, I immediately spooned it into some Ball jars.  I let the jars sit out to cool a bit before putting them in the fridge.  While the fresh cranberry sauce was cooling, I got started on making a fresh white cheese sauce.  This sauce will be used for a green bean dish...  fry up some bacon...  then saute some onion and garlic in the bacon grease...  then add the green