Scattered Thoughts . . .

Since the beginning of the pandemic, we've been doing the Thanksgiving thing at home with no guests.  We did the same this year but when I think back to my decades of Thanksgivings, I can honestly say that this is a highly unusual way for me, and even for Sheila and I  since she has come into my life , to celebrate Thanksgiving.  This Thanksgiving, however, we continued the pandemic tradition of celebrating alone. Throughout my entire adult life, I've always been the one to arrange a Thanksgiving dinner with everyone who had no other place to go.  I've arranged and hosted some rather quiet dinners for four to eight people and I've arranged and hosted many more festive Thanksgiving dinners for upwards of dozens of people.  On a rare occasion, I go to someone else's home but that really is rare.   Thanksgiving is my least favorite holiday for various reasons...  reasons I don't care to get into here or now...  and I think I cover up those horrendous memories by cr

A fter a few mistakes made this past weekend which delayed our traditional Thanksgiving dinner and resulted in some ruined alternate meals throughout the weekend, we managed to have a very-well prepared but rather belated Thanksgiving dinner this evening.  My favorite dish of this dinner was and always is the homemade cranberry sauce.  I added some diced apples and diced pears to the cranberry sauce this time around and that really worked out well.  I think I'll be doing that again in the future (if I remember).  It was delicious.  I had prepared the cranberry sauce on Wednesday so all we had to do this evening was open a jar where we had stored it.   I normally totally despise green bean casserole because most people make it with a can of soup and a can of fried onions.  I don't do it this way.  Actually, if I had my way, canned soup would never be in my house and especially not to be used as an ingredient to another dish.  For this green bean casserole, I made a white bechame

W e ended up changing plans for our Thanksgiving day for various reasons all more than likely related to my history of bad luck on past Thanksgivings.  This day has always been my least favorite day of the year and today was a great example of why I feel this way. First, at some point when I started to prep for our Thanksgiving dinner, I realized that I forgot to set a calendar alarm to remind me to remove the turkey breast from the freezer on Tuesday.  That meant that our turkey breast was still in the freezer and frozen solid.  After a few choice words flew from my mouth, I moved the turkey breast to the fridge and quickly accepted the fact that our traditional Thanksgiving dinner was now moved to Saturday.  I don't even like turkey so I'm not sure why I continue to make this particular meal.   Then, we received a weather alert...  A snowstorm was approaching and would begin sometime Thanksgiving night.  This meant that I would need to head outside to prepare for significant

W e started our Thanksgiving weekend yesterday with some food prep, Florida and Dayton NCAA Tournament basketball games ( never, never, never  lunkhead football in this house), and a nice Thanksgiving Eve dinner.   Yesterday, I started my morning making some sweet mint tea and homemade blackberry syrup.  Then I got started on making homemade cranberry sauce.  I made very small batches this year since we will again be home alone due to the lingering and once again flaring pandemic.   Sheila and I both had this virus before testing was even available last year (not that I have any faith in our lame testing and almost non-existent standard guidelines for testing) and it was an absolutely miserable experience so we are avoiding all chances of getting this virus again.  I am actually still struggling with debilitating inflammation and swelling so I have no desire to prolong this any longer than necessary.  So, we'll be home alone again for this holiday.  We do, however, have our Alexa S

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

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

This Thanksgiving, as with most every Thanksgiving in my adult life, we are hosting a Thanksgiving Dinner with close friends.  We have done very little socializing in the past year due to a few different health issues starting with Sheila second bout of breast cancer and ending (hopefully) with my two and a half months of significantly poor health due to some poor decisions by a couple of so-called specialists. Needless to say, we're both looking forward to socializing with some close friends today! As most of my friends know, this is perhaps my least favorite holiday on the calendar for far too numerous reasons to mention here.  That being said, decades ago, I found that I do enjoy the day whenever I host a small gathering of friends for the day.  Better yet, I always enjoyed being on-duty in the Air Force and putting together a celebration for all those working with me. The same holds true for Christmas... which happens to be my favorite holiday on the calendar! So, in keep

Sheila's radiation treatments are now behind us... by only days, but behind us nevertheless... and I am now scrambling to get ready for the holidays! My goal is to make the holidays as easy for Sheila as possible and, so far, things are going well in reaching this goal. We are having a few people over for Thanksgiving, quite a few people over for Christmas and a house guest from overseas for about a month between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was well past time for a new, larger kitchen table so I had to get busy extending our table. I got a great deal on a piece of Birch butcher block (just a couple of hundred dollars)... I grabbed it instantly since Thanksgiving was only a week away... unfortunately, this meant that at this point I was committed to accomplishing another fair sized project before Thanksgiving. I jumped right into this project by building a big tent in our kitchen to contain most of the sawdust... We decided that we wanted one end of this table to be slig

We had a really nice Thanksgiving Day... relatively quiet... with some friends we haven't seen in quite some time... it was warm in the house... while it was snowing outside like it was Christmastime.  Liza spent the morning with us watching the Thanksgiving Day parade. This parade should be renamed "The Parade of Balloons and Commercials" because they no longer show any of the parade... only the balloons. They do show some quick acts from current Broadway plays but that is not the parade. Anyway... we watched most of the 'parade' with Liza. After Liza left, Sheila's sister and her two children stopped by for a little while and that was a nice surprise.  Not only was the weather rather Christmas-like but our home looked like Christmas as well.  Every year, when it came time to go cut Christmas trees, we always felt it was a tremendous waste of resources and that we were being selfish and wasteful just so we could go out and pay $35 to cut down a tre

After I finished with food prep for the day, Sheila took over the kitchen and started working on making some candied pecans.   She spread the bag of pecan halves on a cookie sheet, then coated them all with some olive oil by tossing them around the cookie sheet and then slow roasted them in the oven...  On the stovetop, she brought some water, sugar, salt, and cinnamon to 'soft ball stage'... added some vanilla extract... then dumped the roasted pecans into the pot... mixed them until they were all coated with the candy mixture... dumped them onto some waxed paper... and then used a fork to separate the candied-together pecans. These are delicious! Now it is about time to start on tonight's dinner... grilled steak!