Scattered Thoughts . . .

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

A couple of weeks ago, Comcast offered us an upgrade to our router for free. I knew our router was getting old and I knew that we occasionally have problems needing reboots and removing the battery (which is difficult to get at) so a free upgrade seemed like a 'no-brainer'. When we got our free upgrade to Xfinity a year or two ago, I thought it was odd that the Xfinity package didn't arrive with a new modem but everything seemed to work just fine so I forgot about having an older modem. Sheila ordered this free modem upgarde and the package arrived yesterday... in a massive box... I left it, unopened, on the living room floor until after my usual afternoon nap. When Sheila arrived home from work, I opened the box... this new Xfinity router was absolutely HUGE! It was larger than our BlueRay DVD player! This router was so deep, that it barely fit on our entertainment center shelves. I would need to lay it down flat and bend all the cords plugged into the back of it in

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend and today is the first time I've had a chance to share some photos and video. The first thing I want to share is a video that I shot while we watched a Christmas concert on the colorfully and brightly decorated Canadian Pacific Holiday Train. Our holiday weekend began with entertaining friends at our house on Thanksgiving Day... I'll write more on that and share some photos another time.  Then, on Friday morning, we headed to the rugged Adirondack Mountains to spend the rest of our long holiday weekend in beautiful Saratoga Springs. I haven't been to Saratoga in a few decades so it was nice to get back there and spend some time! Our primary purpose of visiting Saratoga Springs was to see Canadian Pacific's Holiday Train as it pulled into the station. If you've never had an opportunity to see this brightly lit and colorful train, you should! Once the train pulled into Saratoga's surprisingly nice train station... ami

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!

Thankfully, I think I am done with another day of Thanksgiving food prep! Sweet Italian sausage for my Country Harvest Turkey Dressing. Earlier this afternoon, I cooked up some sweet Italian sausage for my Country Harvest Turkey Dressing. This sausage will get chopped up with some onions, sage, corn bread, seasoned bread, garlic, thyme, and dried cranberries... then add some chicken stock... into the oven for a bit... this should be some pretty tasty dressing! So, the sausage is now cooked, moved to the fridge and ready to be chopped tomorrow.  While the sausage was cooking, I had four sweet potatoes in the oven. These sweet potatoes will be for my Bourbon Glazed Yams. After cutting the sweet potatoes, I'll add some butter, maple syrup, molasses, brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and some bourbon. Throw this concoction in the oven and then finish the last few minutes with some mini marshmallows on top until they are browned.  So, the sweet potatoes are ready to go

Since Adam can't be with us this Thanksgiving, I thought it would be appropriate to bring some local flavor from his new home to our own Thanksgiving Day. We've done this with every holiday since Adam left... we've brought food to our table from the area of the world in which he is currently living.  On this Thanksgiving Day, I will be drinking a tasty Pilsner which was brewed in the Munich style! Although this particular Pilsner beer, Idletyme, was brewed right here in Stowe, Vermont, it is a golden Pilsner beer in the Munich style so it is quite different than all the overly hoppy beer found here in the northeastern US. I prefer lighter, golden beers to darker, foamy, hoppy beer. That being said, I also love smooth dark porters as well. I've never tasted this local brew but I'm looking forward to having a bit tomorrow as I finish preparing our Thanksgiving meal and socialize with some close friends. Adam will be enjoying a Thanksgiving meal with co-wor

After I wrote and posted my previous blog entry, I headed outside to help Sheila shovel. Fortunately for my spinal injuries, this snow is light, fluffy stuff so it was a quick and easy job.  Then I went in to retrieve my camera to see if I could get some decent shots outside without a tripod. They came out okay for shooting in complete darkness, handheld with driving snow covering me and my camera... I should have dug out my tripod though.  Hopefully, they'll be more chances to get some nice shots of the house decorated for the holidays...

We had just finished the Christmas lights outside the house... sunny weather nearing 70 degrees... then we had heavy rain through the night... which quickly turned to big snow flakes falling out of the sky.  Now... Sheila is outside shoveling all the snow so we can get out of the driveway.   I guess this means I'll be raking the roof tomorrow...

It is only Monday but I started my Thanksgiving Day meal prep this morning.  I made some southern sweet tea infused with mint. I put a fresh sprig of mint into each jar of tea then placed them in the fridge. They'll continue to build flavor over the next few days until Thanksgiving.  Then I made some fresh blackberry syrup... poured it into ice cube trays... and now we'll have blackberry ice cubes to add to the sweet tea! Of course, we'll also have some lemon slices ready to go too...

As I had written previously, we spent the day outdoors decorating the house and yard for Christmas. It looks great out there! The only thing which can make it look better is some fresh snow. After finishing decorating outdoors, we headed indoors and continued since we already had all the storage bins of decorations out and open. Now, the inside of the house is looking pretty nice too!