Saturday Stuff

Yes, I am up at the crack of dawn.  Yes, it does suck.  I am not a morning person.  Never have been, never will be.  But my little tiny Rachel Pie had a crack of dawn flight this morning so we had to be at the airport 2 hours before that crack of dawn flight, which meant I had to be up even earlier than that!

I am back home from the airport and drinking my morning tea and thinking about going back to bed.  It's always sad when people leave, but most especially if it is one of my kids.  That's the hardest thing.

Thanksgiving day was really nice.  The food was fabulous, the company was spectacular, and the conversation was great.  The only bad thing that happened that day actually happened to my poor s-i-l, who was making a few of the dishes and bringing them over.  She was loading the food in the car and dropped one pie on top of the other one.  And bam, just like that!  There was no pie.  That's pretty flipping sad, is what that was.

So I trotted on over to Luby's and picked up a few pies and was back in no time.  No harm, no foul.  Except for all the time and ingredients and effort she had put in were in the garbage.

Now we tried some new recipes this year and some tried-and-true ones and here is the scoop on them:

New England Maple Herb Butter Turkey and Gravy (t and t recipe) ***** (that's 5 stars)
This is always fabulous.  The recipe is a few days back if you want to scroll back and find it.

Dressing with Sausage, Apples and Cranberries (t and t recipe) *****
Same thing here.  I make this because it goes perfectly with the turkey and gravy recipes above.  And this year it was just sublime.  Love this dressing.

Cranberries with Grapefruit and Mint (new to the rotation) *****
This was so good, I can't even tell you.  I did make it twice, rather than doubling it.  Sometimes recipes just don't double well and I didn't want to screw up all the cranberries and have to start over, so I just made single batches twice.  I can't even think of a thing this stuff wouldn't be good on.

Shredded Brussels Sprouts with Smoked Ham and Pecans (new recipe) *****
We doubled this recipe, but did half with ham and half without.  We had a guest who is from Saudi Arabia and doesn't eat from the pork so we split it up this way.  It was really good.  We went around the table and critiqued each recipe so I could make notes on which to keep and which to ditch, and everyone agreed the sprouts were awesome.

Butternut Squash with Tangerine Juice and Sage (t and t recipe) ****
Everyone loved this and went on and on about it, but I thought it was only a 4 star dish.  I am not sure exactly what was missing for me, but it was not quite top-notch.

My s-i-l made a sweet potato dish that was very savory and spicy rather than the usual sweet stuff and it was really good.  She also did some homemade Parkerhouse rolls, and a corn dish.  Also, along with the poor smashed pies she made this Apple, Cranberry, Pineapple crisp recipe that we made last year. It was just delicious.  That one might be 4 and 1/2 or 5 stars.

We served champagne (Korbel Natural), iced tea, jamaica and water.  Jamaica (pronounced Hah - MY - Kah) is a beautiful tea served iced from Mexico that is made of dried hibiscus blossoms.  It looks a lot like cranberry juice in the glass.  Just gorgeous color.  It is loaded with vitamin C and other good things and is a diuretic and so is used as a diet aid to help flush things out of your system.  It tastes good, it's good for your body, it is pretty, I mean, what more can you expect out of a beverage?!

That's my review for this year's recipes.  Someone please remind me next year to find this post so I can remember what to do and what to tweak and which ones to kick to the curb.

Yesterday we did our traditional trip to the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. They do an annual shopping extravaganza called the Peace Market that is so much fun.  It is essentially an anti-Black Friday thing to do.  They invite artisans from all over South America and Mexico and local artists to come set up booths and sell their wares.  In addition, there is wonderful food and live music.  It is like the best little street fair you ever attended.  I had such a good time and I bought some great things.  As a matter of fact, I will probably go back today with a friend and see if there are any treasures I missed the first go-round.  I promise to post some photos of my new goodies, all recycled, or made from recycled stuff or just cool and original.  No plastic or crap involved is what I am saying!

It has been a wonderful Thanksgiving week.  I was dreading it and didn't even realize that until we got into it.  Probably because of Grandma dying last Saturday, but I didn't make that connection until Thursday.  When we were sitting down to the Thanksgiving dinner I said how sad I was that this was my first holiday without her and that we needed to all remember her because we were eating off the beautiful dishes she had given me.

Grandma gave me a set, a huge set, of antique Franciscan Desert Rose dinnerware.  Her uncle worked in the factory in California where they made these dishes. They are kind of a rustic pattern and each one is hand-painted.  Not like now.  Franciscan was bought out by some English fine china company and is made there now and each piece is perfect and identical to the last piece. I don't like the new stuff near as much as the older, more charming pieces.  Anyway he worked there way back in the day and he was able to buy the seconds for a song. So he collected a set for each of his nieces.  And that is where Grandma got hers.  And get this, she never used them.  Never.  She carried these boxes and boxes of dishes around with her since the '40s and never used them.  Doesn't that just beat all?  Ever since she gave them to me I have used them every single Thanksgiving.  I will try and remember to post some pictures of  some of the really cool serving pieces I have of this set.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone, and I hope to do the same.  It sort of seems like a weekend after a weekend, doesn't it?