A few of my favorite things

It's fall, or autumn, whichever you prefer.  Do you capitalize your seasons like they do in German?  Some do because they think it is correct.  It is technically not capitalized in English, but it does look better as Autumn, doesn't it?

Anyhoo!  It is time for the fall/autumnal version of regular items.  All the breweries are making their winter/fall/holiday versions of their beers and ales.  Yay!  Does anyone remember Coors Winterfest?  o.m.g. that was such a great beer!  Can I find it here?  Nope.  Do I know if Coors still makes it?  Nope.

But I do know that Hershey's has brought back the Pumpkin Spice Kisses!  Score!

Have you had these?  They are like little bits of pumpkin spicey cheesecake goodness.  Get some.  And be sure you get a second bag to get you through to Thanksgiving.

While I was at the store scanning the Hershey Kisses I saw these:

However good you think these might be, well, they are a million times better.

Those almonds are delicious.  I am thinking that as good as they are all by themselves, they might be excellent in some brittle or other candy recipe.  Maybe chopped up and put into some fudge?  Maybe tossed in a fall/autumnal salad with some roasted squash or beets?

What about sprinkled on top of some ice cream?  Or cheese cake?  Or ground up and mixed into a graham cracker crust with a pumpkin cheesecake filling?  (I am trying it both ways to see if cheese cake looks better as one word or two.)

What I am saying about the nuts is . . . . . Get some.

You're welcome!

Thanksgiving Planning

I am approximately 1 week behind in planning our Thanksgiving dinner.  But we nailed down the menu, recipes and started the shopping list last night.  In case you didn't know this about me I am extremely anal retentive and a bit OCD, and if that weren't enough to drive most people away, I am also the Queen of  List-Making.  Oh, how I love the lists!

So, planning and prepping for a big holiday shin-dig is what I do best.  I am going to share with you how I do this and you can either take an idea or two that might help with your own holiday planning or use it as evidence against me when they send the men with the butterfly nets to haul me off.

First off, you need a yellow legal pad and a pen that works.  On the first page up at the top title the event and the year, i.e. Thanksgiving 2010

Then list the guests invited so you have a head count and know how many of each thing and whether or not to double recipes, etc.

After that I start listing the dishes to be made. Example:
New England Maple Glazed Turkey and Gravy
Dressing with Sausage, Apples and Cranberries

Next to each item I then put where to find the recipe. (Bon Apetit 1994, page 78)

The next page is the Shopping List.  As I am looking at the recipes, I write down every item I need to buy.
But I have found that instead of writing it as 1/2 cup butter, if I do this "Butter, 1 stick" then when I am on the 3rd recipe that calls for butter I just put "+1 1/2 sticks".  At the end I just add up total amts of butter to buy.  I hope that made sense.  It did in my head.

While I have the recipes out I go ahead and label the next few pages thusly,
1 week ahead
3 days ahead
2 days ahead
Day before
Thanksgiving Day

Because most good recipes will say "can be made up to this point 3 days in advance" or something like that.  Then I put that step in the appropriate page.  It really helps me to stay focused and keep on task to get as much done as I can ahead of time.  Plus on the 1 week ahead I can put Grocery Shopping, Set the table, Polish silver, or whatever and not leave stuff till the last minute.

The last couple of days of prepping I always have a clean spot on the counter where all the recipes are stacked up with the legal pad o'lists.  Since my kidlets are pretty well grown and usually have a friend or partner or someone over, it is easy for people wandering through to just look at the list and choose something to do and take care of it.  I like to think that they appreciate handling something on the list and not having to ask me "what next?, now what?"

The other good thing about doing this type of list-making is that I can always refer back to who was here for which holidays, what recipes worked and what was a flop.

There you have it.  Lisa Pie's List-Making Plan.  What do you think?

Do you have little tricks you do to help keep you sane and focused?  Please share!  I am always refining and updating my lists.

Rambling thoughts, yet again

I can NOT believe it has been six days since I posted something.  Where has the time gone?  Well, mostly it has gone to getting up at the crack of dawn to watch the early a.m. World Cup matches.  Woot!!

Are any of you watching?  Are any of you annoyed and irritated beyond belief at the flipping vuvuzelas?  Those horrendous horns that are like a big long kazoo and when you have 50,000 of them going all at the same time for 2 hours straight, it doesn't get annoying at all. And when you watch 3 matches in one day, that doesn't make it any better.  And you know what?

There's an app for that!!!  Yes indeedy, there are apps out there that can put that oh-so-annoying sound right on your phone.  Just in case you want to create axe-murderers out of your family members who have to listen to it.  Guess who got not one but TWO different vuvuzela apps on her phone?  Yep, it was me!!! Annoying my family and loved ones since heaven knows when!!

I also attended a birth this weekend.  Mom and Dad both did such a beautiful job getting that baby born.  And what a large, healthy and precious baby boy!  He was born exactly one month after his cousin.  I was at her birth as well.  Isn't it nice when sisters have their babies close and then the cousins can grow up together?  I wouldn't trade my relationships with my cousins for anything!  Extended family is a beautiful thing.  I dated a guy in high school whose parents were both the only child.  That meant no aunts, no uncles, no cousins to play with or fight with or anything.  By the time I knew this family there was only one grandma.  Such a difference from my huge, rowdy, loud family.

My car is off getting it's 5,000 mile check up and new tires, new brakes, spark plugs, the whole nine yards. It feels really funny to know that I am going to stay home, nowhere to go, and no way to get there.  Of course, I could always walk to the corner and hop on the bus if I had to, but being car-less it's a different feeling.  One we might all need to be getting used to.

Which leads me to the BP oil disaster.  I am refusing to call this a "spill" or a "leak".  This is a disaster of epic proportions and it is ON-GOING, people!  Thick, gunky crude petroleum is spewing out of the earth at rates no one seems to be able to quantify with any accuracy.  And how can I be all outraged and upset if I am still using a gas powered vehicle?  This a real pickle we have gotten ourselves into, being all dependent on oil and mostly foreign oil and no easy solutions.  But hard changes are coming and the sooner we face them, the better off we will all be.

What are the options for Americans?  We have built this infrastructure over the last 60 years of highways, and being completely dependent on them for not only getting ourselves from point A to point B on a daily basis, but also hauling all our food, store goods, everything.  Our train system is a joke.  Traveling by bus within the city is one thing, but to use the bus or trains rather than our own cars is a HUGE pain in the ass to figure out and ridiculously expensive.  Four years ago in Jan. of 2007 I joined The Compact in an effort to learn to quit buying new.  And over the last few years I have learned so much and implemented so many changes to my life all due to the Compact.  There are currently between 10,000 and 11,000 people all over the globe on the Compact list and everyone shares their little bit and we all benefit.  Changes that I have made over the course of my time on the Compact include:

* No more paper napkins, paper plates, plastic cups, disposable anything (except paper towels and tp)
I already own a ton of cloth napkins.  Now we use them on a daily basis and it has added almost nothing to my laundry.

* I make all my own cleaners and laundry soap and dishwasher soap.
Making your own cleaners is a great way to get chemicals out of your house.  If you have any sensitivities to chemicals, you need to do it anyway and you just won't believe how easy peasy it is to do this.  Not to mention the side benefit of costing waaaaaaaaayy less!  Win, win on this one.

* Revived my composting ways.  I have composted off and on for years, but forced myself to get serious about it.  And let me just say this, if you take everything that can be composted out of your garbage and then you take all your recyclables out, there is just not very much garbage left.  Which leads to . . .

*Changed my shopping habits.  If there are two products available and one has lots more packaging and plastic, start buying the other one.  Make it a priority to purchase things with less packaging.  Don't bring it in your house and then you won't have to deal with it.

*Changed my shopping habits, part 2.  I am really strict about taking my own shopping bags with me. No more plastic bags coming in the house!  If you don't think plastic is a problem, watch this and this.

*Changed my shopping habits, part 3.  I try really, really hard to buy as many local and organic products that I can.  Yes, they cost more.  Yes, it can be tricky trying to find them.  Yes, it is necessary and it is worth it.

We all need to do more.  Whatever we are doing to be good stewards of the earth, we need to do more.  We don't need more.  And one of the most important things I have learned over the last 3 1/2 years is this: There is no *away*.  When you throw something *away*, you are just giving that problem to someone else.

And on that happy note, I will leave you with my favorite recipe for all-purpose cleaning.  I mix this up and pour it in a spray bottle.  This lasts about 2 to 3 weeks or so.

3 Tbsp. vinegar
1/2 tsp washing soda
1/2 tsp vegetable oil based liquid soap (Castile type soap like Dr. Bronners or Murphy's oil soap)
2 cups hot water

Mix in a spray bottle and use as you would 409 or any other non-rinse cleaner.  Note:  I use the tea tree oil version of Dr. Bronners and I also add in about 10 drops of real tea tree oil for extra disinfecting.

If you were to do a cost-analysis of this vs. whatever product you are currently using, I think you might be pleasantly surprised.  Let me know if you do try it.  And also if there are any other cleanser recipes you need, just give me a holler!

Ranting. again.

Anyone remember Muttley?  Muttley was the dog of Dick Dastardly on the Saturday morning cartoons.

This is what always happened; Dick Dastardly made a mess of things and then yelled at Muttley to clean it up. Then Muttley would find a way of getting back at ole Dick (can we all say Passive Aggressive?) and then he would do the Muttley wheezey laugh.

But . . . way back when Dick Dastardly was yelling at Muttley, that is when we would hear Muttley cursing and swearing under his breath "Ras-a-frass #$$%$%^%%^^"  Remember?  THAT is exactly what I was doing today!  The Muttley Cuss-a-thon!  Yeah!

And now that I have used my daily allotment of !!!!, I will get on with my rant.  The mood has been set. The tone is now right. Everyone understands what kind of response I had to things that happened today.

First, I went to Walgreen's.  I love me some Walgreen's!  They are one of my all time favorite stores.  As a matter of fact I went in once and bitched at the manager because they have signs all over their parking lot saying 30 minute parking or they will tow your car off.  Now, how on God's green Earth can anyone get in and out of Walgreen's in less than 30 minutes?  Never gonna happen.  They have the cutest little cart/buggies to push around, don't they?  Not like those weird ass things they have as Kohl's.  Those things are just weird as hell.  So, anyhoo, by the time I get my cart and strap in my purse and start heading up and down each aisle and then check to see what's on sale and what's on clearance, and then finally go get what I came in for, well, you KNOW 30 minutes have already elapsed right?  So, I was in Walgreen's today and wanted to complain about how they have changed the Walgreen's brand of Ibuprofen.  So I asked the checker guy who I would complain to about product changes?  He has no clue.  But here is the deal:  Every single product that Walgreen's makes their own generic version of has a cute little name.

For example:

Sudafed = Wal-fed

Claritin = Wal-itin

Ibuprofen = Wal-profen

I love this and I think it is one of the funniest things ever!  The last batch of Wal-profen I bought didn't say "Wal-profen" on the bottle it said IBUPROFEN. Then to make things worse, they changed the color from a nice sedate little Sienna red-brown to Bright fluorescent orange, like you would be wearing on the side of the road picking up trash.  wtf?  I am not too happy about fake colors in my body anyway, but fluorescent ones seem 100 times worse.  For some reason we also have a Target brand of fake Ibuprofen in the kitchen and it is also the horrific orange.  This is what I have been doing, taking the newer Walgreen's Ibuprofen and pouring them into my old Wal-profen bottle!

Needless to say, the 10 year old checker dude at Walgreen's was not at ALL interested in my story of how I hate the new changes to Wal-profen.

I left there and went to my local grocery store and headed for the men's deodorant aisle.  And why I didn't look for this when I was at Walgreen's I will never know.  But there I was at the men's deodorant aisle at the grocery store looking for Regular Old Spice Deodorant Stick.  Not the roll on, not an anti-perspirant, not a new flavor, just what I had been asked to get.  So I perused the aisle and found the Old Spice area.   Starting at the top shelf, going across, "Not that one, not that one, not that one" down a row, "not that one, not that one, not that one".  I FINALLY found the one I was looking for on the very bottom.  And then I counted every.    single.   version.   of Old Spice Deodorant they carry.  Want to take a guess at how many there were?



THIRTY-FOUR!


That's how many types of Old Spice Deodorant were available at my grocery store.  Guess who was doing the Muttley grumbling cussing thing in the men's deodorant aisle?

This is the same flipping store that carries 5 Brazillian flavors of my favorite brand of Mexican juice except for the one flavor I want.  (It's Plum Nectar, by the by. And it is delicious!)  The same store that carries 5 rows of Orange Jell-O but not one single box of Apricot Jell-O.  The same store that won't stock the only flavor of Campbell's soup that I like.

Don't ask me why I don't go shop elsewhere because in this area there is the one big local chain, and Super Target and Super Walmart.  That's it.  Unless you count Costco and Sam's.  And in my house Sam's and Walmart are verbotten!  I do hit my Super Target quite a lot because it is right around the corner, but they just don't have the selection that the grocery store does.  Don't you feel bad for me? Aren't you glad you get to shop in your own home town that probably has more stores and some competition?

All done ranting today.  Feels good just to get that off my chest.