~hiatus~ {or not}

It's occurred to me that it's been awhile since my last post, and in the meantime, we've had a wonderful Thanksgiving and a few other things have been going on. Like, my Jerry got all his christmas presents wrapped. He was done with the shopping months ago, well all but one or two things. And my surgery on Monday went well.

So I thought I oughta let folks know that I may be scarce these next few weeks. I can't really to an entire entry at this point covering all sortsa stuffs, and that's what brought to mind that I wanna let folks know that if I don't post for awhile, I'm alright.

The surgery took more outta me than I realized {literally}.

We are planning to go away this coming weekend and I'm thinking that when I get back, I may be a lil more tired than usual.

Gee, even this post is taking me much longer than usual.

So the long and short of it is...I'm alright, not to worry; but may not be posting overly much for awhile.

Or I may be posting just fine as per usual.

Either way, I wanted to wish everyone a very happy last month of the year!!! We're wrapping up fall, heading into winter and soon christmas dinners and trips and specials will be upon us and then the new year starting and then the winter blahs will settle in for lots of folks and so on and so forth.

Time's taffy.

**tah~DAHH**

The bread was more than five loaves. It was also six hot~cross buns and four smaller individual loaves, to be shared with a couple {similar to those you receive at really good restaurants}. And of course, I always do small doggy~bites cuz Bread! is shaddow's Favorite! and I know the other dogs love anything any of the others are enjoying.








And also, here is a fraction of the cookies that have come out of our kitchen in the last few days. This is about fifteen dozen, I think. It's hard telling at this point. I'm gonna head off to bed now, cuz I've not had any sleep for the last forty~five hours or so.





And we all know that I NEED my beauty~sleep.



*wink*

baking bread MeMommaMia's way, by feel, a dash of this, a pinch of that...and lots of love

Well, a slight change of plans for the day resulted in my delivering the cookies to various folks and wishing them a very happy Thanksgiving. Then, I came back home, changed into comfy jammie~duds, and got busy baking More! Cookies! Yea!! My dear friend came over to visit us while my Jerry got his bird {everyone knows, it's the word!} ready for the roaster and I baked some delicious lemony soft moist cookies with peanut butter morsels and milk chocolate ones too. So good, it'll make your mouth happy! After she left for the evening {she'll be joining us tomorrow for dinner}, I baked a double batch of carrot~spice with butterscotch. Yummmmmm!

Then I took a brief break and eyed my bread bowl, and my bread board, and my proofing bowl, and decided that even tho it's later in the evening than I'd usually get started, mmmmmmmmmm bread! So, right now, the dough has rested the first leg and is now rrrrrrrriiiiiIIIISSSSIIINNGG. Then I'll punch it down and knead it a bit and tuck it back in to its warm bed and let it rise again. And so goes the process of bread, wonderful baking of bread!

Tomorrow, I'll serve fresh loaves with our turkey, gravy, dressing, and cranberry~jelly. We'll have cookies for desserting thru the afternoon. And everyone will take plenty of left~overs home! The bird is 23 pounds. And there will be five loaves of bread. And there are about fifteen dozen cookies.

I'm really looking forward to making merry with family and friends! Hope you have a very sweet Thanksgiving too!

next up...

Early in the morning, I hope to get started with a batch of bread.

While it's rising, I'll go deliver the cookies. That way there aren't so many here that I end up looking like the girl over there <-------.

{whistling}

Hope ya have a great Thanksgiving!

and yet more cookies

I'm almost done baking this batch of cheater~cookies.


These are the Cran~Orange with Raisins.


Yum!


*winks*

more cookies!

I made some cheater~cookies this evening and already they are gone.

Ok, lemme tell ya what cheater~cookies are. Some folks call them big fat cookies. They are very very simple to make. Ya take a box of dry cake mix, any kind. And then ya mix in a container of sour cream. It'll be super moist. And then, ya mix in an add~on. And POOF~~cheater~cookies!

Now what's an add~on, ya say. Gee, I'm glad ya asked. Well, an add~on is any thing you want. It could be chocolate chips, or nuts, or coconut, or raisins, or ... well, you get the idea.

And you say, how is it possible that all the cheater~cookies you just made within the last few hours are gone? Cuz I've already arranged plates to give to friends and some other folks who I hope have an awesome Thanksgiving!

And an extra special plate goes to my general practitioner. She's been my very favorite doctore, ever!! Every year, I take cookies into her office for the very friendly, efficient staff. Last year, I took her pina~colada cookies that she still raves about. The last time I saw her, two weeks ago, she asked if I would make her some more, just for her, that she wouldn't have to share with her staff.

So, tomorrow, I'm gonna deliver her some Tropical Cookies. I started with Pineapple cake mix, added in some sweetened coconut, and then a couple banana cream pudding mixes. She's gonna love them!

Now, I'm off to do some Cran~Orange with Raisins and a Secret Ingredient {mmm}. toodles

coooooooooookeeeeeeeeez

Well, we haven't all the pix from the wedding events, but here's one that my brother took.

For Thanksgiving, which is usually the biggest holiday in my family, we have several traditions. We usually do up a bird, and then choose to do something else for Christmas. Another tradition my mom and I have is that we bake. We do all our cookies, pies, cakes, breads, and sticky~buns for the entire season Thanksgiving Weekend.

This Thanksgiving, my Jerry and I are staying here since it's not really a good time to be traveling for us. We're going to spend some time which he has off over the Christmas break out in Arkansas. So we thought we'd stay here this holiday. That way too, I can schedule my out~patient procedure for Monday morning, a week from today. Yea, me!

So last week, I went to WalMart and I bought about a hundred pounds' worth of turkeys. Four turkeys {two at sixty cents per pound and two at forty cents per pound, limit two, doncha know}, each between twenty and twenty~five pounds, and then too, we have one~pound tubes of ground turkey stocked up in the freezer. Saturday, Jerry took one of the turkeys out of the deep freeze and stuck it in the fridge. Wednesday night, he'll put it in the roaster and begin the slow process of cooking it. So then on Thanksgiving, we and a few others will sit down to eat around noon. Jerry's making his cornbread up now, so that come Wednesday, it will be ready to mix up for stuffing the bird!

Since I am not going to be with my mom for this first stage of cookie~baking {altho we will bake some closer to Christmas when in Arkansas}, and since a friend of mine and I have been trying to get together for ever, we decided yesterday to combine the visit and the cookie~baking. So we did. And boy, didn't we bake lots tho?

We did a double batch of each of three types: soft sugar cookies, oatmeal peanut butter cookies, and soft chocolate chip cookies. That's about four hundred and twenty~five cookies. My friend took some home with her, and Jerry's son and his wife took some home with them, and then I packed the rest in bags and tubs. I sent quite a few with Jerry to work today, and POOF! they were gone by noon.

The soft sugar cookies are so buttery smooth, mixed with the lovely crispitty crunchiness of granulated sugar, well, they are the ones that are most likely to disappear first. Plus we had some sugar lay~ons remaining from the 138 autumn orange, reds, yellows, and brown maple leaves that we'd used for our wedding cakes, so my friend affixed those to the center of the sugar cookies and they are so pretty, it almost made me hesitate to eat them.

Almost.

The oatmeal peanut butter cookies are so scrumptious, but very crumbly. My friend pointed out that sprinkled over vanilla ice~cream, they'd be extra yummy. And I'm sure she's right. In fact, I was thinking that I'd have me a big ole bowl for a treat. There goes any intention to lose the fifteen pounds I gained within the last two months prior to the wedding.

Oh! And we also added raisins to a portion of the oatmeal peanut butter cookies and that, omg, there is nothing healthy about these sinfully divine delights. Promise. *wink*

The Soft. Chocolate. Chip. Cookies. sigh. Well, these cookies call for pudding mix. I used three packages of chocolate, and one of cheesecake. They are so good, they make ya wanna moan and groan and make all sorts of faces of pleasure. The dough is chocolatey, the four cups of chocolate chips make each bite a lovely mix of smooth and crisp texture. It's so fine, you'll wanna bake extras.

Well, my next venture with cookies from scratch {as all these were} will involve my trying to make some with sweetner, versus sugar, since my Jerry is not really able to digest sugar without dire consequences like passing out &/or vomiting. He deserves some treats too!

I have the cheater~cookie fixings {dry cake mix and sour cream} and also have the stuff for a batch of bread. A batch usually yields three to five good sized loaves. I haven't made bread since this time last year, and now I have all my bread board, bowl, and other bread~things here. So, I'll be a busy lil bee for the next few days!

Hope your Thanksgiving week/ends are all good! Travel safely, eat lots, sleep lots, and enjoy yourself! *toodles*

Sana~tizing with Santa

Don't pay attention to the date~stamp on the pic, it's not right. However, this was the pic taken by the folks at Starkville Daily News a few years ago, on my Jerry's annual seasonal Santa ride. His late wife had bought him the bike four years ago, on what would be their last anniversary and that fall, he also won the Oscar Meyer Wiener contest {"what would you do with the wiener~mobile for a day?" my jerry's answer: load it up with toys and gifts for the kids at the neighboring Palmer Home, dress as Santa and distribute the toys, give the kids rides in the Mobile, and basically give them a really nice Christmas}. His late wife's birthday is December 23 and Christmas was her favorite time of year, so to honor her, Jerry rides the last gift she'd given him as Santa either on the 23rd and/or the Saturday just before Christmas.

Yesterday, I was at the Emerson Center for Families {which had been a school at one time not so long ago, and now the building is used for community~based activities, workshops, classes, and seminars; 2/3rds of the building is secure for early~start, head~start, Project TAB, and other early childhood educational oriented programs}, using the elison dyes, the rubber~stamps, and such for making book~marks out of old card catalog index cards and also using them for small thank~you notes for the Wedding/Party. As I used to facilitate support groups there and also have assisted with various classes there, I am somewhat familiar with who is who and what the set~up is. The director knows that I can be fairly quiet, so I remained while they had a luncheon for their planning advisory board.

The key phrase to that would be: can be fairly quiet. Cuz while I was listening with half an ear, my attention scattered to the four winds, I had actually just had the thought that being there was sorta like listening to talk~radio on NPR/MPB. And then, all my attention snapped! into one concentrated place, the director speaking only three feet from me. She'd just asked, "does anyone know a Santa?" I waited, and then said, "can you give me the details on that last thing? cuz I do know a Santa"

So here's the details:

The Emerson Center is co~sponsoring the WEE READ program for pre~schoolers {this would also include kindergarten} along with Starkville Reads, the Public Library and the County Schools. From December first thru the sixteenth, you keep track of all the books your child reads {write down the titles and authors}. Then, on Thursday 17 December, at 5:30pm come to the Emerson School Cafeteria in the upper end of the building and participate in a Family Fun night of celebrating childhood reading. There will be activities, including face~painting {my friends Adria Ware and Kim Green have since signed on as the face~painters}, storytelling, and pictures with Santa.

My Jerry will be their Santa! From 5:30 to 7:30p Thursday 17 December, at the Emerson School Cafeteria. If you have small readers in your family, come down and join in the fun!

So the director and the board were all very happy to have that taken care of, cuz they didn't yet have someone and the other options that they looked into would not have been suitable since the santa's charged between one hundred and one twenty~five, per hour! The director kept saying that god truly does amazing things. She went from not having any one to help to having an entire crew of positions staffed by folks not even serving on the board. Pretty cool, huh?

And as I was driving later that afternoon, I heard on NPR that there is a push among the thousands of Santas this year to promote hand~sanitizing amongst the kids in the photo~lines. This is in efforts to prevent the spread of germs which cause colds, flu {including swine flu}, and other contagious/infectious illnesses. I think this is an excellent idea!

So I popped off eMail asking if the director would be willing to provide sanitizer so that the elves and other assistants could make the sanitizing process part of the Santa photo experience. I'm thinking it'll be cool to sing a song to help kids know how long to spread the gel on their hands. I know that usually the most often sited song is two rounds of Happy Birthday, but I'm sure we can fit on of the classics of the season to the time recommendation.

{humming Frosty the Snowman...my Jerry's mother just sent a sketch of a snowflake earlier with the label that it was Frosty's baby picture!!}

burrr-day greetings, party in my pants!

Well Monday was my birthday, and since we celebrated on Saturday, I didn't really expect much...but boy was I mistaken!

First off, I visited the gyn, which was a real treat and I think everyone should get to experience the joy of a uterine biopsy even if they have no uterus! I've had biopsies before on various parts of my body over the years, doctor's always seem to be more excited than I am about that lump or bump...I'm just a lumpy~bumpy person and always have been. However, I must say that the uterine biopsy takes the cake when it comes to intense awkward "just a lil pinch now" pain. I'm moderate to heavily tattoo'd {depends on your perspective} and am fairly accostomed to lil pinches, so this lil pinch rated right up there almost into the BIG pinch range. However in the overall scheme of things, it really was a lil thing.

But oh so much fun!!

And of course, getting felt up by a new doctor always ranks right up there on my funometer. But, oh wait, but the vaginal sonogram was the best! If you have never had a chance to experience one of these, rush right to your nearest gyn and ask for one! Even if you have no reason to require one, ask for one anyway! You'll be oh so glad you did!

Then, I met with my Jerry for lunch and then we filled out my life insurance application which is the greatest thing ever to do on your birthday! There is nothing quite like deciding do you want this coverage or that, and when they say this do they mean that deciphering abilities. It's the best ever!

Then I did a myriad of errands, including discontinuing a few utilities at my old place on the farm. The lady at the power company insisted that I didn't have an account. She seemed to never have encountered anyone who has gotten married and so their name in no longer the same. I wish that the usual woman was there, but she wasn't. Perhaps I should have waited...

And then! Then I met with my bookclub on campus at Barnes and Noble. And then, I came home to my Jerry.

Now I've used some heavy sarcasm earlier, but this is in total seriousness...I love, Love, LOVE black licorice. I have since I was a child. And Jerry knows this and bought me not just the Twizzler type...but there is this awesome Aussie Style which is softer and so strong, it is yummy! Made primarily with molasses, it made me moan and groan and sigh and engage in all sorts of facial contortions that Jerry snickered, chortled, and guffawed at my display of enjoyment.

He also gave me THE perfect birthday card with lots of inside jokes and cute lil drawings and big love. It was a perfect birthday, that lasted from last month when my mom took me for an endless shrimp dinner at Red Lobster to this week's black licorice still in the fridge. Thanks, guyses!