Christmas

Bah. Humbug.


I think Gage said it best in the comment on my last post. For me the best part of this Christmas is remembering last Christmas and spending the time in chairs next to Aud's hospital bed. I slept poor, I ate poorer, and our apartment became a cesspool. (note: not because Aud's the only one that cleans it, because the skunk was the only one in it to do anything at all most of the time).

This Christmas, we were both off of school, I attending and Aud teaching. Grades came in, as did a blizzard, and we just hung out, watched period comedies and Shakespeare movies. I'm really not THAT cultured, it just seemed to be what were were in the mood for. I cooked, we ate, and we speculated when it might actually stop snowing.

We got about a foot of snow, and lots and lots of ice. Other parts of Portland got twice as much. This is not a big deal to people from colder parts of the country, but bear in mind that Portland has no snow removal plan or infrastructure, so it was quite paralyzing. Most of my work hours were taken up with shoveling snow and clearing the property. In fact, all of my office hours this last week were pre-empted with snow clearing. It didn't matter, since no one is coming by to see the manager when they can scarcely get out of their own driveway. The skunks have loved having mom and dad home for over a week solid, though it's wintertime and they're spending more daytime sleeping... except when Tobias thinks he can wrangle food out of us, though Aroma doesn't care much.

All in all, we didn't do a lot for Christmas, and we didn't want to. I wanted to hang out with my wife and family, and see some friends. Most of my friends are busy with their own spouses and families, but 2 out of 3 isn't bad! I just have started to hate the retail aspect of the holiday, and I get a little tired of some of the cheesier religious aspects, so having a Christmas on our own terms has been a relief, and a welcome change.

Happy holidays to you, friend.

Thanksgiving.

So I cooked Thanksgiving dinner.

It was fun, I didn't do anything fancy. I got a young fresh turkey, and stuffed it with a traditional stuffing recipe. I made potatoes, bought some rolls, made gravy from the drippings, and made a pie from scratch. I made a simple pate brisée dough and snagged a recipe for pie filling. It was good, in the future I don't think I'll pre-bake the pie crust. It dried out a little more than I'd like.

I've made roast turkey before, so I wasn't afraid. The gravy turned out super good, though. I think it's because I layered bacon on the turkey while it roasted (not to eat, of course), and then had chopped onions in the drippings pan, so the turkey drippings and bacon drippings got freaky-deaky with the onions and resulted in a magnificent passport to deliciousness.