Ugh, and So The Holiday Season Begins

And it was with a bang.

Sorry, I haven't posted until today. I have simply been a bit overwhelmed. I worked until Thursday morning, came home and started the holiday meal. And let's face it, the holiday meal is never as easy as it sounds, is it? Especially when you throw in dietary requirements for a Celiac family member.

I decided that despite having a celiac dinner attendee that I would make yeast rolls. To do this, first the kitchen had to be completely stripped down and cleaned to assure no cross contamination since I am not usually a gluten free cook. Bob took care of the cleaning while I was at work. Then, I make the gluten island. The one place in the kitchen that is allowed to have gluten products. Easy, eh? Well, it could have gone better. I have an older refurbished kitchen aid mixer. It has a couple quirks that I have worked around because I'm just grateful to have the thing on days like this. One of the quirks is it won't go higher than setting number 2 for speed. It never has. Since I also have a Cuisinart Food Processor, I tend to just deal with it until the day I can afford to replace the thing. Well, after I created the gluten island, and started the dough for the rolls a mixing in the mixer, it decided to spontaneously utilize all its speeds, right up to level 10 and blew flour across the kitchen. So there I was, on the first dinner item and already behind schedule as I re-scrubbed the kitchen down.

After the second deep cleaning, I started the crustless pumpkin pie which turned out amazingly well and rich! Definitely a keeper recipe. While that was all a mixing and prepping I had the rice cooking for the wild rice stuffing. Pie in the oven, the giblets got put on the boil, mushrooms and onions sauteed and the turkey stuffed, bagged and baking. Root veggies then were chopped and started roasting for the "mash". I haven't made traditional mashed potato's in years. I instead buy a host of root veggies (i.e.: sweet potato, a couple red potato's, carrots, a yam, turnips, a couple small onions, lots of garlic and whatever else catches my eye) roast them up in olive oil with fresh sprigs of rosemary then run them through the food processor into a mash. Then I got the fresh green beans and cranberries cooked up in the bacon fat before the turkey came out for dinner time as the family arrived. And the last thing I wanted to do was eat. Normally as I prep a large meal I snack as I cook, but that wasn't the case. I was just tired. By the time two o'clock in the afternoon rolled around I was exhausted. I couldn't stop yawning and tracking conversations was about impossible. I truly wanted to tell the family to enjoy dinner and I was going to bed. To bad they probably thought that I was being rude and that they weren't welcome when in fact I they wouldn't have kept me awake if they opened a keg in the next room and stayed past midnight and would have been welcome to stay as long as they wanted as long as they washed the dishes. Regardless I was in bed around 6.

Friday was dedicated to sleeping in and doing nothing. Unfortunately, I was not succesful in the nothing department. Luckily I did little, just not nothing. I didn't even turn on the computer in an attempt to do nothing. But I did get one of the two books I had slated for my knitting hiatus finished! That being something, not nothing...

Saturday of course I had to return to life, but had a great evening with a friend and her family. Thank you Theresa and Aaron for teaching me Euchre. I've always been curious of the game and now I can say I have at least an introductory knowledge.

Today, I decided to turn on the computer and return to life. I have a late in the day dog training session, and I'm sore from our excursion with the dogs on the mountain earlier today. I'll rant about Bob's getting us stuck in the snow in his Toyota and ;then tromping through waist deep snow instead of utilizing either our skis or snow shoes at a later date. Some people...

I hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving ans some rewarding time with loved ones. Good night.
Q