Thanksgiving

This post is over a week late but I'm still thankful so Thanksgiving is still relevant.

This year, I hosted my very first Thanksgiving dinner. It had its moments but it wasn't nearly as stressful as I expected. I cooked the entire day Wednesday and Thursday. And I was only cooking for five people.

The recipe list. In order of cooking priority from left to right. It was mostly accurate.

Day 1 included Pomegranate Cranberry Jelly. [Have you ever cooked fresh cranberries? They pop and crack as they cook! It's so fun!]

And the rolls. Dough cooked in a stock pot? Yes. And it rose. There is little else that brings more joy to a baker than bread dough rising. Audible celebrations were had. Especially after the below-mentioned incident with the turkey. 

And I made this. It was beautiful. And delicious. I love that I was raised by Yankee parents but all these Thanksgivings sans PEcan pie... we never knew what we were missing.

 As mentioned above, my only noteworthy adventure of the whole experience was the turkey. Stupid bird.

I got this beautiful, happy turkey from Whole Foods. No preservatives or hormones or other junk. My plan for the tastiest bird ever on a newbie's first try at Thanksgiving dinner: brine!!

Ah lovely brine ingredients. It started out with so much potential.

A beautiful bath of salty goodness. My kitchen smelled fantastic.

This was the original plan. I read from numerous sources that this was an entirely acceptable, even recommended, way to brine your turkey. Doesn't it look so happy and cozy in its little bath?

It wasn't. After spilling brine all over the floor - twice - it got mad at me and sprung a leak once in the bag. The reason I chose to brine in a brining bag was because a) it's a "brining bag", that's what it does, and b) I lack ownership of anything large enough to hold a 12 pound turkey plus 2 gallons of liquid. Hence when it started leaking, I panicked and starting rapidly ticking off a list of everything in my house/garage that could hold all the goods. Coming up with nothing, I resorted to placing the leaking bag inside another non-leaking bag and hoisting it back in the cooler and filling it with 2 more bags of ice. And there it remained for 24 hours. I may or may not have sworn at the turkey. 

Then, after cooking, per instructions, for requisite time and temperature, all seemed well and good and we removed and got ready to slice. Unfortunately, due to either faulty instructions, faulty thermometer or faulty cook- the bird wasn't done. It's a good thing I didn't have those mini-pitchforks in my hands when we realized it wasn't done.

So then we did this for another 45 minutes or so and played "I'm thankful for..." but in alphabetical order. I.E. A- apples. B- bunny rabbits. C- children's laughter. D- dental floss. It proved to be a rather fun way to pass the remaining turkey-cooking time. 

I'm so glad my family was there with me. Aren't they cute? I love them. I wouldn't have finished everything without all hands on deck. My dad loves doing dishes. Don't let him tell you otherwise. 

All eventually turned out being delicious even though it was a little later than planned. 

And I only subjected my family to about 15 minutes of portrait attempts. I am thankful for S- self-timers and T- tripods.

Overall, my inaugural Thanksgiving hosting event was a success.
Lessons learned:
1) next year, explore deep-frying because the brined turkey tasted about the same as a less high-maintenance preparation, or pretty much any other option.
2) always have pecan pie. always.
3) roasting garlic is so yummy. How did I never do this until now?
4) you do NOT need more than 5 lbs of potatoes for 5 people
5) I feel I earned a merit badge in my culinary ambitions by successfully manning Thanksgiving dinner. But it was so much more fun for those couple hours my family was there to help cook than it was kickin it all by myself. Or maybe my family is just so much fun that anything is better with them around. Yeah, it could be that too...

Writing on the Wall

I have this wall. I hate blank walls. I had a plan for all other walls in this room except for this one. Every time I go in the study, the wall is challenging me: "Hey man, think you got a plan, huh? Well you don't! I'm big and empty and I like it that way. You lose. Sucka."

The wall did not speak to husband in the same way as it spoke to me. He didn't feel taunted and teased by the blank study wall. But I did. And I knew I needed to conquer it. So. I found a plan. It started with listening to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 4-5-1 [which, by the way, don't. It's read by Ray Bradbury and he's either 100 years old, extremely fat, extremely drunk or all of the above. Slurring and audible breath refills don't work for audio books].

Anyway. There is a quote in the beginning that I loved. I thought:
Hm. I love that line.
I should do something with that.
How about I type it up in a cool font, frame it, and stick in on a wall.
Which wall?
How about the study wall? Ya know, books in the study, book quotes on the wall. It could work right?
It's too big for just one little quote.
How about a bunch of quotes in a photo collage?
That would take a lot of frames. That's expensive and I've already planned a photo frame collage for another wall. Don't want to go picture collage crazy...
What else could I do with this quote?

I could write it on the wall! 

By this point, I've missed about half of the slurring, breath-gasping first chapter of the book but am totally jazzed about my new idea and am already thinking of other books/authors/quotes that I want to use to fill up my wall and what kind of pen/art supplies I should use.

Problem step: convince husband.

His initial response was "I don't know how I feel about encouraging people to write on our walls." Because I had included my almost favorite part of my plan: have people who come to my house contribute and write their own personal favorites on the wall. I could see he needed more convincing.

I don't know about you but when I come up with an idea for something "creative", I'm not entirely sold on my own ability to come up with something cool. So I go to Google and search for validation that someone else on some cool decor blog has done something like it and therefore, I'm not completely off my rocker for wanting to do said creative project. Although, if I don't find a similar project, I just chalk it up to having a completely original cool idea. Either way, Google validates all creative endeavors.

Validation #1
Months ago on a wallpaper search, I found this wallpaper at Anthro. I love it. But don't love that it's $700 per roll. That's just insane. But I mentioned this to husband. See! Someone else did this in wallpaper form and is charging obscenely for it!

Validation #2
Extreme doodling. Granted this is actual artwork and not written word but I write much better than I draw. Plus the idea of drawing anything on the wall caters to that inner-rebellious child. And we're all supposed to listen to our inner-child right?

Validation #3
If you saw this movie, you know how totally rad this was. Perk: my wall won't have the inconvenience of chalk dust all over the place.

Validation #4
You. I know you can't see the vision I have in my head of this project but you get the general idea. Fill an entire wall with handwritten quotes from books. The font will not be too big or too small. Too tiny will look messy and too big will look unintentional. I'll start in the middle and balloon out. Use the same color throughout. What do we think?

Mulling Things Over: Part 3 (Holiday Edition)

Halloween

When I tell people I don't really like or even celebrate Halloween, you'd think I just cursed their firstborn child or spit on the American flag. I'm not going to go into all my reasons for why I don't care for it but they are very legit and I stand by them. But this year, I started to reconsider my aversion to the holiday. For reasons as follows: 

1) I love pumpkin. I made pumpkin muffins, pumpkin pancakes, and chocolate pumpkin pie this fall. I'm considering devoting the entire month of October next year to pumpkin recipes. 

2) The color orange makes me really happy. I think my house would look totally rad in orange decorations. 

3) A dozen or so costumed kids rang our doorbell Saturday night. They were so happy and excited and SO cute in their often ill-fitting costumes. I told Jericho that once we have kids, we'll become better Halloween people.  

Thus I have found that there are things about an otherwise annoying holiday to enjoy and celebrate and therefore save some face for all those that think it's offensively un-American to not like Halloween.

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Thanksgiving

This year, Thanksgiving is at my house for the very first time ever. Our guest list is a whopping five people but I'm researching enough recipes to feed a football team. [Is four pies too many for five people?] I can't help myself. I feel intimidated and empowered by the challenge. Thanksgiving is the gold medal round for all cooks. A culinary walkabout. It's the culmination of all my cooking skills, all to be manifested in one glorious day full of sweat and tears and decadent fall fare. And, it's giving me an valid excuse to buy more fun kitchen gadgets. And I'm pre-ordering my never-frozen, organic turkey from Whole Foods. I do work in Chapel Hill, after all.

Anyone need a place to go for Thanksgiving? Our house seats up to 14...

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Christmas

I decided to send Christmas cards this year. I've finalized the list and ordered them from Pear Tree Greetings getting the early bird discount. I've even started my Christmas shopping. Every year, I always say I want to start my Christmas shopping earlier but it never happens. I end up planning but never actually doing. This Saturday, I may attempt do some more at the grand opening of the Tanger Outlet mall. It's going to be epic. This beauty occupies a piece of property directly across the interstate from my neighborhood. It's going to destroy traffic on our exit. But it'll be epic. Our neighborhood HOA is petitioning for the town to build a skywalk over I-40. 

My house will also be host to some family over the Christmas holiday. I've never played hostess to house guests before so I'm a little excited. Husband doesn't understand why I plan so much for anticipated house guests. I guess it's a woman thing. At least now we have a mattress for the extra queen bed.

Who knew having a house would infuse so much domestic responsibility into my life?

Eighteen Months Old

Today, Jericho and I are eighteen months old. Eighteen months. We're definitely still newbies. [Keen Mary decided to count her marriage age in months until they reached the two year mark, much like you do with children. It makes sense so I shall do the same.] 

It seemed the first few months of marriage went by rather slowly. Not in a bad way. Lots of transitions and newness. Lots of excitement on our new adventures.

But newness and adventures wane a little and you get caught into the swing of life. Adventures still come along and you learn your lessons together instead of individually. You learn how to make things fun and not sweat the small stuff.

You learn that you're not just playing house. But it is comforting to have a house, a friend in that house every day to come home to, and a husband that provided that house. And mows the lawn and builds shelves and vacuums and plants bushes and yells at the construction people for oozing mud all over our beautiful grass.

No matter how busy we are, I'm still thankful every day that I'm married to Jericho. He is my constant.* He is my confidant and comedian. He is my cheerleader and tissue box. And he thinks I'm funny.

I'm glad I have someone that goes fun places with me and even some places that aren't fun. Well, maybe not fun for him but I think the bookstore is fantastically fun. To know you'll never be alone in anything is delightful and totally spoiling.

You're pretty stinking in love on the day you get married. But every day after tells you just how much you didn't know about love on that day. It's a pretty small day in comparison to everything else that you have from that day forward. I'm excited for many more months to come.

Happy eighteen months to my favorite person ever. 

*see Season 5 of LOST

Deep-Fried North Carolina

One of my favorite things about North Carolina is the State Fair. Just as most that are devoted to their home states, we all truly believe that everything from or in our home state is the best of its kind [i.e. for NC- Krispy Kreme donuts, Bojangles, beaches, fall foliage, pigs, cigarettes]. With most places, these superior claims could arguably be true. [Except for Texas and Canadia.] And thus it will be true for the NC State Fair. I didn't think it was all THAT special. I assumed that everyone's state fairs included ample deep-fried weird things, pig races, cow auctions, demolition derbies, mull-pulls and the like. This year, I noticed through Facebook just how many NC emigrants throughout the country voiced their longing for the happenings of the NC fair since their new respective state's fair didn't measure up.

When I first started taking pictures at the fair this year, I thought how cool it would be to do a photo journey of all that can be found at the fair. But alas, not only was it raining when we got there so the nice camera was left in the car, but there is no WAY I could capture everything in one trip. So here is a small snapshot of our fair experience this year.

First stop is the Methodist Church ham biscuits! And some pretty tasty onion rings. 

We didn't even come close to being tempted to try this. I think I got indigestion just getting close enough to take a picture. Ew.

We did, however, chow down on fried mac-n-cheese and PB&J. I know that mug looks like it should be frothing over with beer but it's just some tasty Pappy's soda.

The boy loves him some peanut butter.

Toured inside the buildings. Aside from the homemade contests people enter, the rest are like a giant collision of infomercials and a flea market.

Speaking of contests. Did you know you could win a blue ribbon for table decorating? I think I've found a competition to aspire to next year.

Joined up with mom and Krissy and Wade later in the evening and shared some cheese steaks and fried Snickers. Lesson learned- don't wear black when eating food covered in powdered sugar.

Stopped by the produce and cow display. The fair isn't ALL about eating...

These were some HUGE cows. All the cows/calves hanging out matched except for these two. She felt a little out of place since it was clear paternity was a surprise once the baby was born. 

$10 to ride the Ferris Wheel. I took a picture instead.