Oh my stars and garters have you seen pie in a jar? Trina linked to the post at Our Best Bites that explains (in mouthwatering color) just how to make these darlings. I was wondering what would be the best way to make and freeze individual pies to take camping with us at Thanksgiving, and this is a perfect solution. Now I just have to find some jars. I'm thinking pecan and apple for sure -maybe some pumpkin pie too? Oh boy oh boy oh boy. This is going to be great.
Looks like we really are going to go camping for Thanksgiving. We had the opportunity to spend Thanksgiving with the "remnant" hosted by some folks from our church, but we decided that we wanted to head out. I suppose that (for me at least) despite the griping about being uprooted and away from family I'm curious to see what happens when it's just Allen and I on Thanksgiving making our own traditions and finding our own meaning in the celebration. So we're heading for the hills again, although our plans actually took a left turn. We were thinking about driving out to King's Canyon/Sequoia National Park, but that's just way too much park for us to have a relaxing trip. Perhaps I should say it would be too much park if it was open. I'm not sure about making our first trip out there when A. a significant park of the park is closed, and B. they're saying to pack your sleeping bags and extra food in your car in case it snows and you're snowed in for a while! That would be just a little too much fun for us. Instead, I discovered a campground close to redwood country that even has HOT SHOWERS! That is going to be nice after a few days living in our smartwool socks and polypro base layer. The place itself looks nice enough to stroll through while ruminating over turkey and dressing, and it's also close enough that we can take side trips to Humboldt and Sinkyone if we like. The drive back will also give a chance to explore a section of CA-1 we haven't yet encountered. All in all I think it's a great way for us to visit a corner of Northern Cali without feeling rushed off our feet.
Thanksgiving itself is another matter :D I've decided to be just a tad ambitious for our little sojourn among the big trees. Here's the menu thus far:
Roast Turkey ala Byron's Dutch Oven Recipes with root vegetables
Baked Sweet Potatoes
Green Salad
Cornbread Dressing
Turkey Gravy
and Miniature Pecan Pies
Wine or Spiced Cider to drink
I might add bread if I get around to it.
Sounds like a lot for cooking outdoors, but I already have a 12in dutch oven I can use to cook the turkey and root vegetables. Whole Foods lets you order petite turkeys ahead of time which means I'll be able to get one small enough to fit in my oven. I can prep the veggies before we go and have them ready to add. Ditto for the basting. Sweet potatoes I'll wrap in foil and cook alongside my oven. The cornbread dressing I'll make ahead of time and freeze in muffin tins, so I can bring (and heat) only what we'll actually eat at one time. Since I only have one oven I plan on improvising a smaller oven with some cheap aluminum pie pans. It's easier to do than to explain. Basically you put your food in one pan and turn the other one over on top of it like a lid. To the top pan you've attached a third pan (bottom to bottom) so that you now have a bowl on top in which to put your hot coals. All you need in a drill, screw, nut, and washer. Anyway, I'll warm the dressing up in that (and maybe the bread if I decide to add it), and once the dressing comes out I'll put my mini pies in there to bake and/or warm. I plan to do the pies like the dressing and freeze them in muffin tins and then heat them by putting the muffin tin (probably have to cut part of it out) in my improv dutch oven to warm while we eat. As for the gravy, I'll probably just put the turkey and vegetables on a cutting board covered with foil and mix up the gravy in the bottom of my dutch oven. Sounds about doable I think. The rest of the trip I'm mostly planning on us reusing the leftover turkey either with rice and veggies or over bakes potatoes with salad -maybe I'll throw in some baked apples or such. Now if only it won't rain.
Well, those are our plans.
Yeah, I'm realizing it's a very good thing I didn't get to fully exercise my fancy at my wedding. You think it was bad that the ac blew out at the reception, but at least you didn't have to deal with 500 Scotsmen...err make that Scotsmen singing "500 Miles" because yes I would have. And that's not all I would have either.
"Havering" is apparently an old Scots word for talking piffle; piffle is an English word for blarney, and blarney is an Irish word for nonsense. Nonsense is a American word that describes my thought processes while constructing the above sentence.
There aren't many good ways to say it. I desperately want a home. I'm getting tired of lodging places. Last year it just about worked. I remember calling Allen up and telling him that little nonsensical me had decided that our little apartment appropriate artificial Christmas tree just wasn't enough. I wanted a proper tree - a real live Christmas tree to stand in the corner of the living room and scratch up my arms while I wound the lights around it and greet me again and again with its festive breath. And Allen said why not. So I heaped up evergreen branches on the mantle and strung all my lights and for a time was blissfully happy in the beauty I had called forth. Even then I wanted a proper house, but it's no hard job being content with that beautiful tree in the corner. Thanksgiving too went well. There was family gathered around, and even if the traditions weren't my traditions they were family traditions nonetheless and enjoyable for their own sake. This year...we aren't flying home for Thanksgiving because it'd be rather spendthrift of us to fly out for Thanksgiving and then fly out again three weeks later. So we're going to be here. Since there's not really anyone here we'd feel comfortable sharing Thanksgiving with it looks like we're on our own. Probably going to pack up our gear and head for the hills again. Thanksgiving dinner will be produced from my dutch oven and not Grandmom's kitchen, but I don't know that there's any help for it. As I indicated though, we are flying home for Christmas. Even though we'll be at home for Christmas there are other problems. If we're going to be gone for roughly two weeks I can't very well put up a live tree in my living room that needs to be watered every few days. If I'm only going to be there two-ish weeks (and over Christmas and New Years to boot) I'm going to be hard pressed to reconnect with all the people I miss. And this doesn't even account for the cheese balls, gingerbread, cider, and hot buttered rum that have become part of our (Allen and I) own traditions. Leave them here? Take them with us? If so how? I see a lot of difficult questions ahead without a lot of really satisfactory answers. There's no other way to say it. I want a home with large windows to let the sunlight in and a corner to put my great big Christmas tree in and plenty of rooms to house those children we don't have yet. I want it close enough to family that I can drive over and see them for Thanksgiving. I want to be back among my own people who know me and love me. This is my third move in as many years of marriage and my forth move in four years -five if count our month of temp housing. I'm ready to have roots again. I suppose a lot of people are. I wonder if I will be one of the lucky ones.
Yesterday the counselor said I need to start basically being more conscious about how I live my day ie not letting facebook happen all day but deciding what I want to be doing at any particular moment. Result? It's a quarter after one, and I've only had a small piece of cheese to eat. And yes I'm hungry. MAKING DECISIONS IS CRAZY SCARY CRAP! Even though he told me I could decide to do whatever I wanted to do I had to actually decide. If I was on FB I needed to decide to be on FB for half and hour or something and then make a new decision after that time was up (even if I decided to stay on FB). Somehow that added up to me not even being able to decide to get something to eat. Yeah. Paralyzed of making wrong decisions? Even when there aren't supposes to be any wrong decisions? YES!!! My problem is that I don't want to decide to do dumb stuff like read on-line comics for hours at a time. I want to decide to do good stuff -like scrub the entire apartment :D But I don't want to scrub the apartment. I want to make a (very belated) smoothie and work on my bedroom. And yet because that means deciding not to worry about the dishes that need doing and the laundry that needs folding and the bathroom that needs scrubbing I find myself unable to decide to do anything. And since I'm not doing anything I might as well read internet comics while I'm just sitting here. Yeah, come live inside this head for a while. You'd be a bit kooky too ;)
Ok, enough ranting. I'm going to give this at least one shot today. The counselor said this was going to be pretty emotionally exhausting, and I think I believe him. I already warned Allen that emotional exhaustion was probably going to translate into frozen food from Trader Joe's.
Ok, for real, going to get up and do something. I think. Damn, this is scary. And it looks so easy when other people do it.
I admit that I'm finding it increasingly difficult to get all excited about gay marriage and all the various arguments Christians put up against it. I've become convinced that one man one woman no longer cuts any ice as an argument since it pretty completely misses the point. To a certain extent marriage conventions are arbitrary -there is no "obviously" right way to do marriage (or sex or romantic love for that matter). To my limited knowledge we've had polygamy, hetero plus homoerotic relationships on the side, convenient marriages with mistresses on the side, polyandry, and now a huge battle over whether or not homosexuals should be allowed to make the same spectacular failure of marriage as all us clean cut, church going heteros. At this point I should probably clarify that when I say "arbitrary" I mean something that's not readily apparent to fallen man. It's not like saying that walking off cliffs is unmistakable bad for humans. So long as enough men and women are getting together to produce enough children to keep medicare from going under what do we care what all the other folks are doing?
I've come to the conclusion that I am against gay marriage for the very same reason that many other people are for it. To the secular mind (secularists correct me if I am wrong) marriage is a commitment made between two people who love each other and wish to solemnize their love in front of witnesses. It is the ultimate form of exclusivity and a proclamation to each other and to the world that this person is hereafter dearest above all to one's self -to be considered, cherished, and enjoyed above all other relationships. Women also like wearing pretty dresses and having a big to do :D I highly advocate all the above, but a Christian marriage adds something more. Beyond any other consideration a Christian marriage depicts Christ's relationship with His bride the Church. Christ (masculine) is betrothed to the Church (feminine). Christ is not betrothed to Himself, and the Church is not betrothed to herself. The secular mind sees nothing in the definition of marriage that cannot be extended to same sex couples, while I see everything. It's not about one man and one woman or two hens and and guinea pig. It's about Christ and His Bride, and because it's about Christ and His Bride it's also about masculine and feminine. And that's why I can't get too excited when people start blathering on about gay marriage. If Christians start showing the world what marriage is (and painting with God's brushes and not just whatever they had on sale at SaveMart) then I believe gay marriage will fade away in light of God's covenant awesomeness. If, on the other hand, we refuse to live together in light of Christ and His Church, then all the referendums, sign waving, and illogical babbling won't stop it.
I'm still going to vote, argue, believe that homosexual relationships aren't God's plan for the world, but I'm going to be a little less hysterical and a little more compassionate when I encounter my unsaved counterparts. I'm going to try and wave signs less and live a little harder in the Gospel. I don't plan on being ignored, but I admit I'd rather be known for my love of God than my propensity to stand about on street corners.
I might have to rethink my frozen fruit smoothie habit -either that or turn on the heater. Brrr. I keep forgetting that you can actually get cold in California.
You know one thing that makes me feel competent? Homemade biscuits! To me biscuits symbolize pretty much everything awesome about home life. There's winter sunshine streaming in through the windows, the sooty, metallic scent of the wood stove, soft doggy paws clicking over the floor, and fresh out of the oven biscuits with their hot flaky insides just waiting. Any pan where I didn't burn my mouth (and my fingers) on their moments from the oven goodness I just wasn't paying attention. There is nothing to compare. I know I'd had a few things to say about my home life on this blog, but those mornings will always remain for me a delightful memory.
Anyway, this evening Allen and I were having breakfast for supper -sausage, scrambled eggs, cooked apples, and perfectly flaky biscuits with golden brown crusts. While we were eating I was thinking that this is what I want to do when I'm old and (Lord willing) have grandkids. I want to invite folks over for weekends and holidays and sit in my kitchen eating hot biscuits with butter while outside the wind stirs the bare branches and inside a wood fire crackles and glows. Then, while the kids play cards or run in out and out of doors we adults will sit there with our coffee and cider discussing the good things in life. Maybe later we'll go for a walk or play in the leaves with kids. It's a good dream I think.
Took our bikes off to the library today and came home with panniers full. Kind of interesting when you go run your errands on a bike. Walked out of the store with this huge duffle bag we bought to replace the one we lost around Moab and for a moment we weren't sure if we could get both it and the library books home. However, bike bungie cord cargo rack doohicky to the rescue! Got all the books, the duffle bag (yuppy plaid, but hey it's what they had), cookies, the water bottles, and tomorrow's sausage home all in one piece.
