Jumblicious 12/4/09

This time of year means food and crafts to me. So this edition of Jumblicious will be devoted to those things.

Food

For the past few years we have cooked our Thanksgiving turkey in the Ultimate Turkey Roaster. You cook it outside on a propane burner, but don't have to worry about explosive oil fires. The turkey always turns out nice and moist, but we have never been able to get a crispy skin. So it's tasty, but not pretty! Also, it is hot and HEAVY - around 50 lbs. with the turkey in it. However, you get your entire oven to fill with side dishes.

I love jellied cranberry sauce. This Fresh Jellied Cranberry Sauce with Apples was easy, tasty and nice and jiggly!

Potentially explosive Sweet Potato Balls added a delicious touch of "danger" to the table.

I roasted some chestnuts to put in our dressing, but my husband didn't care for them so much. So I just snacked on them as I cooked.

These Blackberry Souffles were good. However, I'd like to tinker with the recipe a little, maybe make them into more of a custard.

Crafts

Earlier this week I was seriously considering making my own snow storm.

We're already into December, but this craft stick and origami box advent calendar is just too cute.

How about making a cute juice pouch holder for your (or your kids') little electronics?

This isn't holiday related, but for all of you moms, here's how to add adjustable elastic to pants. My son is tall and skinny, so finding jeans that fit is always a challenge.

Three Facts

It's 9 AM and the yard is already full of dog tracks.

1. It snowed last night!

See all of the nice, shiny ice in the tire tracks?

2. There is a layer of ice under the snow = slippery roads.

3. It isn't easy to play frisbee with mittens on, but we managed.

Finally!

I am currently looking out my living room window and I finally, FINALLY see some snow coming down! It is very dark and dreary outside and the snow is mixed with rain (that wonderful combination we call sleet), but still - it's SNOW! A few days ago we had a few flakes come down, but only if you looked really hard. Dallas, TX has had more snow than us. I live in the central Michigan area. Dallas, Texas has had more snow than Freeland, Michigan!??

By the time spring comes around everybody is tired of the snow, but right now I am so happy to see it. I have zero holiday spirit and I think it's because the weather has been so unseasonably warm, and snow-free. It isn't uncommon to have snow on Halloween. Last year my holiday letter went out, well before Christmas Eve, complete with a picture of the kids and dog next to a newly created snowman. I guess this year I'll just have to put fake antlers on Cooper and take a picture in front of the Christmas tree. Dying grass and bare trees won't make a very good picture!

So how about you? Has the weather been odd this year where you live?

Treasure Hunt!

I haven't been reading too much over the last few days. The crafting bug has hit and my needles are flying (that would be beading and knitting needles).

The fabulous beadwork designer, Suzanne Cooper, has a holiday pattern treasure hunt at her website. Just start here and see what kind of holiday patterns you can find. For any of you beaders out there, the patterns are done in peyote stitch. For all of you non-beaders, no, you don't start hallucinating or getting visions when you do peyote stitch. I'm going to start some of the tea light covers this week.

Book Review: Kitchen

Kitchen
By Banana Yoshimoto
ISBN: 0671880187

This book is actually two books in one: Kitchen and Moonlight Shadow. In Kitchen, Mikage was orphaned as a child then raised by her grandmother. She is a young adult when her grandmother dies, leaving her with no living relatives. To her surprise a fellow student Yuichi, who works at the flower store her grandmother frequented, offers to her let live with him and his mother. Mikage has a special connection to kitchens and falls in love with the other family's kitchen and comfy couch. She moves in with them and is surprised to find out the mother, Eriko, is actually Yuichi's cross-dressing father.

Yuichi and Eriko help Mikage through her grief and she eventually moves out of the apartment and onto another life as the assistant at a cooking school. Then Eriko is killed and Mikage reaches out to Yuichi to help him.

In Moonlight Shadow Satsuki is coping with the death of her boyfriend by running. It's the only thing that seems to help the pain of losing Hitoshi. On one of her early morning runs she meets a mysterious person who promises her something special in the near future. As Satsuki tries to figure out what the special event might be she also helps her boyfriend's brother cope with both the death of his brother and girlfriend, who was killed in the same accident. In the end, the promised event was magical and healing to both Satsuki and the surviving brother.

This was a magical, little gem of a book. The stories, more like a novella and a short story to me, were both slightly odd but engaging at the same time. While grief and healing was the central theme of both stories, the main characters found relief in different ways. The descriptions of life in Japan were interesting along with the food detailed in Kitchen. Some of the food sounded delicious and others, not so much. A nice little taste of another culture.

This book is from my personal collection and I was not paid or compensated for this review.

Book Review: Weird Michigan

Weird Michigan
By Linda S. Godfrey
Publisher: Sterling
July 2006

Over the past few years I have become fascinated with the supernatural, particularly ghosts. I'm not sure I am brave enough to actually try investigating spirits, but after buying this book I at least know where to find them!

This book is a wonderful collection of weird, scary and down right odd things from the past and present from my state of Michigan. The subtitle is: Your Travel Guide to Michigan's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets. A sample of the chapters include Ancient Mysteries, Bizarre Beasts, Local Notables, Roadside Oddities, Cemetery Safari and Haunted Michigan.

While there are plenty of scary stories, including an incident the happened in a cemetery 20 minutes away from my house and ghost dogs that inhabit a forest near our cabin, there are plenty of other fun, wacky and kid-friendly things included. There are directions on how to get to a giant, metal head of George Washington and a house made of bottles. There is even a story on how Detroit artists are painting abandoned houses orange in an attempt to make them into art.

I bought this book and was so fascinated with it I pretty much read the entire thing in one day. I got completely creeped out by some of the ghost stories and also found some places to explore with the whole family. If this kind of thing sounds like fun to you, but you don't live in Michigan check out The Weird US website. There are listings for books on many states.

Great Term

I'm knee deep in Thanksgiving prep, but I just had to share a term that my daughter learned in school. My fifth grade daughter has a weekly writing assignment, so every weekend I go over the rough draft with her before she types it up. However, her Language Arts teacher doesn't call it a rough draft. It's a Sloppy Copy! All of you writers out there, how great is that term? I know my rough drafts definitely qualify as sloppy.