Emily Bloss

I’ve decided to post our weekly menus online so all in the house have easy access. Someday we’ll set up an RSS feed so Trav can display it on his site, too. For now, it’ll just be a regular ol’ post. Here’s a list of our meal choices for the coming week:

• Salad (romaine lettuce, 2 kinds of cabbage, bok choy, radishes, carrots, parsley, green onions and that red & white stuff that’s kind of a cross between cabbage and lettuce… what is that?)
• Chicken Marsala (Ate this tonight, with Panera sourdough baguette and perogies)
• Buffalo Chicken Wing Soup
• Beef Enchiladas
• Sausage, Noodles, Onion & Tomatoes (SNOT)
• Sassy Sausage and Black Bean Soup
• Mama’s Tuscan Spinach Rice Soup (experimental)

I’ll let you know how the Tuscan soup turns out… I can’t wait to try it!

The state of our government is appalling… we’re basically being run by corporations, special interests and people who are so rich they’re out of touch with most of us. It’s sad that we’ll elect our next president based on who can raise the most money. Here’s a site where you can look up election contributions:

Fundrace

I looked up our zip code and only two people came up… one democrat and one republican. In my parent’s zip code, there are lots more, but still evenly divided between the two parties. You can search by name, too… and by profession and all kinds of ways. Very interesting!

Being prepared in advance is kind of strange!! I feel like I should be busy, running around the kitchen preparing large quantities of food. But here I am, sitting at the computer, feeding rice to hungry people and then pacing around the kitchen, noshing on pumpkin seeds and hazelnuts while we wait for everyone to arrive. We’re going to eat around 3:00.

The turkey is coming along nicely. The stuffing turned out really good - I think it’s going to be almost worthy of my Dad’s.

In one of my newsletters, I got a link to a very cool site… Grocery Guide. It allows you to check out the specials at your local stores, and to compare deals. It’s still in beta so it may not have all the stores in your area, but it looks pretty cool!

Time to go baste the turkey.

Happy turkey day, everybody! We’re having everyone come over here tomorrow, for a total of eight people. On the menu:

• Turkey (17 lb)
• Stuffing (Homemade, like the delicious stuffing my Dad makes)
• Corn
• Mashed potatoes
• Butternut squash
• Cranberry chutney
• Cranberry sauce
• Homemade eggnog (one batch with rum, one without)
• Pumpkin pie
• Apple tart
• Layered Jell-o thingy

All but the desserts are being made here. The cranberry chutney and sauce we made ourselves… yummy! It’s really hard to find holiday food without forbidden ingredients (high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils) so we’re making pretty much everything from scratch. I did end up buying some white bread for the stuffing that has HFCS in it… we stood there and looked at every stinking brand of white bread and could not find one without it. So we picked the best of the worst - at least it’s made with white wheat. I didn’t want to make bread because I didn’t think I could get the right texture - I want it to be as close to Dad’s stuffing as I can get!

So take care everybody, and enjoy the holiday. Talk to you soon!

Here in Florida, we have to worry about getting blown away by a hurricane, though we haven’t had to worry too much since we’ve been here. Today I found something that could help reduce damage - I contacted them to see how much it costs to get a hurricane protection system for our windows:

Hurricane Fabric from Naples Windows

This looks like a good thing to do… I sent to them for a ballpark estimate so I can figure how much we need to save up. I have no idea if it will be $1000, $5000, or $10000! We have 14 windows and a sliding glass door on our house. Any guesses on the cost?

While I was in Arizona for my brother’s wedding, talk turned to making mozzarella cheese at home. What a great idea! I think I’m going to put this on my holiday list:

Mozzarella Cheese Kit

This sounds like a lot of fun. And yummy, too.

Bleys found a great site - freerice.com - where they donate grains of rice for every vocabulary word where you can choose the correct meaning. It’s great fun! Hard, too. The most recent word I tried was ameliorate - I’ve seen the word but got it wrong…. ameliorate = improve. I’ve made it (briefly) to level 44 so far.

This made me think of being a kid and calling myself Emilia Bloka, when I was learning Spanish. Which makes me remember getting a Spanish dictionary for Christmas! I believe my parents have a film of me showing off my spiffy new dictionary. I love those films!!

I was reading a story on CNN about how 36 million drivers would fail a written driving test, which doesn’t surprise me even a little bit. I think drivers in Florida are some of the worst around… people just love to tailgate and drive aggressively. Here’s a link to the test:

GMAC Insurance National Drivers Test

I got 100%, woo hoo! I think I’m a pretty good driver… I do try to follow the rules of the road and not be a hazard to someone else. I wonder how Trav would do on this test? He’s the best driver I know - he can avoid a crash like nobody’s business. I feel very safe with him at the wheel. Test results welcome in the comments!!

I was laying in bed this morning, petting the cats and planning my day, when I thought I heard Aunt Susie’s truck. I jumped out of bed and peeked out the through the shades, and WOW!!!! There they were. Trav drove straight through from Michigan! 23 hours!!! I threw on my robe and ran through the house shouting, “They’re here! They’re here!” And so we all went out to greet them. What a wonderful surprise, I’m so glad they made it safely. They were really happy to arrive. And it’s wonderful to have Trav home. Yay!! I barely had enough time to miss him.

Hopefully Trav is well on his way out of Michigan by now! I keep wondering where he is right now… and now, where is he? Now? Now? He never seems to be very far from my mind.

We’ve been following our normal routine… walk this morning (saw the front chickens - 3 babies, still - and the crane family). Dinner tonight will be Italian Chicken Soup with sourdough baguette from Panera, mmmm! Same old, same old, which is not so bad.  We do have to drag in all the potted plants because it’s going to freeze tonight. Then it’ll be back up in the 80s next week. Nice!

I feel compelled to write about the everyday stuff while Trav isn’t here to share it. Hopefully this is not too boring for you, dear reader.