Merry

Thursday night was the Little House-themed Christmas party at my place. Very loosely themed, to be honest, but we did make fried apples 'n onions (Almanzo's favorite), and button strings, and I gave out stockings that contained shiny pennies and horehound candy and Christmas candy in pink mosquito bar bags, and a whole orange for everyone! Could one ask for more?

Tonight I finished up the Greek cookies with my mom, and then Allison came over (look for our very first double blog post soon!) and we started a new Christmas tradition. The final cookies we made, theples, are fried in boiling oil. When they were done, it occurred to us that, hey, we still had a pot of hot oil. Why not fry some more random items? We battered up some Candy Cane JoJos, a chocolate chip cookie, a piece of almond bark (that one was a mistake) and two Whoppers. The JoJos were by far the tastiest creations. Hooray for frying! I also later made sweet potato pie with a pecan and brown sugar topping. It overflowed a bit in the oven - fortunately just onto the baking sheet where it was sitting - and it's currently chilling overnight in the fridge. Final verdict on its success will come tomorrow - it could go either way, folks. This concludes the Christmas baking, though I will also be pitching in for Christmas dinner. And I'm planning a healthy New Years pumpkin cheesecake (no, really) made with stuff like Fiber One cereal and fat free cream cheese.

Tomorrow (today, technically) is Christmas Eve. I love Christmas Eve. My responsibilities are pretty much limited to the gym in the morning, 4:00 mass at church, and then hanging out with my family all evening. I wish everyone a safe, warm, and very merry Christmas. Here's hoping it's a funky, funky one too.

Kindergarten recipes

With Christmas just over a week away, many people are busy with holiday baking. I'm always eager to help my readers with tips and tricks to make your lives easier. In that spirit, I'd like to share with you some recipes for this holiday season. They're perfect for family gatherings, Christmas parties, or just fixing a delicious meal or dessert for a cold night. These were originally compiled for Mother's Day, but I'm sharing them now in the hopes of making your holiday season just a little bit brighter and tastier. Don't just thank me - thank Miss Clarke's P.M. kindergarten class of 1986.


MAIN DISHES

Chicken
(recipe from David C.)
Directions:
Put it in boiling water. Turn stove on. What we are going to do is put some barbecue sauce on it. It tastes good. Take out of oven and eat it and nothing else.

Spaghetti
(recipe from Amber J.)
Directions:
On it put sticky cheese and tomato sauce, not tomato juice. Put salt and pepper on it. Well noodles. Then you cook it cause some of it's after you cook. Then you eat it.

Spaghetti and Meatballs
(recipe from Tony C.)
Directions:
First, box of string things. Put in pan. Put sauce in pan. Take hamburger, put sauce over, then it would be done.

Steak
(recipe from Gregory L.)
Directions:
Put steak in oven, has to cook for awhile. Make corn on cob, put butter on it then. I would make more steak. Then make carrot, cut them, take off corn, cook carrots. Then ice cream cones for dessert and chocolate pudding and more steak.

Bacon
(recipe from Marcy B.)
BACON

Chocolate Meat
(recipe from Lia C.)
Ingredients:
-powder
-salt
-pepper
-dough
-sugar
-meat
-chocolate
-chocolate milk
Directions:
First you start with powder and last is salt. You put it in the oven for 10 minutes and the rest of it is second and then you do dough then pepper. You do sugar fourth.


A fine transition to... DESSERTS

Cake
(recipe from Jesse O.)
Ingredients:
-3 candles
-put flowers in there
-dough
-milk
-different kinds of cookies in it
Directions:
Turn knob on right, put in oven. When it buzzes take it out. Candles around cake.

Pie
(recipe from Heidi E.)
Ingredients:
-strawberries
-pumpkin
-berries
Directions:
Make dough, put it in the oven, take it out, eat it.

Chocolate Cake
(recipe from Eric B.)
Ingredients:
-3 scoops of sugar
-chocolate frosting
-some of that chocolate mix in the middle of the whole cake
-with chocolate chips inside
Directions:
First you need a pan and put in the frosting first and then the middle and then spread the frosting on top and then put the chocolate chips in on the top, then bake it 20 minutes.

Apple Pie
(recipe from yours truly)
Ingredients:
-5 apples
-pie crust from the store
-cinnamon
Directions:
Cut the apples up, put them in a bowl, put the pie crust in a pan and put the apples in the pie crust. Sprinkle cinnamon. Put leftover crust (if you have any) over the top of the apples, then put in oven and bake for 20 minutes, take the pie out and eat it all yourself.

Cherry Pie
(recipe from Daniel M.)
Ingredients:
-powder
-knife
-cherry
Directions:
Pour sugar, stick a knife in it, press it down, slice pie. Cut ends of crust, put cherry in, put sugar in it, put more crust, cut square holes, then you eat it.

Cookies
(recipe from Jimmy C.)
Ingredients:
-chocolate chips
Directions:
Make round circle, put chocolate chips in it and put in oven for 6 minutes.

Chocolate Cookies
(recipe from Keith B.)
Ingredients:
-dough
-sugar
-chocolate
Directions:
Bake 'em.


Happy holiday baking, everyone!

Decking the halls

First Christmas here! Lots of snow outside! Things are decorated! Hooray!

Christmas vacation

I'm off work today! And I'm off Monday and Tuesday! Not to jinx things, but I think I've officially met my goal of not being too sick to move this Christmas. Granted, that wasn't aiming very high.

'Tis the season for year-end lists right now. A lot of people are doing their "best album of the year" rankings, but I kind of feel like I never buy enough albums in a year to accurately do a top five or ten, let alone more. But if I make up a category - say, my favorite two albums from 2006 by people I'd never really listened to before - the winners would be Rabbit Fur Coat by Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins, and Post-War by M. Ward. When 2007 officially begins, I'll unveil another list I've had in the works for awhile. It's not music-related, but it is quite detailed. I'll bet you can't wait.

Now, it's time to go have some holiday baklava.

Update from the sickbed

Well, my mommy came on Sunday and took me back to Kenosha. I just called this week of work a wash. (I was scheduled to be off Friday through Monday the 26th already.) Since Monday I've been feeling slightly better, but not a ton better. And since all my insurance-related doctors and clinics are in Madison, in order to see a doctor I had to get authorized ... to go to the emergency room yesterday morning. Wooooo! It wasn't as bad as the first time. I went to the new hospital here, and everything went pretty quickly. I was apparently STILL a little dehydrated, despite my best efforts. (Do you know how hard it is to drink 10 glasses of water a day while sick?) So they gave me another liter of fluids, but this time they only took 2 tries for the IV. Bonus! They also took a CT scan of my head, and a nasal swab for the flu ... oh my lord. Have you ever had one of those? Here's my advice - don't. "Nasal swab" is such a misnomer. It's more like jamming a long wire into your brain through each nostril. Anyway, the doctor thinks I'm recovering from something like viral meningitis. Yikes. (Bacterial is the "it'll kill ya!" one.) Basically I just have to ... keep on recovering ... but he gave me a prescription for some different anti-dizziness/nausea stuff, and something for the headache. Meclizine and Tramadol, I think? The Tramadol, though, made me really dizzy and nauseous, in a slightly different way than usual. For awhile. But it also totally knocked out the pain, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I don't think I'll be taking 2 at a time again.

Besides that, I don't think I have anything interesting to report. Christmas is close. Very close. The only person whose present I didn't manage to finish buying before being struck down (well, the only person I'll actually see before Christmas) is my mom. I think I'll just tell her what the rest of her present is and cut her a check if she's going shopping. She won't mind.

My radio commercial

Some time ago, I figured out the rudiments of digitizing old audio tape recordings. So, through yousendit.com technology, I'd like to share with you ... my radio debut:

Click me

It was a Christmas commercial for a local bank, and I was 8 years old. They had me say my real name, but told me to read the school listed on the script. The clip has the kid who spoke after me edited out - you didn't want to hear him anyway, right?