Black Friday

Well, our Thanksgiving did not go according to plan. Ralph came down with a horrendous cold, which meant staying home so he didn't infect everyone at the open house/potluck. This also meant having to come up with an at-home Thanksgiving meal at the last minute. I think I did pretty well, all in all. I had already baked a cranberry pie (thank you, Lizard, for the recipe--we're already down to the last tiny slice!) in anticipation of the potluck, and had all the ingredients for a corn casserole as per my last post. A quick run to the market snagged us a turkey breast, the last jar of chicken gravy (and I only got that because I saw someone set it down amongst the cans of mushroom soup), and the fixings for a green bean casserole. A box of Stove Top isn't quite the same as mom's oyster stuffing recipe, but was definitely better than no stuffing at all. I used the last little bit of cranberries from the pie to make a small dish of cranberry sauce, plus already had some instant mashed potatoes at the house. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself, and we even had leftovers.


In more food news, today I made soup from a leftover roast chicken that Ralph had cooked on Wednesday. This is the first time I've ever made soup from a carcass and actually had it taste good. It helped that there was a lot of meat left on the bones. I seasoned it with black pepper, sage, thyme, and Better Than Bouillon, thickened the juice with cornstarch, then topped it off with Bisquick dumplings. It was so good I had two bowls of it (and four dumplings!). Plus there's something soothing about chicken & dumplings on a cold day like this. (OK, so 66 degrees isn't exactly freezing, however as a California native I get chilled at 70.)

Making slow but steady work on the sloth. I am remembering why I dislike knitting with eyelash yarn. I spend more time making sure the maximum number of eyelashes are on the right side of the fabric than I do actually knitting. Still, it's promising to be absolutely adorable when it's done so I'll just keep at it.

An old photo today, one which I think I may have posted in the past. Halitosis has some arthritis in her hocks, so I knit her these legwarmers ages ago. As you can see from the look on her face, she adores them & is sooo happy to wear them. I think the 10 seconds it took to take the pictures is the longest she's ever worn them.