WWQP Bulletin Board Chat

Christmas Present

Whew, I just had to get off my poor feet while the cookies cool. I’ve had a very rough week or two due primarily to my complete inability to anticipate things far enough in advance to accomplish that which I want or need to do. The situation is still out of hand. I was so stressed that I woke at 3 AM today (it’s now 3:45 PM as I draft this) worried about the horrendous mess in my living room/kitchen area and couldn’t get back to sleep. I wouldn’t care but I invited other childless orphans in the neighborhood to join me tomorrow afternoon for dinner. One of them is the aged and mentally slipping father of one of the other guests. I got up and transferred a bunch of stuff to the guest room and sewing room and that calmed me down a bit and at 4:30 I managed to get back to sleep until the alarm went off at 7. I don’t normally bake at this time of year as I eat that sugary junk as fast as it comes out of the oven. However, I do want to have a bit of a gift for the guests. I discovered sometime in the past year or so that Betty Crocker ginger bread mix has a cookie recipe on the back that requires only the addition of the naughty melted butter and hot water. The cookies are very tasty. I tested only one and distributed all the rest in small cookie tins for the two couples and the other single (the old gentleman) to present tomorrow.

It’s now a bit past 8 and I’m out of steam so will head to the unmade bed soon. The table is set with the Wall Mark damask table cloth which looks great but for the creases that I didn’t bother to press out when I unpacked it. The cheap 3’ artificial tree is cute and I’ll just move the rest of the stuff out tomorrow and vacuum. I’m fixing Indian pudding in the morning. I haven’t done that in at least 25 years. Look it up in your cook book. It’s always been a favorite with me and I had to resurrect my 50 year old edition of the joy of cooking. Dinner will be a simple affair of pork tenderloin with some olive oil, lemon juice (I learned about the lemon on pork from a work colleague whose immigrant Greek parents had a restaurant among the many Greek restaurants in Tarpon Springs, FL where Greek is the language on the street. Great eating there. I bought a rosemary tree and have managed to kill it in just a week so the roast with have rosemary along with garlic too. I’ll roast some veggies with them and the guests are brining other stuff in the way of veggies. Sounds yummy to me right now.

Anyway, like everyone else, I’ve been too busy making Christmas stockings for the new step grands and other stuff to post.

I took note of the borderline snide remarks by our friends from down under especially the remark about strawberries and cream. As I’ve said before I’ve just got to get down there. I think February might be a good time except strawberry season will be well over by then but we will be sick of winter here and there you will be moving into autumn. Speaking of New Zealand, we haven’t heard anything from Tenneh on the Mt. in a long time. I hope it’s just because they’ve been busy. I hope, too, that her husband’s mobility problems have been resolved. Does anyone know?

As I emerged from the end of my driveway to head to Weight Watchers this morning I noted a package hanging from my mail box so stopped to get it. It was obvious to me that it must be wedding pictures from DD’s wedding in August. Immediately after the meeting was over at 10 I couldn’t contain myself and opened it up and went through the album sitting in the parking lot. It’s a new format for me. It was in the form of a bound book with the pictures printed on heavy paper. I’m afraid my guests will have to endure going through the book making appropriate ohs and ahs.

Welp, as Donnie, also missing in action, would say, I’m heading for bed so I can finish the superficial clean up and get the pudding baked without getting stressed out tomorrow.

Blessings of the season for folks of all religious and other persuasions.

Jane

posted by Jane in NC @ 8:39 PM