All posts by Annette

Sidling into the new year

Once again, here we are at the end of one year and the beginning of another. Once again, it will be time for people to make a list of resolutions the cynic in me says they will never keep. Ironically, although I have never really been prone to making such lists, I had started one the other day, and one of the items on that list was to be less cynical about people and their motives. Another is to be calmer in the face of abject stupidity – I suspect that these two actually go hand in hand. Years ago – and this is many years, since it was two exes ago – I had a fairly profound interest in Zen Buddhism. Not to the extent that I am a particularly spiritual person. I am not. I am also not a religious person, much to the dismay of my sister, who is, and who finally settled on Catholicism as her religion of choice. Most of my interest in this is for the human factor, and to me it’s a lot like any other stress-reducing pursuit. As I was reviewing the past couple of years and all the assorted activities that have occurred, I told myself it would be worth my while to take up that interest again, and so I have. I expect this will help immensely in dealing with the people we have to deal with every day, and also help with the anxiety that every day brings as a result of that one singular day when the biopsy came back positive and the snowball that developed from there.

I also told myself that getting back out in the yard and working around the property will help, both physically and mentally. Getting the greenhouse built – what, you didn’t know that was planned? – will enable some experimentation with growing things out of season, inasmuch as anything really is out of season down here. This is Florida, after all. Plus, I’ve decided to take up another hobby: soap and candle making. Not very complicated (or, rather, only as complicated as you make it), relaxing, and in the end, a useful product, all of which satisfies both the left and right brain requirements. Who knows, that might be another side to the business here as well, but we’ll need a snappy name for it. My lack of sleep combined with one side of that (the soapmaking) may bring about echoes of something else entirely, but I think leaving out the underground fighting and general mayhem won’t be a real issue to overcome.

With all of that, plus two additional brands to finally launch, 2008 should be very active indeed. Here’s hoping it will also be happy, prosperous, safe, and healthy for everyone.

Hi, stranger

“Where are yooooouuuuuu?” asks one of my loyal, even if slightly deranged, handful of readers.

Well.

I’ve been busy with work-related stuff, trying to get some things done for the end of the year. I’ve also been dealing with a couple of the absolutely, without a doubt, unquestionably dumbest, rudest people I have ever had the misfortune of encountering. Let’s face it, if you call me by something other than my own name, when my name is in the dozens of ticket responses you’ve received, including the very one you’re quoting, then you are indeed a rude jackass. If you also can’t read plain English and suggest that we’re lying about something, you’re just ratcheting down our already low opinion of you. By the way: if your domain expires, and you don’t notice the fact that it doesn’t go anywhere for three entire months, don’t whine to us about how important it was to you, and that you were “busy” getting married and working. I’ve been dealing with cancer-related crap for over two years now, and I’m guessing that my employees, the state, and the feds wouldn’t accept that as an excuse if I neglected to pay them or file paperwork because I was “busy”.

In any case, I finally unloaded the camera the other day, and was shocked to discover about 500 pictures on the thing. That’s a lot of review and selective editing to be done. First, though, the goal is to complete the rollout of our gift to our clients before Santa shoves his butt down the chimney (what? no chimney?) so I can move on to other things. And since it’s just me on the job today – everyone else is at the football game or off having other fun – and since it’s quiet, I’m hoping to use today to bang out quite a number of things on my todo list, if only to see if there’s any hope of shrinking that before the new year rolls around.

Hope everyone is well and enjoying their holiday. Be safe, be well, be happy.

Planning for the harvest

“Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.”

We don’t have any chickens around here (yet), and wouldn’t be hatching any babies anyway, since we’re only interested in fresh eggs, so I suppose it would be better as “Don’t count your vegetables before they’re grown” for me.

Despite the rather horrible output of the garden in the sand that is the lot – the most prolific things were the guajillo pepper, putting out a bucket of peppers, the thyme and catnip, that survived floods then baking heat, and wonder of wonder, the onions, which thrived and even crowded one another – hope springs eternal. With that and some frames to create some raised beds where you can mix a good soil instead of trying to do anything with a sandlot, you can actually grow some things.

For the past couple of days, I’ve been trying to get outside to get some soil mixed for a frame to hold my garlic. Tomorrow – or today, as the case may be – will be the day, assuming that I manage to get any sleep at all this morning.

Heading into winter is also the time to be looking at seed catalogs, for spring planting. The way winter is going around here, it will be a little springlike for quite some time, but even if it isn’t, I have a plan. You’ll have to wait a day or so for details on that. In the interim, I’d like to blame, I mean thank, Steven for causing me to go to Seeds from Italy. Thanks to him, I now have all sorts of seeds ordered, some of which I plan to foist off on Stacy, as I can’t use five grams of carrot seed in this lifetime. I think. Unless I get a wild hair and decide to try and sell some of it. Those items will be in addition to all the things I’d like to get growing next season after this season’s stuff is harvested.

The big day

There are few things in life for which I will get out of bed at 5:30 in the morning after going to bed around 3 or so. Since I’d not done a lot of the things I had wanted to do earlier in the week, there was quite a lot of prep and cooking to be done on the big day. I hauled myself out of bed and got my thoughts together.

One of the benefits of getting up before the sun is watching the sun come up over the barn and trees. On this particular morning, the colors were even more striking, as we were expecting rain and this lent an extra vivid start to the day.

Thanksgiving sunrise

The colors faded rapidly as the clouds moved in, and that was my hint to get started on what would be the real show of the day: the food.

Our family gatherings for Thanksgiving tend to be huge. Between family, friends, and assorted guests, in the past we’ve had up to 80 people at any one meal. This year, we were expecting to have somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 people. Between moves, sudden other engagements, scheduling conflicts, and miscellaneous issues like flat tires, we wound up with a much smaller, much more intimate gathering: 12 people, four animals.

This, when you think about it, can be a good thing, really. At times when there are dozens and dozens of people wandering around, sometimes it’s difficult to really touch base with some people you might not see very often. Now that we’re living further out in the country, it makes it doubly so.

The amount of food I’d planned did not change. That is, after all, one of the joys of a holiday like Thanksgiving: leftovers. Fewer people equals bigger doggie bags.

As I was spending most of my time cooking, one of my sisters wound up with the camera for much of the evening, so many of the photos here were ones she took throughout the festivities.

Mom had the right idea to start the day: coffee first, before anything.

There must be coffee

Through the window, we could see the rain beginning to fall. Since we weren’t really planning anything outside, this was not weighing too heavily on our minds.

Fat Man was up first. Like Little Boy, he had spent a luxurious evening soaking in the brine. After a shower…

Cleanliness is important!

he was ready to meet his match: aromatics.

Something to stuff you with, my dear

I like to keep it simple, and I don’t like to stuff my bird with stuffing (dressing, to those of us down here). Aromatics only, please, along with a good dose of this

Herby, buttery goodness

under the skin. Finish with a nice rub of various spices, and the big guy is ready to go.

Ready for your closeup?

Except that we discovered a 20 pound bird will not fit into our standard roasting pans. A little improv, maestro, if you please: a giant steam tray, with racks in the bottom, made for a nice bed for the bird. And then, another problem: no twine. No problem.

Non-cheesy cloth

Some judicious use of cheesecloth to tie the legs, a little tuck of the wings underneath, and we were okay to go.

Low and slow

Low and slow: the bird went in for his marathon cooking at 8 AM.

After some hours, his tan was shaping up nicely.

Roasting

Not to mention creating some great drippings for gravy later.

Drippings

Little Boy went on the smoker about half an hour after the big guy went into the oven for roasting. But the day is not just all about turkey, of course. There were also rolls to be made.

Golden orbs

Fresh, day-of-event, pull-apart rolls.

UFOs

Seriously, though, it’s the people. What would happen to all the food if they weren’t around?

Susi and Samir took a stroll about the grounds.

Susi and Samir

Gabrielle stayed inside and kept us company.

Gabs

While Ricky and Mom also took a stroll outside and then came back in…

Mom and Ricky

Gabs showed us how she was enjoying the mushroom turnovers.

You gonna eat that?

Then she showed us all how to be quietly beautiful.

Gabs again

Ricky was very serious, or just looked like he was about to go into a coma, probably because he and Gabs had been at his mom’s earlier for an early dinner.

Serious Ricky

Barb arrived, alone, a few hours after her own early dinner with her group.

Barb and Samir

Frank arrived, either a bit out of focus, or the recipient of my sister dashing around snapping pictures right in everyone’s face. Probably the latter.

Frank

Angie looked fabulous, as usual.

Angie

All, right, I hear you: enough with the people. Where’s the food?

Tarragon pickled mushrooms and onions, crabcakes, mushroom turnovers.

Let’s eat

These didn’t last long.

Crabcakes

Or these.

Pickled

Or those.

Turnovers

Or even those.

Rolling

We also had assorted other stuff: sweet potato casserole, shrimp, stuffing (with and without sausage), mashed potatoes,apricot glazed carrots…

Weighed down

broccoli gratin , cranberry compote, brussels sprouts, those aforementioned rolls, crabcakes, and pickles. Everything was labeled.

Labels

Because you have to know what you’re eating. The ham is hiding over there on the right. The butternut squash soup is in the crock on the left.

Turkey

There was also focaccia, which disappeared before a good picture could be taken, a hawaiian dessert that mom made that likewise disappeared, cinnamon raisin bread…

Cinnamon raisin bread

assorted cookies, fudge, pie.

Dessert

After stuffing ourselves and watching more football, things finally broke up and everyone went home, no doubt to sleep and then get up in the middle of the night to tear off a piece of turkey as a midnight snack.

Overall, a highly successful evening. From this dinner, and for the next four days, I ate turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry compote, and gravy. Over and over, for each meal. Not a bad way to get some food into yourself.

Heading into the stretch

I decided, rather on the spur of the moment, to convert the blog to WordPress. The thought has been brewing in my head for a bit now, even before the conversion to Movable Type 4. After dealing with the back end of MT in the latest version and trying to find certain options that should be readily apparent (but aren’t), and after converting someone else’s blog this evening from MT to WP, I decided to go ahead and – as the ads say – just do it.

This is not to say that everything is exactly the way I want it. There is still some tweaking to be done. But it certainly is easier to manage this, and there is no rebuilding after doing one little thing, only to find that you’ve screwed up and need to redo something, then having to rebuild yet again. There are a few things I like about MT, but the aggravation factor with WP is less, os it wins. I get enough aggravation from dealing with work.

I promise you this: Monday will bring about a post on Thanksgiving. With pictures.

Slowly but surely

We’re making our way toward Thanksgiving day pictures, really. With tons of images to sort and resize, and rolling out our upgrade gifts to our clients (and let me tell you how much it warms my cockles to have some idiot bitch about how long it takes to get through hundreds of servers to give them something for FREE), there simply are not enough hours in the day to get everything done so I can whittle down my to-do list. We’ll get there.

What happens next

I really had planned to do a number of things well before Thanksgiving actually arrived. Alas, between other things in life intruding, the only thing I managed to do in advance were to make a huge batch of cranberry compote and talk my mom and brother into making some batches of stuffing.

So the day before found us not only going to the store, but starting on some of the other things that needed to be done/could be done before the big day.

The Boy and I had driven down to Citra to pick up a pastured turkey – organic, and, according to the wrap, “grown as nature intended”. The bird was still huge.

At 20.2 pounds, this bird would be more than sufficient (when combined with everything else) to feed everyone. He (she?) went into the brine first thing in the morning so he would be ready for roasting on Thanksgiving day.

We had also picked up a breast-only, about six pounds, for the smoker. Since it was frozen, I also tossed it into a brine after dealing with the big guy. Normally, for such a portion, overnight brining would result in Bad Things, but given the block of ice it was, it did not harm to give him about 24 hours, too, as it allowed him to get his freeze off in a good, non-bacterial-inducing environment.

After dealing with the birds, it was time to move on to a couple of other things. This is why counter space is so very important.

We started making compost.

Kidding, sort of: that was part of the remains of what became actual food.

We put this together.

Wrapped it.

Crimped it.

In the background above, you can see more compost material, courtesy of the remainder of what was used to make tarragon pickled mushrooms.

Vented it, courtesy of The Boy.

Mmm. Pie.

The final product.

Oh, and did I mention that mom and The Boy were making a cherry pie while I was slicing up the apples and getting that mixed? No?

‘Twas the day before Thanksgiving

A bit of a foggy start to it, truth be told.

But the day rapidly turned into a clear, sunny, gorgeous Fall day in Florida. Who says we don’t have fall here?

That was the view from a stop light as The Boy and I made our way to Publix. The day before Thanksgiving. At noon. Crazy, you say? Sure to be a madhouse? Not at all: the super secret, brand new store, near a development that isn’t anywhere near capacity is a win. No crowds – there are never crowds at this store (yet). The people are friendly to the point of being annoying, since every worker bee from managers to stockers will ask you how you’re doing and if you need help. And since there were all sorts of staff on hand, vastly outnumbering the shoppers, we were asked probably a dozen times each of these questions.

What were we buying? Stuff. Lots of stuff.

This was in anticipation of the 20-30 people we expected to appear. On the way back, we got to enjoy more of the palette Mother Nature thought it nice to share with the rest of us.

And we made it home safely with our loot.

What happened next? That’s another episode.

The little injustices

Anyone who has ever been to Jacksonville will tell you the city is always under some kind of construction. For the past however long, there has been a major construction zone where I-10 and I-95 come together, to expand the amount of traffic the interchange can handle. One of the things that happens during all of this is of course changes to the various exits along the way. Normal, functional people who know how to merge and deal with traffic such as, oh, that sort of traffic you might encounter going to a football game, have no issues with this. Either you manage to make it over, or you just head up to the next exit. Simple, right?

Except for the total moron who stopped dead in the left hand lane – the very lane other people are also in, looking for an opening to merge right in order to get off at one particular exit. This idiot didn’t just stop: they slammed on their brakes, even though they’d not yet reached the area where the exit was even available. We all know what happens then: the person behind them has to slam on their brakes, and the person behind them, and the person behind them.

So today, for the first time ever, I was involved in a traffic accident. I rear-ended the guy in front of me after slamming on my brakes to try to avoid him after he slammed on his brakes to avoid the guy in front of him, who slammed on his brakes to avoid the guy in front of him, who slammed on his brakes to avoid the jackass who stopped in the middle of the damn highway because apparently the concept of merging and changing lanes was simply too difficult to grasp.

So I’d like to thank that jackass, and toss in the two troopers who showed up and decided that it was two separate incidents instead of one caused by that singular act. And I’d further like to thank the first trooper for not handing out a ticket to anyone in the first pair even though clearly one of them rear ended the other (because they “gave conflicting stories”, so he didn’t write one). Even further, I’d like to thank the second trooper for taking almost 25 minutes to type up a simple report and a ticket. For me. Because here, the person at the very back of the line gets screwed. Which is precisely what happened: I get the damage (the guy in front of me has a minor crack in his bumper, while my front bar is crumpled right into my front bumper and my left headlight is now out of alignment; the guy in front of him has minor bumper damage, and the guy in front of him has a small crumple in the hood and bumper damage), I get the insurance premium increase (because I am the only one who got a ticket out of this, and the very nice claims woman says they have to put me down as at fault), and I get the ticket (for “not exercising due care”, worth 121.50)

To sum up: I got hosed for an accident I did not cause and could not avoid.

And the jackass in the white Chevy Blazer who started it all? Drove off, and probably – unlike the rest of us – made it to the game on time.