By Julie on 11/25/2008 5:58 PM

Planning Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is drawing nigh. And I would hazard a good bet that the busiest websites right now are places like allrecipes.com, cooking.com, and foodtv.com. Everyone is frantically searching for the best recipes for some old favorites and maybe some new items to spice up the Thanksgiving table.

We are not having Thanksgiving at our house this year. We have no family visiting right now and we did not plan a trip home to Mississippi to be with my family. So we are going to the home of one of our best friends, to celebrate Thanksgiving with her family.

And no, I still have not decided what to bring yet. A couple of side dishes most likely. I do have a very good recipe for brussel sprouts sliced and sauteed in olive oil with onions and bacon. Or perhaps I will whip up one of my famous cheesecakes. I better get busy. Tomorrow is probably the busiest shopping day of the year at the grocery stores and I still need to pick up ... Read More »

By Julie on 11/24/2008 7:21 PM

Cookie Party

We have just received our much coveted invitation to our friend Sharon's 18th Annual Sick & Twisted Cookie Party. It sounds odd indeed. But it is great fun. And it is held in Austin which does its best to remain weird.

The cookie party involves building and decorating a gingerbread house and various offensive cookies. A few examples: Sponge Bob NO-pants, A-BONG-HIT-able snowman, and various amputee reindeer.

Among with the libations served is the ever-popular bourbon slush. But the party is also quite child-friendly since most of the attendees over the years have produced children and bring them along for the fun. I suppose I will be going up the day before so I can help with baking the many dozens of cookies required for the party.

By Julie on 11/23/2008 8:12 AM

Books

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. Cicero

Yesterday we put a serious dent in our Christmas shopping. Unbelievably now, we are almost done. A couple more items to buy and I will begin wrapping the gifts which is my favorite part of it all.

Our local bookstore was the place we found many great gifts. I always believe books make the best gifts. (And chocolate, also.) There are inevitably several people on everyone's list that defy gift-giving choices. To put it mildly, they are the difficult ones to buy for. Either they already have everything or they live in a small place and have no room for more or any number of other reasons.

So I tend to get books for many of my family and friends. I believe we all need a library in our home, even if it is just a small collection of books. I don't know how I would live ... Read More »

By Julie on 11/21/2008 7:10 PM

There were two outstanding vendors at the Texas Renaissance Festival when we attended last weekend. And they both were picture related.

The first: Whimsy's Muse. They take amazing photos with gorgeous props and costumes. The website is  WhimsysMuse.com. I would love to show you some examples of their work but I don't currently have their permission.

The second vendor: Poetic Portraits. The photographer Christine Angele takes a photograph and screenprints it onto a canvas. Then she proceeds to paint a scene using oil paints and weaving the real-life photograph into a magical scene. Please visit her website at 903smile.com

 

By Julie on 11/17/2008 8:45 PM

Tumeric

I read an article today about the great health benefits of tumeric. Apparently researchers are finding that compounds in tumeric aid in cancer fighting.
Here is a copy of an article about this from the American Cancer Society.
So this evening I worked tumeric into our dinner plans and it turned out quite well. This is my recipe:

Baked Butternut Squash

1 butternut squash peeled and cubed
2 teaspoons tumeric
2 teaspoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a bowl, mix the tumeric, olive oil, and black pepper. Add the butternut squash and toss well with the tumeric mix. Spread the squash on a baking sheet. Scrape any remaining tumeric ... Read More »

By Julie on 11/16/2008 4:15 PM

I am back in Texas and we spent yesterday at the Texas Renaissance Festival in Plantersville. It is normally a two hour drive from our home. But yesterday, when we were about 12 miles from the festival, the traffic slowed down to a crawl. And it crawled very slowly. It took a hour for us to drive the remaining 12 miles. Total driving time: 3 hours.

Parking was remarkably easy considering the large volume of traffic and people. There were thousands of people there. I have never seen it so crowded. I looked up the media fact sheet for the festival and they average about 23,000 people per day through the gates. It is the largest Renaissance fair in the world.

It honestly would have been so much more enjoyable if it hadn't been so incredibly crowded. The weather was cool and perfect.  The theme for the festival this weekend was Highland Fling and I was hoping for lots of great bagpipe music. Unfortunately, we only heard bagpipes once. And for heavens sake, ... Read More »

By Julie on 11/12/2008 10:15 PM

I am in Las Vegas for a geeks and nerds convention (a.k.a. computer programming convention). I have done some serious walking while here. Everything is a fair distance apart. Even the convention which is in Mandalay Bay hotel. I take the tram there each morning but then I still have to walk the 1/4 mile hike through the casino and long passageways until I reach the south convention center where we gather for breakfast. One guy was actually wearing a pedometer and he had already logged 5 miles by lunchtime just walking from his nearby hotel to the convention center and then between classes in the building.

I am tired and still functioning on the Texas time zone. And I am tired from a full day of classes and tons of walking so I leave you with my picture of Lady Liberty, Vegas-style. This photo was snapped last night outside New York New York H ... Read More »

By Julie on 11/10/2008 8:14 AM

Sometimes you just need a weekend at home. A weekend that is not filled to bursting with activities and things to do, places to go, people to see.

We just had such a weekend. We stayed home! I worked on sewing a costume for my daughter to wear to the Texas Renaissance Festival. We are planning to go there next weekend. Many people dress up for the festival and since my daughter is such a diva, I knew that she would want a princess dress.
Also, this weekend, we made a large pot of homemade chili and spent a good bit of time reading. I usually ... Read More »

By Julie on 11/8/2008 6:57 PM

This week we have been on the Doug Kaufmann diet. It is basically a diet that beileves many illnesses are caused by fungus in our bodies and this diet seeks to kill off the fungus.

During the first two weeks of the diet, you don't eat any grains or sugars. That means no breads, no sweets. You eat lots of vegetables, meat, nuts, berries, etc. I had a very hard time the first couple of days of the diet without chocolate or my daily latte but I have adjusted. The lack of beer and wine on the diet has been a little trying at times also. But I love vegetables anyway so I have been eating lots of those.

The first phase of the diet should go on 2 weeks but I won't be able to keep that up. I have to be in Las Vegas most of next week for work and let's face it, who wants to be on a restrictive diet while in Vegas? I will do the best I can and pick up the diet again when I return. But then ... Read More »

By Julie on 11/6/2008 7:31 PM

Since Hurricane Ike traipsed through our little kingdom here on the gulf coast, the local fence builders have been crazy busy, along with roofers, tree removal companies, and other businesses which help clean up and fix up after a storm.

Our town is fairly new, having been established only in the 1940's when Dow Chemical decided to build one of their largest operations here on the gulf coast. So the town is laid out with many neighborhoods and very delineated business districts. In the neighborhoods, everyone's back yards are mostly isolated behind wooden fences.

But then the hurricane came plowing through and tore many fences down. The upside to that: we all got to know our neighbors better. We could stroll into each other's yards without going around through the front gates. We could help each other out with the massive cleanup from the storm. We could commiserate over the lack of electricity for weeks.

Sadly though, the fence bui ... Read More »