Starting right after Thanksgiving, my mother has gone full-boar into Christmas decorating.  This is probably to make up for the fact that she was so depressed that Prodigal Son was in Japan last year, she did no decorating, not even a tree.

I suppose I can’t complain: I do love Christmas decorating and some traditions.  I’m a “secular humanist”, and therefore, celebrate “Secular Christmas.”  Religious groups will try to get people back to the “true meaning” of Christmas: celebrating family, togetherness, and helping fellow men – all of which I fully support, but I will not adhere to the “religious overtones” of the season.  I’m just not that into religion.

I digress.

So, I have what my brother lovingly refers to as PS3 thumbs (aching, gnarled joints) from bending hundreds of wire loops to adhere ornaments to.  I have two fatty cats who really enjoy sitting in the base of the tree; and if I can’t save the boughs of the tree from the cats, I will save the glass ornaments from getting destroyed when they launch in or out of the tree.

I also have to decorate the main banister at the stairwell.  I think half the reason my parents bought the house they live in now is because of the Christmas-decorating-possibilities this banister has.  I’m planning on festooning it with pine boughs, lights, and stylized poinsettias.  It’s going to be epic.

In addition to home-decorating, I have a new berry-wreath for my office door, and lit pine-garland for around my door.  I’m very excited, even if my next-door-neighbor co-worker is a huge Grinch (I feel that I can say this safely, as my girlfriend, K, is his wife, so I know him outside of work, too.)

1. Do you cook all or part of the meal?
   I make the apple pie, and I help with everything else.
2. How much do you spend buying groceries for the meal?
   My portion cost me $8 this year: it was the apples that really cost me, what with off-season produce and whatnot.
3. Do you eat at home or go to someone else’s?
   It depends.  I don’t feel very particularly, one was or the other.
4. Describe your perfect bite?
   Turkey, stuffing, gravy, green bean casserole, and cranberry goo.
5. White meat or dark?
   They both have their appeal; I’m not picky.
6. Stuffing with giblets or without?
   Ew, no giblets, that’s just…ech.
7. Anything you won’t eat at the Thanksgiving meal?
   Hmmm…ham.  My MIL has ham and turkey sometimes, and I just don’t like ham.
8. Carve Mr. Gobble at the table or serve on a platter?
   On a platter.
9. Favorite pie?
   My own apple; but if Gram was still alive, hers would beat mine, hands down.
10. Formal table or Chinet?
    Formal.  If there is any holiday for formal tableware, it’s Thanksgiving.
11. Your menu:
    Turkey w/Gravy
    Mashed Potatoes
    Roasted Sweet Potatoes w/ Honey Butter
    Good Old Country Stuffing
    Green Bean Casserole
    Cranberry Jelly
    Rolls w/ Irish Butter
12. Favorite leftover?
    An entire reheated plate of everything from the night before.
13. Extended family, friends, both or just the immediate family for dinner?
    One year, I’m going to have just friends over: it seems like the least stressful way to do it.
14. After dinner, do you go to the latest movie or watch football on TV or just a turkey induced snooze?
    I usually get stuck cleaning the kitchen; but this year I get to clean and decorate the tree by myself.
15. Do you watch the Macy’s Parade?
    Nah, I’ll pass.
16. Christmas decorations up before or after?
    After Thanksgiving.  I’m really, really particular about Christmas decorating, and timing is everything.
17. Black Friday shopping or sleep in?
    Mostly shopping, but not at big boxes stores – that’s insanity.
18. Any special Thanksgiving tradition?
    Nope.  I’m not terribly sentimental.
19. Favorite thing about Thanksgiving?
    Using the formal dinnerware.
20. Favorite Thanksgiving memory?
    Dinner at my in-laws house for Thanksgiving, with The Boy, The Brothers (and dates), and the Uncle and Aunt.  It was so much fun: it was casual, no stress, everyone pitched in to clean, and everyone enjoyed everyone else’s company.  It was awesome.

So, as the start of the next phase in relocating my office to the basement, the plan is to remodel both the office side and the living side of the basement.  Part of this means that there needs to be paneling put up over the cinder-block-and-plaster walls.  This also means that the bookshelves in the living section need to be emptied, and pulled away from the walls.  So, my phase is that I started moving the books.

I cannot believe how many of the books survived the move from our house in the Heights to out here. But apparently, my father was insistent that all of the books get packed up.

I am so glad that he got a barn that he can tinker in: it keeps him out of Goodwill and from buying nickel- and dime-priced paperback books from the ’60s and bringing them home.  There have to be hundreds upon hundreds of paperback novels alone.  Do not let me forget to mention the hardbound books, either: we have a copy of The Hunter’s Encyclopedia from 1968.

My father does not hunt.  He has never hunted.  We have no need for this book. Or tattered copies of diet books and encyclopedias from the 60s-80s; or travel guides for the Soviet Union (oh yes, I did not mis-type).

What frustrates me about it is that it’s just so much stuff that we have to dispose of.  And I’m not really excited about giving it back to Goodwill; I don’t want to try and sell useless copies of Agatha Christie novels on the internet; and even though they are useless, it seems pretty abhorrent to use them as fuel for the firepit.

It was certainly a testimony to getting a Kindle, or thinking twice about buying another object that gets used and just sits.  This is a huge reason why I love the library: first of all, free; second, I can figure out if I really want a book before I buy it.

It also speaks volumes about how amazing the interenet is for free information.  I certainly believe that guide manuals and books are extremely important to have in a hard copy if necessary.  But I also believe that if you’re just a lay person trying to get a snippet of information, the internet is going to be your new best friend.  Hell, even Wikipedia is a good jumping-off point.

(Aside: does it make me sad about the internet over books? Yes and no.  Books are irreplaceable, but my father’s avid “collecting” of books is testimony to how useful the digital age is for information.)

I’m not looking forward to the next steps of this project, which includes picking out which books need to get pitched, trying to find a book-recycling program, and re-assembling the bookshelves.

Baked and baked and iced and iced for the bake sale to raise money for the Cleveland Food Bank, dying for a cigarette the whole time.

I gave into eating icing straight from the pastry bag (mmmmmaplesyrup), but not to the cigarette.  Go me!

Holy crap: today was so busy, and my brain is so mush, that I might have to make this it….

Well, except for the fact that I’m working on my baked goods for the Food Bank Bake Sale at work: pumpkin whoopee pies with maple cream filling and…what else?

I’m having trouble thinking of the “what else”.  What would go over well with a group of financial planners and their staff?

Recently at work, we were able to take a cooking class at the Viking Store at Legacy Village that had been graciously sponsored by a wholesaler.

I had a ton of fun, and got to learn (which, besides getting hammered on complimentary wine, was the point).  Specifically: knife skills.  I got to use a Shun knife, and let me tell you (what every experienced cook knows) – holy crap, what a difference a sharp knife makes!  At home, it takes me an eternity to get through chopping a single vegetable; but during this class, I was actually disappointed as I was nearing the end of the vegetables I had been assigned to cut.

I asked the instructor what he thought some of the best knives were, and he said Wusthoff and Henckels are great brands from Germany, and any knvives made in Japan are great.  So, I put three Henckels knives on my Amazon wishlist, with the hopes that I will be able to get them for myself.  It makes a huge difference.

I cannot wait to enroll in some of their other cooking classes.  They are not inexpensive, but they are definitely worth it.

2.		J.A. Henckels

I spent the early part of this afternoon making both pumpkin whoopee pies and chocolate cupcakes.  I like the way the whoopee pies came out (well, I got my father’s approval, and he’s not one to mince his words), but the cupcakes were fairly average.  I personally don’t care for chocolate, in the least, so I can’t tell you if the cupcakes were good or not.

I might be a woman who is after a career, and alphabet soup after my name, and aspirations to run my own business and spend my own money on my own things, but I have a very domestic side to me.  Martha Stewart Living for December came in the mail the other day, and I’ve already leafed through it about three or four times, marking off different things I want to do this year.  I love to cook, bake, decorate and keep house.

I don’t think that these two traits are at odd with one another – in fact, I think it probably ups my street value.

My grandmother was always known as a phenomenal baker, and her piece de resistance was her pies.  I have wonderful and fond memories of her making both apple and strawberry rhubarb pies from scratch.  I have her recipe for pies, and I’ve tried my hand several time at pies.  When I’m successful, I love having baking-accolades lauded upon me: I’m proud of my work as a baker.  But oh, how the sun refuses to shine on the days I am not successful – there is no joy in Mudville.

Baking is tough: as Alton Brown says, it’s about chemistry.  For the record, I sucked really hard at Chemistry in high school (barely passed with a C-), and I wussed out and took a pseudo-chemistry class in college (and bombed the section about electron clouds in the beginning of the semester).  Crusts are about the hardest things I’ve ever had to master.  As one of the nuttier tricks I’ve tried, I’ve even resorted to making crust out in the garage because the ambient temperature in the house is enough to ruin the fats in the dough to make it impossible to roll out.  I would gladly take custard over crusts.

For the last three or so weeks, I’ve been making pies for work, for The Boy, and for the family.  I’ve gotten pretty confident with my crust-making abilities (even after I completely destroyed three pies I was supposed to make for the 4th of July), and so I didn’t have any reason to fear this particular batch.

But woe!  I was punished for my pride!  I knew the instant I began to add the final tablespoons of water to bring today’s batches of dough together that there was something terribly wrong with my crust.  But, I pursued, and tried to roll the dough out.  When it began to tear when I tried to turn it, I knew it was done for.

Since I’m such a terrible perfectionist, I wanted to say screw it, and throw everything out.  I understand that some people use store-bought crust, and believe me, I wish I could loosen my sphincter enough to just let Pillsbury take care of the tough work, but I can’t.  I cannot be conquered by crust.  Today, however, I reluctantly gave in and bought the ready-made crust.  I tried to doll it up with my raw sugar crust, but I knew I put the proverbial lipstick on a pig.

I think I might have to go on another self-imposed pie-making hiatus.

Twice a year, I try to change out my wardrobe for the appropriate season.  Since I’m not quite the domestic goddess that I play on TV, it starts out with the best if intentions, but it devolves into clothing recklessly shoved into two plastic tubs, only to be discovered in a wrinkled mass six months later.

The Boy is pretty much down for the count with what looks like the flu, so I figured that there was no time like the present to get my fall cleaning done.  In part, I had every intention of half-assing the project again this time: all I wanted to do was take the summer clothes out of the dresser and put the winter clothes in.  I figured I would be in and out in an hour, tops. (Foreshadowing.)

I was at it for four hours.  Not only have I gotten everything out of the drawers, but everything that was to be saved for next year, everything is carefully folded  and stacked in boxes with a couple of dryer sheets in them to keep them fresh.  I also went through and bagged up items for donation at my parents church, I re-arranged the drawers.  I cleaned out the closet, and ended up having two garbage bags of crap to throw out.  I even changed the light bulb in the bathroom that had been out since before my brother moved to Japan.

I have a dual personality about cleaning.  I will hoard things for years, knowing that someday, I will use them – I just know it.  Then, after about three years, the reality sinks in, and I go on a massive purge, and I throw nearly everything out.  Last night, I got rid of so many unflattering pieces – I have a 50-gallon garbage bag that is packed to the seams.  (I’m hoping that slowly and surely, I will replace those pieces with more classic, better-made pieces.)  I couldn’t believe how many boxes, magazines, shopping bags, and gift bags I was holding on to.  I need to figure out how to not let this happen again.

Though, I do have two tips from my cleaning experience:

1. Keep your expensive/dress shoes in the boxes: it may seem counter-productive and space-wasting to some, but I couldn’t imagine storing my shoes any other way.  Not only are the boxes stackable for space-saving, but it keeps those shoes from getting dusty, crushed, stained, what-have-you.  I know I was pissed when I found at the top of my closet racks a pair of shoes I know I paid $40, and they were mangled almost beyond wearing.  If I had saved the box, that wouldn’t have happened.
2. If you have some latent guilt about not having gone completely green and still get plastic bags when you shop – feel guilty no longer!  Use them to stuff your purses.  For the same reason you want to keep your shoes in the boxes, you want to stuff your purses.  You want the purses to keep their shape: this isn’t a warning just for those with expensive designer bags.  Even if you have the most soft, supple, Botoxed leather bag, it will crease if left slumped on its side with weight piled on it.  This is another take-my-word-for-it moment.

I do need to utilize the space under my bed, so I think ‘I’m going to go out today and get some of those long plastic storage containers and put my shoes whose boxes I’ve lost in those containers under my bed.