Pasta

Christmas dinner was a success - Mindy got her fill of turkey and Andrew didn't eat it all in one sitting. The day started off with eggs benedict, then present opening and then dinner. On boxing day we decided to make some homemade pasta using my pasta maker that I've yet to use. We found a nice recipe for agnolotti - a meat and cheese stuffed ravioli served with mushrooms and a little grated parmigiano-reggiano. First Mindy and I made the dough from scratch, making a well of flour and cracking eggs into the middle, then combining and kneading for 10 minutes. We ended up saving half the dough for later since there was just too much. The agnolotti were very delicate and the filling very tasty. I will make that again. Yesterday we used the left over dough to make fettucini noodles which we served with some tomato sauce as a light lunch. All in all it is a bit time consuming to make your own noodles but the tooth/texture is excellent.

Christmas Eve Dinner

The prime rib turned out excellent - nicely medium rare to rare - just the way I like it. The yorkshire puddings didn't fall and the gravy wasn't too bad after I added in some salt. It seems I can never make a good gravy, but Mindy tells me it is because I don't add enough salt. I shudder to think how much salt must be in restaurant gravy! Roast potatoes and green beans rounded out the meal very nicely. I actually had some wine with dinner and I must admit it wasn't that bad. For dessert Mindy made a blueberry pie and it turned out great. She says she has never made a pie from scratch before. Blueberry is pretty easy so it is a good one to start with. After dinner I tried Andrew's new scotch but didn't care for it at all. It must be an acquired taste, Mindy and Andrew both love it. So once again I just had a few beers, and, once again, I am the first up this morning while the bozos are still sleeping.

Snowflakes

The only snowflakes we will see around here are the ones that my aunt sent me. They are her first attempt at doing free standing lace and they turned out excellent. The level of detail is incredible and I have them hung on the tree right in front. Very pretty! Thanks Auntie! The forecast is for a warm 64 degrees today but by tomorrow it is back down to 50 and more rain is in store as well. Last night Mindy and Andrew were both banging the drums making way too much noise. I am not sure what is in store for today. Mindy and Andrew are still both sleeping in after drinking about 1.8 L of wine last night. I am not a fan of wine so I had a margarita and a couple of beers. So perhaps we will be taking it easy tonight. I'll make a big fruit salad for breakfast to start the day and then we'll go from there.

The Tree

My sister arrived very very late last night. Her plane from Chicago got delayed 2 times and we picked her up at 1:15am. Which means we didn't get to bed until around 4:00am this morning. A very late night. Today we went grocery shopping, booze shopping (Andrew bought the Lagavulin) and tree shopping. We took a forest walk with the cats in the incredibly warm 70 degree weather - Mindy was sweating! Then it was time to decorate the tree. I guess it turned out not too bad for our first attempt. The tree only cost 5 dollars so you can't beat last minute shopping. Tonight we will be making dinner (pasta with artichokes and black eyed peas) and then watching a movie, Mindy's choice.

Vandals

Yesterday evening we went out for a nice dinner at the Outback in Anderson and then saw the movie 'Casino Royale'. I think the new Bond is great and the movie was pretty good except the ending seemed to be rather short and the plot wrapped up too quickly. In the beginning there is a great stunt sequence with Bond chasing a bad guy by jumping over/in/through/onto lots of buildings/windows/structures etc. and the whole sequence was really great. I was exhausted just watching it! We only watch movies at home now so going to the theatre was a treat and I am glad that we didn't pick a bad movie. But then we came out of the movie theatre to find that some loser vandal had smashed the driver's side mirror of our car. We called the cops and filed a report for insurance. Andrew took this photo with his cell phone camera. Now Andrew has to take the car to the dealer and get an estimate for repairs. He is not sure whether to claim it on insurance or not. Depends on crunching the numbers. What a drag though - a nice dinner and movie spoiled at the end with a hassle. But luckily the car in general is ok and driveable, so it could have been much worse.

One More Week of Work

One more week of work to go and then it's the holidays and we get a good stretch of time off. I am ready for a break. My sister will be down for most of that week so that will be fun. This past friday we went to a staff work party and then on saturday we watched movies and went on a walk with the cats. We saw the new 'Pirates of the Carribean' which had lots of action and sword fighting. Not really my kind of movie but Andrew liked it. Yesterday we started the re-organization to prepare the guest room for sleeping in. We have to kick the cats out and wash all the bedding, and we also moved the acoustic drum set. Now I have 2 sets of drums in my bedroom. Just what I always imagined I'd have! Yeah. We also did a little Christmas shopping for some tree decorations and stuff. We will save the actual tree buying for when my sister is here. She wants to participate in the decorating so she might as well start at the beginning with picking out the tree and helping us haul it into the house.

Forest Walk

Thursday was our annual staff Christmas luncheon at Just More BBQ. I took home the placemat to show Andrew - it has all the local 'mountain talk' expressions and their meanings. We really do hear people saying many of these, but one of my favorites is not listed: 'might could'. As in 'We might could add another brick path over there next year.' We woke up to a very cold and frosty yard this morning. Andrew had to get up early in order to proctor a final exam starting at 8:00am, and he is just off to another right now that starts at 6:30pm. So his Saturday was basically shot! Our temperatures over night of late have gone down into the teens - very hard freezes. It's amazing that the pansies and the italian parsley plants handle these temps without a problem. If anyone ever calls you a pansy take it as a compliment! This morning I finished knitting up Andrew's slippers and he needs them badly - his current ones are leaving little tuffs of wool on the floors which the cats are eating up. After that the outside temps had warmed up a bit so I went outside to install the benches in the greenhouse. I decided not to stain them and just left them natural and in time they will weather to a light grey. A little too lazy to stain I guess, but I also like the smell of the redwood and the grey will provide a bit of contrast to the stained wood. I took this picture using the self-timer on the camera - first time I had used that. Once the benches were finished the cats and I went on a very long forest walk while Andrew banged on his drums. Our poor dock is sitting on mostly dry land - if it wasn't for the beaver this whole area would be bone dry. I took the camera out to try to get some shots of the cats on the walk. I guess I treat the cats like dogs because I had never had a cat before, and thus the cats like to go on walks and stick right with me just like a dog would. They love to climb the trees and sometimes it seems they are deliberately showing off because they climb the tree right next to us as though to say 'Look how high I can go!'. Sometimes Sidney gets a little too high - when she was little Andrew had to bring her down once on a ladder. But for the most part we just walk along the deer paths and have a good look around at things. I love having the corps land right behind us. It feels like my own personal forest!

Wilson!

When we go grocery shopping each week I like to take our blood pressure at the machine. Last year at this time Andrew's blood pressure was around 150/100 and we were getting a little worried. So we quit smoking, started exercising and changed our diet to emphasize fruits/vegetables and legumes, and cut down on the animal products and junk food. I haven't kept up with the exercise but Andrew has and it has paid off. Today his reading was excellent and on average he is now around 130/80. Hopefully by next year he will be down to 120/70 which would be great! This afternoon we had a great day of sailing. The wind wasn't blowing that much (about 7-8mph) but it was just enough to practice some manoeuvers. Andrew has signed us up for the next set of sailing lessons this coming March in Pensacola so we need to review our last class and be well versed in basic sailing and safety drills. We each had lots of helm time today and practiced man-overboard and heave-to. The man-overboard drill is kinda fun. The crew throws out the lifesaving cushion without warning and shouts "man overboard". Then the helmsman has to head away on a beam reach. I kept yelling "Wilson!! Wilson!!!" as we got further and further away from the floating cushion. At about 3 boat lengths away we tack into the wind and head back towards the cushion, keeping the jib luffed (floppy) and approaching with the cushion on the boat's leeward side. This means the boat is blocking the wind from the cushion. The crew then hooks the cushion and the helmsman sets the boat back on its course. Heaving-to is just making the boat come to a stop and keeping it stopped by placing the mainsail, jib and tiller all in opposition to each other. It was also great to be using the tiller that Andrew recently stripped, stained and re-varnished. Much nicer on the hands!

Cheap rocks

This week we tried two new dishes. The first was a stuffed red cabbage dish that Andrew picked out. We won't be making this one again because the red cabbage just wasn't cooked well and didn't taste that great. But the stuffing inside was quite good - it had raisins, apples, cottage cheese, red onion, carrots, chickpeas, honey, soy sauce and apple cider vinegar. The second dish was merely adapting an italian sausage pasta dish by substituting gimme lean sausage. I find that the vegetarian substitutes for sausage and pepperoni are very good since their taste is mostly due to the spices so the actual meat content is a non-issue. The week went by as usual, nothing much to report. On Friday after work we hung up our lame christmas light display. It is more of a bistro look I guess but then I never was much for decorating. The neighbors have all done it up like crazy but at least we have something. My sister should be coming down for christmas this year and she is insisting on a tree and some decorations so that will be something new for us in this house. Yesterday was a great yard work day and we got a lot accomplished. We started off by going to the quarry to get some pea gravel to finish off the greenhouse floor. We had quite a bit left over and decided to use it up by putting in french drains around the greenhouse and the shed. Evidence from a recent rain storm shows that water is getting inside the greenhouse coming in up through the floor, so we must try to carry that water away. Luckily the ground was soft from the rains so the digging was easy. We were also able to use up all our bits and pieces of drainage pipe and extra landscape fabric that we had lying around under the house from other projects. I love it when you don't have to buy anything and you just use up what you already have. Andrew then went to the store to buy some mulch which we spread out to stop the dirt from splashing up on the greenhouse and shed walls. I think that ends it for the hardscaping this season. We are both a little burned out so the last project, the brick paths, will have to wait until next year.