Thursday, November 17, 2011

Thanksgiving is coming . . .!

The onset of the holiday season became more real, yesterday, when I actually sat down and made up my chore list for Thanksgiving. I'm not a terribly organized person but I do rely on lists to see me through company dinners and Christmas parties. The most important guest for Thanksgiving arrived . . . and is in the freezer . . . a twenty-pound turkey! And, said turkey was only 47 cents a pound. This is a nice savings when everything else in the grocery stores continue to soar up in price. My new shopping plan is to stock up on products I use when they go on sale for prices only seen four years ago or so. I don't use coupons much but I still save in shopping only for sales. Also, the fact that I make most of our food myself saves a lot of money. Bread at the store can cost up to four or five dollars for a good brand while making my own, including grinding grain, costs pennies . . . and tastes better, too.

After a quick trip to the store for yarn for a project I'm working on, I'm sorting out my cookie recipes. I keep a lot of them on-line so when I make my baking decisions, I just run off copies and clip them to the refrigerator for easy reference when I bake. I dug out several 'antique' recipe books my mother gave me that date back to the 1950's. It was like a trip down memory lane as I recognized recipes my mother used to make at the holidays and I had forgotten about. My proposed project, during Advent, is to get my recipes for cookies collected, typed up, and put in booklet form so my children will also have some great memories at hand.

I got a good start on my crocheting project last night. It was going way too smoothly as I suddenly realized the finished shawl I was matching up to the new one ordered . . . did not match! Sure, both were off-white but the new yarn now has a sheen so I am off to purchase enough yarn to redo the adult-sized one. God likes to keep me on my toes! I almost finished the one shawl while I watched television last night so they both should be done and mailed off in good time.

Today, I'm making turkey soup with the leftovers from our 'trial' turkey from the weekend. Seems kind of backwards to have turkey leftovers before Thanksgiving! I'm also going to try the recipe for leftover stuffing dumplings for the soup. My son is a great kid in that he is always open to trying any new recipe I come up with. The only complaint I get from my family is that I don't usually have a recipe when I cook dinner so seldom can repeat and especially enjoyed meal!

We can tell the weatherman might be correct about the possibilty of rain this weekend. Whenever there is the slightest chance of rain, our dog drags out her pillow from the dog house and leaves it exposed to the elements. The pillow was out last night! Chick is a very mellow dog. She lays out in the sunshine during the day and isn't even interested in the multitude of little sparrows that wade in her water bowl and nibble on her dry dog food. She does have a good memory, however. During the summer, we purchased some of those tiny packets of fancy dog food on sale and put it over her dry food for a treat. When I came home from shopping, I had gotten five packets and set them on the table as we put away the groceries. Chick immediately jumped up and when into her 'pointer' mode, eyes fixed on the goodies on the table.

I think those fancy dog food packets are funny with their fancy names. The one she had last night actually had miniature pasta in it. I did hear that the taste group for developing new pet foods are humans! Dogs don't buy dog food so I guess the names, etc. on the package have to appeal to the owners. Not a job I would want, that's for sure. It is all I can do to open those goopy packets and dump it on the dog's food. Taste it? Not me!

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