Gobble Gobble and Jingle Bells

I have been so pre-occupied with trying to get recipes on here that I have neglected my blogging duties. Writing a descriptive recipe is a lot harder than I foresaw it to be. I am somewhat of a perfectionist, so between my limited computer skills and being very new to cooking, it is a challenge to satisfy my "need to get it just right" tick. Over the weekend I started to get a little burned out from this thing, so I put it down and didn't allow myself to think about it for a day or so. Monday is now here, the boys are being very good and I feel like I can take a quiet moment to put a few thoughts in writing.

Well Nate's days at community college are coming to a close, 3 days and counting. As of last night he still has a 4.0, but is a little worried about the Chemistry final, but I'm not….that man can pull an A out of you know where and I have no idea how he does it. Still waiting on something to happen job wise, but we have a few back-up plans in place, just in case. Cross your fingers.

Thanksgiving is almost upon us. A time where you will probably travel at least a little, consume more food in a few days than you would normally in a whole week and see people you haven't seen all year. Turkey (baked, smoked or fried…my family in Texas usually has one of each), ham and pies galore….ooey gooey sweet potatoes and beloved green bean casserole…stuffing, giblet gravy (no wait, that's probably just something we did, sounds gross but oh so good, just can't think too hard about what you are consuming : ) and warm rolls...creamy mashed potatoes, cookies, cranberries, and all things pumpkin, I could go on like this all day. I believe I have 3 dinners to go to this year…I know what my New Year's resolution will have to be after all that wonderful food. This will be my first Thanksgiving in years not spent with my giant family back home, which is going to be very hard; but on the flip side, it means this is the first time in years we are spending it with my husband's family. The change in traditions will be nice to revisit and I'm glad the boys have a chance to spend the holidays here. We may still have to bring the Texas spirit to Iowa and throw something on the pit, preferably a turkey or brisket. One of the biggest differences from here to there will be the weather. We have no snow on the ground yet, but I'm sure there will be by the time turkey day rolls around. I think it would be really fun if the first snowman or sled ride of the year was spent with lots of family stuffed with food. I haven't found those extra special dishes I am going to contribute to the festivities yet, but I am still looking. I think I want to try to find a twist on a classic pie, some kind of melt in your mouth bread and a great veggie something.

For the 1^st time in my entire life, I am kind of wanting to go and experience Black Friday. The thought of a gazillion people pushing and fighting over merchandise…suffocating body heat, the deafening hum of all the voices and tight crowded spaces has always made me a little nervous. For some reason, probably the fact we have been so broke for a while, I am craving the granddaddy of all shopping fixes. So if anyone has a few hundred dollars they would like to donate to my retail therapy, by all means :). Christmas shopping in general up here has always had a special feel to it for me. Maybe it's the snow….but there is nothing like braving the weather, making the hour drive to Des Moines, fighting the crowds and finishing with a good meal at a nice restaurant. Money or not, I still want to at least go window shopping this season.

Pretty soon, we will be busting out the Christmas décor. We managed to bring my 10 or so boxes of decorations in the move. I think my mother-in-law is going to let me decorate the tree this year….it's one of my favorite things to do during the holidays. At one of my floral jobs that was a big part of the business. We would professionally decorate Christmas trees for hotels, restaurants, large businesses and fancy parties. There is actually an art to it….and I love it. I would love to start a business during the holidays doing just that, which I briefly tried a few years ago, however it was a short lived due to a small disaster. I learned that unlike businesses who just want something to look beautiful, people in their homes usually want it to be sentimental as well. I was doing a tree for a lady in a huge and beautiful house. She had most of her own stuff that was high quality and actually matched, all I really had to buy to make a masterpiece was lots of beautiful ribbon. The disaster came when she pulled out a huge box of heirloom ornaments passed down from a grandmother…yeah, I broke one and needless to say, she didn't call me to do it again the following year. Lesson learned. Even though I am usually very careful with my work, I am still gun shy to try again for people I don't know. So I will relish in the opportunity to do a tree for my mother-in-law, especially since I will probably be doing it with all my own decorations. I've always dreamed of someone asking me to do a tree from scratch; giving me an unlimited budget and allowing me to go and buy everything new…that would be amazing. No worries of breaking anything irreplaceable, plus getting to pick out what I want to work with. Yeah buddy, that would be awesome.

Can't wait for the holiday ball to get rolling. The boys are finally old enough to start getting excited about the approaching festivities.  I remember that feeling when I was a kid.  That magical feeling.  I'm so glad I get to watch my kids experience that.  Santa Clause and presents, special church services, family and friends, decorations and music....the whole works. I loved Christmas time then, and I love it now.  Ho Ho Ho let's get this party started!

This time of year is fattening, exhausting, fun and heart-warming. It creeps up so fast and is gone before you know it…leaving you feeling like another year is gone. Make every moment count this year; stop and appreciate the time spent with people you don't get to see often and take pleasure in all the small things that make the holidays special. Try not to stress, material grandeur is not nearly as important and love, laughter, good food and great company.

My Flower Girls

Hey there again…

It’s 11:53 pm (soon to be an hour less due to the time change) and I am eating dinner finally.  Smoked garlic-lime beef shishkabobs (a marinade you definitely have to try...I've posted the recipe under my page: "A little of This and That") and garlic mashed potatoes.  I started dinner at a respectable 5 o’clock, but with just about anything cooked on the pit you have to give yourself at least an hour grace period, especially when you have to marinate, then let the meat rest and  smoke till tender.  Supper wasn’t edible till around 9:30…but even then, I wasn’t ready to eat.

I am eating so late because I had a wonderful phone date with my girls back home.  This is a perfect opportunity to let you meet them.  I will change their names for sake of privacy...but just to let them know, their names will be changed to something else that starts with the first letter of their actual name…

My “girls” are a collaboration of cousins and wives of cousins.  The main group consists of me plus 4….Gerber, Aster, Daisy, and Rose (remember...made up and I am a florist a heart, so I went with flowers. For this entry I am Juniper : ).  Growing up and on into adulthood, I didn’t really ever have a big group of girlfriends. Right before we had our first child, my husband and I moved out to the country near (actually right on top) of a bunch of my family.  I quickly became very good friends with a circle of girls.  Even though we are all very much different, it's easy, maybe because we are all family of sorts.  Whatever it may be, it works.  Sure there’s the occasional drama that inevitably comes from a bunch of women, but at the end of the day (and maybe a bottle or 2 of wine) we come together and love one another for every fault, quality, talent and whatever else that makes us who we are. 

When I was moving from Texas to Iowa, they threw me one last little hurrah and gave me a beautiful James Avery butterfly ring.  I was wearing it when my husband and I went out with one of his high school buddies during the first month we were back in Iowa. On the ride to the resturaunt, Nate and his friend sat up front and I wedged myself between the boys carseats in the back.  When we arrived and I was crawling over one of the carseats, I didn’t realize I was holding the front door’s frame.  When our guest slammed his door shut, my entire right hand was slammed in with it.  I thought for sure all 4 of my fingers were broken.  I didn’t feel anything, but I figured it was shock numbing me.  The guy had no idea what had happened until I finally found my voice and as calmly as I could, asked him to open the door.  Not wanting to asess the damage…I slowly moved my fingers.  It appeared everything was still intact, all but one little nick from where the butterfly’s wing on the ring had been pushed into my skin…it had saved my hand.  Not only that, but it wasn’t the least bit bent…now that’s some Guardian Angel stuff.  I feel like even a 1000 miles away, my girls still have my back.

Gerber is married to one of my closest cousins.  My cousin and I are only 3 months apart and were best friends growing up.  We always said it would be neat to have our kids be as close in age so they could have what we had.  Sure enough, Gerber and I got pregnant a month a part (to the day)  with each of our first children.  Up until we moved, our kids were great playmates.   That has been one of the hardest things about moving….I know toddlers forget so quickly.
From the first time I met Gerber, I knew it was BFF’s for life.  We have been through a lot together and time only brings us closer.  I did the flowers for her wedding, she was there for the birth of my 2^nd son.  We lived together for a hot minute and have spent countless days sitting and drinking coffee on her front porch visiting.  Man I miss those days.

Aster is the only one out of the girls that is my blood.  We are first cousins, 4 years apart and she has always been my hero.  As a little girl I looked up to her and secretly pretended she was my big sister.  I am so grateful that as adults we have become such wonderful friends.  We may not talk often (even when I was still in Texas), but when we do it’s like no time has passed.  She has one little girl that reminds me a little of myself when I was young...totally ok with not having a girl of my own, I will just live vicariously through her.   Our husbands (I  have also known her husband  since I was a kid) get along great and it’s always a hoot and a holler when the 4 of us get together, let loose, enjoy some good tequila or wine, great food and fine cigars (well the guys anyway).   

Daisy (that’s cool daisy works for her name, it’s her favorite flower) is a married in, but if she isn’t family I don’t know what is.  She is some kind of super glue that binds us all.  She is a wonderful woman full of layers.  We have been friends since her kids were in my wedding years ago.  I hardly knew her then, but that didn’t stop her from staying up till all hours of the night before my big day, helping me get all the flowers done.  We became closer over the years…she witnessed the birth of my first son (and then some in that delivery room...apparently the baby wasn’t crowning) and I witnessed her last.  She has pulled me through one crisis after another and snapped me out of many emotional spirals and back into reality on more than one occasion (my 2 and 3 year old are less than 13 months apart…I’m allowed to be a little nuts).  After the birth of her 3^rd child and becoming a stay at home like me, we spent many days carting around kids, shopping for unnecessary things and eating lots of oh so missed Mexican food.  Mmmmm….Chuy’s.

Rose and I have kind of a quiet friendship.  She’s a sweet but strong one. We are very similar in so many ways… but sometimes those are the things that make us go for long periods of time without hearing from each other.  I’m horrible keeping in touch and getting wrapped up in whatever I am doing at the moment.  She has boys like me (but one more, I can’t even imagine) and is in school, so she stays plenty busy.  Her boys are so great with my boys…again, hard to move away from that.  Her and her husband (my cousin, are you getting all this straight?) are another couple we get along with great.  Football season is here again and I miss getting together, firing up the grill and yelling obscenities at the game.

Tonight was Daisy’s son’s birthday slumber party.  This means the husbands and the sons all gather at someone’s house. The boys do boy things and the husbands have a few beers and probably play music (that’s my family). The women take the itty bitty babies and daughters and go to another house to drink wine and be a little silly.  This is how I got my phone date. Knowing they would all be together, I called to crash the party.  I had a nice long chitchat with each of them (minus Rose, she couldn’t make it : (
and it almost felt like I was there with them, hanging out in the backyard, sipping the wine and laughing about anything and everything.

It is so bittersweet…I miss them all terribly.  However it is such needed therapy to hear all their voices having such a great time enjoying one another.

So it’s now much later then when I started…I am going to finish my wonderful food and call it a night.  I just had to give props and credit for my survival to the fabulous women back in Texas that are awaiting my return.

True Friendship is the key to a great deal of sanity. It takes a real friend to understand your crazies and make you feel "normal". I have 4. I am a very, very lucky woman.

It's All BUSY-ness

Do you ever look forward to Monday just so you can recover from the weekend?  I feel like that has been me just about every weekend since we moved to Iowa.  Life is so busy up here, which is strange to me, you would think coming from a big city, here would seem simple and slow….but absolutely not.  It’s like every moment must be filled with one chore, obligation, function or SOMEthing after another. I’m not complaining about all of it, staying busy has probably kept the homesick monster at bay a little.  However, I am an island kind of girl at heart.  The vision of a perfect moment is kicking back in a hammock somewhere warm, sipping a drink and watching the world move just a little slower. 

This past weekend was no exception.  Of course there were all the Halloween festivities…which btw, we will be trick or treating on a much different scale next year.  30 kids in the wind and cold getting on and off a trailer is just a little more chaos than I care to voluntarily expose myself to.  I would take much more delight in watching just my 2 boys running from house to house excitedly trying to fill their bag.   The neighborhood that we are in right now does a block Halloween party every year.  A couple months ago, they had a neighborhood potluck.  At this party we were told Halloween was off the hook and so much fun.  Everyone got into it.   SO...last minute my husband and I threw together cave man and women costumes, complete with ragged clothing, teased hair and dirty faces to go along with the boys dinosaur costumes. We set off up the driveway with my cute little T-Rex and Triceratops roaring a loud and constant roar behind us (yeah, that wasn’t a costume choice I regret…sarcasm.  I think their roar started Wednesday when they got the costumes and didn’t stop until Sunday). We headed to the party thrown by bunch of people we don’t really know. We walk in and of course we are the only adults out of 30 or more that dressed up.  Needless to say, once food was ate (I made these really cute white chocolate covered strawberries that looked like ghost and crème filled pumpkin cupcakes….yummy) and the trailer ride was done, we headed home early.  It actually worked out that we didn’t have that want to stay and play, we had our biggest BBQ order to date. 

Guess now is a good time to explain our little income supplement (that really hasn’t supplemented anything).  While living in Texas, my dad taught my husband the way around a BBQ pit…not these gas or dinky charcoal grills, but a real Texas smoker.  Ribs to brisket to beer-butt chicken, fish, oysters, and pork…you name it, we have probably smoked it (on the pit…not rolled up in paper : ).  Not such a big deal living in the Lone Star State, but up here is the land of the gas grill, so we thought we might be able to market some good ole Texas brisket with southern sides.  We take orders during the week for the following weekend.  We smoke the briskets the night before and have it cut, packaged and to your door by 11:30 either Saturday or Sunday. It hasn’t really taken off how we would have liked, but we get a few orders here and there that basically pays for whatever we decide to do on Sunday while watching the football game (BIG Texans fans, and they definitely don’t air the games on local channels up here….we usually head to a bar with Sunday Ticket at noon on Sundays, classy).

When we first started, it was just the meat…but people kept asking if we had sides.  So we expanded to potato salad, coleslaw, pies, sausage and my personal favorite, jalapeno poppers.  I have been in such a “learning how to cook” kick, that I am even making the buns that go with the brisket from scratch. I'm still trying to nail a couple recipes to perfection, but it will come.  I made my very first, from scratch pie just a month or so ago, and already they aren’t bad.   We have our own seasoning rub that I make in bulk as well as a secret BBQ sauce.   I’m pretty proud of how our culinary skills have blossomed.

Well this particular weekend we managed to get orders for 2 ½ briskets (and they take about 10-12 hours to cook), coleslaw, potato salad (my dad’s recipe), a pecan pie, sausage, 2 dozen jalapeno poppers and 2 batches of homemade bread.  I stepped in the kitchen around noon on Thursday and felt like I didn’t step out until Sunday morning.   Along with the things I HAD to make, for some reason, felt the urge to try two new recipes, Pecan Tassies and a variation of the poppers.  Cooking and trying new techniques in the kitchen has become one of my favorite new pastimes, so it’s not like I am complaining.   Yesterday I tried my hand at jalapeno cheddar challah bread (from scratch of course….one day it occurred to me that anything you can buy frozen or pre-made in a store or restaurant, can be built from the ground up at home, and I think that is pretty cool.) Today was garlicky spaghetti with meatballs, a French loaf turned into the best garlic bread I have ever put in my mouth, and a variation of my apple pie.  Some other from scratch recipes I have tried…chicken pot pie, Ragu Bolognese, caramel apple cheesecake, baked potato soup, smothered pork chops and several kinds cookies, just to name a few.  If you would ever like a recipe for one thing or another…I will be happy to share, just ask.

The brisket business might be in danger of sputtering out before it even really gets started….Nate is done with his fall semester on the 17^th and will almost definitely be going to work full time. Depending on the hours he gets, it may be too much to do both.  He has had a phone interview for a safety position at a hospital (Methodist), which is phenomenal because it’s kind of middle of the road in the leap from Physical Therapy to Occupational Safety.  From what it sounds like, it went well.  He is 1 of 4 out of over 50 candidates for the position.  We should be finding out soon if he made it to the next round…a face to face interview with the guy that called him.  From there, he will get interviewed by a panel of 4 or 5, plus background checks.  You would think he was going into the secret service or something.  Even if he does score the position, it doesn’t start until January.  So we are still in the process of figuring out what to do in the meantime.

We have found an online school that offers a Masters program in Safety that he is looking into.  If it is recognized by all the places that matter (employers, Board of Certified Safety Professionals, ect.) then that is awesome and he will be starting that in January.  Right now he is taking Abnormal Psych, Behavioral Psych, General Chemistry and Physics….and acing them all.  Genius. I am so proud of my husband.

So that’s kind of an update of our life at the moment.  I’ve got to throw a few of these out every once in a while to let you know just where we stand on the path to our future. 

Right now, I’m going to kick back, drink some wine and relax.

Tomorrow brings a new day and with it unpredictable directions.  So close your eyes, take a deep breath and embrace what may come your way.