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overstocked
November 10, 2014
We drove down to Sycamore on Saturday to meet Daddy for lunch, so we could get to see him before he left for Phoenix (his flight was today). We went to a cool place on the courthouse square; a pub and grill in an old drygoods store from the 1870s called P.J.'s Courthouse. Fantastic food--Spouse had a Maxwell St. Polish sausage, I had a reuben, and Daddy had a burger, and they were all great. They all came with a huge servign of hand-cut fresh fries, which were amazing and perfect.
And we had a nice little visit. Spouse programmed Dad's electronic timer for the lights at the house, Dad gave me my mom's sewing machine. That excited me a bit, since mine got ruined when the bathtub drain blew out back in 2012. This is the Brother machine I bought her in 2008 for a combination birthday/momday gift, so I know it is a nice one. It's filthy (Oh, Mommy...you were in such bad shape, weren't you?) and needs to be oiled, but everything is there and I look forward to playing with it. I have some old sewing projects downstairs that I will finish, to get me started. And I would like to take a machine-quilting class, now that I have a machine again.
It was good to see Dad, and get to give him a smooch and wish him a safe journey--he's getting the heck out just in the nick of time, because the weather is getting ready to turn to utter shite--temps turing to freezing cold, and parts of the midwest are supposed to get a foot of snow this week.
Yes, winter is fast upon us, and Spouse is in full-on squirrel mode. He's stockpiling food like a doomsday prepper. I honestly don't know what I'll do with it if he brings home any more groceries, because he has filled every shelf, cupboard, freezer, and fridge. After we got home from Meijer on Saturday, I put my foot down and told him he simply mustn't buy any more for a while.
So on Sunday, he went to Festival and Aldi. Facepalm.
How, you may ask, did he get away with it? Simple. He knows my buttons, and he pushed the one marked "Seasonal Baking". This weekend I got cookie icing (Aldi had Betty Crocker icing tubes for $1.99!), almond extract, flour, butter, a bag of gorgeous extra-fancy, multicolor raisins, and Cognac for the fruitcakes.
And a bag of Halloween-themed Tollhouse chips that were marked down to eighty cents. I baked those up into cookies yesterday, and so Spouse could take some treats to work. Learned something that pissed me off, too--Nestle has apparently downsized the package again, and a bag is only 10 ounces! Which screws up every recipe I have that calls for a 12-ounce bag of chips. I did not want to have to go buy extra chips, so I dug around in my baking cubby, found a partial bag of Reese's chips, and threw in a big handful to make up the difference. It made a surprisingly yummy cookie! Not very chocolatey, because the Tollhouse chips were a mix of regualar morsels and "white chocolate" (bright orange, actually). But the PB chips added an interesting element.
I had baked up a small batch of plain (just a sprinkle of turbinado sugar on top) sugar cookies on Friday, using dough from the Festival bakery. I had intended to bake up the remaining dough into cookies yesterday and decorate them for Spouse to take in. But once he found those marked-down morsels, I could tell he was really wanting me to make homemade cookies. What the heck--it isn't that much work anymore, I enjoy doing it, and I had the time and the supplies, so I made a batch. Used the KitchenAid recipe that makes six and a half dozen, so there were plenty for him to take to work, and still have a cookie jar full at home.
Didn't really do much else this weekend--except put my foot down and use the new washing machine myself. No wonder he didn't want to share! It is so darned easy...I honestly hadn't realized what a pain my old SQ was getting to be. This one is a set and forget, self-propelled, effortless dream. And it seems to be getting stuff really clean, too. I did three loads (Spouse did the rest), and everything came out perfectly. I need to pop my electric blanket in and get it washed so it can hang to dry, as I expect to be needing it very soon.
Since Spouse made the decision that he wanted to stay home for Thanksgiving (honestly--he doesn't consult me--and I really don't care), he went into overdrive with meal planning and grocery-acquisition. We currently have, on hand, every single element of our holiday dinner.
From tomato juice for the traditional (for him--I hate 'em) Bloody Marys, to whipped topping for the pumpkin pie (for me--he hates it), we've got it all. We are read-Y. If Thanksgiving was tomorrow, we could pull it off without a hitch. He has planned the following menu:
Cocktails and appetizers (cheese, summer sausage & crackers)
Roast Turkey
Cranberry sauce
Stuffing with homemade sausage
Mashed potatoes & homemade turkey gravy
Whipped sweet potatoes
Peas and carrots
Crescent rolls
Choice of pie--pumpkin or chocolate cream
Seems like a whole lot of trouble to go to for just the two of us, but he seems to be pretty happy at the idea of cooking his feast, so who am I do say him nay? We haven't done a home Thanksgiving in a few years. Back in the days when I had to be up at 3:00 on Friday to work Black Friday, we really couldn't go much of any place for our turkey, and it got to be a sort of tradition to stay home. Then we went to P&E's for many years, and to the Pfister for the last few. Time to change it up again and get back to our roots. It will be nice to lounge around a bit instead of having to get dressed up and go out.
"Black Friday" is fruitcake baking day, which will tie me up for a good chunk of the day. It truly is a major project. But I refuse to do any shopping or even leave the house from Wednesday night till Friday afternoon, so I will be home and have time.
It used to be safe to go out on Thanksgiving day, at least--but so many stores have decided to ruin Thanksgiving now that I say Frack it.
Honestly--it nauseates me that now we cannot even have one full day in this country where we abstain from acquiring useless shit and take time to appreciate all the useless shit we already have. Nope! Bolt that holiday dinner, wave bye-bye to grandma, and hit the stores to buybuybuybuybuy!!!
Maybe I've got the crotchets, but I am so...disinterested in acquiring more crap. If I find it useful, fine--I'll get it. I mean--I've bought pants, purses, sweaters, jeans, e-books, new phones, and a new washing machine recently, so obviously I am not entirely opposed to spending some money. But all of that is stuff I utilize every day, so I feel justified. But I see so many people like my mom, caught in an endless loop of hauling home carloads of excess junk.
Thus endeth the sermon. And if you want to pin me down on a lust for something that is completely unnecessary (even though it useful at the same time)...fine. Guilty.
All I want for Christmas is a fountain pen.
Reading:
Still reading Gaudy Night, and I think I gave up on "The Clarion" again. It just isn't holding my interest. Instead, I started "Living Alone" (1919), by Stella Benson. Per Wikipedia, "Living Alone is a fantasy novel about a woman whose life is transformed by a witch.� It's...weird.
Listening: Counting Crows, Goo Goo Dolls, Green Day, Live, Sublime
At Random:
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