July 20, 2011

Today has been a really good day. I got my political science project and worksheet done and posted. I also got my What is a Place essay completed and ready to post as soon as we get the kinks in the system worked out for posting. What a big relief, like a ton of bricks lifted off of me.I still don't care too much for elephant, but it is a much smaller piece to have to eat right now (figuratively of course, I would never knowingly eat and elephant). I actually just got done with a nice bowl of beanie weenies. I don't care too much for the weenies, but they are tolerable is you smother them in some really good beanies, though I might have to open the window in my office tomorrow if you know what I mean!! I just can't help it, I like really good baked beans. For me it is comfort food from my childhood. My mother used to make baked beans the old fashioned way, from dry navy beans and homemade sauce with brown sugar, bacon and onions. She had a special crockery pot with a metal lid that she used for cooking them. She didn't make them very often because it took over 8 hours to cook them, but it sure was worth it. My mother was a good cook and a firm believer in making everything from scratch. I remember when she would make lasagna, it seemed like she dirtied up every pot, pan and bowl in the house. She made a lot of different things, but her specialty was cookies. She made every kind of cookie known to man and had a cookie recipe for every season and holiday under the sun. I recall many a day helping to decorate the cookies with icing and sprinkles and then getting to taste test them when they were done. This lasted up until my teenage years, when she totally changed her diet to a whole foods/natural foods/vegetarian one. Not that it was a bad thing, but cookies just aren't the same without the butter and the sugar in them. I have tried to bring some of the homemade to my own family, in fact we used to make homemade butter at Thanksgiving and Christmas with whipping cream and a big mason jar when the boys were little. I thought it was fun, but them not so much. They are more of the idea that it doesnt matter what it looks like as long as it is edible and it doesn't really matter if you make it yourself or buy it in the store.
I do make a lot of homemade things for the holidays, and try to do what I feel is a traditional Thanksgiving meal of venison, if we are lucky enough to harvest a deer that year. I really think the Pilgrims and the Indians would have eaten that instead of the turkeys we cook today. However, a fresh wild turkey is quite tasty and nothing at all like the grain fed farm raised ones you buy in the store. Wow, enough about food for now.