A Little Christmas Potluck

New Food Night.  Do you guys just sit at your computer waiting for notification from me that we have eaten again?  I know you anticipate our meals.

This week we did a Christmas Potluck. Just because it's almost Christmas.  Now, what do you bring to a Christmas Potluck?

Well, Mr. Rick Googled Christmas Potluck and came up with this:

Doesn't it look good?  It was.  We called it Chicken Stuff.  Not sure what the real name was but it had chicken, potatoes, cream cheese, cream soup of some sort, other cheese, rosemary, olive oil.  Do I need to go on?  Man it was good.

I need to apologize to his co-workers. He typically has his food cooking in the crock pot at work all day before he comes over to our house. I know they all hope to have some leftovers the next day. This was really good. Sorry for the co-workers I don't think we left to much for them.

Now Gary Googled Wienie Wreath because I had told  him what I thought we should make.I wanted to be sure we had some real food to eat because when I think Christmas food my mind goes to cookies, candies, etc.  I Googled what to take to a Christmas Potluck.

What do you think? Little smokies wrapped in crescent roll dough.  We just cut strips of the crescent roll dough and wrapped around the smokies. Arranged them in a circle on our baking stone. the wreath at the top is a red bell pepper. He brushed the smokies with some melted butter, garlic salt and I think parsley before baking. Don't put bow on the wreath until after it bakes.

Rick said those were some of the cutest little wienies he had ever seen.

The dish of sauce behind the stone is a bar-b-q sauce, grape jelly and some Asian garlic Chili paste. Had a little kick to it for our little wienies.

Miss Annette brought over a corn salad.  She said it's Christmas because it has red and green in it. We didn't argue because we wanted to eat it.  LOL

This was canned corn, onions, red and green peppers and crushed up corn chips.  This was good stuff, Maynard!

K.C. made a gingerbread cream cheese dip and served it with graham crackers.

Man was this good! She took cream cheese, ginger, molasses, cool whip. This is like some kind of crack that you could addicted to!

Now Gary wanted a fruit cake. He knew that as soon as the theme for this week was decided.

I couldn't find my mom's fruit cake recipe (need to really dig through all my cook books and recipes  so I can find it).  So I went to Pinterest.  I made my first ever fruit cake. Rare praise from
 K. C. on this one, she said it wasn't as bad as she thought it was going to be.  She doesn't like fruit cake.

I had a wreath shaped bundt pan that we bought many, many years ago when we lived in Bethany. Glad we made that purchase - this is like the third time we have used it. In fact, I wasn't even sure I had it after my painting renovation this past summer. Thought it might have been one of the items K.C.convinced me I didn't need to hoard.

The batter is eggs, sugar, butter, lemon juice and flour. I think the batter by itself would be a great cake. Add in lots of candied cherries both red and green, candied pineapple, pecans and walnuts. And I do  mean LOTS!  The cake has to bake for 1 1/2 - 2 hours. It tasted good!  Now fruit cake is not something very many people like. I happen to like fruit cake. Keep in mind if you ever want to make one - it makes a lot!  I cut the recipe in half and we still had a lot of fruit cake.

There you have it - our Christmas Potluck!  Sorry you don't have smell-a-rama so you could smell how good all this was or even take-a-taste-a-rama as it would tempt your taste buds.  We are taking a short break over Christmas but I have a couple of meals I haven't told you about yet so stay tuned, I will try to fill in with missed meals.

In the meantime, is there anything you might want to challenge us with? Or maybe you have something you have thought about trying but just didn't have the courage to do? Let me know, we are open for suggestions for our New Food Night.

{Note to myself: keep notebook handy at New Food Night - right by my plate. Take note of all ingredients used in each dish}

Some Elfen Fun

Last year Gary and I were adopted by a little Elf on the Shelf all the way from the North Pole.  Our little guy's name is Frederick Frankenheimer.  He was quite ornery last year and kept us surprised and on our toes all Christmas season.

Well, he's back again this year! He showed up on Thanksgiving evening just like last year.  He and his friends are known to get into mischief. A couple of his special friends are Doug Douglaschmootz and MMagic Fallos-Craglow.  Doug lives fairly close to us so I am sure they get together frequently.

Let me tell you what our little elf has been up to this year.  We woke up the day after Thanksgiving to find him hanging onto my chalkboard where he had written a note saying "I'm Back!"  Indeed he was.
He migrated from there to the kitchen, a particular favorite place of his.  We found him hanging out ready to dive into some cooking fun.

While we were at church that first Sunday morning Frederick got into the leftover pumpkin pie and the syrup and went into a diabetic coma I think.  We found him passed out next to the pumpkin pie and with the syrup bottle laying on it's side.  We left him alone - figured he got himself into that mess he could just suffer the consequences.

The first room I decorated this year was the dining room. This obviously made Frederick happy as he just hung out in the tree full of smiles.

From there he decided to go visit the snow scene. Hope he wasn't thinking he would enter the frigid temperatures he was used to.

And since he didn't find those cold temperatures with his snowmen friend he decided more drastic measures needed to be taken. He proceeded to help himself to my eggnog in the fridge!

We went to Branson over the weekend and since we forgot to advise him of our plans, he consoled himself with one of his favorite foods -- chocolate!

To bad for him there was not as many chocolate chips in the container as he thought there might be. He must have forgotten that one of Gary's favorite foods is also chocolate.

Well, we came back from Branson to find that he had decided to visit my Christmas village.

Things weren't to exciting there for him BUT -- I had started decorating the rest of the house!   Obviously I don't work fast enough for Frederick. He thought I took to long to just put the tree up so he decided to help me out with some decorating while I slept.

As  you can see, he couldn't find the hangers but was able to find the duct tape. Way to improvise, Frederick!

He was so happy to see all the tree decorations that he kept decorating. He choose his favorite ornament and decided to hang out with it for a while. It was from Alaska.

I think he just saw Alaska and thought it might be cold.

From there he moved to the stockings. He was checking to see if there was anything in them.

He should know that Santa won't fill them until Christmas Eve! Not to mention he chose 8- Balls stocking. Stupid cat is always in trouble so you probably won't find anything in there.

Now he decided to really make himself at home and watch my favorite Christmas movie!

Gary said the TV was pretty loud when he woke up. He had to turn the sound down. I was pretty upset that he didn't wake me up to watch the movie with him. You notice he has a bowl of sugary cereal to eat while he watches the movie.

Today I woke up to find him surveying the kitchen.

Who knows what he is planning for tonight!

I know that he's supposed to report to Santa on whether or not you have been good or bad. I'm guessing that Frederick hangs around my house to report on Remington and Lily and even Katy Rose when she comes over to visit.

Now, if you have been lucky enough to be adopted by an elf what kind of mischief does he get into?

Post-Thanksgiving Feast

Thanksgiving - thoughts of all the food we prepare to celebrate. Thoughts of all the leftovers.

By the time New Food Night rolled around this week we thought we would all be tired of turkey with the trimmings so we planned on another soup night.  Turned out to be a good  choice as the weather had turned off colder.

Gary chose to make a taco soup.

Looks good, huh?  Tasted good too.  I don't know how you could make a small batch of this. Well, I guess if you used small cans of the veggies you could.  He took a pound of hamburger and browned plus some taco meat we had leftover from tacos. Some diced tomatoes, canned black beans, canned corn -- simmer (probably more stuff too but I don't know).  Good stuff!

Miss Annette made up a gumbo.

This was very well received. Some chicken chunks, smoked sausage, Zataran dirty rice, seasonings. .  This was very good.  We all thought it would be good with the taco soup ladled on top. I don't know that any of us tried it, though.

Mr. Rick brought a pot of ham and beans that had been cooking in the crock pot all day.

I LOVE ham and beans!  We don't have them very often as they are not a favorite of  Gary's.  I remember I was so excited when we moved to Tulsa and went to church for Wednesday night meal and they were going to have ham and beans.  My mouth watered all day thinking of them.  I found out that here in Tulsa ham and beans consists of pinto beans!  What a disappointment for me!  They were good but not what I grew up with.

Northern or Navy beans with ham and cornbread!  Take the cornbread and put in the bottom of your bowl.  Butter the cornbread then add chopped onions then add a lot of ham and beans!  That is good stuff.  And the ham and beans Mr. Rick made were yummers!  We didn't have the cornbread but that was okay.  My Granny Lake called them dry beans.  One time she told me she was going to make dry beans and I had no clue what she meant -- she had to explain to me.  Makes sense as they are dry until they are cooed.

Kind of a side note here (nothing to do with this New Food Night) but I always think of cornbread and milk.  We would take cornbread, add butter and onions then pour milk over it.  Oh my gosh!  I love cornbread and milk!

So there we have three very hearty soups and they were all good.  I could not decide what I would have seconds of.

But WAIT!  We are not done.  We have a dessert soup.

K.C. made a Scandanavian Blueberry Soup.

It could be served warm or cold so we just opted for room temperature.  Blueberries, lemon juice, syrup, cardamon.  Serve with a dollop of Greek yogurt.  Good stuff.

Now I had made some Fall Leaf Sugar Cookies but forgot to take a picture of them.  Just used a plain sugar cookie recipe. Divided the dough into 3 balls and used food coloring to color it red, yellow, and orange. Mixed some of each color and rolled out then cut into fall leaf shapes and baked.  Very pretty and I do love a good sugar cookie.

There you have it - our tired of turkey meal.  Now just wait until you read about next week's meal!  I will give you a hint - we haven't had Italian for a while and it happens to be a favorite of Miss Annette and myself.  My mouth is watering right now thinking of the dish I convinced Gary to make.

First Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is only a couple of days away.  Are you as excited as we are at our house?  We LOVE Thanksgiving.  As my daughter K.C. says, it's her favorite holiday because the only thing expected of you is to eat!.  And who doesn't love to eat?

Now let's combine Thanksgiving with New Food Night because - well just because that's what we do. This year we decided to go with the theme of the original Thanksgiving.  We did some research on line about what the first Thanksgiving food was.  We learned that most likely shellfish was on the menu along with a lot of root vegetables and fruit and ...... wait for it...... PORRIDGE.

Man, was Remington every excited to hear that!  He quickly said that he wanted to make porridge. So let me share our new food night from last week with you.

 Of course we had turkey.  Because what it Thanksgiving without turkey?  Now this wasn't a wild turkey - we didn't go out 'fowling' to get our bird. We just went to the local Walmart Neighborhood Market.  I love turkey.

Now Miss Annette was going to bring some root vegetables but a dear friend had a fall and she felt it was more important to spend time with her.  We agree - nothing more important than helping friends. We compromised on this and had a dish of cheesy potatoes instead. Very good last minute substitution. Hash brown potatoes, cream of chicken soup, diced onions, Velveeta cheese.

And here you have it.  My Bud making his porridge.

Gotta admit - I wasn't real positive about this dish but it was very good.  Made from cornmeal and the addition of sweetened condensed milk and I'm not sure what else but it was yummy.

Mr. Rick took care of the shellfish portion.  He made a  crab boil kind of dish.  Shrimp, some catfish chunks, beans, potatoes, and corn on the cob. Man this was good.

And we made a quick substitution for our dessert as well.  Miss Annette had a fruit compote she was going to make and we were going to serve it over baked pumpkin.  Instead we had ginger snap cookies. This was from a mix I just happened to have in the cabinet. My thought was - surely there was ginger laying around at the first Thanksgiving and they must have used it somehow.

There you have it - our version of the first Thanksgiving.


We are ready for our Thanksgiving this year. K.C. is making our turkey for the first time and Gary is going to make a new vegetable plus all our 'favorites'.  We do love our food.


How about it - what do you have for Thanksgiving?  Anything unusual? Or maybe you are trying something new this year as well. If so, what is it?


HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Holidays

Oh man am I ever getting excited for the holidays!

I just can't help myself. All these feeds show up on my Facebook account. All my friends post things on my timeline.

If you know me very well you know I LOVE Christmas!

I admit it - I love everything about the season -- the lights - the music - the decorations.  I wish it lasted longer.

Now, however much I love Christmas and I plan all year long in my head where I will put my trees and how I will set up the decorations and just where everything should go, and how often I can watch my favorite movie.

I love Thanksgiving just as much!

I love the family being together.

I love the traditions we have.

I love the food we have.

I love planning the food we have (well okay, Gary really loves this part more than I do).

And for me the Holidays include Thanksgiving.  So now matter how much I love having my Christmas decorations out - we never decorate until  after we have celebrated Thanksgiving.

So here is wishing all my friends a very Happy Thanksgiving!  

Veterans Day

VETERANS DAY     A day set aside to honor the men and women who have served their country.  It was first celebrated in 1919 when President Wilson declared November 11th the first commemoration of Armistice Day.

I come from a family of military personnel. Every member of my immediate family growing up served in the military. My parents and all three of my brothers. I was the only one who never served. They served in the Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War and Dessert Storm.

Many, many, many of my uncles, cousins and nephews have served. Two of my son-in-laws have served. Every branch of military is covered in our family: Marines, Air Force, Navy, Army, Reserves. Two of my brothers are retired military and several of my uncles also made the military their career.

I have had many friends go into service and many of the boys from Boys Ranch that I consider 'my boys' have served.  I have mailed letters and care packages to my brothers and their friends.

When the movie American Sniper came out, Gary and I went to see it. I sat there and cried through the movie as I listened to words I had heard my own brother say regarding his service.

It has only been in the last couple of years that my oldest brother has shared with me about his time in the military during the Vietnam War. We have had many phone conversations where I sit on the phone and listen to him and cry with him as  he recounts stories.  I am certain I don't hear everything he needs to share but I am thankful that he does share.

Honoring them one day a year does not seem near enough to show our support of all they have done and the sacrifices they have made for our country and for us.

Here's to all veterans out there and to all the men and women who are still serving.

Top row -- my Dad - Eldon Power, my Mom - Katherine Kern Power, my uncle Harold Kern
Bottom Row -- my brother Wayne Corum, my brother Jerry (Bub) Power, my step-son Brian Houston

My son-in-law Perry Craglow.

I have no picture in uniform of my brother Steve Corum or of my son-in-law Michael Groves.

I have many more uncles who served but don't have pictures of them either. To every one of them and to all the others who have and are proudly serving the USA -- thank you!  

Ghoulish Meal

I know this is a little bit past Halloween but please cut me some slack.  We planned on having this meal last week for New Food Night. I made an unexpected trip out of town and we were not certain what time Tuesday I would be back so decided to postpone the meal for a week.  We aren't to far behind.  

So the theme was supposed to be Halloween themed food. No guidelines - just Halloween themed.  

This came about because Gary found something he JUST had to try.  A puking pumpkin.  

How cool, gross, disgusting, neat is this?  (Choose your own adjective here)

The brains of the pumpkin are a cheese dip and the barf is guacamole.  Serve with a generous portion of chips for dipping.

I found a recipe I thought I would make. Caterpillars.  They looked good. When I went to try and find the recipe again to double check that I knew what I was doing I was unable to find it  no matter what combination of words I used to search. So I just hoped I remembered correctly and that it would work.  

I simply took crescent rolls and dipped them in melted butter colored with green food dye. I wrapped this around a piece of mozzarella cheese and baked.  Now with the cheese kinda oozing out of some of these we thought they looked more pupa stage.  I think I coulda used a little more food dye or maybe left them in the butter longer.  

Miss Annette made us some  Mummy Dogs.  She also brought along some dipping sauces, a honey mustard sauce and a honey barbeque one.  

Now knowing that the other contributions were going to be a dessert type dish, we decided we should have some other type of food-food besides Mummy Dogs. So Gary made up a batch of chili. No special recipe just plain old chili.  

I was able to prevent a food catastrophe with this dish though. Gary asked me to 'taste' to see if it needed anything. I said I thought it needed a little more chili seasoning as I tasted tomato. He picked up a large spice container to add into the mixture. I asked, 'you're using cinnamon?"  Our cinnamon and chili seasoning containers are the same size and he had taken the cinnamon container out and set aside to get to the chili seasoning. 

Good stuff!

Now for dessert!  

Mr. Rick made a Halloween cake.  

This was a milk chocolate cake mix and I believe he said he added some orange and chocolate baking chips to the mix. The 'frosting' is candy corn and chocolate and orange baking chips Pure sugar overload!  WOW!  

K.C. made us some finger cookies

She said they didn't turn out quite as well as she wanted. When she put them on the sheet to bake she said they looked perfect!  They tasted awesome!  I told her we would call them arthritic finger cookies.

But wait - we are not yet done with dessert. We had someone new join us this week . Mr. Harrison joined us this week and he brought the best dessert of all -- BLUE BELL ICE CREAM!!

If you are not from Oklahoma this may not seem like such a big deal to you but here in Oklahoma it is. Blue Bell Ice Cream is made right here in Broken Arrow. They have  had all their plants shut down for several months and just recently re-opened. Blue Bell Ice Cream only hit the stores here in Tulsa on Monday!  Cause for celebration at our house (not by me as I don't really care for ice cream but it is a staple for Gary and apparently a lot of other people).  

Every Tuesday I say the same thing. "I ate to much". I try everything (yes even the desserts although I do usually try to limit that). And every week I end the meal thinking, I should have stopped before dessert or else taken smaller portions of everything.  

So there you have it. Our little bit delayed Halloween Themed New Food Night. What do you think?

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Emoji

EMOJI

How many of you use these little characters? Especially when you're texting? Or maybe on Facebook?

My younger grandkids love them. They will message me just all kinds of emoji's on Facebook.

They are fun to use.  You can add a little picture to your text messages.

Man I'm tired.

Send your love

Promote your favorite holiday

What a great way to brighten up your day.

However, I have decided that maybe I shouldn't be using these emojis on my phone when I'm texting, As you get older it's harder to see smaller print. Those emoji icons are not real big on my phone screen. But I text away to my daughters and friends, add an emoji for fun and hit send.

Now, either my girls don't pay close attention to my texts or else they just assumed I didn't know what I was doing. Or maybe their eyesight is as bad as mine.

It wasn't until I was texting my across-the-street daughter that I questioned my use of emoji's. We are sending texts back and forth about nothing in particular and I'm adding emoji's because she is,.  She questions me - what are you mad about?

Me: I'm not made that was a laughing real hard face - big smiley picture.

She advises - no - it was teeth clenched because you are mad.


REALLY????

I had no idea - to me it just looked like a really happy face.

So -- I am now a little more careful when I add an emoji to my texts.  Don't want to give anyone the wrong impression.

How about you - do you use them?