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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