Half a Turkey is better?

The snowfall was gorgeous. The power outage was predictable. Cooking the turkey was the problem.
What a wonderful Thanksgiving day we had. We spent the day hauling firewood in to feed the woodstove in the living room, and sweeping up chunks of snow from everyone's boots and from the dogs going in and out as well. The boy, who is too cool to wear snow gear, was changing out of wet jeans and socks every half hour, and the wet things were piling up. We put stuff near the stove to dry. Gin rummy was played.
Most of the cooking was done the day before, including the cranberries, the squash, the rutabaga, the rolls., the pumpkin pies. We just had to cook a 24 pound bird, make gravy and mashed potatoes. The resources available, and the clock moving steadily onward, figured in the final solution: cut the turkey in half, and cook one half on the gas grill. With the second half of the bird safely in a cooler on the back porch (38 degrees), our fearless grillmaster left the house carrying the roasting pan to the back shed, where the grill was set up, out of the snow. Thirty minutes later, the power was back on.
Cooking was finished in the kitchen. (In the evening, I cooked the second half, and made more gravy, as we all know, there is no such thing as too much gravy.)
I hope your day was as satisfying, though if you did without the snow and the power outage, you don't lose any points.

Hope for Chicken Cacciatore. Expect Chili.

In my mother's kitchen, you did not stop your meal preparation to go get a missing ingredient. Actually, you did not stop if you were missing all the ingredients. You substituted. We still recall Mom's recipe for chicken cacciatore: Brown a pound of ground beef. Add tomatoes, onions, celery, and beans. Season with chili powder. Serve over mashed potatoes. We all faithfully follow this recipe.
I was thinking about this yesterday, when DH said, by the way, there are some really great frozen tacos in the freezer. I asked him how he had failed to tell me this last night, as he watched me eat a swanson mexican combo frozen dinner. He had no answer. Actually, his excuse was that he was nearly comatose in front of the tube when I got home from my bowling league, but this is not where I want to go with this post. Back on track!
Oh, yes. recipes. Actually, my chili recipe is constantly evolving. (Sounds much more creative than 'substitute'.) It has gone low-fat (ground turkey) or vegetarian (tofu) or shabby chic frugal (diced pork roast). It has gone 'green' (Verde). Apparently, that's what recipe's do- they evolve. Which leads to interesting questions, like do recipes arise, like life in the premordial soup, over and over again, or does a recipe arise once, and evolve endlessly into a thousand diverse offspring? And who cares?
I plan to make chili on Wednesday. People are driving a long way to visit for the holiday, and they will need something familiar and tasty to eat when they get here. It has to be no-fuss. But it needs to demonstrate just the tiniest shred of having evolved from the last time. Can't say what that will be until it happens. I see some chicken in the freezer.

Birthdays for House Plants

It's official. One of my house plants is old enough to vote. Now I know that most people do not know how old their plants are. Tell me: How can that be? (You don't know either, right?)
It's the Grapefruit tree. Of course, I didn't find her, she found me. One day in November 1990, I was eating a grapefruit. (duh.) One of the seeds was already sprouted. I shoved it into the soil of the nearest potted plant, a very maternal philodendron. It grew and it grew. By the time it was 7 or 8 years old, she lived in a huge pot, and I tried to get her to spend the summers outside, and her winters on the porch. She suffered severe winter kill in her 8th year. Nothing budded in the spring. I was whacking her trunk off to make it easier to get the body off the porch, when .... TOO LATE!!!! I saw the green rim of live just beneath the bark in the very terminal cut I had made. I was miserable. I dragged the tree outside, and went back for the pot. That's when I saw the tiny leaf budding an inch below the cut. She wasn't gone after all.
She just had to start over. I don't prune her. My Big Guy keeps talking about how she needs a good clipping, take out those crossed branches, thin out the limbs where they are too close. I can't bring myself to do it. Who does he want her to get pretty for? I say, leave her wild. She looks good to me.

The Old Lady's nap

The Old Lady has taken up napping in the dog's bed. This leaves Sally flummoxed, since she recognizes that the cat has higher pack status than she does, and if the cat is in the Sally's bed, the dog cannot get into the bed until the cat invites her. The Old Lady will not be inviting her, as she cannot imagine anyone waiting for an invitation. This is how I know that we will not be able to effectively communicate with creatures from other parts of the galaxy, when they arrive on earth. Maybe they've already been here and left, looking for a more understandable species.
At any rate, the Old lady is in the dog bed only because she cannot jump up on the couch, her preferred nap space. When I do find her napping on the couch, I know that she tried and failed at least twice, before her old, wasting hind quarters could launch her from the floor to the couch. She will not use the kitty steps I have placed for her.
Everything has changed, and nothing has changed. Youth is gone, and with it, the competent comfortable body. Expectations have not changed. I expect to nap on the couch. I will probably use the kitty steps.

My Inner Knitter's OCD

Well, I made this shrug- a great color, a wonderful texture. It's huge, and light, and warm. It's up-to-the-minute in-fashion. What's wrong with this picture? My IK is NOT happy with the edge. (You can't SEE the edge, I tell her. You know it's there, she answers.)
There IS a lot of edge to this garment. But you really can't see it when it's worn. IK is worried that another knitter will examine it, and will be able to discount the garment for it's glaring faults, the way IK can, when she sees a garment that she wishes she had made, but upon close inspection, finds the flaws that allow IK to just KNOW she would have done a better job.
It6 was my first shrug, I told her. It was idiot knitting, she answered. After lengthy dialogue, IK and I arrive at a compromise. I will immediately point out and confess the flaws to anyone who looks at the shrug. IK is not particularly thrilled with this course of action, but has to live with it, because it demonstrates that IK is right, something IK is not capable of disputing, ever.
Because IK is very prickly after this conversation, I have to decided make something that IK will not have a problem with. I am considering what that might be. Pie, perhaps. Apple pie. Ala Mode.

When a pain in the ass is a good thing

I always imagine that when I bowl a terrific score, it will be because I am physically, mentally, and spiritually in the zone. Consequently, when I began my first game on Friday, and immediately felt a painful cramping of something deep, deep in my right cheek... Well, no spectacular bowling tonight. There was a serious hitch in my get-a-long, a pinch, a cramp, a strain of some kind deep at the point of my sitting-down bone. You know that stretch that you do after aerobics class, the one where you sit on the floor with your left leg out straight and your right leg bent at the knee, with your right foot crossed over your left leg, and on the floor to the left of your left knee, and you pull left on your right knee and turn your upper body to the right, and you feel that spot loosen up in the stretch? That's the spot.
Anyway, I slowed my approach way down, so as not to aggravate the cramp, and I stretched it out as best I could between frames. I started rolling strikes. My first game had 7 strikes, and a 190 total. My second game was a 220 and I finished with a 212. My 622 series will get me mentioned on the local sports news. ("Yes folks, that sometime 600 bowler that we have not heard from in the past couple years is back...")
All of a sudden, being 62 just got better.
That was Friday night. Today, I bowl in a daytime league, with other retired people. They already know what happened Friday. What will happen today? Will I be able to live up to my newly recovered reputation as a scratch bowler? Or will I be no better than I was before Friday? Expectations have changed. But I don't know that the world has. Am I the Red Sox or the Rays? I'll let you know.

Camping with Zippy

There are weeks that you would pick out to live over again. I'm putting last week on that list.
We took the camper to Letchworth state park- and had a beautiful couple of days in the sunny, warm indian summer. We hiked the trails and I think we got to every lookout. The scenery was stunning, and we had the place nearly to ourselves. (As we checked out on Friday, though, we could see we were in the nick of time- the campers were rolling in, and the extra parking was marked out, and the shuttle stops were already marked, for the giant craft show this weekend.) I already had my treasure. We had wandered into a little 'antique' shop in Mt. Morris, where I found a $15 box of 'sewing items'. There was treasure in that box.
When we got home, I pored over the items in the box, enjoying the company of all the ghosts.
Among tons of other stuff, there were two sets of steel sock needles, in the original wrappers- gilt tipped and imported from England. I am putting socks on one set as we speak.
Why do I like these old things? I think I feel connected to all the people who have ever knitted when I use the old needles. They remind me that I'm doing something useful, and that I love somebody.
I used Zippy on the picnic table, and I must say, I love her more each time I spin with her. Zippy and I filled a couple bobbins of natural grey wool, which I'll get plied up at home. One of the things I am appreciating about Zippy is that I can work several feet away from the orifice. When you have to treadle the wheel, you can only back up so far... I am trying to figure out if there is a real advantage to my long-draw, 5 feet from the orifice style, or if it's just a no-dif preference. I need to ponder that one for a while.