A bit of holiday shopping and Christmas cards are out.. mostly!

Not the pups' Christmas presents but they badly needed some new bedding because I had to tossed a couple of them in the trash this weekend.  I've been buying all their beddings from HomeGoods for years, simply because they are the cheapest and quality is very good.  I bought two beds and blankets but it's not enough so I will have to go back for a couple more.  There's always a buzz of excitement when new beddings or toys are brought in and everyone take their turn to try things out.  I got a few fuzzy teddy toys and treats for them for Christmas but for now they are hiding under the Christmas tree!

For their dinner last night I cooked last of the left over food from couple nights ago mixed with eggs, they eat eggs about once a week and absolute love them!

I did a good amount of holiday cards this past weekend and also a little bit of holiday shopping last night.  In fact, for the coming new year I plan to go more card writing because people don't do it so much anymore and it's always so special to receive a thank you note or birthday card in the mail!  I'm a terrible gifter and never seem to know what to get for people, so I opted for some boxes of See's chocolate and called it a day.  The problem with going into the chocolate store is I end up eating a lot of samples and buying way too much candy for myself!

A little bit of treat for every one..

Tonight was meal prepping time for the pups, I try to mix things up a little bit so it doesn't get super boring.. the special ingredient for this meal was butternut squash and it seemed to be well received.  I blame the decline of my real cooking skill to making too much dog food!

There are a few white and black clouds floating around my feet impatiently waiting for their meal.  I read somewhere that little pets have hopes and dreams, I guess providing a warm meal and a little petting on a cold winter night count as part of that!

I've been reading blogs featuring simple and easy cookie recipes and as a result I was dying to try my hands at it.  After all, it's not the holidays without a little baking.  I've never made cookies ever and being pretty oblivious to things that don't interest me, I never even knew what a cookie dough was suppose to look like.  

The instruction was a little confusing and seem to be missing critical information... I guess what was missing was my common sense, but I somehow made it work!

My first batch of cookies came out ok, I declare it a success!  I've never been a cookie person but I must say, home made cookies are warm and soft and crispy all at the same time and quite delicious!

Right in the middle of all this cooking and baking, my neighborhood annual holiday hayride drove by my house, I made a real quick run outside in order to catch the sight of it.  I'm not sure if this is a normal occurrence in other parts of the world and was quite startled the first year when I moved into my house, but it's essentially a neighbor's truck that's decorated with hay and Christmas lights complete with real kids and a Santa Claus, and people get together to have a potluck and then go through the neighborhood singing Christmas carols.  I've yet to befriend this neighbor in order to participate but it's quite a magical experience to see this one car floating parade with beautiful lights and music.  

Thanksgiving came and gone.  Typically I either host a small Friendsgiving party at my house or spend the day at a good friend's house, this year two of my friends invited me to their friendsgiving dinners for both Wednesday and Thursday and I ended up meeting some really awesome new friends and had a amazing time.  I came home with some super delicious recipes and inspired to host some nice dinner parties at my own house.  For people that don't have large extended families, holidays can still be heart warming and fun, it all takes a little bit of pre-planning.  This year I still got to cook and bring a dish to my friends' house but it was rather stress free because I did not have to be responsible for the whole meal.

Recently I had a conversation with a friend about not having large families near by and holidays do get a little funny, but at the end of day I don't think everyone's family fits into that picture perfect mold like how it shows on tv, but I guess I'm ok with that.

I made no plans for Thanks Giving this year, a couple friends invited me over but I thought I would just laid back and relax, but at the last minute I decided to cook anyway since all the holiday special ingredients were for sale at the store and looked so tempting.  Every year I like to do something a little different, this year I tried to make a butter herb mix to coat and stuff the turkey, the aroma turned out quite lovely.

I don't use anything like onion or wine to prepare the turkey because I wanted to share the left overs with my pups, it would be a shame to make something so delicious and then just to have the doggies stare at it.  They knew it was some sort of a special occasion too, eagerly waited by the kitchen to see what comes of all the cooking.

I'm a rather slow cook and to make a complete Thanks Giving meal takes me about four hours, from prepping and roasting the turkey to making cranberry sauce, stuffing and gravy, but after a few years of practice a lot of the dishes became quite easy.  The pups really benefited from the turkey this year, I gave them a few pieces with each meal and they seem to love it! 

One of the dish I've made without fail every year is the cranberry sauce.  It's an easy enough dish and homemade ones always seem to taste better than the store bought type so I always make it.  If I visit friends then they look forward for me to bring it.  I like to present the sauce in lovely antique sauce tureen and this year I used my blue and white sauce tureen to make a prettier presentation.

So much to be thankful for when I put things in perspective.  For one I am not sitting in movie theaters during holidays like I often did in my 20s staving off hunger on pop corn.  There is immense happiness being able to sip coffee, play an old movie and cook delicious food in my own kitchen.  I also have lovely pups and my health to be thankful for, and it's good to be reminded of things we often take for granted!

Another Thanksgiving holiday came and gone. At first I was pretty set on not cooking a whole big dinner since the dining crowd on my lot is quite meager, but when the night was approaching and the sizzle of holiday cheer started to boil over,  it just felt like I would miss out if I didn't cook myself a once a year turkey meal.  I wasn't able to find those all in one package precooked dinners, but Costco had some of the packaged items and I just had to cook the turkey. It was such a chaotic experience shopping for food on Thanksgiving eve, it felt like millions of shoppers with their giant shopping carts was flooding towards me, there was shopping cart jam in every aisle, making it out of there with food loaded in my car was quite a triumphant feat!

Since I came to the States as a teenager, I had no idea what Thanksgiving holiday was all about, my family never celebrated any American holidays and there's no day off from work for a Chinese holiday, so I never celebrated holidays of any sorts with my family at all.  Later in college I lived with a landlady in a hundred year old Spanish mansion, it was a cold large house filled with dark and gloomy antique furnitures. We often gathered in the kitchen late at night telling each other haunted stories over a cup of tea for fun. She was a struggling piano teacher trying to make ends meet to support herself and her house after her husband had left, non the less she always pulled out beautiful heirloom china from the cabinet and prepared a full on dinner with a few family and friends on holidays.  On one occasion out of having no place to go I went to a half empty theatre on a very empty stomach because it was one of the only places open during Thanksgiving, when I went back to my rental place their dinner was still going on, she was surprised to see me and insisted from then that I dine with her on holidays. It was such a heart warming experience and every now and then I still think about it.  

Now I was quite stupid for the first few years when I started cooking my own Thanksgiving meals. I insisted on cooking every dish from scratch, it not only cost an arm and leg to shop for all the ingredients but the cooking in itself took forever. Gradually I learned a few tricks and started to have a little bit of a system. Cranking out holiday meals became a bit less of a hassle as each year went by.  This year for instance, I picked an easy recipe and stuffed the bird in the oven the night before and had it cooking over night, albeit I overslept by a couple hours, it still turned out quite juicy and delicious.  I skipped aromatic ingredients such as onions so that my puppies could share the huge turkey with me.  I bought packaged gravy, sweet potato and mashed potato from Costco's and they were absolutely delicious, and I froze half of everything for next month's Christmas meal. For homemade dishes I made cornmeal stuffing, green beans and cranberry sauce from scratch. That was still quite a bit of cooking, but these are simple dishes I've done a few times before. These homemade dishes are so easy and delicious, there's really no need to buy them. 

So there goes the final product! Another delicious meal accounted for during this year's Thanksgiving, at my very own small but beautiful house with my wonderful puppies, now that's something to be thankful about!

I had a wonderful Christmas time with my family. We spent the entire morning unwrapping gifts, took the doggies to the park and then cooked Chinese hot pot instead of the traditional American Christmas dinner.  My husband hid all my presents in his car just in case I couldn't resist the urge to dig through the whole house for presents before the holiday arrives. This year, one of my favorite presents was the salt and pepper grinder by Perfex. I absolutely love them! My husband told me that the sales lady's son got them as his wedding gift in 1964 and still uses them today. Maybe they will last me 50 years too?

Dim sum for breakfast and Christmas tree shopping afterwards. Since Christmas tree is an American tradition and I didn't grow up with it, it was such a novelty for me when I first came to live here. Putting up a Christmas tree in my very own home has been a dream for years, it's a dream come true, in a trivial kind of way. For me this is happiness, so I'm going to enjoy this moment:)

The night before Thanks Giving, my husband and I were reading upstairs in our own rooms. Around midnight, we suddenly heard a noise sounded like something had slide over the fence. I thought it must be a burglar, we turned off all the lights to look outside, Kelly got scared too and followed us closely instead of laying in her bed by her lonesome. We were too afraid to go out, so we locked the doors and went to bed. The next morning we got up to check the backyard when the neighbor called me across the fence to come outside and have a look. And this is what that mysterious noise was...

Apparently, the tree root had rotted so much that there was barely any root left to grab a hold to the ground, so it collapsed and crushed our neighbor's car. We joked around that it must be the squirrel jumping up and down a little too much because there was certainly no wind or rain that night. Our neighbors got positively excited, all took out their dslr cameras to record this exciting moment in the neighborhood, I'm betting some money that we'd finally make our 15 minutes of fame at the neighborhood newsletter.

So, the first thing that popped into my head to solve the problem was to call Louis, our fix-it-all gardener, to come in and saw the tree apart and change the roof and plumbing while he's at it too. While that didn't seem like too good of an idea, we decided that we might just be able to lift up the tree, plant it a little deeper into the ground and scotch tape it, and then it will be just fine. We toyed with the idea for a little bit, then decided that our neighbors might just not like it so much, finally, maybe we should call some tree expert to take the tree apart so we can have some nice firewood.

Yesterday was Thanks Giving, our neighbors were nice enough to let us deal with it today. Since the tree blocked out their front entrance, they had to dug a walk way through some bushes to let their guest in for their holiday party, one of the owner's friend said to us, "you know, it's always on Christmas or Thanks Giving that this sort of things happen!" Our neighbors were really nice about it, or maybe they are settled with the fact that their new neighbors are just young and stupid!

This year I wasn't planning for a full on Thanks Giving dinner, but it just happened that my mom bought pre-made dinner for us. I still had to cook a turkey and make cranberry sauce, but it was the easiest Thanks Giving dinner ever, all I had to do was stuff the turkey to the oven and relax. I think cooking some but not all of the dishes is the way to go!

Since this is my third time cooking a turkey, I've gotten a few tips that seem to work well.

1. Rub the turkey skin with generous amount of butter (come on, it's a holiday, you can think about diet and health later), stuff it with a mixture of apple, onion, cranberry, carrots, rosemary, cinnamon, seasoned with all spice, salt and pepper. Cook the turkey in the oven at 500˚F for 30 minutes or whenever the skin begin to look crispy and golden.

2. After that cover the turkey with a aluminum foil cap and set the oven for 350˚F for 2 1/2 - 3 more hours or however it requires to reach 200 degrees on the thermometer.

This way the skin is crispy but the meat stays juicy and tender.

Did you have a nice Thanks Giving day?

Christmas is done! We opened gifts in the morning, cooked a big meal and I have just cleaned the last dish out of the sink and people are happily slipping into a giant food coma all around me. I went a little over board with the cooking and splurged on wine and sugar and butter and cheese. I figure for once a year I don't want to think about calories at all and I want to get a fix on all my cravings.  The potato dish was delicious, so was the apple baked pork tenderloin, I must write out the recipe sometimes!

For our last Thanks Giving, I spent almost three days reading menus and grocery shopping to prepare a made from scratch Thanks Giving dinner, including thawing and cooking a real turkey and homemade gravy! I ended up cooking with my boyfriend the entire day, by the evening we finally sat down and ate our rather delicious first time homemade Thanks Giving dinner, only just the two of us had to finish an entire table of food. This year we got smarter and ordered from Whole Foods, it was a splendid idea, I must had just spent 15 minutes in the kitchen and the food was pretty good! We bought wine and Gruyere on the side too and cut up the cheese in small pieces and gave a little to Kelly and Bobby, they also got a very long walk during the day to the park, and boiled chicken for Thanks Giving dinner.
I'm really thankful for spending the holiday with my family and boyfriend, and that life has been good to us and blessed us with happiness and health. Kelly and Bobby are not the talkative type but I'm guessing that they were thankful for all the long walk and cheese and chicken that they got today, and hoped there will be more of it in the future.