Thanksgiving pictures

I drove 12 hours one-way to spend Thanksgiving with my Grandma! It was amazing... The stories alone, about my aunt and uncle and dad, my grandparents growing up, would have been well worth the trip. We've talked about doing it on the other side of the family, but I thought about it again tonight. We need to record these stories. I don't know if any of you out there are tech savvy, but I can't help but think it would be an amazing thing to sit down with wedding pictures or baby pictures or no pictures and just tell stories... pass the voices and the experiences on to generations to come.

I had a white Thanksgiving...
I slept in. I went shopping for scrapbooking supplies, and pajamas, and I slept in. I spent time chilling out with my grandma, and scrapbpooked and cooked and ate and talked and just enjoyed it. I also got to see my aunt Dalene and Uncle Gerry, and look at all of Aunt Dalene's scrapbooks... She has quite a few! Hers are pretty! Okay. Off to the study place. But I will leave you with a teaser: Pictures now exist of me in the muslin of the red dress! You'll just have to come back and see.

Mini Thanksgiving

On the Menu: what went wrong

• Turkey Breast didn't count thaw time, so it took way way way longer
  
• Mashed potatoes and gravy nada
  
• stuffing guesstimated, again, took not enough time, possibly too much liquid
  
• green bean casserole how do you manage to screw that up?
  
• cranberry sauce I forgotted it
  
• bread/rolls umm... yeah, fogot this too... It'll be toast and croutons before too long.
  
• cheesecake squares never made it to squares, still in my fridge
  

Yeah, so a turkey breast takes a long time to cook... sitting and waiting and smelling it is not the funnest way to pass the time either... Now it is in the process of becoming turkey and dumplings. I don't know why I had no brain for this today... Probably my current state of running on fumes. I promise, I can cook. Tomorrow's post will be about the dinnerthat was right that I made almost a week ago.

Mom's favorites

These are 2 favorites that get eaten quite a bit at home, and that we make so much we don't use recipies for... Sorry for my poor approximations... If I had access to a kitchen I'd make these with measurements before posting!

Pot Roast

A favorite... we get the cut for one that will feeod our extended family more often than not because it'll stay good and warm in a crockpot... I like the 2-3 lb variety myself, but bigger or smaller works depending on the size of your crockpot and your family.
Brown the roast with oil, salt, and pepper on all sides and then put it in a crockpot. Cover with water and add an envelope of French Onion Soup mix. Let cook overnight on low. About 4 hours before you would like to eat, add potatoes(cubed in 1-2 inch pieces), baby carrots, and 1/2 of a chopped onion. We use a potato for every person and at least one for the pot, and a handful of carrots for every 2 people.
Delicious with little to no effort!

Biscuits and Gravy

Preheat the oven for your favorite biscuits(I confess, I use the ones in the freezer section by White Lily)

Brown one pound of breakfast sausage in a skillet the same way you would ground beef,seasoning with salt, pepper, garlic and onion powders to taste. Drain it well, put your biscuits in the oven, and turn your heat setting to low. Put enough milk in the pan to coat the sausage, and if you are feeding a larger group, to colver it. In a coffee or measuring cup, combine another cup of milk with one or two tablespoons of flour, and mix with a fork, getting out as many lumps as possible. When the milk in the pan begins to simmer, add the mixture, using your fork to catch lumps. The milk and flour will thicken, if you're lucky, at about the time your biscuits are golden brown. If it's too thick for your taste, you can always add more milk, or half milk and half water.


On another note completely, I just now figured out how to moderate my comments, so they'll appear more quickly from here on out. I WILL get the hang of this!

Thanks Mom!

I grew up on a lot of one-casserole dish/pot foods that I didn't realize were so amazingly good and homey that it's not even funny.... If we hadn't walked down the frozen food isles to pick up vegetables or the occasional pizza and ice cream for treats, I wouldn't have known instant dinners existed. Many of my friends are amazed I can cook, and that I never had instant potatoes or the like growing up....
I didn't know how big of a deal it was until I was kinda an adult myself, and making time for things like cooking... and encountering those who didn't ever have sit-down dinners and homemade meals. So this post goes out to mom, and moms and dads everywhere who do the same kind of things for their families, even though life is crazy. You mamas probably already know these "recipes" but I am going to post them tomorrow just the same.