thanksgiving dinner success!

We decided to stay home and have dinner just the 5 of us. I was happy that the kids got the idea of giving thanks when we played a little thank you game.

I was EXTREMELY happy that my first attempt at brining a Turkey was a total success and that Tom loved the cornbread dressing recipe and the cranberry sauce recipe--all of which I found on foodnetwork.com.

GOOD EATS ROAST TURKEY
Ingredients
1 (14 to 16 pound) frozen young turkey
For the brine:
1 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 gallon vegetable stock
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
1/2 tablespoon allspice berries
1/2 tablespoon candied ginger
1 gallon iced water

For the aromatics:
1 red apple, sliced
1/2 onion, sliced
1 cinnamon stick
1 cup water
4 sprigs rosemary
6 leaves sage
Canola oil

Directions
Combine all brine ingredients, except ice water, in a stockpot, and bring to a boil. Stir to dissolve solids, then remove from heat, cool to room temperature, and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled.

Early on the day of cooking, (or late the night before) combine the brine and ice water in a clean 5-gallon bucket. Place thawed turkey breast side down in brine, cover, and refrigerate or set in cool area (like a basement) for 6 hours. Turn turkey over once, half way through brining.

A few minutes before roasting, heat oven to 500 degrees. Combine the apple, onion, cinnamon stick, and cup of water in a microwave safe dish and microwave on high for 5 minutes.
Remove bird from brine and rinse inside and out with cold water. Discard brine.

Place bird on roasting rack inside wide, low pan and pat dry with paper towels. Add steeped aromatics to cavity along with rosemary and sage. Tuck back wings and coat whole bird liberally with canola (or other neutral) oil.

Roast on lowest level of the oven at 500 degrees F. for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and cover breast with double layer of aluminum foil, insert probe thermometer into thickest part of the breast and return to oven, reducing temperature to 350 degrees F. Set thermometer alarm (if available) to 161 degrees. A 14 to 16 pound bird should require a total of 2 to 2 1/2 hours of roasting. Let turkey rest, loosely covered for 15 minutes before carving.

And I love Tyler Florences recipes...this is no exception!
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/caramelized-onion-and-cornbread-stuffing-recipe3/index.html

Lastly I skipped the walnuts for this Cranberry Sauce:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/foodnation-with-bobby-flay/cranberry-sauce-recipe/index.html

And now I am looking forward to getting up and shopping on Black Friday!

Monday: Putting the M in Mundane.

A week from Wed I leave for our National Conference. Can't wait. I was thinking of packing my suitcase today, but then I thought hmm. a bit too early.

Exciting news around here...our cat Friday who only eats Friskies Salmon dinner in a can--actually ate cat food I got at aldi.

can of Friskies from Walgreens: 69 cents. can of Friskies from Jewel: 59 cents. can of Friskies from Walmart: 49 cents.

can at Aldi: 23 cents. Number of cans of cat food the cat goes thru a day = 2-3

So... we go thru a good 20 cans a week. Yippee.

Yes it doesn't take much to pass for exciting news.

School count down: 2 weeks from Today!

*note to self: see if the boys have gym shoes that fit.

August 1st

August has arrived. Back on June 1st who know how quickly it would arrive. I'll be leaving for my National Conference in 13 days. And it looks like Tom will have to travel to New York again for work either the 11, 12 or 13--any of which will mean some extra child care shuffling...but it will all workout. Fingers Crossed.

This morning you might have thought it was 10/1 around here instead of 8/1. Patrick left for his last day of summer school sporting a sweatshirt and long pants (apparently it has been really cold in the classroom. And I made a big pot of Mama's soup per Bryce's request for breakfast-and then I really wanted a cookie so I made a batch of peanut butter cookies from a recipe in a cookbook given to me by my good friend Beth LeMie, Personal Historian.

So S-L-O-W

this morning my IE is just running really really slow. It's very very annoying...so I tried the safari browser on my pc and that worked ah 500x faster, but not all the features for websites works w/that--esp. links so not as helpful as it could be to me.

Tomrrow is my big garage sale AND 7/25/08--ie Christmas in July. Not that that means anything, just a little observation. Being Christmas in July Eve, there was an article in the Tribune talking about a retailers already being worried about the holiday shopping season. I think we'll just focus on socks and underwear for the kids this year...

Facebook

So I set up a facebook page tonight, it was that or do more laundry --ugh. Facebook seems pretty user friendly, didn't see an option to add a song that loads when you click on my page, but I'm not a fan of suprise music so that's fine with me.

Tomorrow we are headed back to the beach, this time my camera is charged and ready so I should actually get some pics this time!

This soup is so yummy...

Oh this was sooooooooooooooooooooooooo good! I found the recipe on the Whole Foods website. It was great w/the nice cool evening we had last night. I used TS Dried Tomato and Garlic Pesto for the Italian Seasoning since I was out of the TS Italian Seasoning Salt.


Italian Wedding Soup with Vegan Meatballs
Vegetarian
Heat-and-serve simple and full of flavor, our Whole Kitchen™ Vegan Meatballs make a great substitution that will please the whole family. The recipe name is actually a mistranslation of minestra maritata, which refers to the "marriage" of greens and meatballs in the soup.

Ingredients with an asterisk () are available as 365 Everyday Value™ and/or 365 Organic Everyday Value™ products.
Serves 6

1 (15-ounce) can Italian-style diced tomatoes with garlic, oregano and basil
6 cups organic vegetable broth
4 ounces elbow pasta
1 (16-ounce) package vegan meatballs
3 cups fresh organic spinach, roughly chopped
2 teaspoons dried Italian seasoning
Sea salt and ground black pepper
2-3 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese (optional)
Bring the tomatoes and broth to a boil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Simmer 10 minutes. Add pasta, meatballs, spinach and Italian seasoning and cook until the pasta is tender and meatballs are cooked through, about 8 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Ladle into bowls and serve. Sprinkle with parmesan if desired.
Nutrition Info
Per serving (About 14.5oz/418g-wt.): 310 calories (79 from fat), 9g total fat, 0.33g saturated fat, 18.5g protein, 34g total carbohydrate (5g dietary fiber, 7g sugar), 3mg cholesterol, 1400mg sodium

Freebies

I am very excited about our upcoming mini trip downtown~ We are staying at a Marriot Residence Inn and I earned the hotel stay free through Tastefully Simple...then I have 5 AMC gold tickets so we can go see WALL-E for free through my coke rewards.

Then I have a $25.00 gift certificate for NIX a restaurant by our hotel that I got for free wthe coke rewards again...Then we have 6 free tickets to see the white sox from Bryce's baseball camp...AND today I read in the Trib that all summer long kids get in free to the Museum of Science and Industry! So this is going to be my kind of trip, my freebie and rewards collecting will equal less out of pocket expenses and we don't have to spend a ton of $$ on gas.

I am also happy to report that the hotel room has a fridge and a microwave so we don't have to eat in restaurants the entire time. Wahoo!

So tomorrow will be 10 days with out chocolate. I have been waiting for the phone to ring and someone to tell me I get some fabulous prize for subsiding w/o chocolate for more than a week...

Relay for life on Friday

Well on Friday I am participating in a local Relay for Life overnight event. I really am not sure how it will go...I have like a tent thing, but not a tent tent, I have one of those coverings you put up that is like a cheap version of a tent for an outdoor sale event.

Tom will be home with Anna and I'll be there w/the boys. I really hope it all goes ok...ie no storms and no crabby kids. I think I should probably check w/Tom and see if we have a tent tent somewhere in the garage...

I figure I can do lots of walking, since Im used to running. Really I am just giving myself a pep talk on the whole thing right now, I don't like going to places where I don't know exactly how things work--but who does like to try new stuff right? I'll also be doing onsite fundraising w/my TS and I will have at least one team member coming up there--I need to work on hopefully finding another team member or 2 who might want to come up there as well.

Today Anna turned 4, and what did she want to do for her birthday. Get a pink booster seat. So we went to Target since it looked like they'd have better selection on booster seats than WalMart...but they didn't. So I got her a Dora necklace from the one spot..and we went over to Trader Joes because the one other thing Anna really really wanted to do on her birthday was get a little shopping cart and put food in it. LOL Fortunately when we got to Trader Joes they had a mini shopping cart available for the birthday girl to use. Fortunately for me she only almost rammed it into about 3 fellow patrons of the Trader Joes--she was pushing the cart around like she was Danica Patrick...

Then she finished offer her day w/a big piece of chocolate creme pie that Auntie Teri brought over.

So that's what it is!

The other day I cut up cantalope, had a couple of pieces and right away my mouth started itching...and the same thing happened when I made guacamole...so I did some googling and found this:
http://www.revolutionhealth.com/articles/pollen-fruits-veggies-help-trigger-oral-allergy-syndrome/hd-607439?ipc=B00449

turns out if you are allergy to ragweed--yes...then pollen in some fruits and veggies can trigger oral allergy syndrome...

well at least now I know what the deal is. And at least cooking the fruit or veggies in question can stop it...which is good in case it ever starts happening w/tomatoes...Still I am bummed about the guacamole issue. I love guacamole. But it is def. a prob. I have w/alvocados because today I had alvocado on a sandwich and one bite and my mouth started itching. which is really freaky!

Anna is turning 4, my summer experiment

Here is the Princess Cake I made for Ms. Anna's birthday. It was a big hit w/the girls. Pink frosting Pink Cake... And Anna got lots of fun princess-y stuff for her birthday from all her friends and family. She especially loved the dresses from Auntie Kat--yes she is all girl.

I am on some pins and needles as I am so close to my goal to promote to Team Mentor on 7/1...but it is mostly out of my hands and in the hands of my team. It's hard to work hard and sit back and be patient at the same time.

On the running front, I ran the Ridge Run again this year and survived. Oh and then they take pics of you during the race and email them to you in case you want to order them for a memento...yah-no. My pics I should get printed and put on the fridge --that's a guaranteed way to skip opening the fridge! I want to run a 1/2 marathon again and finish faster than last year and to that end I got a new pair of running shoes FREE w/my coke rewards point collecting --that was super cool AND I am doing a change of diet experiment to try and lose weight cause then I would be running faster (less drag...)

So I am on day 4 of my new diet of no meat no dairy. I think I'll probably lose about 1000 lbs cause I love dairy and cutting it out really is reducing all the fun! LOL.--On the plus side, peanut butter is in....

Tonight I made quinoa and mixed that w/corn and black bean salsa and yum, it was delish and today I also found out margarine doesn't contain meat or dairy which was news to me, duh! Of course since I want to lose weight, I won't be able to sit around and eat toast w/margarine all day as lovely as that would be!