It's been an on (running around working) and off (laying on the couch under a fuzzy blanket) busy day today as we prepare for a family gathering tomorrow here at our home. The
forecast (at NOAA, my webby weather guru) is telling me that there will be some new snow on the ground in the morning with a little bit more possible until around noon, a total accumulation of maybe one inch. Merle has been itching to get his new
mongo snow blower cranked up again. It's just a wonderful piece of pricey machinery. No effort in getting lots of snow out of the way. I even took it upon myself to use it one day and have to say, I enjoyed it very much. Our driveway is long and at one point goes downhill. The self propelled snow eater just moved itself along, downhill and up and spat out the snow in neat rows along each side of the pavement. It even has an optional electric starter. No more pulling your arm out of it's socket trying to crank the engine manually. Just push the button and it comes to life.
Anyway, back to Christmas. The originally planned "simple" Christmas celebration has turned into something bigger although I am going to try to keep it from getting to it's usual level of frenzy. One effort was to try and simplify the food and so our main dish will be my version of
English Cottage Pie. This is a very basic food that is not particularly exciting, but should
accommodate the less tolerant palates. My rendition consists of cooked beef chunks that are very tender in a savory gravy with or without peas and carrots topped with mashed potatoes that are slightly browned before serving. The recipes on the web all say to use ground beef, but as stated, I made a couple of changes. No turkey, no ham, no Roast Beast this Christmas. Everyone is bringing a dish or dessert so there will be plenty of food.
WHITE ELEPHANTS
.....as in White Elephant Gift Exchange, a potential for lots of fun. We did this a couple of years ago and everyone really enjoyed it. Merle and I, along with the daughter and son-in-law scrounged around the cabinets here looking for our gift contributions. We found 3 suitable items and the 4th is still being found by the kids somewhere at their place of abode. An old, but hardly used stadium seat, a remote controlled monster truck I gave Merle a few years ago for who knows what reason and a really ugly rug checker board with giant checkers. I believe the last item was purchased during one of our basically non-existent visits to the chain restaurant know as the Cracker Barrel. It is a restaurant for high cholesterol junkies - those people who have high cholesterol, but cannot help themselves when it comes to biscuits and gravy, fried chicken tenderloin, country fried shrimp or chicken fried chicken (it is on the menu). So, I think we've been there once. They have a gift shop filled with resin figurines, gingham stuff, silly signs to post and offend your friends and lots of other garage sale fodder including giant rug checkerboards with giant checkers. There is no question that the food tastes good in a totally disgusting sort of way, but I can't get past the fat grams, thank you very much.
More news to follow after the big event tomorrow.
I hope no one gets hurt tomorrow fighting over who gets that stadium seat - we have some serious sports fans in the crowd................
