Dance Little Sister...

... don't give up today...



Terence Trent D'Arby - Dance Little Sister



Indeed. And I didn't, as you will note. I'm still here.

I have discovered a thing about myself. I have a disease. It's called depression and there is no cure. The best I can hope for is remission. But that's neither here nor there, as my mother liked to say.

I have also discovered that I don't like selling my jewelry. I'm not a salesperson. And then, even when you say on your page that the item is sold "as is" people ask you to alter it somehow and then it doesn't work and it breaks and it's not my fault but I try to fix it and then they want to say they never received it back and yada yada yada... so, I closed my etsy store. I'm just not able to deal with that crap. I can't believe I used to work in customer service. If I had to do that now I think I would hurt somebody.

I also discovered that when I go grocery shopping I should pay more attention. Here's my funny Thanksgiving Turkey story: I bought a frozen turkey for our Thanksgiving feast. I didn't want a huge one but I wanted a whole one, not just a breast like we usually get. I wanted a drumstick, ya know? :) So, I'm digging thru the bin of turkeys and I find a small-ish one, around 12 pounds. I put it in the cart and take it home. Now... Thomas has a way that he saw on Alton Brown's show Good Eats on the food network of soaking a turkey in brine and seasonings over night and roasting it the next day. It's a really good way to cook a turkey. This is the way I almost always do mine anymore. So... I have my turkey thawing in the fridge for 3 days, on the day before Thanksgiving I make the brine. I had to do two batches because the turkey would be soaking in the cooler which is bigger than what I usually soak a breast in. Anyway... I cooks up two batches of brine and then I cut open the plastic wrap from the turkey and the most horrible smell assaults my nose! I swear to God I thought the bird was rotten! So I start looking on the package for a sell by date or something and wondering if I can find a fresh or already thawed turkey at 8pm on Thanksgiving eve! As I'm looking at the packaging (with my glasses on) I see that it says this is an already marinated turkey! Marinated and shot up with Cajun spices! I swear I never saw it when I bought the damned thing! I hate that nasty Cajun stuff they inject turkeys with. It's yucky, icky poo, nasty. Needless to say I was mortified. So Pete says, "maybe if you rinse it off really good and soak it a few times in fresh water it will wash it all off and then the brine will season it like we like it. So that's what I did. And I ended up with a totally inedible bird for all my hard work. It was gross. And further more, the damned thing was way hot. I can't imagine how hot it would have been had I not rinsed it off before cooking. I can't see how anyone could have served something that spicy to their kids, but... what do I know? So, we had prosciutto wrapped asparagus, delicious cornbread stuffing, baked sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce. And no bird. It was a good meal anyway. Thomas did eat some of the turkey breast wrapped in a tortilla with some jack cheese and lettuce on it. He said it was good that way. I, however, purchased a new whole turkey and I plan to have a do-over real soon. Yes, I read the whole package very carefully to make sure this one is just a nice, plain, old-fashioned, season it yourself, turkey. And that's my Thanksgiving story. Nice, huh? Good thing the pecan pie was good. In fact it was outrageously, unbelievably tasty. I did good on that part of the feast.

Now then... I have made the candied peel and I'm going to do the coconut candy today then I will get the fudge shop opened. I love this time of year. Sugar is so fun to work with. It gets me all giggly and excited. Hope everyone else is all giggly and excited about this time of year, too.