Tag: dinner

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A Peaceful Christmas Eve

Here it is Christmas Eve and everything is ready for the big day tomorrow. I have been really good about planning things out and getting my shopping done early enough so that I’m not in a last minute panic like I was last year.

The grocery shopping was probably the worst. I went around 4:00 in the afternoon and the place was jam packed with people. It was so crowded I could hardly make my way up and down the aisles. I had a list with me to help speed things up, but it really didn’t help much. I was stuck in the human tide of going up and down each aisle anyway.

I wrapped the very last gifts this afternoon and have been able to enjoy a nice, quiet dinner and I’m actually heading to bed early. I hope Santa likes the chocolate chip cookies that I baked for him, and that he is good to me – and you!

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Only One Week To Christmas

Wow! Did you realize that Christmas is only one week away? I think this is about the right time to start to panic. Do I have all the gifts bought? Do I have plenty of wrapping paper and ribbons? Where are the gift tags that I bought on sale last year for 80% off? I know I put them someplace safe so I could use them this year and not have to spend top dollar on gift tags.

The dinner menu is starting to worry me. Do I have all the things I need in my pantry other than the turkey? Do I even want a turkey this year? I have been thinking about getting a Honeybaked ham instead. But it has always been a tradition at my house to have turkey on Thanksgiving and again on Christmas. Of course, that much turkey makes everyone pretty much sick of turkey and we don’t even think about having turkey again for several months – it’s just too much. So maybe it makes more sense to get a ham this year and start a new tradition?

Thankfully I got all the Christmas cards written and mailed last weekend. I don’t have that hanging over my head any longer. This year was tough to send cards – I have not been good about keeping up with everyone’s address changes. One card to my niece already came back as undeliverable because she moved and I forgot about it. So I have to call her and get her new address tonight, then find a new envelope to get that last card mailed out to her.

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What On Earth is Celery Root?

I just watched a Paula Dean cooking show and she had a guest on the show who brought out a thing called celery root. I have never in my life seen anything that looks like that, and this guy claims that we can all buy it at our local grocery stores. I seriously doubt that, but maybe it is something that I have just never noticed before. So next time I go shopping I will be asking the produce manager for celery root and see if they have it around here.

He says you have to peel the celery root and that causes a lot of waste. The idea of wasting a lot of food bothers me, so that is Strike One against buying celery root. After you peel it and make sure everything you cut into is thoroughly clean, you slice it into big chunks and boil it in water on the stove top. After you cook it for 20 -30 minutes, you have to push it through a hand tool called a ricer. That is Strike Two – I don’t have a ricer and I can’t think of anything that I might have in the kitchen tool drawer that would be a good substitute.

Then he adds the cooked and riced celery root into a big pot of boiled but drained white potatoes. Mixing them together with some butter and whole milk, and you have a big pot of tasty mashed potatoes.

I don’t think all that extra work is worth it for me to make this in my own kitchen. If someone has a restaurant and they want to do this and put it on the menu, I’ll be happy to order it at least once and try it. But in my kitchen, I don’t feel the need to add celery root to my mashed potatoes. I’ll do fine with my own way of making that.

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Different Pizza Toppings

As a kid, we had pizza a lot. My mom probably ordered pizza for the family every Friday night through our whole childhood. She almost always would order pizza from Pizza Hut, and she would order one pepperoni every time, and a second one with different toppings depending on how adventurous she was feeling that night. I think her favorite was probably sausage and mushroom, but she also liked canadian bacon with pineapple and a vegetarian topping with extra black olives.

Nowadays we have a lot more pizza places to order from and a lot of local restaurants are in the pizza making game, with specialties like brick oven baked and hand tossed dough and toppings that can be anything from spinach and garlic to shrimp to barbecued chicken.

I still like the good old standby pepperoni pizza – especially if this is from a new pizza place and I’m trying it for the first time. If they do OK with the pepperoni, I will have more confidence trying a different topping next time I visit that place.