5 Gallon Bucket

Ok, Tom said to use a bucket, Rick said to use a bucket, and Alton Brown said to use a bucket. Looks like we're going to use a bucket. It's not supposed to be cold enough Wed. to leave it outside our door (and I could just see one of our neighbors kicking it down the stairs . . . a flying turkey . . .), so we're going to use Alton Brown's method of icing it in the tub. Actually, AB has a great brine recipe using water, brown sugar, salt, vegetable stock, and black peppercorns that I may try. If my stockpot is big enough.

Brine 'da Bird!

I almost titled it "Brine 'da Byrd." Am I thinking of "tyger tyger burning bright?"

Sweet relief. I began and finished a paper today. I have so much to do - part of me wants to start the next thing, and part of me wants to say "It's 7:00 on a Sat. evening, you just wrote an 8-pager, go watch a movie." Which I can easily do here at work - I rented "In Her Shoes." To top off the lovely feeling of accomplishment, I think it's a pretty good paper. I felt that my fiction work sucked, but that this social analysis somewhat redeems it. It makes it seem so much deeper than I truly intended. :-)

Yes, I desperately want to brine our turkey. Except I need a container that will hold 2 gallons of water, completely submerge our turkey, and fit in the refrigerator. I've been racking my brains, but I don't think it's going to happen. Even if I buy a plastic bin at Walmart - how am I going to wrestle it into the fridge? What am I going to do with the stuff that's been displaced?

I had the same problem with the Christmas tree. I really really really want a Christmas tree, ever since Mom asked a slew of questions pertaining to the holiday and I answered each one with a gloomy "no." She finally asked if we're going to have any holiday spirit, which I answered with a tentative yes. So it propelled me into plotting how I can get a Christmas tree into our house. I finally solved where our box of ornaments can go - somewhere in the top of the closet. Then I figured that we don't really need to open our dresser drawers for a month, so the tree can go in front of the window in our bedroom. The hitch came with the tree itself. If we get a fake one (one that already has lights on it, preferably), then where the heck do we keep it until June (unless we become those tacky year round Christmas lovers who never open their dresser drawers)? I had the brilliant idea of a real tree, but my brilliance has yet to be followed up with practical answers as to 1. where do I buy a real tree? and 2. how do I transport it our apartment and up our steep, narrow stairs? 3. do I really want pine needles everywhere?

Then I realized that I was potentially more excited about the prospect of buying an incredibly festive candy-cane patterned tree skirt than the tree itself, and I began to wonder if maybe I should scratch the whole idea. I stopped myself short of googling Pool Cities in the Lexington area.

So I'm back to a too-small refrigerator with a too-big container of a dead bird soaking in a salt solution.

Movie Movie Movie!

I finished a BOOM question on evangelism; now I'm pondering my understanding of the teaching office of the commissioned and ordained, particularly in regard to the Bible.

Rick thinks I use semi-colons wrong, and I suspect my Strunk & White is locked away in the bottom of our closet, so I can't peruse the riveting punctuation chapter.

Rick and I have Blockbuster Online. Once you figure out how to navigate the site (it took us awhile), it's almost idiot-proof. Sometimes I still get a surprise, though, when I log into our queue and see titles have been added, like "The Tale of Ichabod and Mr. Toad" and "Rocky (25th Anniversary Edition)." I guess better a jolt here at the screen than at the mailbox. At least now I know not to get my hopes up for the next movie . . .

Cheeeeeeese

I'm hesitant that someone will find this journal . . . but my delight for the background and font outweighs my most intimate experiences being discovered, so here goes.

Last night, Rick and I went to Buffalo Wild Wings. I'm not sure what the big draw is; it's so loud that we have to scream at each other to be heard and even then, our conversation is like something out of a comedy movie. So really, Rick tuned into the football and basketball games, and I played the trivia thing which wasn't as much fun because the first 15 questions were all sports related. But it's worth it for the two tubs of blue cheese dressing. Yea, I know, most people go to wing places for the wings.

I know what my thing for blue cheese dressing is. It's the anticipation over biting down on an actual piece of cheese. My family is wild over cheese. Even Lailee is nuts over it. All you have to say is "Lailee . . . cheeeeeeeeese?" and she goes bonkers. Actually, so do we. I thought all families had our bordering-on-obsession-compulsion for cheese, until I realized that every other family I knew didn't take an annual trip to a cheese factory, lugging coolers with them to carry home the maximum amount of curds. For Keith's 18th birthday, I bought him blocks of different cheeses. Last year when Mom came to visit, she didn't bring anything useful for her cash-strapped, dish-washing-for-a-living-daughter, nope I got an expensive block of hickory smoked cheese. Which was incredible. I discovered last week that I can now buy these gloriously creamy, soft hunks of pepperjack in bags.

So I nursed my blue cheese dressing, occasionally taking a bite of a wing not smothered in it, and then Rick and I went to the Liquor Barn. The Liquor Barn is fabulous because it has fresh breads and aisles of items you won't find in your typical grocery store. Like Asian ingredients and an entire chocolate aisle. Really, I'm surprised they don't specialize in cheese, to go along with the 1000 varieties of wine you can indulge in. I found something new - endangered species chocolate. The wrappers have pictures of adorable but endangered animals upon them, and part of the proceeds go towards foundations dedicated to the endangered animal cause. I wanted the Otter Chocolate Bar just because she (he?) was so cute . . . ah, a reason to go back!

Rick bought rye grain whiskey (he let me taste it - which I spit out - disgusting!!). For some reason or the other, he looked incredibly hot last night. He was wearing black, that's why. And he shaved his beard down to a goatee yesterday, which makes him look years younger and gave an additional cuteness to him. So I suggested he jump me. He did . . . let's just say it was a very . . . squeaky experience.

But to tell the truth, it was invigorating and exciting. Our sex life so far has been rough, because of me. I've been having trouble getting my mind into it - getting past that "sex before marriage is bad" mentality. It's not like flipping a switch once you're married, you have to recondition your entire thinking on the subject. So I've been dealing with these guilty feelings every time we get down to it - and really just wrestling internally.

I was pretty loose last night. I asked Rick what his favorite thing about me is. He said my humor - that while he's never sure where I'm going to go with it (and apparently that's dangerous), he said I'm pretty funny most of the time. I've noticed that I can make him laugh, and keep him laughing, while no one else can. It's something I've sort of prided myself on. I guess we are a match made in heaven.

Fall Foodie

Yesu, where did October go?

(It just ocurred to me that I may have taken the Lord's name in vain in Spanish . . .)

Rob visited mid-October, we spent the evenings bowling on his Wii and the afternoon at Shaker Village. My parents also came down that weekend, and I attempted to knock everyone's socks off with a cranberry-orange pork roast, rice pilaf, and a braised fall vegetable medley of carrots, celery, apples and raisins, with a freshly-made home-churned pumpkin bourbon ice cream for dessert. For those counting calories, I whipped up a lower-fat chocolate cinnamon carob chip ice cream. To compliment dinner, I simmered a mulled spiced apple cider and served my gourmet meal on bright blue plastic plates with non-matching pink napkins. It was elegance at its finest. However, I'm not completely lazy - I allowed everyone to use real silverware. Rob treated Rick and I to lunch at Ramsey's Sunday after church, and then he headed home.

Two weeks later, the 'rents came again because Keith told them he's having problems with drinking. So of course everyone fell apart and I found myself hosting guests during what was quickly becoming the busiest part of my semester . . . It was one of those time where I just had to forget about the mounting piles of work I had to do and concentrate on my family. Ironically enough, Keith physically looks the best he has since he started college. He looks like he's lost weight . . . Mom tried to give me some sort of speech on the phone about "now, I know you've lost patience with your brother, you've had a right to, but now is when the family needs each other the most and you just have to . . ." I cut her off at that point, a bit annoyed, because I haven't lost patience with Keith. Contrarily, I'm waiting patiently on the sidelines until he decides he wants to have a meaningful relationship with me. Oh, and I made meatloaf with creamed corn and mashed potatoes. Now, meatloaf may sound boring, but sautee thyme with the onion and garlic, use bread crumbs as the binder in a beef and pork mixture, bake the loaf free-form, and top it with a secret glaze that includes cider vinegar - and you have a culinary delight that will burst on your tastebuds. It is indeed one of my typical recipes - that is, recipes that require a minimum of twenty ingredients.

Tomorrow night I'm a-fixin' seared pork chops with a cranberry-apple compote and a sweet potato mash with an undecided vegetable. Tuesday night is slow-cooker chili with buttermilk biscuits and again, an undecided vegetable. Thursday night will be lemon piccata chicken with rice pilaf and green beans.

Tonight we're going out to Buffalo's Wild Wings. I'm thinking a nice, deep, honey barbecue sauce to compliment the crisp fall day outside will celebrate the season properly.