Category Archives: Food

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Mid-week adventure – preparing for Thanksgiving!

. Food, Holidays, recipes . , ,

This year I’m not having Thanksgiving at home, but instead will travel to California to celebrate the holiday with #1 Daughter, #1 Son-In-Law and my grandchildren. They live south of San Francisco, in the Palo Alto area, and this has become one of my favorite destinations. First and most importantly, my family lives there. But almost as important to me is the scenery, which is always beautiful. Beaches and rolling surf and tide pools and golden hills and fields full of produce we just don’t grow in Texas. I have developed a fascination with the artichoke plant. Who knew it got so big?

I will be in California for almost a week and plan to post a full report of our adventures after I return home. In the meantime, I seem to be dreaming of Thanksgiving recipes, even though I won’t be doing as much cooking as normal. For some reason, that doesn’t seem to matter. Late at night I find myself immersed in cooking magazines and cookbooks and my binders full of favorite recipes. And what is my most favorite Thanksgiving recipe? Hands down, it’s Sausage, Cranberry and Cornbread Stuffing, which was published in Epicurious in 1997: 

I’m a huge fan of lots of cranberry sauce with my dressing, and since this recipe includes fresh cranberries in the dressing, it’s just perfect (at least in my humble opinion!). Plus it has sweet Italian sausage and pecans. Heaven! It’s the only side I will probably insist on for Thanksgiving dinner. Perhaps I should share this link with #1 Daughter!

Note: there is a link within this link – the recipe for the cornbread. You’ve probably already figured that one out, but I will confess it took me several years to find that hidden recipe. Silly me! Also, instead of the seven leeks called for in the recipe, I usually just use a whole yellow onion.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

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The FAIR!

. Food, Life, Travel . , , , , ,

Today was the perfect Fair day! The temperature hovered around 55 all morning, which is chilly, but a long-sleeved T-shirt and a fleece and jeans were perfect. I took Dart to the Fair, which is so easy and even relatively cheap when you buy the combo Dart and Fair tickets at Kroger. The train stops right at the front gate, which is awesome!

The fun begins after you get through security and on to the Esplanade. I always stand for a minute just enjoying the Art Deco buildings.

I also use that time to figure out which car show to see — the more upscale, foreign cars or the Ford trucks. Today I started with the foreign cars and fell in love with VW’s small SUV. Until I saw it was $50,000. Yikes! After I finished drooling on the cars, I went out the back door of the car show building and this is what I saw:

And inside:

The log house had three rooms, and this little bedroom was the only one I could photograph. It was beautiful inside, though. I wanted to live there!

Next it was a trip down the middle of the food booths. That’s what you go to the Fair for, right?  But so many choices . . .

None of these tickled my fancy, though. I’m a traditionalist and always have to have my Fletcher’s corny dog:

I take mine slathered with mustard, but unfortunately forgot to take a picture of it before it was gone. <sigh!> The chaser?

The next stop was the Creative Arts Building. I don’t know which I like most — the butter sculpture (this year commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Girl Scouts:

or the quilts:

The quilts are hard to photograph because they’re up high, close to the ceiling of the building. I suspect the quilters don’t want anyone’s sticky fingers touching their beautiful handiwork. This display always blows me away. I can’t imagine the patience it takes to create these masterpieces.

I also liked the Lego sculptures in the corner of the building:

I wandered around some after that, but I’d really seen everything I wanted to see. I took a walk by Big Tex and said “Howdy,” then back to the front gate and the train home. It was a great ending to my “no work” weekend!

Back to work tomorrow, but the real adventure continues next weekend. See you then!