A Feast Fit for the Family!

Ah, yes....here we go!

This is the week of Thanksgiving, a week full of cooking and baking in a warm, fragrant kitchen, culminating in the traditional feast we call Thanksgiving Dinner, at a table full of family and friends.

I love to cook, I love to decorate, and I love large gatherings, so for me the holidays are sheer delight.  I'm really not sure what I love more---the delicious anticipation of planning and preparation or the actual event itself.

Definitely my Thanksgiving traditions have morphed over the years, changing with the seasons and stations of life.  When I was a child, grandparents were never really part of our holidays.  We never went "over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house."  We moved a lot while I was growing up and our family dynamics changed a few times, so that meant our holiday gatherings changed too.  Different locations, different people, but always constant was our little family unit and lots of really great food, a masterful mix of classic dishes and something new, flavorful and unique.

When I married, I entered a family whose traditional gathering was exactly the same every year...same location, same people, same menu.  Because I lived in my husband's hometown and not my own, his family traditions became mine, so my own children were born and raised like my husband had been...same location, same people, same menu.  Except my nomadic background slowly infiltrated the sacred sameness.  I introduced new dishes and new ways of preparing old dishes.  I suggested moving dinner out to my sister-in-law's log cabin at the lake.  I invited other people to join us.  I wasn't doing it to be defiant or push my way, it just sort of naturally evolved from who I am.  And I'm happy to say my husband's traditions worked their way into me as well.  Doing things the same way every year brought a sense of stability and security to my soul that I had not known growing up.  It was then I decided that the best aspect of tradition wasn't which tradition you kept but that you kept tradition...your traditions, even when they evolved over the years to fit the times and seasons of life.  And now, in yet a different season, our family has forged new traditions that we have now kept for the last five years...and I love these traditions every bit as much as I loved my childhood roaming holidays and my young married years of sameness.  I love them because they center around food and family and friends, and all those "F's" spell fellowship to me...nourishing body, soul and spirit.

So join me these next few days as I prepare a feast fit for a family!  I'll post recipes and how-to's for those of you who like to cook, and I'll post decorating ideas for those of you who like to decorate.  And I'll blog about the richness of family and friends who gather at my table for those of you who simply like to read about the joys of others because it reminds you to enjoy and appreciate the special people and traditions in your own life.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Ode to the Twinkie

Okay, I'm jumping on the bandwagon!  I mean, how can I ignore the demise of the Twinkie, the darling of the `70s lunchbox?  Those golden, round, plump little cakes...

Honestly, there are no tears shed from my eyes!  I can't say I'm even the least bit sad that Hostess is being laid to rest.  I'm actually a bit hostile towards Hostess.  I blame it for the scourge of my life...my golden, round, plump little thighs!

You see, as I've mentioned before, my mother was of the era of "wonder products" like Wonder Bread (ever wonder how it got its name?), Cool Whip, Blue Bonnet margarine, Campbell's soup, Oscar Mayer weiners and bologna, Jell-O, Kraft Singles processed cheese, and the infamous Twinkie, Ho-Ho, Ding-Dong and Hostess Fruit Pie.  Yes, she witnessed the birth of hydrogenated oils, trans fats, and preservatives.  How exciting for the modern homemaker of the 50s and 60s to have bread sit in the cupboard for a week without going stale!  How convenient to open a can of soup, add a can of water, heat it up and call it dinner!  How lovely to scoop up a spoonful of too-white fluff and plop it onto pumpkin pie!?  And how effortless to tuck a Twinkie in a kid's lunchbox for a sweet snack that showed just how much they were loved!

Yep, that was me...raised on all those delicious, nutritious food mutations.  Every lunch, every day, for years I ate a processed cheese and bologna sandwich on white bread, a bag of chips, a banana and a Twinkie (or Ho-Ho, Ding-Dong or Zinger, the coconut-raspberry flavor) washed down with a thermos of Kool-Aid.  It makes me cringe just to think of it!

When my mom says she's baffled by my love for healthy cooking and eating, when my husband has to sneak a Hershey almond bar every time he picks up a gallon of milk at the store, and when my kids mock me for telling them sauteed asparagus taste like candy, it's just because I am making up for all the damage those Ding-Dongs have done.

So Hostess Twinkie, I say good-bye.  I wish you would have left a whole lot sooner. (And if it's really true what they say about Twinkies never decomposing in a landfill, the people who love you still can take comfort knowing that good-bye doesn't mean forever!)

Nostalgia!

I love woodstoves.  They make me think of cozy cabins in the woods, quilts, rocking chairs, country living.  They're pretty popular in Oregon...wood is plentiful and the weather is just chilly enough that you can actually heat your home with one.

Last night we went to some friends' house.  They live up on the mountain where I once lived when I was young, so just driving there makes me feel nostalgic.  We parked the car and ran through the rain and the mud in the dark towards the house.  The door opened and we blew in with the wind...into the welcoming warmth of the dry heat of The Woodstove.  Like a cat coming in from the cold, each guest would enter, shake off his wet coat, and make his or her way to the woodstove...stretching out cold hands and turning backs to absorb the heat all the way to the bone.  We pulled up our chairs around the hearth and huddled there...then one by one, off came the sweaters, back moved the chairs, and finally, we opened the windows and let the fire burn down a bit.  Then an hour later, on went the sweaters, closer moved the chairs, and the window was closed and another log tossed on.  I carried the warmth of the woodstove with me all the way home.  As we drove through the rain and the fog of the night, I reminisced to Jeff about the woodstove we had when I was young and how I would love to have one again.

When I was 13, our family fell apart.  My mom moved us...me, my sister and my brother...2000 miles across the U.S. all the way back to the home of our birth, which was Oregon, where we had family to offer support and comfort.  We moved into a little house way out in the country, on the very mountain I was driving down.  It was my aunt and uncle's house, and they lovingly squeezed us in.  They took one bedroom, my mom took the other, and all five kids bunked together on the back porch, which had been hastily boarded up to become an impromtu back bedroom.  Just four months after living together like that, my uncle got a new job out of state, so they moved out and generously let us stay in the house.  So my mom kept her room, my brother got the back porch bedroom to himself, and my sister and I shared my aunt and uncle's old room.  With virtually no money, we had to make do.  Part of making do was keeping the heating bill down, and that happened by never turning the heat on, just burning wood in the woodstove.  That was fun!  I had always wanted to be Laura Ingalls and live in pioneer days, and now I almost got to!  Yeah, it was fun...until winter came.  We had never lived in the country.  None of us had ever swung an ax.  I learned phrases like, "seasoned or wet," "split kindling," "a cord of wood," "pitchy," and "chimney fire."  I learned that garter snakes loved to nest in the wood.  I learned that even a light brush against the stove caused a very quick burn.  I learned that complaining over having to split kindling only got you in trouble and you'd have to split more.  And my mom learned that chopping firewood took muscle, and that crying when chopping firewood made your muscles weak.  So she stopped crying and she got mad, and, boy, she could chop a lot better!

One day---it must have been before my aunt and uncle had moved because we were all together and I was still in ignorant bliss about what it meant to heat the house with a woodstove---my uncle interrupted our quiet afternoon by bursting into the house yelling, "Chimney fire!"  My aunt jumped up and grabbed my little cousin and hollered at the rest of us to get out of the house, NOW!  So we ran into the front yard and stood shivering while we watched my uncle climb on the roof and do something with the chimney.  When all was clear and we began to relax, my aunt looked at one of my cousins, standing in the yard with her Bible wrapped in her arms against her chest.  "Ohhh," all the adults crooned, "Look what she saved when she ran outside."  Lots of hugs and praise for my cousin, who beamed angelically.  I remember thinking rather sullenly, "She just grabbed that on purpose because she knew she'd get a lot of attention."  I didn't even know I was supposed to grab something to "save" on my way out...I just ran when my aunt yelled to run!

I guess heating by woodstove was hardest on my mom, although I didn't realize it then.  I only felt sorry for myself, of course, as any young teenager would.  She was the one who had to "stoke" the stove before bed so it would hopefully burn through the night (another new word I learned!).  And she's the one who had to get up early in the morning to poke it back to life so the house would be warm for us wimpy kids.  Of course, I certainly didn't think I was wimpy.  And I certainly had no desire left in me to be Laura Ingalls!  Every night when we went to bed, we had to close our bedroom doors so all the heat would stay in the main house, making it quicker to heat in the morning.  By the time we woke up, there was frost on our window and our breath hung in puffs over our faces as we lay in bed.  I'm not kidding or exaggerating.  It is the absolute truth!  Finally, when we could delay no longer, my sister and I would say, "1, 2, 3!!" and jump out of bed, grab our clothes (which we learned to lay out the night before), and then run straight to the woodstove and throw our clothes on top of it to warm them up while we, shivering, warmed ourselves.  Then my mom would stoke the stove for the day and we'd all leave for school and work, only to come home to a cold house and a dying fire that had to be fed to life again.

Okay, so it was a lot of fun to cook pancakes on the woodstove when the electricity went out.  And it was convenient to boil the tea kettle on the top.  And it was nice to keep simmering pot pourri heated to scent the house.  But other than that, it was nothing but a vicious cycle of chop wood, burn wood, get warm, get cold all winter long.

So last night on the way home while I was recounting these stories to Jeff I suddenly said, "I don't want a woodstove...ever."

And Jeff said nothing, because he never intended to have one in the first place!

I'll just keep my gas fireplace...no ashes, no burns,
no chimney fires, and no chopping wood!

The Last Leaf

I love fall in Oregon.  It is long and lingering---a full three-month display of scenery so vivid and rich it almost takes your breath away.

When I lived in Canada I loved fall too.  But an Alberta autumn is a quick burst of bright then a glorious gasp for life as it succumbs to the deathgrip of winter.  I remember feeling almost sorry for the bare branches exposed to the bitter winter wind that stripped them of their leaves, and I would wish for snow to come and cover the hard, brown ground and twiggy trees with a soft blanket of white fluff.

Here, our trees are in various stages of undress.  Some trees are completely naked while others are half-dressed, clinging to a see-through negligee of lacy leaves.  Still others are at their peak, flashy in their bright yellow and vivid orange costumes.  And we even have the determinedly green tree with no sign of giving in to the inevitable change of season.

There is nothing like the riot of fall color...showy shades of yellow, orange, red, crimson and even purple that overlap and layer each other in a palette that painters and photographers have tried to reproduce for ages.  But there are hidden treasures behind all that show...treasures that aren't revealed until the gorgeous exterior is stripped away, exposing nature's shy and quiet beauty that is often missed and greatly unappreciated.  (There's a message there...do you see it?  Another hidden treasure!)

The first treasure I noticed was just outside my door.  I walked outside yesterday morning, facing the tree in front of our house, newly stripped of its leaves, and saw a bird's nest high in the branches.  I never knew there was a bird's nest there.  All summer a mama bird had nested and raised her young under the protective coverage of thick green leaves.  Now her babies were grown and her home abandoned as she flew south for retirement.  (And yet another hidden message!)

Then two treasures I think are truly beautiful in the dead of winter have just this week shown themselves...lichen and mistletoe.  The intricacy of lichen fascinates me.  In the winter, instead of flowers I make arrangements of bare branches covered in nubby lichen in shades of pale to deep green.  And related to lichen (which is really a combination of algae and fungi!), is mistletoe.  Since it rarely snows in Oregon, I am happy that we have evergreen trees, holly, ivy and mistletoe to make it feel like Christmas.  Mistletoe is actually not good for trees, as it feeds off them (lichen does not).  It grows profusely here in oak trees.  You can see mistletoe once all the oak leaves fall.  It looks like pom-poms on the branches.  The method for harvesting mistletoe?  Shooting it out of the tree with a shotgun.  Honestly!  My son and some friends actually spent a few days "harvesting" mistletoe, which they then bundled with red ribbon and sold so people could kiss under the mistletoe at Christmas!  Besides the cost of bullets and cheap red ribbon, it was a pure-profit endeavor...and a lot of fun! (Don't all boys like to shoot things out of trees?  And shooting mistletoe is a good thing...it sucks the life out the tree and it's not a bird or a squirrel!)

 


















Of course, once the leaves fall, apples and berries are very easy to see and therefore pick.  Because we rarely get frost this early, the apples are still good for the eating!

And here was a surprise!  Jeff and I went for a walk today, and I had planned to take pictures of the lichen, mistletoe and apples, but, lo and behold, this is what we found in the fescue around the golf course...

Golf balls hidden all summer long by the thick green grasses, now exposed and ours for the taking!  Jeff's pockets were loaded with over 30 balls...we even had to leave some behind!  So you see, there really is treasure after the last leaf falls!

Now go find yours!

Oh, the Pain!!

As you probably are aware by now, I go for a morning run almost every day and I try to squeeze in a Zumba class whenever I am able.  I've been running for about 3 years now (just 2 to 3 miles...really, it's more of a jog as true runners, in my opinion, do about 10 miles and have very skinny legs, of which I do not!).  I don't love it, but at the same time I hate to miss my morning run.  I do love being outside, so it's tolerable.  Then I discovered Zumba a couple years ago, and that I did love.  Two summers ago I was able to go about 4 times a week, plus running in the morning, and I was at a pretty decent weight and felt pretty good physically.  But the instructors have changed and the location has changed, and I'm now only able to go about once a week, sometimes only a couple times a month.  I have slowly watched the pounds creep up...since last March I've gained a good 7 lbs.  To some people that may not sound like much, but when you're only 4'11" there isn't a whole lot of body to hide extra pounds.  I've been feeling it!  So I did a whole cost/benefit analysis of local gyms and Zumba classes to find something that I could afford and something that would fit my busy schedule of two part-time jobs and church/ministry life and a revolving-door household with all the kids who come and go every week.  That led me to a 10-day trial at a nearby gym...which led me to the realization that I am not just 7 lbs overweight but I am fat and flabby, weak and wiggly, slow and saggy, old and ugly.

Days 1 and 2 were Zumba classes, so I was totally in my comfort zone, and doing the routines for the first time didn't faze me a bit.  The third day was called "Cardio Circuit."  It was actually a lot of fun...great variety and a decent work-out.  But having never exercised in a gym before, I was unfamiliar with the bands, balls, bells and bars.  In fact, I had never even used a mat before!  The instructor was middle-aged, maybe 10 years older than me.  She demonstrated each station in the circuit, and although I had never done many of the exercises I felt reasonably confident that I would catch on and have no problem.  My first circuit was the jump rope.  Easy.  At the next station there was a mat and a ball, and I already had forgotten what I was supposed to do with them.  The girl ahead of me was kind enough to explain.  So I lay down on the mat, put my feet on the big rubber balls, arched my body up until only my shoulders and head touched the mat, and then rolled the ball out by extending my legs and rolled the ball in by drawing up my legs.  Okay, that was a little tougher.  Two stations later I found myself with what they call a "medicine ball."  It looks a lot like a bowling ball and is probably about as heavy.  This one was 10 lbs.  The exercise was to hold it in one hand and lift the arm straight out to the side, without letting the wrist bend, then drop the arm, switch hands, and lift the other arm out to the side.  When the instructor demonstrated it, she did it with such ease that it totally shocked me to discover that not only could I not keep my wrist from bending, I couldn't lift the ball to even half of what was required!  I tried putting a little swing in my arm on the way down to hopefully add some momentum to lifting the other arm, but I couldn't get my fingers out of the handle in time to switch hands and ended up awkwardly almost dropping the ball.  So I completed the exercise with my baby half-lifts.  Then it was on to another ball and mat...and bar.  The girl ahead of me was using a very large bar and when the cycle ended, she turned to pass it on.  Then she hesitated and said tactfully, "Maybe you'd like a different bar???"  I selected bar #3, the little bar.  Then I sat on the ball and slid down towards the floor until only my head and shoulders were in contact with the ball and the rest of my body was at a 90-degree angle forming a sort of table---with the ball and my legs serving as the legs of the table and my torso the table top.  Then we were to take the bar and bench press it into the air.  I haven't bench-pressed anything since my high school gym class, and then to have to do it by balancing myself on a rolling ball made the exercise that much more humorous.  I started to roll to the right, overcorrected and rolled to the left, sagged a bit and rolled forward, strengthened myself with determination and rolled back into position.  The whole time that bar was swaying wildly overhead as I fought for balance.  I thought to myself, "If I close my eyes and can't see anyone in this class, maybe they won't be able to see me!"  I had to be corrected on half of all the stations in the circuit.  I came out of that class feeling just a little bit dumber and a little bit weaker than I had when I first walked in!  But it was the next day's class that was the real killer...

Cycling.  "Think of it as a journey," the class description read.  I walked into the room and saw that everyone was taking out one of the many stationary bikes lined up against the wall, so I selected the first one I walked up to and half dragged, half pushed the heavy thing out onto the floor.  "Uh, uh, uh!"  I heard the instructor call.  "There is no back row.  Bring your bike up here and join us."  I looked up.  She was talking to me.  Oops.  I pulled my bike into the open spot she pointed out to me, which of course was front and center!  I tried to act like I was comfortable and ready for the class, and climbed aboard to start warming up with everyone else.  Hmmm.  Can't touch the pedals.  I slipped off the bike and fiddled with the clip that releases the seat and lowered it down...all the way down as far as it would go.  I got back in the saddle and started to pedal.  It was a bit of a strain to reach the handlebars, but I could manage.  The instructor didn't think so.  She came over and told me it looked like my seat needed to be adjusted.  She pulled on another clip and slid the seat forward as far as it would go.  Then she told me to get back on so she could fasten my pedals.  I didn't even know the pedals fastened!  She guided my feet into the cage around each pedal and then buckled each foot in.  I felt like a little kid getting her boots on with her mommy's help!  I began blabbering self-consciously about having never ridden a stationary bike before (besides goofing off on the old one in Jeff's mom's basement!).  My very fit and young instructor smiled big and said, "Oh, you picked the best class!"  And then she took her place on her own bike in front of us and began to warm up.

"Let's go, nice and easy!" she called out.  I was already warm just from hauling out my bike and getting embarrassed, but I started a smooth and even rhythm.  Then I looked in the mirror in front of the room and saw everyone's knees moving up and down double time and the instructor doing triple time.  I picked up my pace to try to match the other's and started to feel a tad nervous.  I took a good look at the instructor.  She had very long legs and there wasn't an ounce of fat on that long, lean body.  She was sculpted all over, which was easy to see because she was wearing a tiny little work-out skort and half-tank.  Even her neck and jaw looked strong!  Yikes!

So, imagine your "journey," she told us.  We were riding up Highway 99 with big Rex Hill before us.  We had to turn our tension knobs to the left for resistance.  Okay, so far so good.  Then she said to stand up and really push.  Yeah, that was actually even better.  Then she called out "Position 3!" and everyone leaned forward over their handlebars.  Alright, a bit of a distance for my short body but I imagined myself to be in the Tour de France, hunched over my bicyle with my very fit butt sticking up in the air.  Except the mirror kind of ruined my fantasy.  I was the third chubbiest in the whole class.  Most were wearing cycle shorts over their tight butts and muscular thighs.  I wondered if I did this class every week if I would end up looking like them.  Instead of imagining my biking journey, I began imagining my get-fit journey.  I have never had skinny legs in my entire life...never!  Maybe it was because I had never tried cycling!  Maybe this was going to be the answer to my life-long yearning!  Feeling quite motivated I turned the knob and pumped harder and faster against the resistance.

Within 15 minutes I was wishing the class was over.

The class was an hour.

She had us up, she had us down.  She had us pedal as fast as we could, she had as pedal as hard as we could.  She even had us do an exercise with a fancy name where we were to stand up while pedalling, not hold the handlebars, keep our back straight and rigid, and try not to move our upper body at all, just our legs.  The girl two bikes down the row from me pressed her hands together in front of her chest and stuck her elbows out like a praying Buddha and remained motionless in that position while her legs pumped evenly.  Wow.  Even the teacher was impressed.

At the 15-minute mark, I began to notice that my bottom hurt.  You know those two little bones in your butt that you don't even know exist until you ride a bike?  Yeah, those bones.  They are called your ischium prominences.  Well, I haven't ridden a bike since junior high...7th grade to be exact.  That's a lot of years to have protected my ischium prominences, so they were not happy with the constant hitting on the very hard bicycle seat.  By the time the class was halfway over, I was in major pain.  I kept wishing, almost praying, "Please be the last song."  But oh, no...the class just kept going.  The instructor had us take off all tension and pedal as fast as we possibly could.  I did not know that anyone's legs could move as fast as hers without falling off.  Not kidding.  I actually wondered that!  Then we had to turn the resistance as far as it could go and pedal as hard as we could.  With sweat pouring down my face, I strained and pushed until I finally got a rhythm going...a very slow rhythm!  I looked at the instructor and her eyes were closed, her head was swaying, and her body was rippling like a Greek goddess.  It looked like she was having a spiritual experience!

Finally, she told us we could sit and pedal easy...but I couldn't.  I could not sit down on my ischium prominences.  The pain was actually that great.  I kept standing and pedalling, but my legs were so fatigued that they'd slowly give out until my bottom landed on the seat, then I'd pop back up into a standing position and keep pedalling.  I felt like this:

 

"Somebody let me off this thing!"  I cried out inside my head!  And finally, an hour later, we were done.  I unbuckled my pedals all by myself and started to drag my bike across the floor.  The instructor saw me struggling and took one last opportunity to humiliate me by saying, "If you lift up on the front of the bike, the wheels will come out and you can roll the bike back to its place."  She looked at my sweaty face and my stiff body and then lifted it up and wheeled it back for me.  Ouch.

As I limped out of the room, she said, "Come back and give it another try.  It really is a great class!"

"Sorry, Sweetie," I said, "I'm going back to Zumba!"

(Of course I really didn't say that.)

I think I might give the class a second try if I could do it like this!

Oh, this was soooo good!

We haven't cooked for awhile, so I thought I'd share this fabulous recipe I made for the first time tonight.  It's one of those dishes that makes you go, "Mmmmmm," out loud when you take the first bite.  In fact, I think I did that three times during the course of my meal, and also complimented the cook (me) out loud a few times too!  I said things like, "This is as good as The Painted Lady."  "If I ate this in a nice restaurant, I would be just as impressed as I am now."  "This is unbelievable."  And nobody thought I was bragging because they were all agreeing and "mmmm"-ing and complimenting the cook too!

So what was the delicious dish?  It's called Salmon in Champagne Sauce.  I hope you like salmon.  I know instantly I lost about a third of you because chocolate wasn't on the menu!  But seriously, this is an excellent way to prepare salmon and actually not that difficult.  You will definitely impress your guests if you serve it!

When Jeff and I were at the Columbia Gorge Hotel last weekend celebrating our 25th Anniversary, in our room was a complimentary bottle of champagne.  Jeff was of the mind to leave it behind, but I knew better and packed it away with the apples, squash and cider donuts!  Then I went online and searched for champagne recipes.  This is the one that caught my attention...it has everything I love and sounded so rich and elegant.  Here it is, in all its glory:

Salmon in Champagne Sauce
6 shallots, sliced thin
1 lb. of mushrooms (I used cremini and baby portabellas)
4 T. butter
1 t. lemon juice
1 bottle of champagne
1 to 1-1/2 c. whipping cream
fresh herbs
salt and pepper
salmon fillet

Saute onions and mushrooms in butter until just soft.  Pour in champagne and lemon juice.  Place salmon in an oiled baking dish (Pam spray or olive oil).  Pour champagne mixture over salmon.  Bake uncovered for 45 min. at 375 (baste with juices if salmon looks like it is getting dry).  Strain liquid back into the saute pan and boil until reduced to 1/2 c.  Whisk in cream, fresh herbs (I used herbes de Provence) and salt and pepper.  Pour cream back over salmon and serve.

I served my salmon with jasmine rice and sauteed asparagus.  Add a beautiful salad and some artisan bread (and chocolate!) and you have a special-company dinner!  Bon appetite!

Popcorn and a Movie

I love popcorn.  It is my favorite snack...or maybe dinner!

I sort of like movies.  If they aren't silly, predictable, slapstick, unrealistic, sci-fi, horror, sports, or rated R.  (See why I only sort of like movies?)

Tonight is movie night.  It's pouring rain and dark outside, and all the kids are gone...yes, all gone at the very same time (that doesn't happen very often!).  So I am making a big bowl of popcorn in my special microwave bowl with a bit of butter/olive oil and sprinkled with brewer's yeast, and I am hauling out the ironing board and the ironing, some paperwork, and a project I'm working on for Kate in Bosnia.  I will do all those things while I watch the movie.  I have a very hard time justifying sitting in one place for 2 hours when there are so many things needing my attention.  But if I can settle down in front of the TV with a good project and great popcorn, I am content!

I also really dislike movie theaters.  Shall I name the ways?
- stuck in my seat for 2 hours without a project
- must listen to other people in the audience laugh when I don't think it's funny
- dangling feet because my feet don't touch the ground
- popcorn so salty it makes my lips pucker
- popcorn so buttery it makes my hands greasy and my stomach feel ill
- chilly movie theater
- can't curl up with a blanket
- must wear street clothes rather than slippers and sweats
- the cost

Home is the place for me...cozy in my favorite cushy chair in my comfy clothes with my own bowl of perfectly dressed popcorn on one side and a project on the other, watching a great movie that is suspenseful, makes me think, surprises me, has a little romance, makes the bad guy get it in the end, finishes strong and leaves me feeling good. (If you know a movie that fits that description, let me know!)

So that's it...my Sunday night blog.  Jeff just turned on the TV and I've gotta get poppin'!!

I have this popcorn bowl as
well as a few others!
I LOVE popcorn!!