Hi everyone,
I trust you had a good Christmas. It was kind of quiet, here at my house. My phone didn’t ring once! I didn’t even think much about it. I just figured everyone was busy with their family celebrations. My oldest, much adored sister Patti is the only one of my siblings that I could count on for a Christmas Day Call, but since I had just talked to her a day or so previous and we wished each other a “Merry Christmas!” I wasn’t surprised that she didn’t call again. And as for the kids, I ‘chatted’ with my beautiful daughter Kat on the FaceBook and exchanged Christmas Wishes with her. Our youngest and very handsome son Kevin was sick and we don’t want to get sick, so although our dinner with them was postponed, we did talk on the phone.
Kandyce, Kevin’s beautiful wife, has an awesome chicken casserole recipe that she was going to make for us and I was going to take a dessert. “What should I make?” I asked Kevin when we were making these plans.
“Anything you want.” That’s what he always tells me. “Everything you make is good.” Also what he always tells me. Ha! Just wait till I tell him about my Christmas Dinner SNAFU!
You know what SNAFU stands for, don’t you? Situation Normal All F*&%$# Up!
So for a few days, What to make? was rattling around in my head. Then, after I talked to Patti something clicked. I remembered making a Turtle Cake for her and her handsome cowboy husband Lee many years ago and it was a big hit. I haven’t made it in a long time but I knew I still had the recipe.
“I know! I’ll make Turtle Cake!” I told Mike.
“Okay, but leftovers stay at Kevin’s house,” Mike told me in no uncertain terms. Cause if it’s in our house, we will eat it. And Kevin has a disposal system for all things fattening. He takes it to his work. Those dock guys work so hard that nothing sticks to them!
So for two days the special ingredients for Turtle Cake sat on my kitchen counter. “Should I make it anyway,” I asked Mike after our dinner plans with the kids were canceled. I didn’t think a practice run would hurt anything and I would just re-buy the special ingredients when our dinner was re-scheduled.
“NO!”
“Okay!” I heard that one loud and clear. And I put the caramels and chocolate chips and evaporated milk and cake mix in the cupboard.
Christmas Day here was just beautiful! Sixty degrees! Not bad for late December in mid-Missouri!
Mike and I decided to have a prime rib roast for out Christmas Dinner. I have never cooked a prime rib before and I didn’t want to screw up this expensive piece of beef so we talked to lots of people and I consulted Betty Crocker. According to Betty my size roast should take just under three hours so I had all of my sides planned to be done at that time.
“You should put it in a really hot oven for half an hour,” the guy at the meat counter advised. “Then turn the temp down and finish cooking it.”
Betty Crocker doesn’t say to do that.
Mike talked to our friend Margaret, who cooks an awesome prime rib, and she says that she also uses a hot oven for half an hour. It seals in the juices. And she uses a meat thermometer. “Your thermometer will tell you when it’s done.”
So we set our oven for 425, stuck the newly purchased thermometer in the roast and put it in the oven. Half an hour later we turned the oven back to 325. Ten minutes later my thermometer is showing a well done roast.
“It can’t be done,” I told Mike. We let it in the oven for another twenty minutes and fretted the whole time.
“I don’t want to ruin it. Call Margaret.”
“If the thermometer says it’s done, you better take it out,” was the advice Margaret gave us. So we took it out and I hurried to throw the rest of the dinner together. I made the stuffing and popped it into the oven, put the broccoli in the microwave and then I got busy making the horseradish sauce. I mixed sour cream, horseradish, a few drops of lemon juice and salt and pepper, just like Margaret said to do.
“Here. Taste this,” I commanded Mike when I thought I had enough of everything in it.
Mike tasted it and made an awful face. “What?” I asked. He didn’t say anything, he just grimaced again. “WHAT?” I demanded.
“I don’t taste any horseradish,” he said.
I tasted it again. I couldn’t believe it. How could he not taste any horseradish? Okay, I thought to myself. Out loud I said, “I can put more in if you want.”
“If you like it it’s okay,” Mike said shrugging his shoulders.
This was not what I was going for. I was going for, “Mmm-mm,” or a “It’s good,” in the very least. But not getting either one of those I pressured Mike to tell me what was wrong.
“Nothing! If you think it’s okay, it’s okay.” Then under his breath he added, “But I’m not eating it.”
“What?” I asked, but I heard him.
“Nothing. Should we cut the roast now?”
Everything I’ve ever read or heard says that before you cut any meat, it needs to sit for ten to fifteen minutes so the juices don’t run out and you end up with dry meat. So we dutifully waited to cut into it. And guess what?
If you guessed it was raw in the center, you would be right. Despite what the thermometer said, it was not well done.
“What should we do?”
“We’ll have to put it back in and cook it some more.” We did. An hour later we took it out, let it set for ten while I warmed sides, then we sliced two pieces from the end and true to his mumblings, Mike wouldn’t eat any of my horseradish sauce. I didn’t care. Well, I did, but what are you gonna do? I ate it on mine and actually enjoyed it.
Dinner over, dishes washed, tummies full, we settled in for an afternoon of TV watching, recliner slumbering (for Mike) and I played on my Cricut.
The whole time Mike and I were planning this, whenever we talked about the horseradish sauce, I pictured the bottle of horseradish I already had in the door of my fridge.
Have you ever done that? Made a mental picture?
And even though the horseradish I had was fine for cooking, I thought I wanted something different for the sauce. Something grated finer. I thought I’d look for something when we went to the store.
Unfortunately...
We forgot. It wasn’t on my list. “It’s okay. I’ll just use what I’ve got.”
So now, hours later, this whole thing with Mike not liking my horseradish sauce is still bothering me. I replayed all of our conversations about horseradish sauce and how to make it, over and over in my head. I just couldn’t understand why he didn’t like it! Then, just like instant replay and slow mo all rolled into one, I see me pulling my bottle of horseradish out of the fridge and I see it. I actually see it in my minds eye.
“See what?” you ask.
I see the words on my bottle of horseradish. It said Garlic. “OH MY GOODNESS!” I exclaimed right out loud as the realization dawned on me.
“What?” Mike asked.
Then I laughed. It is kind of funny. “No wonder you couldn’t taste the horseradish in my sauce,” I fessed up. “I didn’t use horseradish.” He looked confused. “I used garlic!”
I had horseradish and garlic confused in my head.
Has that ever happened to you, confusing things in your head or is it just me?
“Mike, why didn’t you tell me it was garlic?” I yelled at him, like it was all his fault. But he didn’t have an answer for that. In fact, the only answer is because he didn’t know it either. All he knew was it just wasn’t what he had his mouth set for.
Nine o’clock Christmas Night rolls around and it’s time for me to make my daily call to my mother. I pick up my phone, flip it open and see I missed five calls and one text.
LOL. Yeah. You want a quiet day? Turn the ringer off on your phone!
Kevin knows that I do silly things like that sometimes, or that I’ll go out and not take my phone with me. So if he really needs to talk to me, he calls Mike’s phone. Mike is not near as apt to go off without his phone as I am and as far as I know, he never silences it.
So now we have a Christmas Story we can laugh about. In fact, I have to tell you that Mike has been having a field day with this, at my expense.
We were at breakfast Saturday morning, at our favorite breakfast place and Mike called Sue-our favorite waitress-over. “Ask Peg about her horseradish sauce,” he told her.
Sue looked at me expectantly, but I wouldn’t tell the story. Not again. He made me tell Margaret in the car on the way to breakfast. “She can read about it in next weeks letter,” I said.
“Okay,” Sue simply said and went back to her waitressing duties.
You may have noticed something about this weeks letter that you may never have seen before.
“What’s that?” you ask.
I did not start my letter this week by showing you my desktop photo. You wanna know why? Because I haven’t changed my desktop photo this week, that’s why. In fact I haven’t been out to take photos since the 18th of December and that’s a long time for me, but I am otherwise staying busy.
Like I said earlier, I spent Christmas afternoon playing on my Cricut machine. I started out making butterflies and I ended up making eighty of them in varying sizes and colors. I have a little OCD don’t you know. I didn’t start out to make eighty but I was really having a good time. I love to make things.
That is a very good question! One I wondered many times as I proceeded to make owls, mushrooms, and squirrels to add to the menagerie scotch-taped to my wall.
Then I thought of Momma. She could use them to decorate her lampshade. She already has one of my creations on there and she could change it out.
Then I was chatting with Kat and she told me she could use something to decorate one wall in her new apartment. So I made her a bee hive, six inches tall along with thirty bees. Some yellow, some orange.
I took my Merry Christmas down and now, right behind the bee hive (in the picture), I have to touch up the paint on my kitchen wall.
Sigh.
But if I had to find that out then, this is a good time for that to happen.
“When is pulling the paint off the wall ever a good time?”
When you are remodeling.
Walls came down, new walls went up, new ceiling, trim, drywall, all that good dusty stuff. Besides cleaning, we’ll have to paint so it won’t be a big deal to touch up the kitchen wall.
Blessings, you know what I mean?
I am going to end this time by telling you that we had five additions to our clan this year. My handsome nephew Dustin gave us Oliver in July.
My beautiful niece Ashley gave us Kevin in September.
Born in November to my handsome nephew Farley was Kinsley, our German baby.
Beautiful niece Erin gave us Luke on December 22nd and just one day later, Autumn came into the world, born to handsome nephew Tim. And the exciting news doesn’t end there! No sir-ee! We are on track to have more additions next year. Niece’s Bambi and Taysha are both going to have babies and our first great-grandchild will be born in 2015. Hard to believe that I am 55 years old and going to be a great-grandmother.
Until next time, lots and lots of love,
Peg and Mike
No comments:
Post a Comment