“Keeping score feels pretty empty if no one is around to share a cupcake.”

Thanks for the recipes…and have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I’ve got to run.

Happy, Happy Thanksgiving.

Hope you are having a wonderful holiday with family, friends and all those you love (or at least those with whom you have to be civil for 3 hours once a year.) No. This is the time of year to give of ourselves and open our eyes to the best in everyone ~ even those who might rub us a bit wrong.

And a good time to be honest about our faults.

Number one for me…I need a little maturing in the kitchen.

Thanks to all of you who took the time to share recipes. I have printed them all and made an oath to try each one out and share on this blog…(though not by tomorrow).

Deborah Montella won the side of cornbread dressing most generously donate by Madison’s own Ye Olde Colonial. Those of you not from Madison looking for some great Southern cooking  just drive to the square and look for the sign. You can’t miss it.

Deborah is a writer friend I met through a UGA Harriette Austin Writer’s Conference. I haven’t landed a agent yet from the conference, but have made two wonderful friends each year I attended…both who are now working with agents on their projects. What can I say? I seek out attractive, talented, fun women at these things hoping their talent will rub off on me. Deborah asked me to donate her hard earned dish to someone who might be in need of a side item tomorrow. I quickly thought of someone.

Me.

But no, thank goodness there is plenty of food to go on our table this year, and I did come up with someone who was very grateful to add that dressing to their all-give-thanks meal.

So now I’ve got to run look through my race packet. Don’t want to leave it till last minute like usual. Almost missed the start last year.

Here’s wishing you a wonderful Thanksgiving…

And with my recipe post last week  through Nancy Wall’s comment I learned about another great web site … with loads of recipes to share: Necy’s Kitchen.

Nancy Wall and her husband grew up in Madison though they don’t live here at present. Her father, Woodrow Neal, was once principal of Madison Elementary. How cool is that? Her recipe blog is loaded with 40 years of her best recipes. YAY! Nancy’s blog… 

Necy’s Kitchen

Necy’s Kitchen. “I am the bread of life.”

http://necyskitchen.wordpress.com/

What happened to Blueberry? An in depth photo essay.

My daughter had been after me for days.

“Clean Blueberry’s water. Clean Blueberry’s water.”

So last Tuesday I decided to clean Blueberry’s water. I poured out water into a jar then carefully dumped in Blueberry.

Then I went to work on his home. I took out everything…I left the gravel to soak in a very weak mixture of cleaning solution to get out the yucky rotten smell  that gravel some times gets when exposed to air.

I put the bowl in the dishwasher along with all the fake seaweed and kelp.

Then after all washed sterile and clean I put fresh water in…and left it to rise to room temperature before releasing Blueberry back into his pad.

Remember how is was raining ALL day last Tuesday? Okay. It’s been raining all day, every day…but it was last Tuesday. As I ran out the door to exercise for the hour before school let out…in came two very wet cats.

An hour later I came home ready to transfer Blueberry back and….

Hmm. That's odd.

OMGOSH!!!!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Panicking…I checked the bowl…Not there…empty. I knew I had not transferred the Bluemeister yet.

 

Then I looked down and saw the…

 

What a way to go....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By this time it is 3 minutes past when I should have left to pick up the children. My stomach was sick. No time to go to Walmart and buy another Blueberry…..

 

 

HELP!!!

 

 

What could have happened? Then I saw….

 

 

 

UGH!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So now we have…

 

 

 

Strawberry Miles

Please tell me that someone else out there has done in a loved one….Or ever had an episode of Unsolved Mysteries unfold in your very own kitchen…

I thought this might make me feel better. Not so sure. But I am definitely not going to trust those kitties anytime soon. Strawberry I got your back.

RIP dear Blueberry. August 9, 2009 – November 17, 2009

“Just relax, take some deep breaths and become one with the oven.”

Thanksgiving morning my alarm rings about four. There is much to do. Start turkey, check on the dressing, cut four cake layers left cooling overnight each in half to finish my eight-layer caramel cake.

Fib, fib and the last being biggest fib of all. (more…)

The Feast…This year I’m starting a file, so please share your favorite recipe.

I love Thanksgiving.

It’s my favorite holiday with childhood memories of watching the mythical Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. (It was mythical to a girl sitting in Florida with air temperature around 85.)  The turkey going round and round on the rotisserie. That’s how Mom cooked our bird. When I think of Thanksgiving morning, the predominant memory is the sound of that rotisserie motor and wonderful smell of the roasting bird.

But in a confessional column this week, I admitted never having been founder of the feast. There  was one  year when John and I first married when I remember roasting a turkey breast, mixing together some Stove Top and opening a can of cranberries. Very cute. Very newlywed.

When you arrive in your mid-40s and are still reaching for the Stove Top ~ not so flattering. Don’t get me wrong, I love Stove-Top and have the most wonderful meatloaf recipe using a box. (I’ll share that another time). But Thanksgiving does beg for a little more love and effort.

More love and effort than I have to bear.

No. One of these years I’m going to do it. One of these years, I’m going to not to run the Atlanta Thanksgiving Half Marathon and stay home, set my very own dinner table and present a feast for those I love most in the world.

I need your help. Leave me with your favorite dish and recipe. I shall start a file with FEAST written in black Sharpie across the top and will be so ready for that glorious day.

I’ll share my corn casserole  recipe that I bring every year. My husband is not very adventurous with food. I think my mother-in-law asks me to bring it every year so her son (my hubby) will have something to eat. Turkey, corn casserole and rolls.  That’s what my Johnny eats for Thanksgiving.

So here it is….And be sure to leave a comment on blog by Monday 11/26 to be put in the drawing for a side of Ye Olde Colonial’s very yummy cornbread dressing.

For those of you living under a rock and don’t have this tried and true favorite in your file; my corn casserole. Okay, looking at the recipe it’s titled…

Corn Pudding. I like that. It sounds so holiday.

1. 2 cans corn (one whole, one cream)
2. 8 oz. sour cream
3. 1 stick butter
4. 1 box Jiffy cornbread mix
5. 2 eggs
6. Mix all and bake at 375 degrees, 30 to 45 minutes until brown.

Here’s to a wonderful feast for all.

Where is this in Madison, Georgia?

This is not Monday. The day I usually ask that question. But yesterday went by very quickly.

No one came up with the correct response last week for the bell. Here is the bell…

One if by land, two if by sea.

No silly me. That had to do with shining lanterns, not ringing bells. As you can see, the bell sits a top the stairs to the Morgan County High School football stadium. The bell rings after a victory.  So sorry that no one received the great prizes offered by the Boosters.

A Morgan County hat and blackout shirt.

My husband insisted that he receive the prize ~ but I didn’t think that fair since he suggested the bell in the first place. But he kept pouting so I bought him a box of Milk Duds.

How 'bout a walk? Please.

I will keep the really cool hat and shirt for another time…And hope my husband quits begging me to give them to him.

This week in the spirit of the coming holiday, I thought of doing something a little different. Everyone in town knows of Ye Olde Colonial Restaurant. I was in there Friday…fried okra, black-eyed peas, chicken. All very yummy. Which got me to thinking.

How about give away one of the fabulous sides of their cornbread dressing?

So everyone that leaves a comment on the blog anytime this week…Monday 11/16 through Monday 11/23…will be put into drawing for the dressing.

Janice that means you too. I shall ship it to Ethiopia. It certainly will get there in time for you birthday. Thanksgiving in June.

YUMMY!!!

So comment away on posts all this week for a chance to win.

Tail-Gatoring. It’s All Coin Tosses and Cockabooses.

Lots better weather this year than last.

 

 

Gainesville, 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am not making a hand puppet. That’s a baby Gator chomp.

 

We usually don’t have any trouble picking up tickets at the game. This year was no exception. We found two pairs and decided it would be “boys club” and “girls club.”  Joe mentioned one set was upper deck, one pair lower. I distinctly remember saying, “We can just flip a coin.”

 

We ate, drank…tried some of the Cardwell’s wings..

  

See. We can still be best of friends (until kick off).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then headed for the stadium.

 

This trek entails running a gauntlet of these things called Cockabooses.

 

 

 

How about $300,000 for a Cockaboose?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have partied in a Cockaboose after South Carolina beat Florida four years ago.  I didn’t care for a repeat stint of  hanging around after the game in a caboose filled with happy Cocks. Deliriously happy. Please not another immersion in their Cocky, giddy happiness. Nothing personal.

 

So we gals were handed our pair of tickets. (Funny, no coin toss.) Up we went.

 

Kat and I were perched here among the Cocks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They really were okay seats.  Notice a lot of raised hands. The stadium rocked and rolled.  You’d have thought they were playing the Number One team or something.

 

Oh. I guess the Gators are.. but to me, they’re just my dear boys I have gone to see play football since I was five years old. When they were never number one, never on television and went to the All-American Bowl in Birmingham, Alabama.

 

 

They have become a football powerhouse with a perennial target on their back. And that crowd wanted something BAD. Especially the man sitting directly off my left shoulder screaming constantly into what used to be my good ear. He must have some “issues.” Wow. Talk about scream therapy.

 

South Carolina played a great game. The more they stayed close — the more the crowd roared.

 

 

HELP!!!

 

 

I did learn my camera had a good lens.

 

I have a really good lens. Because we were on another planet from Tebow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Madisonian Julie Speyer texted me during the game asking were our seats were…was John wearing a blue shirt, she thought she had just seen him on TV?  John on television? Surely, not. Why would there be any cameras, anywhere near where he was sitting?

 

Mid-way through the game we got a text from the “boys club” …a picture from their seats.

 

The menfolk's view.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Hmm. Those wise-guys probably were on television.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BAD!!  No coin toss.

 

Well, honestly, it was just great  to go to a game. Even more joyous that the Gators pulled through. My hubby continues to protest he had no knowledge of where their seats were ~ throwing Joe completely under the bus. Or should I say…under the Cockaboose.

 

So next year it’s back to Gainesville. Woot!

 

And “Heads.” Most definitely, it will be heads.

 

“There wasn’t a thought to not going. Everyone went. That’s how it was.”

The world is a very different place than that morning many years ago. My dad at 17 years of age sat dressed waiting on his bed. Long before sunrise his father came in and said, “Son, you are very fortunate to be able to go in the Army and serve your country.” (more…)

The Battle of the Bulge…into the woods.

That looks really cold.

I don’t like to be cold.

After talking the other morning with friend Paul Reid, who happened to be in that snow in the French countryside, I felt pretty much the wimp. And very grateful to all those in the Army infantry that held their ground against the Germans.

Every morning as I race into the Madison Fitness Center late for Emily Buck’s cardio-interval class, I scan the gym for Paul. He is usually on the stationary bike. I wave. He waves back. (Well, to me and any female that might wave his way.)

Now during many of our morning conversations, the subject of running comes up. If I’m off to do some athletic adventure, I always ask Paul if he would like to come along. His standard response. “I walked miles and miles through the ice and snow in the Ardennes — I have no desire to ever run again.”

Until our conversation the other day, I don’t think I truly understood.

As a child, WWII seemed a long ago event. Something of black and white photos and film clips. It conjured up images of George C. Scott standing in front of the flag in movie stills. (As a girl I thought he seemed more terrifying than the idea of the war.) Now I realize all that happened less than 20 years before I was born. That would be as talking to a teenager today about something that happened in 1991 — or close to it — like the falling of the Berlin Wall. To them it might seem a world away, to you recent history.

Those young service men lived that history.

Paul left UGA and went through Fort Benning, Camp Swift and Fort Dix. His deployment overseas was interrupted by Roosevelt ordering them to Philadelphia to break the transit strike. While they were there, D’Day happened. (I’m glad my friend missed the honor of participating.)

Their group headed over on a double-loaded ship. Soldiers spent 12 hours above deck, then 12 hours below. This allowed the ship to carry twice as many boys. He used numbers like 5000 above deck and 5000 below. Ten thousand troops heading to the coast of France.

They arrived at Normandy and jumped over the side of the boat into a net but didn’t have to fight their way a shore. There was plenty of that waiting in the French countryside.

Paul was a machine gunner with equipment that “should have been in a museum.” He threw out all the names and places. Normandy, Northern France. The Ardennes and the Battle of the Bulge. The Rhineland Campaign.

Now I’m am embarrassed to say – I certainly heard of those places, but didn’t know much about them. I never heard of the Ardennes. Could it have been a mountain range? Silly me.

It is a forest. And the more I heard about it, I couldn’t help but picture some wicked, enchanted forest straight out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. All covered, dripping with snow. Paul spoke of how they were joined with the British by this point. Sometimes they would go weeks without seeing the enemy, then there would be periods of day-to-day combat.

The troops were ill-equipped to fight in the ice and snow. My husband and son helped fill in a little bit of the history — the Allied forces thought the war would be over that summer — but that is when Germany pushed one last time into the forest. Winter arrived.

The Battle of the Bulge.  Thinking as a child again, I am more familiar with references to this term used by Madison Avenue  to fight weight gain.

Can you can spot Paul in photo?

I feel stupid.

Paul talks being so cold and having nothing to wear. He saw a German soldier lying on the ground and noticed straw stuck in this boots. From then on, he kept straw in his boot to help stay warm.

Dark uniforms couldn’t camouflage against a backdrop of white. They took anything they could find in old abandoned farmhouses – white sheets, white drapery — tearing them into shreds to use as cover for their uniforms. Taking the doors from the houses, they would cover foxholes with the door and dirt. Surrounded by earth…”We were as safe as in your mother’s arms.”

His best friend, a young man from Portland, Oregon — got separated from the group. By the time they found him, he had frozen to death.

An incaluable magnitude of death resulted from Hitler captivating a nation. More destruction than my generation and those who have come after ever have known – and hopefully never will have to experience.

I asked Paul what he felt about the state of the country today. “I have my doubts whether we could fight a war like we did. Today, we are so divided.”

After the war ended, Paul was ordered to stay on as an MP to help rebuild France.

But the war stayed with him long after returning home. Walking in downtown Atlanta with Graham Ponder a streetcar jumped on the rail. Paul threw himself and Graham on the ground. “You just react after being in those types of situations for so long. The men over there now in the Middle East. They won’t be the same for a while when they return.”

It might be clique (one tenets of Writing 101 is never to use clique) but freedom truly isn’t free. That and thank you this Veteran’s Day.

I pray you all are somewhere warm and dry.

Where is this in Madison, Georgia? Getting your bell rung.

This looks like a bell.

That is when the phrase seeing stars came alive for me. From that moment on, I could identify with Looney Tune characters whom got bonked over the head with a mallet and had a galaxy swirling about their noggin. I was very young — and that is where my memory ends with the Pinel’s bell.  (That rhymes. How nice.)