Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 2025

I am thankful for a lot of things, too many to list in the time between now and time to load the food into the truck and hit the road to dinner at my brother's house.  Later, we'll have another dinner at my son's house.

I still have to bake the sweet potato casserole.

I'm a little worried about the sweet potato dumplings.  I wrapped the sweet potatoes in dough and baked them yesterday.  This morning, I made the yummy cream sauce to pour over them.  This is not what the recipe said to do.  The recipe said to pour the yummy cream sauce over the UNBAKED dumplings, sprinkle them with sugar and cinnamon, and THEN bake them.  

I made this dish according to the recipe last week, when The Husband had to take a dish to the office Thanksgiving dinner.  They were ok.  I baked them on a sheet pan instead of in a casserole dish, and the wider pan left more of the dumpling tops sticking above the sauce, which worked out well.  The cinnamon and sugar on the dumpling tops made a nice crust.  But the parts that were below the sauce were a little gummy.  

I can't decide whether to pour the sauce over the dumplings (which are now nestled together in a casserole dish) or heat the sauce and let folks pour it over the dumplings.  The dumplings, by themselves, are kind of blah.  I should have rolled the sweet potatoes in a cinnamon/sugar mixture before I wrapped them in dough.  Without the sauce, they are just a sweet potato in a roll.  

It would be nice to preserve the brown crust on the rolls, but I think I will just to ahead and pour the sauce over them, bake them, and re-heat them when it's time to eat.

Looking forward to today.  After dinner with Son #1, we'll go across the street to Son #2's house.  Granddaughter #1 is home from college.

Sweet Potatoes - November 26, 2025

There's cooking to be done today.  We'll be attending a Thanksgiving dinner around noon, and another around 5.  I am taking dishes to both.  Sweet potato casserole and spinach dip to my brother's house, and sweet potato dumplings and pecan casserole to my son's house.  

The sweet potatoes are in the oven now. 

Historically, I boiled the sweet potatoes.  I never, ever drop a sweet potato into a pot of water that I don't think about Nanny and The Husband's grandmother, Mama J.  (She was a card.)   

The three of us were sitting at the kitchen table, discussing a recipe for sweet potato pie.  I was probably 30 years old hadn't had a lot of experience cooking from scratch.  I commented that the only problem with sweet potatoes was that they were so hard to peel.  Mama J said, "Boil 'em, first."  

It was like the heaven's opened up.  I heard angels singing.  

Evidently, Nanny had that same experience, for she exclaimed, "MAMA J!  You could have told me that THIRTY YEARS AGO!"

Cracked me up.

The angels sang for me again this morning as I was washing sweet potatoes, preparing to boil them.  

My biggest pan is in the refrigerator, half full of chicken noodle soup.  As I was taking a bowl out of the cabinet, planning to transfer the soup to the bowl so that I could use the pan for the sweet potatoes, it occurred to me that I could BAKE them instead of boiling them.

I hope there is not some down-side to baking vs. boiling that I have not considered.  I couldn't think of any, except a possible difference in texture.  We'll see.  

This year, for the first time, I bought bagged sweet potatoes instead of loose ones.  It was a mistake.  Whereas I can choose loose potatoes of similar size, the bagged potatoes came in a variety of sizes.  The little ones will be done far earlier than the big ones.  I've set a timer to remind me to check them early.

* * * * * * * * 

Yesterday, I spent most of the day fooling with Christmas cards.  During the past year, my watercolor practice produced a stack of 4" x 6" mini-paintings, just the right size for attaching to 5" x 7" greeting cards.  Yesterday, I gathered up the best of the Christmas-themed ones, stuck them to cards, and addressed them to friends and relatives.  This morning, I found a few more.  They'll have to wait until Friday.  

Herbs - November 24, 2025

In the sewing room, the embroidery machine is stitching out some gift tags for a friend.  They're felt tags, with metal eyelets for ribbons.  This is the second batch I've made; I sort of screwed up the eyelets on the first batch, so I'm trying again, being a little wiser this time.  

In the new planter, greens are coming up like crazy.  So far, nothing has dug in the dirt, but there are strange humps raised up, here and there.  I can't figure out what's making them, for I smoothed the dirt evenly when I finished planting.  Now that I think about it, though, there are some potato peelings (and other kitchen scraps) between the dirt and the leaves.  If those humps are the result of potatoes trying to sprout, I'm going to be kind of pissed, for I did not put them in there to make plants and grow potatoes.  

Walking around in the yard for the past couple of weeks, I spied all sorts of green growth on the ground.  Weeds, you know.  I finally decided to research these weeds and discovered that almost all of them have some medicinal benefits.  There's a phenomenal patch of chickweed growing in one of the flower beds.  I've been letting it grow simply because it's kind of pretty (if I'd planted it on purpose, I'd be proud of it).  Come to find out, the stuff is good to eat and good for topical applications.  The yard is full of "dead nettle."  It, too, is good for medicine.  Yesterday, I cut some and started a tincture to include in some salve I intend to make.

I haven't yet done anything with the cherry bark that I peeled last week.  

But I have cute tins to put salve in . . . if I ever make any.

* * * * * * * *

It's a dreary, rainy, somewhat chilly day.  At 1:00, I braved the elements to run errands.  First on my list was to mail a package to a friend.  When I got to the shipping store, I found that I'd left out the Christmas card I'd intended to include in the package.  Oh, well, I'll whack a stamp on it and put it in the mail tomorrow.  The second errand was to pick up The Husband's drugstore prescription.  When I got home and opened the bag, I discovered that they'd given me the wrong prescription, some nausea suppositories for my son, whose first name is the same as The Husband's and who lives across the road from us.  Little Miss at the counter didn't pay attention to the street number I gave her.  Next stop, the post office to buy stamps for the Christmas cards I've painted.  The clerk at the counter - the same one I wanted to shank the last time I visited the post office - barely had time to help me because of her conversation with someone around the corner.  When the postal display gave me the "how did we do?" choice of a frowny face, a meh face, or a smiley face, I chose the meh face.  And considered it a generosity.

Final stop, the grocery store, to get Bisquick for the chicken & dumplings I intend to make for dinner.  I hadn't had lunch and wanted everything I saw, so the Bisquick ended up costing me $33.00.

Greens - November 19, 2025

Last week, as I was making an online grocery order, an ad popped up for a 4' x 2' x 1' oval galvanized raised bed.  On sale, $30.  It came in pieces in a box that was about a cubic foot square, along with a bag of dozens of bolts and wing nuts.  The Husband and I put it together in about 30 minutes.  Yesterday, I set it on top of a big piece of cardboard, filled it with chopped leaves and store-bought dirt, and planted mustard, collards, and turnip greens in it.  As I was about to wash up after the planting, I spied a package of carrot seeds left over from last year, which I sprinkled over the bed for the heck of it.  Mother Nature watered it a little bit last night. According to gardening guru Uncle Jack, it's about 2 months late for planting greens.  We'll see what happens.

Squirrels will probably plant acorns in it.  

Last night, WHILE I WAS COOKING DINNER, the blood blister on my thumb (which I got earlier in the day from peeling wild cherry tree bark) started leaking.  I squished out the rest of the blood, put a waterproof band-aid on it, and kept working while trying not to touch he food.  Unfortunately, the task at hand was to wrap crescent roll dough around sliced cooked sweet potatoes, hard to do without two thumbs.  

The cherry bark shavings are drying on the kitchen table.  I'm going to grind half of them into powder and keep the other half intact for brewing tea.

The problem with fooling with new things is that it sends me down multiple rabbit holes before I ever accomplish a thing.  This morning, I watched a video on how to make salve (I've already got the base ingredients).  When the instructor finished combining everything, he poured the warm mixture into little tins.  I've got some little jars, but they're not cute.  I added tins to my Hobby Lobby list.  Then he put cute little round labels on the tins.  I added cute little round labels to my list.  Then I started working out a cute little design to go on the cute little labels . . . and I haven't even made the salve, yet.  

Wild Cherry Tree - November 18, 2025

There's a wild cherry tree growing 10 feet from our driveway.  The first time I noticed it, it was 3 feet tall.  I figured if I simply cut it to the ground, it would become a bush; it needed to be dug up by the roots.  I never got around to it.  Now, it's taller than our house, and its truck is as big around as my thigh, and it's gone long past digging up.

For years, I've said to The Husband, "We ought to cut that tree down before it tears up the driveway or falls on the house."

He'll say, "Yep."  

And the tree still stands.

This morning, "the algorithm" fed me a video about making cough syrup out of wild cherry bark.

The Husband has a cold.  

I think I'll make him some cough medicine.

* * * * * * * 

Caution:  Stripping cherry bark with a pocketknife can be hazardous to the thumb.  

Blood blister.  

Homemade Bread - November 17, 2025

I was especially useful in the kitchen last week.  Around Wednesday, I made a big pot of vegetable beef soup.  We had it for dinner that night and the next.  Friday, I sent some home with a daughter-in-law.  We finished it off Saturday night, with fresh bread from the almost-forgotten bread machine under the cabinet.

Yesterday, I made another batch of bread and used it to make a double batch of cinnamon rolls.  They are not all that fabulous.  They needed a different bread recipe.  I can make a biscuit that you could float to someone across a table, but I don't know much about yeast bread.  Come to think of it, biscuit dough makes a fairly decent cinnamon roll.  ;)

* * * * * * * * 

I started the oil landscape late last week, got it blocked in and left it to dry.  Meanwhile, a daughter-in-law came over to use the t-shirt press, and I had to move all of the painting accoutrements off the table to make room for the machine.  "Out of sight, out of mind."  I haven't touched it since.  

Instead of oil painting, I have been having fun with watercolor.  Did a bunch of Christmas-y paintings for Christmas cards.  Yesterday, I tried to paint one that featured a miniature donkey in a stable.  Tried three times, in fact, and still didn't get it right.  Attempt #4 is drying on the kitchen table, awaiting the next details.  If I don't screw it up, this one might be a keeper.

Northern Lights - November 12, 2025

Well, after two days of really cold weather, it's supposed to be near 70 degrees today and for the rest of the week.  This is why you might see Tennesseans dressed in winter boots, shorts, and fur-lined hoodies over t-shirts.  You just never know what it'll take to be comfortable from one minute to the next.  ;)

The winter blast even affected Florida.  People on the beach were wrapped in blankets in broad daylight.  And here's something kind of hilarious:  the cold made salamanders fall out of trees.  Apparently, they got too cold to hang onto the limbs.  My grandfather once said that he'd seen it rain frogs, but I never believed it, even though he wasn't one to joke around.  Maybe I should reconsider, for years from now, people will be telling their grandchildren it rained salamanders and be telling the truth!  

Last night, we saw the Northern Lights.  Around 9 p.m., the Daughter-in-Law across the road texted and said they were behind Nanny's house.  The Husband and I went outside.  There was a faint blue glow to the northwest.  I wondered if it was just the searchlight from a towboat lighting up clouds.  I was cold and went inside.  A few minutes later, when I was getting ready for bed, The Husband came in and said, "Come outside!"  The sky had turned red, so red that I feared there might be a big fire somewhere.  But it was wavering and changing colors.  Our cell phones could capture better images than we could see with our naked eyes.  It was kind of awesome.

The Husband has gone on another work-related road trip today.  I considered going with him, but changed my mind.  After Saturday's road trip home, when some malfunction blocked interstate traffic for three hours, I've had enough time in the truck to last me for a while.  Next month we have an even longer road trip to do, and I'm already dreading it.

This morning, I'm trying to decide how to spend the next two days.  I need to buy groceries, but since I won't be cooking dinner tonight, it could wait another day.  And now that I think about it, I have enough stuff on hand to make vegetable beef soup, which would last us for a couple of days and push the grocery shopping even farther into the future.  ;)

I might paint, instead.

There's an 11" x 14" canvas, prepped and ready to go, on an easel on the sewing room table.  I've already sketched scenery for a landscape, using a photo from Sunday's walk-about as a reference:

All I need to do is squeeze out some paints and get to painting.  

First, I think I'll go out and take that same photograph while the sun is shining, as the colors will be more vibrant than they were Sunday, when it was cloudy.

Nix that idea.  I just went out to take a picture.  The windy cold snap nearly denuded the trees.  I'll just have to imagine what they would've looked like in the sun.  

But I think I can do that.  Maybe.

Brrrrr! - November 10, 2025

Cold weather arrived with a fury yesterday.  We had our first freezing temperatures last night.  I am not happy about this.  It's supposed to warm up to the 60s and above before the week is out, but I know it will be just a temporary respite from Old Man Winter.

Saturday night, we made it home from our road trip, tired and hungry.  Somewhere between Nashville and Jackson, the interstate traffic came to a stand-still.  About the time we saw the back-up, the map app suggested we take the next exit (a mile away) to go around the problem.  We were on the east side of the Tennessee River, and river crossings are few and far between.  Any alternate route we took would add at least an hour to our drive.  It was an hour before we reached the exit.  When we got in sight of the off ramp, The Husband "floored it," and fired us up the exit ramp, saying he'd rather be moving than sitting.  

There was a fast-food restaurant at the exit, and it was teeming with people like us, desperate to pee and decide what to do.  A group of little old ladies had their phones out but were having trouble using their map apps and did not really know where they were, geographically-speaking.  When I named the closest towns north and south of the interstate where they could cross the river, they brightened up; they knew their way home from the northern route.

We took that route, too, The Husband being already familiar with it from visits with a cousin who lives nearby.  We rolled up in our driveway after nearly 9 hours on the road and about had to pry ourselves out of the truck.  I'd taken a tote bag full of art supplies (which I had not used) and a bag of electronic stuff (which I'd barely touched).  Had to unload all that crap, plus the luggage, plus the cooler and the snacks, and some other stuff we acquired along the way.   I suggested to The Husband that, since there are no bears in this neighborhood to burgle the truck for snacks, we should just leave it all until morning.  But he wanted to get it over with, so we did.  As soon as everything was in the house, I put on my nightgown, ate half a bagel, and went to bed.

Yesterday morning when I got up, it was cold and windy.  Mid-morning, I went out to take some pictures in the yard while the leaves are at peak color.  I've got a mind to try an oil painting, probably a landscape, and I wanted to get some reference photos.  One shot made me laugh when I framed it up in the camera.  

See that ivy "reindeer?"  ;)   

I told The Husband we should wrap it with Christmas lights.  

Yesterday afternoon, we walked across the road to visit with The Granddaughters.  The LRB wanted to come home with us.  She had a hard time deciding what she wanted to do when she got here.  When she investigated the sewing room, for the first time she asked if she could use the sewing machine.  All of her sisters have used the machine.  While I was heart-warmed that she expressed an interest, I said no.  She's 4.  (Maybe next time...)  I steered her toward the toy box, which contains mostly "boy stuff" (most of the "good" "girl stuff" has been taken home over the years by her sisters).   She ended up coaxing The Husband into setting up the Thomas the Train stuff in the living room floor.  He continued to play with it long after she'd moved on to something else.  ;)

I've got a lot to do today.  Art class is at 1:00.  Haircut at 4:45. Multiple errands to run in between.  I hope today's outing is more successful than yesterday's outing.  

Yesterday morning, I went to the hobby store in search of a few art supplies I needed and a craft project I could do in the car on tomorrow's road trip.  The store was unusually crowded, and part of the crowd was running, screaming, crying children, so I did a cursory tour of the store, got my necessities, and moved on.  Didn't find anything to do in the car.  :-\

Next stop, grocery store to get road-trip snacks and cream for the potato soup I intended to make for dinner.  It, too, was crawling with people, many of whom were pushing baskets filled with CASES of food - peanut butter, jelly, tomato sauce, pasta - evidently a group re-stocking its food pantry in light of the government shut-down.    There wasn't any cream.  I grabbed a ready-to-cook chicken pot pie and got out of there as soon as I could. 

This morning, I've been packing for the road trip.  My art supply bag is bulging with stuff for today's class and things I might need while I kill time at the hotel.  I still have to hunt up all my gadgets - laptop, Kindle, chargers.  I hate lugging all of this stuff, but I would go nuts with nothing to do.  

If I would get busy after my haircut, I could come up with something to do in the car.  You might remember that I started a lavender quilt a few months ago.  The original plan was to make 24 hexagon flower blocks and 24 blocks using a printed fabric panel.

I've finished all of the hexagon flower blocks, and now I'm re-thinking the printed panel blocks.  They bore me a little bit, even though that little panel is the very thing that made me start this quilt.  

I'm also considering using this big embroidered bee:

The bee in the picture fits a 4" x 4" hoop.  I digitized this bee, myself, so it can be as big or as small as I want, and I can add things to it, like flowers or a honeycomb background.  

Maybe I can figure this out on my laptop while we're on the road.  The Husband's fancy new truck has an electrical outlet, so I should not have to worry about my battery going dead.  :-)

 

Mean Dogs - November 3, 2025

Yesterday, after my ex-brother-in-law's memorial service, I saw a photograph of him taken some time in the late sixties or early seventies.  He was sitting in the driver's seat of a powder blue Volkswagen Beetle, with Shawn the Poodle in his lap.  Shawn was a demon.  He had not crossed my mind in years.  I told the following story to my nephew's wife, who was sitting next to me when I saw the picture.

I don't know what year it was, but my BIL had gone off to boot camp in the early 70s, and my sister and Shawn were mostly staying at my parents' house while he was gone.  They slept on the couch in the living room.  Shawn stayed home with my mother when my sister went to work each day.  

Pretty soon, my mother started to complain that her "drawers" were disappearing.  One day, she caught Shawn sneaking behind the couch with something in his mouth and, sure enough, when she looked behind the couch, there were her missing panties.  

But when she started to pull the couch away from the wall, Shawn went into attack mode.  He zoomed behind the couch and, stationing himself between Mother and her underwear, went into a crouch, growled, and bared his teeth.  

My mother wasn't having it.  She grabbed the broom and battled her way in, alternately swiping at her drawers and fending off the attack.  She won the round and reclaimed her drawers.  Shawn learned what the business end of a broom tastes like.  

Now that I think about it, my sister, who is a very sweet person, has a history of owning the meanest dogs in the world.  There was Shawn, and then Buckwheat - some kind of little dustmop lap dog.  Buckwheat nearly ate my aunt's nose off when she leaned down to say hello to him.  And then Sparky, a rescued Yorkie-ish dog who attacked just about everyone except my sister.  I guess it's a good thing she likes little dogs.  

Puzzled - November 2, 2025

Lately, on YouTube, I've been watching a British TV show called Portrait Artist of the Year.  It's a show in which celebrities sit for portraits done by professional and amateur painters.  (The celebrity is allowed to take one portrait home with him/her.)  The paintings are then judged by artists and art historians, and the winner moves up in a competition that will result in a commission to paint a celebrity portrait that will hang in a museum.

I often play a computer game in another window while the show is running, but I switch windows at the scenes in which the judge utter phrases like, "Liam has captured something very subtle about the sitter," or "Mary's brush strokes are just fantastic!"   

And I am often puzzled by what the judge has seen.

What makes a brush stroke "fantastic?"  

The winning portrait - not necessarily the one the sitter chose to keep - is often one that I considered the worst of the bunch.

Clearly, I have no taste in art.

Nevertheless, when I work up my nerve, I am going to attempt to paint a portrait.  In oil.  Haven't decided on the subject, yet.  

I might paint myself.

If I can figure out what a fantastic brush stroke is.

* * * * * * * * 

Later this afternoon, The Husband and I are to attend a memorial service for my ex-brother-in-law.  The Husband and Son #1 are playing/singing at the service.  It is no big deal for Son #1 - he plays before an audience every week at church - but The Husband is nervous.  He is playing/singing "Over the Rainbow," the Hawaiian guy's version (I have no clue how to spell the name).  He's got the ukulele part down pat, but the vocals are giving him trouble; he's fudging the high notes a little.  I hope he breezes through it perfectly.