We’re not doing anything Christmas-y at work, 'cause the theatre has been running a Christmas show since late November and we’re all Christmas-ed out. Hard to have holiday cheer when you’ve been listening to the same songs for the past month.
Thanks for the good vibes and such from last week. Chemo’s a bitch, but my Dad is doing pretty well, all things considered.
I’m gettin’ spoiled. ACBG just took me to lunch. We had Mexican. It was good. I ate beans. Pooty noises may emanate from my office this afternoon. Tonight I have to start making up dressing for the big Christmas lunch Friday. I also gotta bake a turkey. Since it’s all properly thawed, I think I’ll bake the turkey this evening, get the dressing all ready for baking and bake it tomorrow night. Friday morning will involve warming up turkey and dressing and making gravy. Good thing we got us a fully equipped kitchen at work. There’ll be lots of other stuff too. I just have a thing for bringing turkey, dressing, gravy (the gravy is a must and it must be good, ergo, swampy makes it so it will be) and cranberry sauce. The kind of cranberry sauce in the can that makes that cool sucking noise when you plop it out of the can.
Next Wednesday, we are having a “Finger Food Feast.” I’m bringing cheese straws. Last year, somebody brought meatballs, which I contend is not a finger food for anybody older than 2 years old. If I see meatballs on the list again this year, I just might bring macaroni and cheese. If we’re gonna have finger food for two year olds and younger, I say we go all the way. 
Ack! I’ve done it again, bought a million groceries for with to try recipes. Tonight it’s buttermilk pie and transparent pie. I’ve never had either but they sound very interesting. Also, I bought a duck. I was buying a turkey and there was a duck there too and I’ve never even tasted one little bite of duck and so I got it, too. If there’d been framboise or cat pee on a gooseberry I’d have bought those too.
It’s going to be 75 degrees here today and I’d give practically anything for a little frosty nip in the air.
swampy, meatballs are toothpick food, and in a weird way, it is possible to imagine toothpicks used instead of fingers (although you actually have to eat the meatball off the toothpick, not just get it on your plate), so I think that meatballs should be acceptable at a finger foods party. On the other hand, you eat macaroni and cheese with a fork, which is a replacement for fingers; ergo: mac and chesse is not appropriate for a finger food party. Bring it to me instead.
I have not done any Midwinter decorating–no tree, no Santas, no Winnie the Pooh and friends Midwinter train, no Yule buck, no stockings, not even any Christmas music. It’s the annual struggle of having it worth it to do just for myself. Plus, this year I was out of town the weekend I usually start decorating (I try to finish before Jan. 6, when everything goes back in the boxes), and I’ll be gone again (as always) for a week or so. But I love my stuff and it’s really not the type of thing you can get out in say, July, so I’m kinda sad. Maybe I’ll go upstairs tonight and just go through the boxes and look at the stuff.
Wow. I’m really not quite that pathetic.
Well, then, Kalley following your logic, a toothpick is also a replacement for fingers, since you gotta use the toothpick to eat the meatball, so we’re right back where we started. Meatballs are not a finger food for anyone over two years of age. So, I still say, if somebody can bring meatballs to a finger food party, I can bring mac and cheese. So There! 
I didn’t put my tree up. I did put out some of my other stuff though. Like a bunch of my Santas. Oh, and I did put out several little trees that light up. And the funky fiber optic poinsettia. I like my poinsettia. It’s fascinating to watch it all lit up and doin’ it’s fiber optic thing in the dark. One of the trees is a ceramic thing with colored glass bumps all over it. It has a light in the center and when it’s plugged in the little colored glass bumps light up like lights on a tree except in a really weird and a little scary sorta way. I like it too. I dug my way cool hand covered wooden creche out too but it ain’t going on display til Christmas Eve like you’re supposed to do. Putting your creche out before the baby Jesus is born makes the still unborn baby Jesus weep.
Transparent pie? Could you give us a little hint as to what kind of dish that is?
Impossible to visualize???
Well, in theory, you could eat the mac and cheese with toothpicks, no?
It’s covered with hands?! :eek: How very… festive? :dubious:
My office is having our party Friday, also. I’ll be making the same stuff I took to UglyFest back in August: Louisiana Shrimp Dip. It was so good that FairyChatMom’s family ate the leftovers for breakfast the next day.
I made Buffalo Wings last year for the office party, and they were not appreciated.
It will have the infamous buttload of spice as previously discussed in other MMPs. However, I will be using the finest and freshest of ingredients that I can buy, and none of which will be in contact with my (or anyone else’s) butt at any any time in the making process.
My MIL gave me a wuuuuuuunderful recipe for buttermilk pie - so rich and sweet and yummerrific!
I may have to make one myself.
We had our annual family Christmas party for our games club* on Sunday. I made a double batch of “sweet & sour” meatballs** on Saturday and we had some for supper, then put the rest into a big casserole dish for the party. After supper I baked white chocolate raspberry squares, also for the party. Halfway through the party on Sunday, Mrs host hands me the empty (and washed!) meatball dish as the crowd had scoffed the lot. Mrs B was grumpy afterwards because she was looking forward to another meal from the leftovers, but I promised to make them again for this weekend for her tree-trimming party. There were a few squares left, but that was no good 'cause she doesn’t like white chocolate, just the brown kind.
(*A few of us got together one week to play a Napoleonic War naval game, liked it, decided to meet for a different game the following week, still doing it every week 29 years and 300+ different games later.)
(**1 package PC® Swedish or Italian meatballs, 2 cups ginger ale, 2 cups ketchup and/or BBQ sauce; bring GA and ketchup to a boil, add meatballs, simmer for 2-3 hours. Not exactly gourmet, but simple and yummy.)
Well, pooh. Our field trip for tomorrow has been canceled. Sorry, VunderBob, there will be no waving. Just another day in the cubicle. sigh 
Word to the wise: be prepared for grease. Lots of it. We had duck the day after Christmas last year and were surprised at how much messier it was than other poultry… But yummy.
GT
I think that whether or not meatballs are finger food depends on whether or not they come in a sauce, but that’s just me, socially inept. Swampy, iffen I ever move back to the South, I’m gonna come apply for a job at your company, K? 'Course the food will probably kill me, but we all gotta go sometime.
What else was I gonna say. Oh yeah, dunna be flauntin your pies at me lassie, less you’re prepared to share the recipe. That’s all I’m sayin. :dubious:
BTW, the trick is to say it all in one breath.
I’m in a two day kick-off meeting for a big proposal writing effort. Don’t you think it a bit grinchy of the gov’t to release a big prop (which was due out in July, by the way) in Dec., due by the middle of January?
Anyway, the group putting the meeting together was ordering food. The caterer said, we have a very good chili! They answered, Not on the first day of the meeting!
So we get it today. Then everyone leaves. It is their gift to the other companies involved…
Tomorrow is my company’s Christmas party. The program manager makes a killer egg nog, which has a small amount of egg to an outrageous amount of nog in it. Some of us look forward to it all year!
If you do eat mac & cheese with a toothpick, don’t just stab at the macaronis, sliiiiide the pick up the center of the noodle to pick it up and eat it. It’s just classier that way.
Last night was Soupo’s Cub Scout Pack Meeting. They were having a Toys For Tots toy drive. While we were heading over with our toy, he asked who the toy was for. I told him it was for a kid who wasn’t otherwise going to get a toy for Christmas that year.
“But couldn’t Santa bring them toys?” (Uh-oh.)
Uhhh… yeah… but sometimes people move and can’t tell Santa in time or they get busy and don’t let Santa know what they want…
“So, we’re going to be helping Santa?”
Yeah, we’re helping Santa. He liked that idea, but man, he’s thinking too much about it. Of course he is going to be eight in January, so it’s right about time. But still…
At least we still have Katcha back in reserve. Our Santa-believing kid for at least a coupla more years.
The Girl has been telling me for a while that Santa must be a thief; how else could he afford all that good stuff for the whole world. I explained to her that the Jewish kids don’t get anything because their people killed Jesus (that’s what Mel Gibson tells me, hey, quit throwing things)* and that Christmas in other countries is scheduled on different days (for logistical purposes). Now the Boy, who is very impressionable, believes this too. But I think that they both still believe in, or harbor a hope for, Santa. The Boy’s belief is definitely stronger.
*This is a joke, folks, albeit a very bad one.
Rue good save. I like that. Helping Santa. Did Soupo pick out the toy? My church does a giving or angel tree each year. You can choose which one you want to call it. Anyways, it’s a wooden shaped tree with little hooks on it. On the hooks, ornaments are hung along with two tags that state the age of the child, sex of said child and one thing the child wants. I got two of em, a boy and a girl. The boy wants a fire truck, so I got this BIIIIIIIIIIG fire truck that has little plastic firemen, a little plastic dalmation, a ladder that apparently one can unhook from the truck so the fireman can climb it, and makes fire truck noises! That kid’s mother will be pleased with the fire truck noises. The little girl wanted an art kit. This was kind of a puzzle for me but I found a cool art kit at Michael’s that has all kinds of art stuff in it. I like doing this.
Ok, Winnie let me tried that again. It is a hand carved wooden creche. Hope that clears up the confusion for ya. Also I hope you didn’t have nightmares about big hands covering the Baby Jesus. I’d feel bad about that.
I cooked a turkey last night. Tonight I get to make cornbread dressing. Y’all wanna hear (well, read) something sweet? Last night ACBG called me around 8:30 and said he was coming over with a surprise. Hmmmm… I thinks, wonder what that could be. Well, it was two pecan pies that he made for me to bring to the big Christmas lunch tomorrow. AWWWWWW! Guess I’ll have to be extra special nice to him for a few days now.
Especially because the flying Pony was in fact one of the infamous Castillian SwainPonies, who confused the heck out of our heroine by whinnying loudly at her,
I wisely baked holiday gift loaves of my Infamous Cartooniverse’s Banana Bread With Chocolate Chips ™ ahead of time and froze them in my custom-built flash-freezing unit which I assembled from some NASA parts I found for sale on e-Bay.
A Parable of Collectibles
Once there was a roomful of Tchotchkas. Many had not been loved or played with for many years, and they were feeling a bit neglected. Now and then, a new interloper-type of Tchotchka would be thrust into their midst, messing up the carefully established pecking order of which Tchotchka was The Human’s favorite one to touch and handle for a few precious moments as he scurried on through their Room.
There was Choppy, the martial arts trophy. The Brothers Clique, who were a collection of antique cameras. A shifty soft-touch gang known as Wax Poetic slunk around, always eager to see The Human fire up a match and set one of them alight for a while, allowing them to become the fiery center of attention before being unceremoniously snuffed out and returned to the cold wooden shelf. There was Ego I and Ego II, gold-plated statues from a bygone era. They typically stood as still as, well…as statues and were the real stuffed shirts of the group except for the fact that they didn’t wear shirts. They were named Posey and Wingy and neither of them had ever spent even a moment’s time in the company of their fantasy gal, Emmy. Oh, what a figure on that gal !! Gracefully holding the world above herself, head thrown back, bosom uplifted proudly by some unseen golden harness type of affair. They dreamt, the two Egos did, but they were unfulfilled dreams at best.
Then one day there was a garage sale and The Human scoured the room of useless bits of ephemera and they never saw each other ever again.
The end.
Cartooniverse