Happy Thanksgiving

mr. Chase always with a smile

 Everyone relaxing after stuffing themselves

 Aunt Dianne and Glen

 Brad's Dad and his wife Mary

 Cousins being cute and silly

 Todd and Brad

 Busy in the kitchen

 My first turkey. Yes, I know such a big accomplishment. 

 More cooking

 Ahhh look out, the turkey carver is on the rampage 

 Brad carving the turkey since I figured it was a man's job

We had mucho fun this Thanksgiving with Brad's side of the family. They told us they were coming to share Thanksgiving with us, and I looked at Brad and said "oh, so I guess we're in charge of holding a Thanksgiving dinner?' Even though I cook too much between school and for the family, I have to say I've never put on an entire thanksgiving dinner. 

I think I cooked for 2 days straight. After my final on tuesday afternoon, I came home and got to work and kinda didn't stop until Thanksgiving dinner.  I had fun for the most part. The problem is that I picked all new recipes that of course I had never tried, which is fun usually but it just made it a little more challenging in prepping everything. 

It turned out to be a success. Some of the recipes I loved were a sweet potato dish kind of like a casserole or souffle but I don't like my sweet potatoes mashed, so I changed it up a little. another one was a corn pudding made with creamed corn, whole sweet corn and sour cream baked with a cornbread mix. 

I also made a few appetizers, stuffed mushrooms and artichoke heart and roasted pepper puff pastry, which is yummy and pretty easy. Anyway the family said it was the best dinner they ever had, I just laughed because they were being so nice, but at least everything tasted good. 

Well except the jello dish I made, go figure, it looked like an earthquake happened and a river was running through it. Jello should be easy, right? grrr. Well it's probably because I was letting the layers set up in the freezer to speed up the time.

Anyway, glad to have spent time with family. We went on some nice chilly evening walks, talked a bunch, ate a ton, watched movies, black friday shopped, and enjoyed a nice warm fire in the evenings. 

Happy late thanksgiving!

A couple of Cuties

I had fun taking some pictures for a friend a couple of weeks ago. Her kids are so adorable, I wanted to show how cute the pictures of them turned out. :)

Black and White or Color?

I like them both! So I can't decide. Another family picture that turned out good. Hurray!

Trick or Treat

So this post is a little late in coming, but we had fun with the boys trick or treating. It was on Sunday this year so we didn't make too big a deal out of it, just walked up and down our street and said hi to the neighbors. 

My little fireman.

we tried to get Owen to say, "I heard there was a fire in the house!" but he didn't really go for that, just stuck with "trick or treat" since that's what got him candy. 

 Chase went as a little dragon, he was so silly!

 Chase in a daze

 The pumpkins we carved.

 Enjoying the loot!

 We are so bad. After the boys got done trick or treating, they helped me sort out all of the candy we didn't like and passed it out to the trick or treaters who were coming to our door for the rest of the night. Shhh, don't tell anyone. haha

School

So far this semester, I have been enjoying school quite a bit. My american regional class ended a couple of weeks ago and now I am taking a class that prepares me for garde manger class coming up next semester. During lecture time we learn about different aspects of catering. Getting a catering business going, food, licensing, etc. and then in the lab portion we are given 3 or 4 items and have to use different ideas and techniques to make them presentable.

So the first day I walk in, the Chef told everyone to shuck some oysters and clams, prepare artichokes in several different varieties of cuts and filings, prepare a stir-fry and make crab cakes. This all sounded great until I realized these were all things that needed fillings or sauces and there were no recipes and we only had an hour and a half to prepare and present everything. So I had to rely on my brain and taste buds to come up with something good. Ahhh!

It is actually turning out to be a very great class for me, I just sometimes have a hard time thinking outside the box and going off of my head for Ideas to throw together into something that will look and taste good. Unless it is something I make a lot or am really familiar with, like baking.

This was my end result to be displayed today, I thought everything looked pretty and I had fun with it too.

 FYI, the flower on the plate is made out of tomato skin!