A little look at November

Holy Free Fabric, Batman!

I was at Enrichment tonight. We tied quilts. I forgot how good I am at repetitive, sudo-mindless work like that. Especially when there is conversation to be had. At the end of said quilt tieing, there were three boxes full of free material. What?!? Free fabric! I am there. And I was. For about fifteen minutes. Picking up a pound or two of free quilt squares and a bolt with about a yard or so of green polka-licious dot material on it.

Of course, it could have been just about anything and as long as "Free" was in front of it, it would be mine. This is how I came into possession of a giant light bulb, a red teddy bear (now named "Rojo" and residing in the boy's room), tons of clothes, and various other things that are not in my immediate eyesight and thus do not come to mind. And tons and tons of those macaroons that they make at BYU catering. Now those are definitely worth sneaking into an event to get. They were still kinda free. I think.

The Giving of Thanks...

The Feast!

In spite of a last minute invitation to dinner, we decided to stay home and have our very first family Thanksgiving. It really turned out fabulously! Zach brined the turkey over night, just like Alton would have him do.

So, So Delicious!

Oh. My. Goodness. It was so freakin' succulent it forced me to seriously consider buying up all the remaining cheap turkeys and a deep freezer and just having turkey for the rest of my mortal existence. Or at least make another one before next year. We had stuffing and mashed potatoes and brown buttered corn and cheesy asparagus and gravy and - oh! It was wonderful! For some crazy reason we made two pies - a pumpkin pie and an apple cherry spice pie. Actually, I made the pies. And they were awesome. I had never made pie crust before, but it was crazy simple.

Zach carves the bird

Ben wants to eat!

So does Sam! (We set the nice-ish plates for them, but they ate out of the plastic stuff per the usual. I've learned my lesson)

I have been baking up a dough filled storm the last couple of days since Zach was home and could try to distract the boys a little. I made a huge batch of gingerbread cookies from Mom's classic gingerbread recipe (holy cow - it made almost 8 dozen cookies! It was a glorious surprise. I also realized I need cookie cutters), the pies, some cheesy calzones and honey biscuits from the back of the Western Family bread flour that we have had since - well, I think the first time we went shopping after we got married.

Apple-Cherry Pie

I have never been much of a baker. When I was a kid and in a Anne of Green Gables or Laura Ingalls faze or something, I would get out flour and water and play with until it went from a sticky mass of revulsion to a smooth ball of dough. I don't recall ever actually baking biscuits from said dough, but if I had they would have been the roughest, toughest bread this side of Mississippi.

But sweet Anola Gay! It seems all I have been doing lately is mixing, rising, punching down only to allow things to rise again. How domestic of me. And delicious.

So, after a long and winding tangent, it was a great Thanksgiving, even if we couldn't be with the rest of the family. And I am thankful for my family, for Zach's turkey, and for the magic and mystery of yeast.

Tag! I'm It.

Sarah, my sister-in-law, "tagged" me the other day. That means that I have to write six things about myself on the blog. So, without further ado:

1. I have been to 49 of the 50 states (I'm coming some day, Alaska!)

2. I am really persnickety about alphabetizing. All of my DVDs and CDs are in alphabetical order.

3. I have a collection of photos of my feet standing in diverse places around the world. I'll have to put them on here sometime.

4. I came up with a series of questions for Stake dances, to avoid awkward, teen silences after the name/ward/school questions had been asked. These included:

1. If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?
2. If you were exiled from the U.S. where would you live?
3. If you were stranded on a island somewhere and could only eat one meal for the entirety of your stay there, what would you eat?

There were more, but you get the picture.

5. If I had not gotten into the film department, I was going to get a culinary arts degree somewhere.

6. Zach and I have not spent a single night apart since we've been married.

So, there are six lil' factoids about me. Now, who gets tagged next? Hmmm... How about Meg! You guys have an awesome blog, by the by.

Sam and Ben Strike Again!

Behind the TV

They may not have as catchy a signature as Zorro, but I have found pencil and crayon scribbles everywhere! Besides the more interesting sketches that we've photographed, they have also left their "art" on the fridge, cupboards, floors and in Zach's library books.

On Couch Pillows

Even on me! I thought the pen cap was on so I wasn't even paying attention. Ben thought that this was awesome.

When they first started to draw it was exciting, I thought, Ya! Look at my little Picasso's! Now, unfortunately, they are little Picassos. Darn that avant garde Spanish spirit!

Food, Glorious Food!

Because we are poor, college-type people and because we like to cook, we have made several meals in the last lil' while. I've been taking pictures of all of them, because I keep thinking, "oh, I'll put this on the blog! That'll be fun!" This usually happens right before Zach is about to dish himself up some food and then has to wait for me to take a picture, usually several to get okay-ish lighting, before he can eat.

Unfortunately, the down side to all this cooking is that it takes a lot of time and because it takes so much time, I haven't been putting in the food entries. So, I thought, I'll just do one big food entry. Sounds good, right? I thought so. So, here you go my friends, some yummy things that I made.

Skillet Lasagna

Have I mentioned that we don't have cable? We don't. And because we don't have an antenna either, we only get three PBS channels, two Spanish channels, and one Asian languages channel. One of the PBS channels has a cooking shows morning, that I happened to catch a few Saturdays ago. I saw the good people at America's Test Kitchen make this Skillet Lasagna, and thought it looked like a yummy alternative to layering all that pasta and sauce and such. On the show they said they kept making jokes about the recipe. I guess you have to be a cook to get it.

Meat Pie with Cheesy Potato Topping

This turned out quite well, though it was pretty time consuming to make. I really liked it. It came from Classic Home Cooking, which is full of deliciousness. I've made several recipes from that book. Of course, for this one we changed several of the ingredients, for the sake of convenience and finances, but it was still great. I don't remember ever having something quite like this, so I thought it was especially good. Very hardy. Zach says he grew up on food like this, so it was more of the norm for him.

Pumpkin Seeds

These are the pumpkin seeds that Zach baked from the innards of our Halloween pumpkin. They turned out quite well, especially with a little salt scattered over the top. Yum.

I think my next culinary venture will be a split pea soup and some Thanksgiving-ish pies. I'll let you know how it goes!

P.S. If anyone is interested in actually getting the recipes let me know. I'm not sure I want to commit to another food only blog like the glorious Meg or fabulous Jodi, but if it comes to that, I'll bite the bullet. But only if I really, really have to.

Popcorn Popping

Sam & Ben

It looks like the boys have inherited our love of popcorn. Or rather my love and Zach's obsession. They run into the kitchen when they hear us start our lovely popcorn popper, though it is usually not on the floor like this, just for the record. I was just too tired to hold them both up to the counter to let them watch it all pop. They really, really love to eat popcorn and request it regularly. In fact, I think they use the same word for popcorn, "pop" for all food. In the morning when I ask if they are ready to go down and eat some food, they'll say, "Pop! Pop!" Of course, they could just be requesting popcorn for breakfast.

Also, speaking of Popcorn popping - or rather a metaphorical musical interpretation of apricot blossoms - I've been called to be the Primary Secretary. I really am not sure what this calling entails, since I haven't been in Primary since I was in Primary as a valiant or whatever they are called now, but this does mean that the boys will be going into nursery early. Which is amazing and a little bit scary. Where did my tiny little babies go!?!

Sam & Ben - First Day of Life