LazBro
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Post by LazBro on Dec 4, 2017 10:10:50 GMT -5
I don't think I've ever had sweet potato or butternut squash pie, does anyone prefer them to regular old pumpkin? I maybe should find a recipe and give one of them a try. Nothing? Oh I get it, maybe I should just stay in my lane and cook nothing but spaghetti pie! I think most people round here don't like pumpkin pie at all, so it's a tough comparison. I prefer pumpkin pie to sweet potato (not big on sweet potato in general) and I've never had or seen butternut squash pie, which I personally fear would be too vegetal.
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Post by pairesta on Dec 4, 2017 10:27:08 GMT -5
I don't think I've ever had sweet potato or butternut squash pie, does anyone prefer them to regular old pumpkin? I maybe should find a recipe and give one of them a try. I talked my mom into using real pumpkin for a pumpkin pie one year and got an earful afterwards. It has a decidedly more vegetal taste. This goes back to everyone thinking "pumpkin" flavor is really just all the spices you have to use to make up for pumpkin being pretty bland.
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Post by Liz n Dick on Dec 4, 2017 10:44:48 GMT -5
I don't think I've ever had sweet potato or butternut squash pie, does anyone prefer them to regular old pumpkin? I maybe should find a recipe and give one of them a try. I love sweet potato pie and hate pumpkin pie, so... there you go. I haven't had sweet potato pie in a million, billion years, though, so perhaps my memories are more golden than reality? And I can't say I've ever heard of butternut squash pie; that's an intriguing concept! The texture would probably be much more appealing to those of us who loathe the gloppiness of pumpkin pie, since butternuts are way more dry than pumpkins, even after the pumpkins get strained and drained. The vegetal-ness of either, though, could vary pretty widely from squash to squash. Pumpkins run a really wide gamut of flavor profiles...
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Post by Pastafarian on Dec 4, 2017 10:50:30 GMT -5
Nothing? Oh I get it, maybe I should just stay in my lane and cook nothing but spaghetti pie! I think most people round here don't like pumpkin pie at all, so it's a tough comparison. I prefer pumpkin pie to sweet potato (not big on sweet potato in general) and I've never had or seen butternut squash pie, which I personally fear would be too vegetal. Interesting, I'd have never thought of butternut squash, but was attracted to the idea when I read this description on a NY Times recipe: "This is a pie of exceptional delicacy. Unlike traditional pumpkin pie, no vegetal tones or stodgy finish mar the radiance of this pie, which stops just short of a custard and glows with the burnish of spice."
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Post by Liz n Dick on Dec 4, 2017 10:57:29 GMT -5
So, December marks the kick-off of one of stately Dick n Hisses Manor's favorite times of year: Hot Cocoa & Marshmallow Season!
I use the Stella Parks/BraveTart recipes for both cocoa mix and marshmallows (I think they've both migrated to Serious Eats since she moved onto the staff there?). Normally I'll make the first batch of cocoa mix way early in the year, when fall first starts to turn chilly; this past year I thought the white chocolate I was using was maybe past peak, but went ahead anyway. Life lesson learned: white chocolate has a shelf life, and you really don't want to go past it. The white chocolate stores in our pantry have since been replenished, and I made a fresh batch this weekend. Ahhh, much better.
So, on Friday night I impressed Hugs and Boomer with my mad marshmallow-making skills -- I managed to hammer out a batch of them while making taco bowls for dinner. I was a machine of candy- and dinner-making efficiency! I don't think I've ever been prouder of a kitchen accomplishment than being all casually like, "No worries -- I'm doing dinner and marshmallows right now!" on a Friday night. (Fridays normally involve me whining about how I don't want to do anything, junking my dinner and baking plans, and burying myself in take-out and box-mix brownies.)
On Saturday afternoon Hugs and I had to run some errands in Princeton and we stopped at the great Bent Spoon for holiday-flavor gelato. This is an artisinal establishment, big on touting its Central New Jersey "terroir", and they had a big sign out front boasting of their variety of hot chocolate flavors and "hand-cut marshies". "HA!" Hugs and I both scoffed, "We don't have to pay for your hand-cut 'marshies'*, because we have a towering heap of them waiting at home!"
If I ever start to wonder why I'm such a hefty gal, I need look no further to the fact that I seem to think a daily mug of hot cocoa with an enormous flotation-device-sized marshmallow in it doesn't constitute a dessert. No, I'll have hot cocoa AND some kind of baked good every night during the holidays. It's truly the most wonderful time of the year.
*Do I need to mention how much I hate that anyone would call them that?
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Post by Liz n Dick on Dec 4, 2017 10:58:39 GMT -5
Interesting, I'd have never thought of butternut squash, but was attracted to the idea when I read this description on a NY Times recipe: "This is a pie of exceptional delicacy. Unlike traditional pumpkin pie, no vegetal tones or stodgy finish mar the radiance of this pie, which stops just short of a custard and glows with the burnish of spice." Ahh, a custard texture totally makes sense. That sounds well worth a try!
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Dec 4, 2017 11:25:12 GMT -5
I think Iโm gonna make snickerdoodle dough today? But Iโm undecided on whether to freeze the dough or just go ahead and make them, rumchata filling and all? Or maybe save it for tomorrow so I can also sip rumchata... I dunno.
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Post by ganews on Dec 4, 2017 11:33:47 GMT -5
The offer is still open for any of you to send me your unwanted pumpkin pie to me for disposal.
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Dec 5, 2017 22:51:10 GMT -5
Whooo the awesome cafe and bakery in the next town has an online order form for holiday goodies, I just ordered cinnamon rolls for pickup the Saturday before Christmas. They will be frozen with frosting on the side. Their cinnamon rolls are the bomb.
(The only small problem is that the adorable downtown theyโre in will probably be bananapants on the 23rd.)
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Post by Liz n Dick on Dec 7, 2017 10:57:27 GMT -5
Okay, here's the situation. Non-Hugs has finally presented us with the travel plans she and her horrible husband have, and it was causing me much agita. They are planning to arrive on Christmas Eve Eve, some time in the afternoon. So my casual sort of hand-wave of meal planning, which included merely Christmas Eve and Christmas, has been upended. I now have to feed them for three nights, and all three will have a sort of loaded "it's a holiday!" pressure on them. Especially because non-Hugs's preferred approach to being a houseguest is to suddenly declare, in the middle of some relaxing activity, "I want [random foodstuff]," and then look at me expectantly*. Her whims have to be anticipated so that I don't end up letting her ruin my life. And it's been made clear that her husband isn't necessarily all that interested in spending Christmas with us as people, but he's hugely into the idea of having a formal, traditional holiday with family. So, like, there is no option for me to say at any point during their visit, "Fuck it, guys, we're getting Chinese," even though Hugs and Boomer would have no problem if that's how our holiday shook out. For some reason, the introduction of a third dinner was more than I could wrap my brain around. Any ability to meal-plan was shot, and I was getting incredibly panicky. But I think I have it all figured out now! The plan: - Christmas Eve Eve, aka Saturday, is fraught. Hugs has to work that day, and my usual approach to her work Saturdays is to make pasta (Saturdays being pasta night) with a bit of extra flourish. There's this really wonderful easy vibe we get on Saturday nights after she works that we'll be losing with non-Hugs and BIL around, but even with the day's routine being upended by having company, I still want it to feel like a Saturday night. Especially because it's the weekend start of a long vacation. So I'm going with homemade pasta noodles, and a big, wine-soaked red sauce with tons of garlicky little mini-meatballs. It'll seem plenty festive and fancy to non-Hugs and BIL, but to the regulars at stately Dick n Hisses Manor it will have a measure of standard Saturday to it. I will also be baking a layer cake for the next day -- almond cake dyed red and green, with jam filling and ganache glaze. - For Christmas Eve lunch we have reservations at the swanky farm-to-table place that, since opening their own brewery, now has a pub food lunch menu. - Christmas Eve dinner will be a redo of Thanksgiving's stuffed pork roast. With its high results-to-effort ratio. Cinnamon rolls will be started in the evening, for the next morning. - Christmas morning will have cinnamon rolls baked off and pigs in blankets made with puff pastry and sausages from the farm market. Much champagne. - Christmas dinner? See, here's the trouble. I'll be drunk off my ass and deeply resentful of non-Hugs and BIL still being there. I don't want to cook anything on Christmas. I'm not even sure what we ate last year, when it was just the three of us. Maybe buttered noodles? Like, seriously, that's the best I can do on Christmas. I want to spend all day stitching off my champagne drunkenness while doing a binge of either shitty CBS procedurals of the the NBA quintuple-header! So here's where the genius struck. The farm market has a catering menu! With various lasagna options! Including one that has layers of bolognese and bechamel! So it's a thing I wouldn't want to ever make on my own (that's a hangup for me when it comes to restaurant/catering food), will have plenty of fucking protein for non-Hugs, and has just enough of a "lots of people have lasagna with Christmas!" legitimacy so that BIL won't feel like he's been cheated of a holiday meal. And the farm market offers an exorbitantly expensive garden salad option that will be ten billion times more salad than we'll need but will be enough to keep non-Hugs from demanding that I present her with vegetables, too. I can't even tell you guys how much more relaxed I am since figuring this out. I'm sure it all seems totally obvious to the outside observer, but this has been, like, the impossible puzzle to me. I think I'm maaaaaaaaaaaaybe letting myself get blinded by how much I don't want them to come for the holiday. *One year on Christmas day we were shotgunning MacGyver episodes on DVD (Santa brought the entire series for Boomer), in a nice buzz of nostalgia while stitching and chilling out, and non-Hugs announced that she expected me to get up and bake sables. Right then. And she wasn't going to let it go until I did it. On another visit, after spending an afternoon indulging in copious amounts of crackers and bacon jam (which is a spread made almost 100% out of bacon), she informed me that she "needed protein" and was going to hold up all further activities until I made her some kind of meat-filled dinner. She is not a great cook herself, but she's not helpless. But she's also big into showing off how much healthier she is than me, so if I did push back and tell her to cook something for herself, she'd end up being like, "I wanted to make spelt cranberry spinach salmon cakes, but you don't have any of the things I need for it. I'll make a list and you can go to the store." It's just not worth fighting any of this shit with her.
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Dec 7, 2017 11:07:02 GMT -5
I preordered the cinnamon rolls, and the cafe's website also offers various sides, (veggies, mac n cheese, salads), snacks, sandwich trays, sweet trays, etc., plus even a few entrees! (like beef bourgonion, not turkey). Next year we'll probably be on our own for Thanksgiving, I feel like I'll just order a bunch of stuff and not actually make anything myself Also I made rumchata snickerdoodles on Tuesday and they are GREAT.
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Post by Incense on Dec 7, 2017 11:08:52 GMT -5
Liz n Dick, Any time I feel like bitching about my mom, I am going to come here and re-read that post and remind myself of the bullshit nonsense your family pulls on you. UN BE LIEV ABLE. I'm glad you'vee got something worked out for your ease and peace of mind, but I am so sorry you are going to have to put up with this shit over the holidays.
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Post by Liz n Dick on Dec 7, 2017 11:22:39 GMT -5
Liz n Dick , Any time I feel like bitching about my mom, I am going to come here and re-read that post and remind myself of the bullshit nonsense your family pulls on you. UN BE LIEV ABLE. I'm glad you'vee got something worked out for your ease and peace of mind, but I am so sorry you are going to have to put up with this shit over the holidays. Oh my god, what you've posted about your mom puts all of my complaining in perspective. Seriously, no one should EVER be holding me up as an "at least it's not as bad as she's got it" point of comparison! The reason I'm complaining about non-Hugs and BIL coming for Christmas is that normally they come for Thanksgiving and leave us alone for Christmas. Which means that Hugs, Boomer, and I have the most self-indulgent, conspicuous-consumption, lazy-person holiday imaginable. I'm peeved because instead of getting to spend hours and hours focusing on opening MY presents on Christmas morning, I'm going to have to spend hours and hours focusing on opening MY presents... and a few of theirs. And I'm going to have to wear a bra for three days, when I otherwise wouldn't. (Okay, that IS a pretty terrible thing...) And I'm going to have to be at least a tiny bit considerate of someone's needs other than my own. Christmas is supposed to be a day all about caring only about ME, dammit! That's what the Bible says, isn't it? I mean, yes, it's true that non-Hugs gets completely ridiculous about how I should be cooking for her. And her husband is a dreadful person. But we all get along very well, all things considered, and most of the things that she does that annoy me are exacerbated by my own younger-sibling issues with her and my own selfishness. And if I'm being honest, every time she gets all demandy about some stupid thing, I'm secretly delighted to have something to bitch about after she's gone. Heh. (This is all easier for me to write now that I've SOLVED OUR MEALS FOR THE HOLIDAYS, though. That's a thing I need to put in allcaps. It's only the 7th and my planning is all done! Woo hoo!)
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Post by Incense on Dec 7, 2017 12:29:31 GMT -5
Oh my god, what you've posted about your mom puts all of my complaining in perspective. Seriously, no one should EVER be holding me up as an "at least it's not as bad as she's got it" point of comparison! The reason I'm complaining about non-Hugs and BIL coming for Christmas is that normally they come for Thanksgiving and leave us alone for Christmas. Which means that Hugs, Boomer, and I have the most self-indulgent, conspicuous-consumption, lazy-person holiday imaginable. I'm peeved because instead of getting to spend hours and hours focusing on opening MY presents on Christmas morning, I'm going to have to spend hours and hours focusing on opening MY presents... and a few of theirs. And I'm going to have to wear a bra for three days, when I otherwise wouldn't. (Okay, that IS a pretty terrible thing...) And I'm going to have to be at least a tiny bit considerate of someone's needs other than my own. Christmas is supposed to be a day all about caring only about ME, dammit! That's what the Bible says, isn't it? I mean, yes, it's true that non-Hugs gets completely ridiculous about how I should be cooking for her. And her husband is a dreadful person. But we all get along very well, all things considered, and most of the things that she does that annoy me are exacerbated by my own younger-sibling issues with her and my own selfishness. And if I'm being honest, every time she gets all demandy about some stupid thing, I'm secretly delighted to have something to bitch about after she's gone. Heh. (This is all easier for me to write now that I've SOLVED OUR MEALS FOR THE HOLIDAYS, though. That's a thing I need to put in allcaps. It's only the 7th and my planning is all done! Woo hoo!) I think you have plenty to complain about! Honestly, that "I want (whatever)" with the implied "and I want it now, go make it!" thing is just ... wow. It's right up there with my mom's holding her glass out and shaking it at me when she wants a refill. And hell, having to wear a bra for three days you wouldn't have had to otherwise is an annoyance. This: "the most self-indulgent, conspicuous-consumption, lazy-person holiday imaginable" is me on most holidays, if I"m honest. I dig.
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Post by Liz n Dick on Dec 11, 2017 9:55:35 GMT -5
It's time to start in on getting some of this shit ready! There's a Christmas tree in the house, there's snow on the ground (!!!), and we're into the double-digits on the advent calendar. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. -- I'm participating in a cookie exchange at work today*, so I needed to provide eight dozen cookies. Good thing our family's spice cookie recipe makes almost that many from a single batch! (Almost, though, so we did go double, and now I have an enormous heap of spice cookies at home, to say nothing of however many I'll be bringing home from the exchange.) So, despite my being the only member of my household who purports to being comfortable in the kitchen, I have never actually made this recipe myself. This has always been one of Hugs's things, so it was very strange to, at 41, finally make my family's signature holiday foodstuff for the first time. They're easier than I expected. And now it feels SUPER-DUPER Christmassy for having spice cookies on hand. -- Pork loin, breakfast sausages, bolognese lasagna, and absurdly expensive side salad (so non-Hugs can't complain about lack of leafy greens) have been ordered from the farm market. -- The Christmas dessert will be layer cake that calls for raspberry jam filling. That means I need to get some jam made! Because heaven forbid I buy a jar of jam from the grocery store, right? (I mean, I have several quarts of raspberries Boomer and I picked at our CSA this past summer that were marvelously delicious but so soft they basically needed to be frozen or eaten in one big clump immediately. So, like, they're there in the freezer for the express purpose of making jam.) -- We're having a friend over next Saturday for a semi-annual "stitching retreat" kind of day, and she's requested homemade crackers. So I need to think about what kinds I want to make... and when that's going to happen. -- Cocoa mix and marshmallows are starting to run low. Time to make another batch of each. *This skirts a fine line. Not quite a potluck, not quite a bake-off. I'm hoping my ego can handle it. I would have said no, but I was so thrilled to be invited by the cool-kid admins (this is not, like, a department-based thing. It's invite-only) that I lost all sense of judgment and agreed to participate.
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Dec 11, 2017 10:09:08 GMT -5
I made pfefferneusse dough yesterday and froze it, so here's hoping when I defrost it it'll bake properly.
I think I might save it for after Christmas so it's fresh when my dad comes, since it was his mom's recipe. I'll have a billion cookies around though.
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Post by pairesta on Dec 11, 2017 14:19:06 GMT -5
Owing to the illness that has nuked the entire family, my wife is woefully behind on cookie making. I'm at once trying to get her to be more realistic about it (i.e., maybe don't make triple batches of 6 different kinds of cookies), while at the same time, come on already. It's two weeks to Christmas and I still haven't had my first sugar cookie!
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Post by pairesta on Dec 11, 2017 20:26:27 GMT -5
Years ago, I got Mario Batali's pamphlet-sized cookbook, Italian Holiday Food, *quietly puts book back on shelf*
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Post by The Sensational She-Hulk on Dec 15, 2017 15:43:18 GMT -5
We finally decided on what to have for Christmas dinner! Christmas Eve will be the usual antipasto and Italian bread and wine, but Christmas Day I'm going to take some of the tomato-basil puree I made fresh this summer and turn it into vodka sauce, into which I'll fold blue crab meat (also picked fresh this summer) at the last second to warm it up before it all gets tossed with cavatappi. I think with a light salad on the side, we'll be more than satisfied. New Year's Day is going to be this recipe for grilled tenderloin from the Pioneer Woman. I actually like her a lot, and we did this last New Year's Day after my dad and I saw the TV episode where Ree and Ladd made it. It turned out to be so amazing that I've been dreaming about it all year - and of course, tenderloin is expensive if you don't live on a cattle ranch, so once a year is about the only time we'll have it. Who knew that a simple rub of lemon pepper and seasoned salt would be so delicious?! I will note that I wound up having to put in two extra sticks of butter because our grill was a bit too efficient. We'll do twice-baked stuffed potatoes and either roasted asparagus or brussels sprouts as a side.
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Post by pairesta on Dec 16, 2017 12:19:45 GMT -5
We finally decided on what to have for Christmas dinner! Christmas Eve will be the usual antipasto and Italian bread and wine, but Christmas Day I'm going to take some of the tomato-basil puree I made fresh this summer and turn it into vodka sauce, into which I'll fold blue crab meat (also picked fresh this summer) at the last second to warm it up before it all gets tossed with cavatappi. I think with a light salad on the side, we'll be more than satisfied. New Year's Day is going to be this recipe for grilled tenderloin from the Pioneer Woman. I actually like her a lot, and we did this last New Year's Day after my dad and I saw the TV episode where Ree and Ladd made it. It turned out to be so amazing that I've been dreaming about it all year - and of course, tenderloin is expensive if you don't live on a cattle ranch, so once a year is about the only time we'll have it. Who knew that a simple rub of lemon pepper and seasoned salt would be so delicious?! I will note that I wound up having to put in two extra sticks of butter because our grill was a bit too efficient. We'll do twice-baked stuffed potatoes and either roasted asparagus or brussels sprouts as a side. Do you have a Costco near you? They usually have whole beef tenderloin cheap around the holidays. Keep in mind this means WHOLE, so you'd be doing a fair bit of trimming, but then you get things like the tenderloin chain to freeze and use in another dish.
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Post by Lord Lucan on Dec 16, 2017 15:44:28 GMT -5
Iโm of a quarter Jewish ancestry (like Lenin!), though itโs never before figured however remotely in my self-conception owing to my maternal grandmother dying twenty years before I was born and my own mother, of blessed memory, having had no discernible interest or familiarity with the culture (and always marking Christmas with extraordinary brio). Anyhow, for the first time this year, I made a point of having some latke and sufganiyot, listening to some klezmer, and imagining what my grandmotherโs Old World Chanukahs were like.
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Post by The Sensational She-Hulk on Dec 18, 2017 13:20:21 GMT -5
pairesta, my parents actually found a whole tenderloin for something like $10/lb at a Giant Eagle up in Pennsylvania this weekend! It's cryopacked and good through the end of the year. We'll cut filet mignons out of some of it for later and use the Chateaubriand end for New Year's Day, because it's about six pounds and there's just no way we'll go through that much meat before it turns. Yesterday I made these chewy ginger-molasses cookies because we did the fruitcakes well over two months ago and I wanted to do some holiday baking. I won second place in my company's holiday baking contest by making the same modifications as I did this time: 2 t vanilla (because for some reason, the recipe doesn't call for any), ~2 T powdered ginger, ~2 T cracked dried ginger, and ~2T fresh grated ginger root. That might sound overpowering, but for the volume of dough involved, it isn't at all. Also, this recipe made 5 1/2 dozen cookies instead of 2-3 dozen, and I rolled them out to 1" diameter or less. So if you want to cut the recipe in half, definitely halve my modifiers as well, or it will be too much ginger. I can't believe I lost to fucking fudge with these cookies. They're amazing.
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LazBro
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Post by LazBro on Dec 19, 2017 10:05:28 GMT -5
Assuming I get around to buying the ingredients, it will be a pretty standard Christmas line up for me.
Prime Rib, blanketed with a garlic-herb butter and roasted to medium rare Turkey, Cajun seasoned and smoked on the Big Green Egg Mashed potatoes, my pain-in-the-butt holiday mash which I've described many times before Dressing, I don't have a standard way of making this yet, so this year I'm doing cornbread dressing with a Southwestern theme: poblano, kernal corn, chorizo Turkey gravy Horseradish sauce
And after I look through the RSVP list I might augment to fill any gaps, but I think this year everything was accounted for.
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Gumbercules
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Get out of my dreams, and into my van
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Post by Gumbercules on Dec 20, 2017 10:49:59 GMT -5
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Post by Liz n Dick on Dec 20, 2017 15:15:54 GMT -5
Raspberry jam is made! WOO HOO! It took, like, a half an hour, all told, to do this. Why was I dragging my feet so badly on it? This step had been looming over me, threatening to block out the sun. This is almost anticlimactic.
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Post by pairesta on Dec 20, 2017 19:38:36 GMT -5
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LazBro
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Post by LazBro on Dec 21, 2017 9:56:14 GMT -5
One of my proudest "Achievements in Adulting" all year is always making my Christmas dinner shopping list, arranged in "store order" so that I can breeze right through the whole trip and never have to double-back. Of course, this inevitably fails when Kroger is missing 4-5 basic ingredients I need, but at least that's not my fault.
This year they threw an extra challenge at me, because a couple months ago they rearranged the entire store. Produce, meat and dairy are still all in the same place, mostly, but all of the aisles have been either reorganized or just moved completely. I've mostly got it down, but I'm not 100%. Wish me luck.
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Dec 21, 2017 10:00:39 GMT -5
I went to Target last night because we still needed a few odds and ends (like canola oil!) and honestly, the lines and crowds weren't so bad, but everyone was walking around in a daze like it was night of the living dead. I saw one guy totally ram another guy with his cart because wasn't paying attention. The shelves were a mess. It looked like a small tornado had wandered through the store.
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Post by Liz n Dick on Dec 21, 2017 10:21:42 GMT -5
I went to Target last night because we still needed a few odds and ends (like canola oil!) and honestly, the lines and crowds weren't so bad, but everyone was walking around in a daze like it was night of the living dead. I saw one guy totally ram another guy with his cart because wasn't paying attention. The shelves were a mess. It looked like a small tornado had wandered through the store. That's what my Target always looks like. I've long wondered why people like Target so much, because my experience with it is uniformly awful. Then I visited a friend in another state, and her Target was this gleaming, heavenly space filled to the brim with plentiful, organized things. I feel cheated. As for tackling organized grocery stores, I've always been diligent about maintaining my grocery lists in store order, but lately my grocery store has taken to rearranging its shelves all the time. Like Snape's Kroger, the major things are always in the same spot, but they shift around the contents of them. So the produce section is never in the same order twice. The dairy section is always the same location, but the contents are always in new places therein. And the middle parts of the store? Forget it. It's mayhem. I'm taking a half-day at work today and hitting up the store this afternoon. I'm hoping it won't be too crowded or too picked-over. The big-ticket parts of the holiday meals are coming from the farm market, and they required a Saturday pick-up for the catered items. I can't say I wanted to have to deal with the holiday crush there, but what can you do? I pre-ordered everything essential, so at least I should be guaranteed of being able to get that stuff. I'm not going to be too hopeful about being able to count on any other things I'd view as impulse buys. This will not be the day to decide I want to stock up on bacon and chicken stock while I'm there!
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LazBro
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Post by LazBro on Dec 21, 2017 10:29:23 GMT -5
I went to Target last night because we still needed a few odds and ends (like canola oil!) and honestly, the lines and crowds weren't so bad, but everyone was walking around in a daze like it was night of the living dead. I saw one guy totally ram another guy with his cart because wasn't paying attention. The shelves were a mess. It looked like a small tornado had wandered through the store. That's what my Target always looks like. I've long wondered why people like Target so much, because my experience with it is uniformly awful. Then I visited a friend in another state, and her Target was this gleaming, heavenly space filled to the brim with plentiful, organized things. I feel cheated. As for tackling organized grocery stores, I've always been diligent about maintaining my grocery lists in store order, but lately my grocery store has taken to rearranging its shelves all the time. Like Snape's Kroger, the major things are always in the same spot, but they shift around the contents of them. So the produce section is never in the same order twice. The dairy section is always the same location, but the contents are always in new places therein. And the middle parts of the store? Forget it. It's mayhem. I'm taking a half-day at work today and hitting up the store this afternoon. I'm hoping it won't be too crowded or too picked-over. The big-ticket parts of the holiday meals are coming from the farm market, and they required a Saturday pick-up for the catered items. I can't say I wanted to have to deal with the holiday crush there, but what can you do? I pre-ordered everything essential, so at least I should be guaranteed of being able to get that stuff. I'm not going to be too hopeful about being able to count on any other things I'd view as impulse buys. This will not be the day to decide I want to stock up on bacon and chicken stock while I'm there! The only specialty item on my list is the prime rib, which I pick up from a specialty butcher. Historically I've had to do this on a Saturday, because I'm usually working, and it's always a madhouse. Everybody piling in to pick up their holiday orders. 90-minute line, easy. Now that I set my schedule and can work whenever I want (not really but I am more flexible), I'm going to go first thing on Friday, praying it'll be better. I mean, it has to be, right?
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