Dear Winter…………

Dear Winter-

I am sorry to say this but………….I HATE YOU!!  I hate your stinking guts!!!   I have had enough of you and its time for you to pack your bags and MOVE!

I am tired of your snow,  your cold,  your darkness, your slippery streets and most of all I am tired of the sickness that seems to follow you everywhere you go.    We have had more than our fair share this year and its time for Spring!  Its time for sun, flowers, warmth,  the smell of fresh grass and most  of all SUNLIGHT!  I want to get off work and see the Sun for a change-  not darkness and cold.

Your not welcome anymore,  so please pack your things and get out!!  You are only welcome now from Thanksgiving until New Years.   Come January 2nd I want you to leave!!

Please hurry Spring-  I cant take anymore of Winter and its your turn to shine Spring!

YAY!! YOUR THIRD AND FINAL CLUE!!

The 1988 tony award winner for Best Actress in a musical is the daughter of what game show host?  First to post this answer back in the thread wins!!

Turkey Leftovers!!

Here are two great turkey leftover recipes that you will LOVE.

First you should have on hand after Thanksgiving:

Turkey Stock- what you didnt make it?! SHAME SHAME you should have- Ok chicken will do.

Mashed Potatoes

Onions

Celery

Carrots

Gravy

Turkey

Turkey Shepherds Pie! Sooooo good!

Saute Carrots, onion and celery in a couple cups of Turkey stock until tender. Add about a cup of leftover gravy or more if you want or have it to spare. You need a good thick sauce for it all. Add Turkey and frozen peas- or whatever veggies you want, anything will work. Top with Mashed potatoes and bake at 375 until bubbly or potatoes have browned. Soooo good you will LOVE it!

Turkey Soup

Saute the same veggies as above and then add Turkey. Add a couple quarts of your Turkey stock and another cup of gravy. This makes it thicker and has the flavor of the herbs and seasonings as when you roasted the turkey. Add your noodles and simmer and wha-la! Turkey Soup!!

Dont you love Thanksgiving! I only had enough leftovers for two meals this year but my Turkey was PHENOMENAL!!!!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!   I hope everyone has the most delicious day ever!   Thanksgiving is the BEST holiday of the year-   the food and family.  Of course I am mostly talking about…….the food!!

I am sad I wont get to prepare Thanksgiving this year.  I look forward to it all year long     However, we will be with Bretts family this year.   Sooooooooo,  no Thanksgiving cooking for Jen

I look forward to Thanksgiving Part Deux maybe next weekend!!!   It wont be the same but at least I will get to cook my Turkey!!

Quote of the day!!

“I look at these people and can’t quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention? To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it? To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.”

- Author David Sedaris, on undecided voters

Oven Glazed Apple Lemon Chicken

Ok this was SOOOOO good I had to post it. REALLY REALLY good- I mean REALLY! Sweet, Sour and Savory! This is yet again a Rachael Ray recipe that is SO good!! Really it is and its so fast and easy. To see Rachael make hers click here! In that clip she also makes Cordon Bleu Potatoes.

Oven Glazed Apple Lemon Chicken-

A few cups of Apple Juice or Cider

1 lemon sliced

A few sprigs of Thyme or a palmful of dried

A few cloves of Garlic just cracked

Bone in Chicken Breasts (salted and peppered)

Simmer all of the above until its reduced to just about a cup. I used Bone-in Breasts, I think baking in the oven with boneless makes them dry without the skin to protect it and keep in the juices. Pour reduced liquid with garlic, lemons and all over the chicken. I bake mine breast down for the first half and then I flip them over- this way the breasts really soak up the flavor. Bake at 400 until done.

Really good and I served mine with honey glazed carrots and they went excellently!

Bird Nests with Chicken and “Green Beans!”

So in case you didnt know it- I LOVE me some Rachael Ray! This woman inspires me so much. We used to eat out ALL the time because by the time I get home from work I was in no mood to cook. Since getting to “know” Rachael I cook every single night! And I LOVE it and feel like I am somehow a better parent by doing this.

This is a spin on on her recipe for Bird Nests with Chicken and Broccoli.

In her recipe she uses broccoli and well…….I hate broccoli so I used green beans! I also wanted to bump up the flavor of the chicken and green beans. She uses just salt and pepper and Olive Oil. So I added the EVOO to the pan and then grated a couple cloves of garlic into it. I then added a splash of Soy Sauce and pepper and salt. Then I cooked the chicken breasts and added the beans when the chicken was done. I think there is nothing better than green beans and garlic with a splash of soy. This made the chicken taste SO good and the beans. I also used a lot of Parmesano Reggiano cheese on my noodles because I LOVE it so much! And dont skimp and use Kraft powder “Cheese” stuff. Get the good stuff at Costco, Harmon’s or my favorite CAPUTOS!

I did use whole wheat spaghetti.   I always use it when something calls for spaghetti,  I lOVE the taste and it is full of protein and fiber.   My favorite kind is “Garafolo” imported Organic whole wheat spaghetti.  You can buy about 10 packs for like $8 at Costco.  It tastes SO good.

Super fast, super easy and SUPER good. Taylor gave it a 9 out of 10! Click here to watch Rachael make hers!

CRAZY for my new pan!!!

So I got my new pan on Friday!! Its the Rachael Ray cast iron grill/griddle pan. Its so heavy its GREAT! Its a grill on one side and a flat griddle on the other. We cooked eggs on it Saturday and had no sticking issues at all, so it is well seasoned. Then on Sunday I grilled chicken on it- it was fantastic!!! GREAT grill marks and the chicken was moist and perfect. It was way better than grilling outside because I could do it right in the kitchen. Plus I can’t grill outside in the new apartment so this solves everything!

So all you Rachael Ray haters shut your pie hole! I am crazy about her and her products!!

Ha Ha! So true and funny!

see Sarah Palin pictures

Eve Ensler on Sarah Palin

I LOVED this so much I had to share-  Please read people and make the RIGHT choice in November-  OBAMA!

Eve Ensler writes:

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it’s their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don’t like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.??

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story — connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God’s plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin’s view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, “It was a task from God.”??

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist’s baby or not.??

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.??

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.??

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.??

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God’s name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.??

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don’t move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, “Drill Drill Drill.” I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.??

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?