AllGuinness

We got our Christmas tree on Saturday and oh boy what a tree. The tree is ten feet tall, as mandated by our ceiling, but it is also about ten or eleven feet wide, and I’m not kidding about that. We haven’t decorated it yet, but we will get to that today. I love Christmas and I wouldn’t be stopped from getting the most ridiculous tree I could find. We went up to the Apple Hill area to cut our own, as the section of trees at ten feet is pretty bad at the in-town lots. There is one tree farm we went to a couple of years ago, and we wanted to find it again. They have these really stunning trees that have a decidedly blue cast to them. I think it is the Silver Tip. The downside to these trees is that they are basically spiny and hard to handle. After much driving around we were able to locate High Sierra Iris and Wedding Gardens which was the same place we went before, and where we got the beauty this year. I also feel compelled to mention Crystal Creek Farm, which didn’t have a tree we wanted, but without their help we never would have found what we were looking for. Here is a before decorating pic, and I’ll try and get an after pic up this evening or tomorrow morning.

Today I’m doing some advanced prep for my Thanksgiving dinner. As I mentioned before, I am using a little bit of an Italian theme, but today much of what I am making is going to be more traditional desserts. Can’t have too many I say, so I’m going to make five pies. I am making an apple and an apple walnut cranberry (both with streusel topping instead of a double crust), two pumpkin type pies, but I’m using other fall squash that I roasted earlier (to be fair, I’m only making the crust today and will fill these later), and a walnut (like pecan but walnut). I’ll only bake the walnut today and freeze the apple pies for baking on next wednesday or thursday. I am also planning to make some pumpkin spice ice cream. I made some sweet potato casserole Ice cream (sweet potato, walnuts, and mini marshmallows) earlier and it is good so I’ll be using that too. There is also a cranberry tiramisu that I am going to make later. Should be a pretty good dessert spread.

Also today I hope to make some pumpkin ravioli with my new pasta maker attachment for the kitchenaid. I think I can freeze these and cook them up the day of. I did it with some sweet potato gnocchi, and it turned out pretty good.

I’ll try and put all the details up on the Eat Me blog soon, for anyone who is interested.

Normally I find tag clouds to be a stupid way to display information, but occasionally I can appreciate their use for a specific type of data. I thought that on the eve of this election, that everyone won’t shut the hell up about, that this tag cloud showing frequency of words used in presidential speeches over time was somewhat interesting.

I don’t vote, but I strongly encourage all of you out there to get yourself out and vote for what you think is right. Try your best to understand each of the items to be voted on and think about how it impacts your life, and how each item makes the world around you better or worse. Educate yourselves actively and vote with your mind. Most of all, have fun with it. It probably won’t impact your personal life all that much either way.