Day in the Life of an Idiot

Image: Classice Yule Log with three white candles, bedecked with boughs and ornaments (surrounded by silver reindeer).

HAPPY SOLSTICE to all who celebrate. And those who don't? I hope you had a lovely Sunday all the same. 

Our Solstice was much as it is most years--a quiet, family affair. We have some traditions, the first of which is making rosettes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosette_(cookie)). I have attached the Wikipedia article if you have no idea what a rosette is--it is, in fact, a deep fried cookie. Personally, if done well, I think they taste amazing, like sugar and AIR. Because, basically, the batter is ultra, ultra thin and you use a cookie iron to to crisp up a lot of vanilla and sugar-flavored nothing. Our recipe actually comes from a class I took on Christmas cookie making several years ago, but very likely (this being Minnesota) comes by way of Norway, though possibly Sweden or Finland. 

The cookie making class is memorable because I was the youngest person in the room. I really figured that probably I'd be the oldest, since I presumed things like rosette, pizelles, krumkaka, etc., were the sorts of things that grandma would pass on and, maybe, it skipped a generation. Nope. It was me an all older ladies and on older guy who kept telling everyone that he took the class hoping to pick up a lady. (Yep, he was that old.) Anyway, me and all the older folks all had a lovely time and I was really only there for the hidden rosette knowledge because everyone agrees there is "a trick to it." 

And, there is.

The trick is making sure the irons are hot first--but also not too coated in oil. But that little layer of hot oil will, in fact, help them come off. In fact, ours often just fall off the iron into the bubbling hot oil. So, we always have to have tongs to hand.


Image: me patiently waiting for the bubbles to slow down the appropriate amount. Mason in the forground. Our kitchen all around and a few exampes of the cookies drying on the paper towels. The irons come in a lot of shapes--star and flower/rosette shown. Not pictured is the Christmas tree. 

We never want the rosette process to be arduous so we only make as many was we feel up to, call it good enough, and then I usually make a fun lunch like deep-fried shrimp.  We have charcuterie for our Solstice dinner meal, light our Yule log (pictured above), open presents, and then take a bit of the Yule light upstairs in a safe, insulated container and keep the light  burning for the longest night. 

I like to joke: if the sun came up on December 22, thank a pagan!



Our Solstice gifts are always books. There is a version of the Icelandic Yule Cat where the present you must recieve is not new clothing, but a book. We decided to adopt that tradition. Mason got a Terry Prachett book (and a gift certificate for Uncle Hugos) because he's been on a Pratchett kick lately; Shawn got the last and final Phil Rickman novel The Echo of Crows; and I got Bad Gays: A Homosexual History by Hew Lemmy and Ben Miller. My gift is one I asked for because I've really enjoyed their podcast by the same name. 

Also as is traditional, someone's present must include the Solstice wrench. It has been Mason for many years, now, in part, I think because we started using it to baffle a child who could very distinctly tell the shake of LEGOs. 


You can keep your King's Cakes, we have the Solstice Wrench!!  


By chance our friend John J. sent along a bunch of other book-related presents and so we opened those at Solstice as well.



Image: Shawn inspecting a surprise gift (one of many!) from our friend.

A lovely time all around. 

So, again, I hope you all had a lovely Solstice. If not, we can all enjoy the return of longer days. More sunshine! Hooray!

 Mason has returned (finally) from St. Louis! 

Today, Shawn is home due to the holiday. For my non-US friends, y'all probably know this one. It's the Fourth of July,  American Independence day, aka "Steve Rogers/Captain America's birthday" (which is what I prefer to celebrate.) Normally, Americans celebrate this with outdoor grilling and blowing things up (fireworks). It's raining cats and dogs, so I am hopeful that fireworks will be cancelled. I'm not a big fan of the noise. Or the crowds. 

I can't say I have never enjoyed a fireworks show, however. There are several I have fond memories of attending when Mason was young, including one in Valparaiso, Indiana at a big open field. I remember laying back on the blanket and enjoying "ooo" and "ahh"ing with the rest of the crowd (which was smaller because smaller town). There was another I remember taking him to the river's edge in downtown St. Paul and watching them not far from where they were being loaded and shot off from. That one was nice because it was also not nearly as crowded. 

Otherwise, I was up late last night with the returned youths and so I am tired and not very brilliant today. Happy 4th to those celebrating.

 
Image: Chocolate bunny in a fancy bowl

Mason's longtime bestie, a lovely nonbinary person named Grey, happened to be in town for a mock trail competition at the same time as Mason's Spring Break. The two of them concocted a plan wherein Grey would stay with us until they needed to head back to their school (in Iowa.) So, we have had a houseguest for a week. It's been nice and so we wanted to send them off in a grand style. Ostara, Spring Equinox, is not for several days yet, officially, but we always retain the right as Wiccans to call on Pagan Standard Time (which is normally a joke about tardiness to rituals, but which we use to say that we can celebrate our holidays anywhere in the vicinity of their actual day.) So, we treated Grey to an early Ostara High Tea.


Image: Shawn's amazing jelly roll.

We pulled out all the stops. Shawn made an incredible (perfect!) jelly roll (sometimes called a Swiss roll), I made pierogi, Ukrainian potato balls (pampushki), scones, little egg tarts, and we had fruit and faux mimosas... and, OF COURSE, tea.  The jelly roll was a huge hit. Shawn used strawberry jam and orange marmalade for the filling. I think Grey was impressed. To be fair, we love setting the table to impress.


Image: Early Ostara table setting (2024)

Mason, like me, always enjoys playing host. He took Grey book shopping and they both came home with arms full. We also had the entire Mock Trial team in our basement playing video games at one point. Mason and Grey went off to the Mall of America to meet up with more friends at some point, too. It's been such a socially busy week for us, I find it deeply amusing to report that, after waving goodbye to Grey, the three of us immediately collapsed into bed and took a long afternoon nap. 

Happy early Ostara to those who celebrate it!

 Happy 4th of July to those that celebrate. 

I can't say that I'm one. It's always difficult in times like these when American discriminatory politics make it very hard to love my country, but, on a much less intellectual level, I'm also just not that into barbeque and fireworks. More often than not I'm at a convention, specifically CONvergence. This year, that starts Thursday of this week. I'm not on any panels this time, but I did get myself a badge, in case I want to attend. 

We'll see if I do. That hotel has terrible parking and the rest of the nearby parking may be eaten up by all the people attending Taste of Minnesota (a music festival) that is scheduled to be on Nicolet Mall this weekend as well. If I take the light rail, I'll probably be sharing it with a lot of music fans. Not that that's a bad thing. It's just more crowds than I'm currently used to. 

Shawn goes in for a colonoscopy tomorrow. She's been having a lot of digestive problems lately, has been very fatigued, and is losing weight without trying. So, this is in advance of her regularly scheduled one, although, by chance, in lines up pretty well with when she was due. It really shows, however, how little we celebrate the 4th that she agreed to have her liquid diet day the day that most Americans are firing up the grill. 

Speaking of that, I'm also a little disappointed that the rain stopped. The national weather service is promising another chance at storms tonight. I should go out and do a little watering again (I was watering when the first storm hit) just to try to encourage things. Maybe wash the car? What else usually guarantees rain?.

Anyway. I'm not feeling especially clever today, but I wanted to post just to stay in the habit and see how all y'all are. How's things? Did you have a good weekend? Doing anything for this holiday, if it's one of yours?

New Year's day is the day we take down our Christmas/Yule tree and pack away the decorations.

This year is no exception. Though we did start in on the process a little bit yesterday, since we knew any big undertaking all at once would be too much for us. Normally, I find this process a little sad and emptying, but, this time, it restored a small sense of order.

Partly because we often use our downstairs bathroom as a place to store all the boxes and bins that the Yule stuff comes out of. Normally, this is a temporary hassle that is tolerable and makes more sense than dragging everything back up to the attic, only to drag it all down and back up again in a matter of weeks. However, with the very much needed addition of an emergency downstairs litter box, it was impossible to keep the floor clean of litter bits and everything just felt chaotic any time I needed to change the box or even just didn't want to bother to go upstairs to do my own bathrooming.

The decoration bins are now staged to migrate upstairs over the next day or two and then be tucked back into their corner in the attic. The rocking chair is off the porch and back in its spot as the guest chair. It was never MEANT to only belong to guests, but... well, funny story about that:

I have a friend Theo, who, when they were buying a house for themselves, got really into the theory of interior decorating. They read a book that talked a lot about what your furniture and style choices say about you and your family's values. They took one look around our cozy little living room, the three overstuffed chairs pointed towards each other in an intimate circle, and the weird, almost out of place rocker and nodded and said, "This house is house for three."

And they are absolutely right.

We happily entertain others, but in the end of the day, this house is a house for three. Possibly three HOBBITS, given the amount of food around the house. We have little stacks of books at our feet and blankets (and snoozing cats) everywhere. The house often smells of something baking.

In fact, I took bread out of the oven only a few minutes ago. I have a French bread recipe I always make as an accompaniment to our traditional wild rice soup for New Year's day. Wild rice soup became the tradition because the recipe we have--from my late stepbrother Mark--calls for BOTH turkey and ham, and we always have leftovers of each in the freezer from the holidays.

We have a pagan ritual we do every morning of the new year, too. Last night, some time before midnight, we find a dime minted in the current year and add it to our collection of dimes that are wrapped in a gold silk square. We put this symbolic "silver and gold" outside of our house and then, in the morning, we bring it in over the threshold to symbolize the act of bringing fortune to us in the new year. This has been our good luck tradition for years (we could probably count the years, given the number of dimes. At least 20, at a guess. I can't remember if we were doing this when we lived in Uptown before we bought this house or not.)

Do you have something personal like that, something to bring you luck in the new year?

I have to say, this is the first year that I've even heard of the whole "rabbit, rabbit" thing. But, I had two FB friends discussing it this morning. Despite my surname, I'm clearly not British (or American?) enough for this whole tradition.

( Quick cat update for those interested... )

 

I see that the last thing I reported was that gingerbread cookies were on the agenda for Thursday night. I am happy to report, they were made. We have successfully captured the gingerbread people (including the rare cyclops ninja)  and trapped them inside this cookie jar.  Resistance is futile.

As you can see, we had too much fun decorating these. Initially, I thought I'd stay out of the kitchen and let Maria and Shawn catch up. Maria is a former colleague of Shawn's. She used to work at the Minnesota History Center, but has now moved on to records management, maybe? (I wasn't entirely paying attention early on), at Thrivenet, formerly Lutheran Brotherhood.  BUT, when it was clear that what they wanted to do was drink wine and chat, I let them settle into that and did the rolling and baking. At this point, it's second nature to me, so I could join in the chat while getting things together.

When the cookies were cooled, everyone did the decorating.  

I had bought the "googly' eyes from Micheal's along with a bunch of other odd edible bits, including lips and mustaches--they all came in a packet for a couple of bucks. I also bought a few frosting tubes because I was there and decided that I was feeling too lazy to do the frosting from scratch on top of everything else.

They're quite whimsical, so I'm very happy with them.

Tasty, too.

I got together with the usual crew on Friday afternoon, except for Eleanor, who was off getting her hair cut. pegkerr brought along her holiday cards to label and stamp. It's interesting to note that Peg's family has always done a Christmas family newsletter. She and I had both come across recent articles talking about how fewer people are writing these sorts of things any more and how this is a concern for historians, as sources of 'mundane' life.  The article I had read was from the Smithsonian and was called "The History of Our Love-Hate Relationship with the Christmas Letter".

I happen to enjoy a well written holiday letter, myself. But, given that I still enjoy the long form of blogging, that's probably not a surprise.

But, otherwise, we were all fairly low-key on Friday. naomikritzer is still, in many ways, recovering from her trip to Taiwan and China. And, I think we were all suffering from a lack of sunshine (though it's been more sunny here starting on Friday. Previously it had been gray with gray sauce.). These dark nights have been tough on me. I'm already an early to bed sort and when it's dark at 5:30 pm, I think, "Okay, great! Time for bed!" Except, yeah, it's like 5:30 pm.

Saturday was a busy day for our family. I took Mason into his job at the Science Museum at 10 am. I was able to say "hello"/"goodbye" on a hangout with jiawen , but then had to take off to go to Mason's work's "open house" that they had scheduled from noon to 2 pm. The Science Museum is not normally more than 10 minutes from our house, but we have gotten in the habit (thank goodness) of leaving a bit earlier because it always seems that there is something happening at the Xcel Center. Saturday seemed to be no exception. There was a Minnesota Wild (our hockey team) game happening and we ended up having to pay $20 for parking. (Outrage! Except, that Shawn pointed out that we could think of it as a donation to the Science Museum, which we happily support in all of its endeavors.)  

The open house was cool.

The program that Mason works for is called KAYSC, which stands for the Kitty Andersen Youth Science Center. They're a nifty little organization that focuses on bringing STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) skills to high schoolers in underserved communities. Mason goes to one of their target high schools, which is how he ended up able to apply. Washington Technical has a predominantly Asian-American student body, with Caucasian students making up only 6%. At KAYSC, Mason gets an opportunity to get paid to learn STEM and project management skills, with a focus on using the sciences to served local communities--something the KAYSC people call "STEM Justice," which is a term I adore. Honest to gods, I would have killed to have a job like this when I was Mason's age. Heck, I'd love one like this _now_.  

At the open house, we got to see some of the areas of interest that the students had identified for themselves. They had set-up various presentations (some static/interactive displays, a couple of video programs, and one tour). I wanted to do the tour, because they were going to talk about gentrification, but we also didn't want to miss the big team reveal at the end of the open house, where Mason would find out which project leader he would be assigned to. They have four "tracks." There's an environmental sciences and sustainability one, which is where Mason ended up, a Engineering and Design, a Biological Sciences and Public Health, and a Media and Technology one. There were some really well put together displays, including Mason's which focused on stereotypes in storytelling.  I was also really impressed with a team that had micro greens growing and talked about ways in which low-income houses could cheaply incorporate more nutrient rich foods.  Another group has a display about the problems GLBTQIA+ students have in high school.  

So you can see the sorts of things they focus on.
 
Mason seems very happy with the assignment. Engineering and Design had been his first pick, but Environmental Science was his second. Given that he has an engineering track at his high school, I imagine they factored that into their decision where he might learn the most.  Because, getting serious, this job is 100% about getting paid to learn, which is why it is SO awesome and probably the best first job any high schooler could hope for. 

But, the event was high energy and full of people moving around and OMG, even this extrovert needed a NAP after that. 

Mason, meanwhile, had us stop at home to pick up some gaming stuff and headed over to his friend's house to play D&D with his robotics crew. He was there, with them, until almost 10 pm. 

Shawn and I came back and collapsed into a heap, but we got back up to make homemade pizza for dinner. Shawn had a work holiday party at a house on Summit Avenue (fancy!) which I bowed out of for a bunch of reasons, but not the least of which was that I am staring up some RPGing of my own. 

I had such a lovely time doing a Star Trek: Discovery one-shot with jiawen and bcholmes at CONfabulous this last year, that we decided to try to make it a regular thing. We spent Saturday night rolling up our characters, and I'm already very happy to watch everyone's character histories comes through my e-mail feed. We're doing this online, as our players are scattered across the globe. I'm looking forward to the campaign beginning in earnest. It's been some time since I had a regular gaming group... probably college, which is going on 30 years ago. Though to be fair, I did keep up with some folks a few years after that, so let's call it 25 years ago?

Even so, that's a long time ago.

I had gone cold-turkey from gaming about the time I started concentrating on novel writing as a career because, for me, I felt it used a lot of the same mental muscles. I felt I could EITHER use those muscles to write _or_ RPG. I'm not sure I was right about that, however--I know a lot of pro writers who could do both.

But, that was the choice I made. 

I'm excited to get back into it, regardless. I also love that in the twenty-five or so intervening years the demographics have flipped. The STRONG majority of us are women (4/5ths). There's only one guy gaming with us. That's amazing. I can't wait to find out what that's like. In the past I was always the only woman or one of a very few... I met my wife gaming, but we drifted together partly _because_ there weren't many women in that campaign... though I think there was at LEAST one other. (To be fair, it was actually love at first sight, since when she asked me to draw her character and said that they should have blonde hair and brown eyes, I told her I thought that was an unusual combination, and she said, 'that's what I am,' and I looked up and literally said, "Oh. You have the most beautiful eyes I have EVER seen." So, you know....)

Anyway. I'm not sure exactly what happened on Sunday, except that Mason and I got into a hormone fueled bickering session that ended with us marathoning several hours of the new Super Smash Bros, Ultimate game on the Switch in order to work it out (which we did. Gaming as therapy is real in the house of hormones, which is what we call our house as Mason is in puberty and Shawn and I are both in various stages of menopause.)

So, that's me. How's by you?

 Well, maybe you're not pagan, so you're not on her list!  But, the Ostara bunny came to ours.  She left her usual basket and a few Goddess themed eggs:


Image: blue Ostara egg with yellow Brigit's Cross

The actual basket:

Image: Ostara basket filled with eggs, candies, treats, and a smiling cat toy.

One more of the Goddess eggs:


Image: a mottled purple Ostara egg with a silvery-blue moon.

Mason told me that he feels too old to do the actual HUNTING for the eggs, but he does still like getting the basket. I told him that he can keep getting an Ostara basket as long as he wants. I'd even send one to college, because WHO DOESN'T LOVE PEEPS AND CHOCOLATE COVERED MARSHMALLOW BUNNIES???!!!???  

Yesterday, I also changed over the altar to its spring clothes... no that that's stopped the snow from falling. When we headed out to school/work this morning, a light dusting was falling. I can see the it's sticking in places. I don't like to complain about the weather too much, but, OMG, the snow could stop any time now. People I know in Chicago are posting pictures of flowers in bloom.

Ah well.

Do you have big plans for tonight?

That's the question everyone is asking today. We _sort of_ do.  In our house, we traditionally stay up for (or, in years past, WAKE UP for) the ball dropping in New York City.  I find this tradition very strange, even though I participate in it, because America is so vast that we're in another time zone from New York City, so even though we tune in "live," we're watching something that was recorded "live" an hour earlier.  People in California and Hawaii have an even odder experience, I'd imagine, to say nothing of Puerto Rico and Guam.  

In past years, we've made Shawn's brother Mark's wild rice soup for New Year's Eve dinner.  We have made this particular soup because it calls for both ham and turkey, which we have in abundance in our freezer thanks to Thanksgiving and Christmas meals.  But, this year, we ended up making our batch of wild rice soup for a holiday party we were invited to.  We made that version vegetarian, so we COULD have chosen to have it again, but we decided to buck our own tradition this year and have steak and potato latkes.

Why latkes?  Well, first of all, they're yummy.  Secondly, I have this weird culinary issue with potato hash browns... as in I can NOT seem to make decently crispy ones.  No, seriously, I have tried everything you're about to suggest, I SWEAR. I once spent an entire week trying out different recipes and different tricks and every time, they were OKAY and edible, but just not what I wanted from my hash browns.  (What I want? Crispy on the outside, fluffy and white on the inside.)  Lots of people can do this outside of professional kitchens. My mother can. She made amazing hash brown my whole life. It's something with me. So, we decided that maybe what I need to do is make something hash brown like that really wasn't hash browns at all, with the hopes that I'd basically get what I'm looking for in a sideways manner.  

Wish me luck.

And, yes, you can, if you wish, inundate my comments box with your tips, advice, and recipes. I would still love to try to make the perfect hash browns, so anything you think might help me to do that is actually very welcome.

Shawn will probably go to bed early.  Mason and I are planning to stay up watching the ten episodes of season three of Haikyu! or at least as many as we can get in before midnight, when we'll wake Shawn up for sparkling cider and noise makers and time-delayed "live" NYC ball dropping.

You? What's your tradition?

 I would apologize for not posting here in a while, but we've had a house full of guests.  Before that, I was cleaning like a fiend to be ready for them.

Thanksgiving has become my all-time favorite holiday.  I don't even quite know how it happened that Shawn and I decided that Thanksgiving belonged to friends, made-family, rather than our families of origin, as it were, but it was by far, the smartest thing we ever did. 

I feel so sad when I hear people talking about how they dread Thanksgiving because it means Yet-Another-Family-Gathering where they're not accepted for who they are, or where they have to suffer through crazy, drunk uncle Bob's horrible racist/homophobic/misogynist politics. I wish I could give them all the fortitude or means or whatever it would take to say, "So, don't do it. Make this ONE holiday yours." After all, it's not like so many of these same people aren't going to end up having to go back to the same awful situation a month later for Christmas.  And even if your family doesn't celebrate Christmas there's usually some other 'can't miss' holiday that's basically required family gathering.  So, why give them Thanksgiving too?

I absolutely love having my house filled, once a year, with the people Shawn and I picked--our friends and their family.  I love cooking them a huge meal, even if, this year, I had to figure out how to make a bunch of my staples vegan.  I love putting together the puzzles, having the competitive board gaming, etc., etc., etc.  I even love that my crazy guests always make a pilgrimage out to the Mall of America for Black Friday. (Hey, you know, if I were in Dublin for some uniquely Irish Cultural Event, I'd want to participate in it too. Even if my native friends were like, "Nope. No way.") 

So that's the sappy way of saying, I had a great Thanksgiving.  Our friends and their family are now coming from both ends of the U.S. and Ireland (one is in Oregon at Reed College, two are in Virginia at William & Mary, and two live in Dublin.)  They all arrived en masse on Wednesday.  Luckily, they were able to find an Air BnB just up University.  They've stayed in a downtown hotel before, but that isn't nearly as homey--and this was very convenient (I picked some of them up there on Saturday to take them to the airport.)  Funny story about that, though. I was given the wrong address at first and so I ended up knocking on a door two doors down. Thank GOD no one answered, though I did spend a lot of time wondering why no one was letting me in.... this is where cell phone are actually a GOOD thing.

Anyway, we ordered pizza from Pizza Luché because they have tons of vegan options, and even make an in-house vegan cheese, while also serving plenty of delicious carnivorous options as well. I think we were off to a good start with the vegans since at least one of them was actually a little overwhelmed by all the choices... since, more often than not, restaurants have only one or two.  

Turkey day itself went very well. It took a bit of planning to have vegan options and/or adapt existing recipes. I'll be honest. A big part of my secret skill as a chef is that I'll put bacon drippings and cream in ANYTHING, given half the chance.  But, we managed to find a good butter substitute and we'd been trying out various dressing recipes for months. Shawn even made a vegan pumpkin pie (as well as two types of cookies and a vegan cranberry-orange sweet bread), and, after several trips to a number of different stores, I managed to find a commercially produced vegan soy whip as an alternative to my homemade whipped cream. It was a lot of work for two out of eight eaters, but, in the end, we could feel good about our hosting skills.  In exchange, I heard no complaints about the dead bird on the table and there were no attempts to proselytize about the vegan lifestyle's superiority. So, I think that was a fair trade.  ;-)

On Black Friday, they all went about their separate ways, but took Mason along.  That meant Shawn and I had a chance to physically recover (I napped... A LOT! I'd feel bad, but it's a full day in the kitchen, since I get up early to make French bread from scratch) and, according to Mason, they all checked out the Herbivorous Butcher for lunch. We had a little snafu about whether or not we were going to brave the Black Friday Mall of America traffic, but in the end everyone hopped on the light rail (Mason always carries his Go-To pass, so he flipped the bill.)  So, it all worked out, plus our Irish guest got to check out what passes as public transportation in Minneapolis/St. Paul. (He and I actually extolled the virtues of trains.)

Saturday, people started drifting off to various airports, though we kept our Oregon guest at our place one extra night. That day was spent playing with the Nintendo Switch and he's ONLY a vegetarian, so cooking for him was much easier. I made my favorite broccoli-curry soup, which I will type out below because another friend has asked for it:

From the Ovens of Brittany Cookbook by Terese Allan:

6 tablespoons of butter, divided
1/3 cup flour
3/4 cup finely chopped onions
1/2 cup finely chopped carrots
1/2 cup finely chopped celery
2 cups of coarsely chopped broccoli stems and tops
1 teaspoon basil
1 (or more) teaspoon of curry powder (I use Penzey's "sweet" curry)
1/2 teaspoon of paprika
1/2 teaspoon of thyme
1/2 teaspoon of celery salt
1 cup of milk
1 cup half-and-half
2 1/2 cups of vegetable (or chicken) stock
1/4 teaspoon of ground white pepper (though black will do in a pinch)

They want you to make a roux with three tablespoons of the butter, heated, to which the flour is added.  I've found you can do this, their method is not that hard, but if the idea scares you, you can just skip the extra butter and mix flour with a little water to make a paste and add it in place of the roux.  Both methods work equally well, IMHO.

Melt remaining 3 tablespoons of butter in a large, heavy pot. Add onions, celery, and carrots. Cook until tender.  Add broccoli and spices and cook a little longer. Add the stock to the vegetables, bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer, add milk and half-and-half. Once that's warmed add the roux (or flour mixture).  Simmer until thickened and the flavors have mingled, but the broccoli is not overdone--10-20 minutes.  Adjust seasonings to taste and serve.

You can see why the vegetarian can eat this, but not the vegans.

On Sunday, we shuffled our last house guest off to the airport, and the had Mason's GF over for our traditional post-Thanksgiving wild rice soup. Of course, she's also a vegetarian, so she got the same soup, only minus the shredded turkey bits.  I made popovers.  It was wonderful.

But, oh my gosh. I'm not normally the sort of person who needs a vacation after a vacation, but this might be an exception. However, I wouldn't have traded a minute of it. Such a good time was had.

Normally, we host our friends the Jacksons for Thanksgiving, but for reasons of other travel plans, they came early, in October.

We could have, I suppose, just skipped the making of the giant turkey, but we decided to invite a couple of our other friends, Eleanor and Patrick, over instead. I made all of our usual trimmings, except I decided to try a new brussel sprout recipe. In the past I had good luck with our one Martha Stewart cookbook, and foolishly thought that maybe her recipe for bussel sprouts would be as good as the Cuban sweet potatoes.

NOPE. They were a disaster.

Luckily, only Eleanor and I even like brussel spouts and I actually have more (uncooked) so I can try again (for myself, for leftovers.)

The rest runs like clockwork these days, though, of course, Eleanor and Patrick came just at the point where I start to get a little frantic about the timing of everything. I don't think Eleanor has ever seen me so.... fussy/anxious before.

But we had a lovely meal and lots of wonderful conversation. It was just exactly how Thanksgiving should be, IMHO.

I've long advocated for Thanksgiving to be the holiday of 'choice/made family.' It really can be quite lovely when celebrated that way.

Today is a pajama day which has started out perfectly with pumpkin pie for breakfast and binge watching "Yuri on Ice" while doing the Thanksgiving dishes.