Ah, the F*cking Holidays

Don't get me wrong. I don't mind the holidays to a certain extent. Past that threshold though I am decidedly un-festive.

Part of the reason for a "festive threshold" is the amount of time I get to "enjoy" with my children. They have the whole week off for Thanksgiving along with two full weeks for Christmas. It tends to be a lot of kid time for me. It goes better if there are activities, but I am not one to plan so far ahead so I get stuck and the kids end up at home with me doing nothing. This time was a little better.

The first weekend F had a birthday party to attend. We got his friend the requisite Lego kit as a present and then we had F make a birthday card. F claims his favorite subject in school is art - I don't believe it. I also don't think he has a future writing for Hallmark.



Thanksgiving is always a "festive" start to the holiday season. We have been hosting since we were first married so he have the whole show pretty well down and we don't deviate much from the script. (Mostly we stay to script because change tends to make A a little "nervous.")

This year was pretty uneventful, except for the one brief blow-up by me and the subsequent silent treatment from A (a marked improvement from past years.)

The table looked much better than last year.


Last year.




This year. (Great job, honey.)

This year I convinced A that we should do the turkey on the grill. Last year, when we had two turkeys we did one in the oven and one on the grill. People really liked the grilled turkey and I like to do stuff on the grill so hey, why not again this year?

I prepared the bird by stuffing with onions, leeks, shallots, garlic, carrots and apples. Then, the piece de resistance, I took Nueske's bacon and shoved six strips under the skin on the breasts and laid a few more strips on each of the legs. While watching Martha Stewart (who generally I abhor) on the Today show on Wednesday, she provided a wonderful tip - take cheese clothe and soak it in two sticks of melted butter and a bottle of white wine, then lay it like a blanket over the turkey covering the whole bird - no need to baste. It worked like a charm. You take it off for the last hour of cooking and the turkey turns a golden brown.

I set the coals up for indirect heat and put a pan of water and some of the leftover turkey stuffings in the middle.



Kingsford makes this awesome Hickory charcoal that gives it a wonderful flavor.



While the turkey was cooking away people were arriving. My aunt comes and always brings this great pheasant dip.



Each year she claims it's made with a different type of bird. This year it was allegedly made with Ivory Billed Woodpecker. Apparently, Ivory Billed Woodpecker is kind of spicy and really good.

After a little over four hours on the grill the thermometer hit 180 degrees and we were done. RIGHT. ON. TIME! I am very proud.



How beautiful is that!?



And then right before I carved it.



Then, after the carving was done.





And, on the platter.



F said a little prayer he wrote in school.



The kids were exiled to the kitchen table.



And then we ate. (No pictures - you don't want to see my family cramming food down their gullets and I didn't want to put down my fork to grab the camera.)

On Friday we went over to my sister's house for dinner. No one wanted leftovers so we opted for Chinese food. I, again, ate my rapidly increasing body weight in lo-mein and sesame chicken. At the end of the meal we cracked open the requisite fortune cookies. This was mine.



How incredibly accurate. (And it's even better if you add "in bed" after it.)

Three Weeks to Gluttony

Every year since we were married A and I have hosted Thanksgiving at our house. This year will be no different. The big day is still three weeks away, but I am already starting to consider what to make. We always do a turkey - that's a given. Last year we did two. One we did in the oven and the other we did on the grill. Everyone LOVED the grilled turkey. I'd like to do it again this year, but we will only have one larger turkey rather than the two we had last year (we had more people last year.) In a blatant attempt to flush out lurkers on my blog I am looking for suggestions for turkey prep. At the very least I am willing to wrap it in Nueske's bacon (the best bacon in the world.) I am also looking for recommendations for stuffing. We won't do any stuffing in the bird, in the past we stuff it with tons of garlic, onions, and other delicious veggies. I have heard deep fried turkey is fabulous, but I am not willing to try something this "radical" - our family members and guests have a finite tolerance for change.

From there we are thinking about side dishes. My mom always brings sweet potatoes. She prepares them the only way any self-respecting northern Minnesotan or Wisconsinite would - with ample amounts of bourbon and marshmallows. We'll have mashed potatoes, but if anyone has a suggestion on how to improve these, that would be appreciated. Veggies have always been my mother-in-laws seven layer salad - again, an upper-midwest staple. (Unfortunately, this dish peaked in the 70's.) We'll also do either Szechuan green beans or asparagus, but those are the default options.

If anyone is looking for a turkey prep suggestion - last year one of the birds was stuffed with lemons, oranges and pineapple. I mean crammed tight. And boy was it good. That tends to lend itself more to oven preparation and I can't do it this year because it doesn't work for gravy production - which is an absolute requirement.

In other Thanksgiving prep news we have made some upgrades around the house. A relented and let me install a TV in the kitchen. This will make watching football much easier while cooking. We have also pulled the trigger and bought new dining chairs. After much investigation, sampling, hand wringing, test driving and procrastination we found some at West Elm. These are perfectly acceptable and inexpensive enough that if they don't last no one's heart will be broken. (You don't need pictures now, you'll have to wait three weeks until the table is set.)

As I sit here writing this post I can feel my ass getting bigger and my gut getting softer. I like the holidays but I really need to figure out a way to keep my weight under control. I guess we all have a cross to bear. Mine tends to be fork shaped at this time of year.

To Swim or Not To Swim

I feel like I should post something just so people are not greeted with "Mr. Walrus Dick" when they come to visit. 

We had a busy weekend. Ran ten relatively easy miles Saturday morning for our last longer run before the marathon this coming Sunday. The weather was beautiful so we did a lot of stuff outside. The kids had swimming lessons - which are going very well. We were having people over for dinner the rest of the weekend so we decided to go out to eat. There is this new restaurant called Burger Jones that just opened. This place is good. They have gourmet hamburgers - here's the website - I had the black and blue burger which had just the right amount of black pepper and just the right amount of blue cheese. 

Sunday night we had A's parents, my sister and her family and another family that are mutual friends of my sister and mine over for dinner (confused? Too bad.) I grilled up bacon wrapped steaks from Costco. Highly recommended! The kids had hot dogs, because that is what kids eat. We are a walking cliche. 

Monday we had more people over. Four families from the kid's school came over for burgers, hot dogs, brats, kilbasa on the grill. We were just going to have burgers and hot dogs, but I kept finding things in the refrigerator that needed to be grilled. A made this awesome bean salad. She just made enough to feed a small army. It will be good this week as I get ready for the race. 

Why polska kilbasa, you ask? When we were at Costco F was hitting all the samples and he came across the kilbasa samples. After some encouragement from me, he took one and tried it.

Me: "F, how is it?"

F (excitedly): "THIS IS THE BEST SAUSAGE I HAVE EVER HAD!!!!"

He went back for three more samples and when E came up he took her over so she could try it and he took two more. 

This morning we ran four miles. I wasn't planning on doing anything but running this week, but now I am tempted to swim tomorrow. So, should I? I don't think I will, but I am tempted. 

All right, this was the all time lamest post ever. But now my mom doesn't have to see walrus "parts." I will try to do better next time. Maybe I will include pictures. Sorry, that's about five minutes that I now owe all of you. Please come back again, I promise it won't always be this b-o-r-i-n-g. 

The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ Can't Come Soon Enough

All you Christians out there please do not waste your time saying a prayer for my soul. I am Catholic and I am already piloting the fastest rocket ship to hell so that post title will only make my descent that much quicker. 

Why do I need Easter to come so soon? (The title was referring to Easter - in case you are not Christian or you just don't pay attention.) Because I can't lose any weight. I am no lard-ass and some would say I am actually rather trim, but I need to lose some weight because I am lazy and don't want to drag all this excess adipose tissue up and down hill and dale for miles and miles. The fact of the matter is, all holidays kill me. 

Thanksgiving was the biggest week of gluttony I have experienced. What makes it worse is, I don't even drink anymore. It's all food. (Who makes two turkeys!? Me.) A month later is Christmas. After that food debacle I was at my heaviest in a long time. I vowed to be better with my nutrition and that worked for awhile. I was bumping up (or "down" as the case may be) against 190 and feeling pretty good. Then Easter comes along. 

As you may or may not know, I am a terrible Catholic. Yes, my kids go to Catholic school. Yes, my father-in-law was in the Jesuit seminary for over ten years - then he left - then he met my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law has a masters in theology. Her parents - A's grandparents and my kids' great-grandparents - were off-the-boat Irish Catholics. F is named after an Irish saint. So I probably have a lot of people pulling for me. They will have to do a lot of negotiating to get me through those pearly gates.

As Catholics we do the whole Lent thing (I just included a Wiki link if you don't know what this all entails - it is very complicated James Bond-type stuff that even I don't fully understand as illustrated by my lackadaisical follow through) which basically includes giving up some "vice" and not eating meat on Fridays for 40 days before Easter. Well, this year I decided to give up Oreos and ice cream. Now, in the true spirit of the sacrifice Jesus made for my soul, I should have given up all sweets/desserts, but in the spirit of making my life easier and increasing my odds of success, I decided to be very specific. (As of today I have not had any Oreos - I will get to the ice cream later.)

What does any of this have to do with not losing weight? In order to satisfy my sweet tooth (teeth) I have substituted Oreos and ice cream with multiple bags of these:

And to a lesser extent - these:

And when I say multiple, I mean many multiple. I bet I have gone through eight bags of Mini Eggs and about three bags of jelly beans. To rationalize/justify/make myself feel better, I do chase the fist-fulls of Mini Eggs with giant glasses of milk. Inevitably, I still have milk left after I eat the chocolate so I have to get more chocolate to go with the milk and then that doesn't work out so I have to get more milk to chase the chocolate and on and on until a quarter of the bag of Mini Eggs is gone and half a gallon of milk. But hey, milk's healthy, right?

While I try not to break one arm patting myself on the back for resisting Oreos, I have to come clean about ice cream. I have been pretty good, but I have had a couple of slips that I need to rationalize/justify/make myself feel better about. My kids both requested ice cream cakes for their birthdays. Now, how can I not partake in my children's birthday celebrations - I am not some inhuman monster after all. Besides, it really is kind of a gray area. It is technically "cake" and I did not give up cake. Granted, it is made with ice cream, but, again cake is in the description so I will file it under "cake." (In the larger scheme of things, Jesus might just give me a pass on this one. He certainly has bigger fish of mine to fry.) My second "slip" is also negotiable. When in Florida I went to an ice cream shop with my mother-in-law and E. When I got there I remembered, "Hey, I gave up ice cream for Lent." Now, I just couldn't disappoint my darling daughter and Grandma was buying (free stuff trumps Lent in my book) so I was all set to dive right into some creamy goodness. Then I saw it - my way out. Actually, my mother-in-law pointed it out to me. The ice cream shop also served gelato - not technically ice cream - ask any Italian, they will concur. I'll get some of that then. I had a bit of a guilty conscience (yes, I feel guilt and yes, I have a conscience - really people) because I knew this was the knife's edge of legitimacy. Then I found the Windex for my clouded conscience - SORBETTO! Frozen fruit. "I will have a scoop of each of those please." 

I did do a little penance for my ice cream/gelato/sorbetto transgression. It kind of sucked. Whoa, not enough to not eat the whole thing, but not good enough to go back. 

And that whole "no meat on Friday" thing. Long story short, it didn't happen. More fuel for the rocket. 

To make matters worse - I have Easter dinner staring me in the face (figuratively, but soon literally.) Candied spiral-cut ham, cheesy potatoes, green beans and lamb cake. Not to mention the appetizers that will precede all that gluttony. And for whatever reason, I am just a boy who can't say "no." Luckily, when I was in the grocery store this morning I saw that half the packages of Mini Eggs were gone and I wouldn't imagine they will be restocking them this late - at least I hope not. And "No," I didn't buy another bag before they were gone, I still have two bags at home. A man has got to know his limits. Maybe one of these days I will know mine.

Thank God That's Over II

Thank God Christmas and the season of gluttony is finally over.  No more presents and no more massive quantities of food.  Let me amend that, more presents and food at my mom's house tomorrow, but small in comparison to what has taken place since Thanksgiving and especially the last few days.  With the kids off of school I have been thrown a little off my schedule so I feel like I have not been getting in the workouts I need.  Next week they are still around but it will be much calmer as we will not be traveling and New Year's will be a relatively calm affair with friends.  I plan on getting on my bike/trainer and picking up the weights again.

I can not believe how much crap we have now acquired.  (Thank you to everyone for all the presents.  I am in no way suggesting that the thoughtful gift you gave is "crap," it is all the other presents that people gave us that are "crap".  Your gift is perfect!)  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE "crap" as much as the next person, but until it all finds a home, it feels cluttery and like we have a bunch of "crap".  

I am happy to say that I received the items below:

The flashlight is from E and the other items were stocking stuffers from A.  I gave A a nice, warm robe (we weren't supposed to give each other gifts, but I couldn't help myself) and I encouraged her to buy herself a North Face down parka in a girls size large which, by the way, costs half the price of the women's version.  It fits perfectly.  Sometimes, it pays to be petite.

At the in-law's house we had our traditional dinner Christmas meal complete with birthday cake for Jesus.

I ate so much that I had heartburn so bad it kept waking me up.  Ah, mission accomplished.  Now I can start working it all off.  Yippee!