Hm. I just can't seem to get back into the rhythm of blogging like I used to. Part of the reason, is that I've been extra busy with one thing and another--Hospitality House activities (making signs, etc.), pre-winter yard work (more on that in another post), a little re-decorating, bit of travel, blah blah and more blah. We'll catch up later. For now, we'll pick it up with our Thanksgiving time with the kids:
The plan was for Rachel, Mike, Dylan, Emi and Emi's parents, Doug and Michelle Hofmeister (who live in Boulder, CO) to come up for the weekend. But life (or, in this case, death) gets in the way of the best plans, sometimes. Sadly, Doug's father passed away Wednesday evening in Kansas, so Doug and Michelle had to change their plans on the spur of the moment (they had planned to fly into SF Thurs. morning).
So, we were a little band of six (Emi will fly back for the memorial service at a later time).
It was a wonderful weekend, none the less, and we'll look forward to another time to get together with the Hofmeisters.
Rachel and Mike arrived early Wed evening. My best intentions to go to choir practice no-matter-what quickly melted away. Tom drove to Sacramento to pick Dylan and Emi up at the Amtrak station the next day.
The weekend had some distinctive texture, besides the activity around a fancy meal. For one thing, Mike and Rachel were one week into a boot-camp-type fitness program and commandeered various locations in the house or deck to work their tushes off for an hour plus every day (including Wed evening). This program makes Jane Fonda's routines (OK, I heard that) look like lolling on the beach. It's called P90, or something, and it's serious. Video trainer, Tony-the-hulk, is forever screeching "bring it!". So I tried to. Actually, I was afraid not to, even though I'm not in the program. You can see that Dylan couldn't escape Tony's reach, either.
Food talk: Turkey (all 22 pounds) was moist through and through. The method this year: no stuffing inside (first time for me); let it sit 24 hours in the fridge all naked to let the skin dry out; took it out to bring to room temp with ice packs on the breast (so white meat would cook more slowly than the dark meat); started at 425 deg for first half-hour; and cooked it upside down (always do that).
In addition, Rachel prepared delicata squash in a fabulous recipe using white miso and sriracha sauce. Incredibly tasty. And who eats delicata? We do, now. Emi, anticipating her parents' presence with us, made wonderful cookies. They are traditions for her family: tiny (diam. of a nickel) cream-filled sandwich cookies and peanut butter blossoms. We couldn't keep our hands off of them, even before the meal, their being such a nice bite-size and all. Other dishes included part-cornbread dressing made with pecans and mushrooms, roasted-garlic mashed potatoes 'n' gravy, roasted green beans w/almonds (squeaky to chew), fresh herbed rolls, homemade cranberry sauce and roasted sweet potato cheesecake.
Crazy meal that six adults can keep eating all weekend with no more cooking. Our leftovers had leftovers.
Another fun thing was a mushroom tour we took on our property. Spring and autumn always produce quite a few kinds of fungal activity around here, but this is a bumper crop. I'll post photos of our faves in the next entry. Anyway, different subsets of us at different times went mushroom hunting and found upwards to twelve to fifteen distinct varieties. Even consulting my comprehensive mushroom manual, we couldn't be sure which were edible, and which not. Mike had a gut-level eat-o-meter pronouncement for most of them, but was not willing to back it up with action. Neither were we.
On Friday evening, we drove over to Grass Valley for the first (of five) Cornish Christmas Fair. Nevada City starts their Victorian Christmas celebrations this week on Wednesday. That's one photo of us (taken by Tom) taken in GV.
Otherwise, we amused ourselves around the house by playing cards, watching TV, and eating, sometimes all three at once.
They all left Saturday evening to drive back to SF together. On Sunday, they had tickets for the Chicago/SF football game (Chicago is home town for both Emi and Mike). Christmas schedules look a little crazier, this year, so this time together was savored as the nice, laid back (well, with the exception of Tony), retreat from the every-day routines that it was.
Yup, I'm lazier about blogging these days partially because I'm busier than I used to be with outside activities. I have to remind myself about why I've been doing it.
Blogging serves a few different purposes for me, one of which is to post enough information about our lives here to make it a little easier to keep loved ones far away somewhat up to date with us, should they so wish. I'm so bad with the phone calls. And though I wouldn't elevate this to "journal" status, it still serves to help me and my lame memory from losing so much of our passing lives in the thick fog of forgetfulness.
So more in the spirit of the second reason, we did take another drive into the back country weekend before last and hit the aspens just about right, this time (as opposed to two weeks previously when it was merely gorgeous without the yellow of the aspens). This time, we drove a beautiful and familiar loop, heading east up 20 to 80 and over to Truckee for the first leg.
I don't know if I've mentioned it before (that fog I'm talking about), but I've taken hundreds of photos of Colfax, a town on the railroad about 1/2 hour south of us for a friend of my dad's who, with an amazing group of model-railroad enthusiasts, needed the pictures to create a perfect recreation of that town for their enormous construction.
They're about finished with Colfax and now need the same treatment for Truckee. In July, Tom and I drove up there and took photos until my memory card was full, about 250 pics. This latest trip to Truckee served to help me continue with that project. After roughly 450 pictures, I'm still only about 2/3 through the buildings they need. I'll try to get up there one more time before the snow gets too deep.
Anyway, from Truckee, we hopped onto 89 North through the huge and majestic Sierra Valley to 49, which brought us back to Grass Valley through Sierra City and Downieville along the north fork of the Yuba.
Yeah, it's a beautiful drive. Here are some of the views. The last picture is that of our front patio area where our American tulip tree is an astonishing yellow at the moment.
