i'll keep this short...

You like pictures, don't you?

Lazy-Caitlyn just now uploaded a whole bunch of pictures from recent events (Halloween through Thanksgiving,) enjoy!

Abby had the girls over for a rather ghoulish Halloween dinner party. Such fun! She even enlisted her 17 year old sister and her friend to dress up in French maid outfits to serve us.

This was from Caleb's first trip back to the hospital. I'm happy to report, he spent Thanksgiving at home and that made us very very thankful!

I taught my friend Tracie how to knit on our lunchbreak one day.
Happy Thanksgiving! I'm very sad to inform you we didn't have time to make our Tofurkey. We'll have to save it for Christmas. Here is my fall squash gratin. It was OK, I was not blown away by it. It contains roasted acorn squash, butternut squash, and a gruyere sauce. This was just one case when I thought the parts were much better than the whole. Oh well, everyone else was kind about it.

Now this was good... Brandon made crab macaroni and cheese with white truffle oil. Yes, the person who invented this recipe is my best friend. It's everything I love in one pan!!! Plus B found these really cool pasta trumpets. I'm a fan! (Just in case you weren't jealous of me before... I've got a man who can cook!)
Drumroll please...... PECAN PIE! Since my aunt, uncle, and beautiful cousin weren't able to join us for the holiday, I had to make my aunt's pecan pie. My aunt's recipe calls for substituting the 2T of vanilla for bourbon. And boy oh boy is it good! We actually used whiskey, George Dickel to be exact, it seemed appropriate. It's from the town where my aunt, uncle, and cousin live.

It was a very happy Thanksgiving. It included meals at my house, at Brandon's, and the traditional "after-party" at Andrea and Aaron's. Although this year no one camped out at Best Buy, since a few people had to work yesterday. Brandon and I also made the traditional Sonic run. He has been eating at Sonic on Thanksgiving for about 10 years.

It was a very good day!

Yesterday, I hung out here at the house I'm housesitting at and cooked. (How sad is it this, when Margaret asked me to housesit, she said: "you can cook all you want while you're here!" People know me all too well.) Yesterday I went and bought some veggies and made an "eat your vegetables" dinner for Brandon and me. We had to do something to make retribution for the massive amounts of saturated fat the day before, plus the fast resumed after our day of gluttony!

I made sauteed spinach with garlic and lemon, green beans cabernet with onions, and O'Brien's roasted potatoes, these are the cubed and roasted sweet and white potatoes they serve at Cafe Eclectic. Then for dessert, I probably negated it all! But here's a recipe for what I made. It's a pecan turtle bar. It's pretty easy to make it fasting friendly by substituting the butter. It tastes a whole lot like a heath bar!

Pecan Turtle Bar- From: Well Seasoned (The Les Passees cookbook from 1997, B got it for free at the Library book sale.) This recipe is from Mrs. Dorsey
Mathis Jr. (Margaret Jones)


2 Cups flour
2 1/3 sticks butter divided
1 1/2 Cups light brown sugar, firmly packed, divided
1 Cup pecan halves
1 Cup chocolate morsels


Combine flour, 1 stick of butter, and 1 cup brown sugar. This is easily
done in a food processor. Pat into a 9x13- inch aluminum pan. Cover with pecans.
Combine remaining butter and brown sugar in a heavy saucepan. Boil 1 full
minute. Pour over pecans. Bake 18-20 minutes at 350 degrees, until bubbly and
brown. remove from oven and scatter with chocolate morsels. Swirl slightly with
a knife. Cool and cut into bars or squares. Makes 3-4 dozen.

Well, I guess I didn't do a great job of keeping it short! Talk to you soon. PS- I apologize for the squished together paragraphs, I keep trying to space them out but blogger just squishes them back together.... sorry if this post is difficult to read.