You have got to be kidding me

Jack Bauer Interrogates Santa

Secret Santa/White Elephant

One of my friends was just asking for ideas for what to bring to a white elephant gift exchange. I'm pretty sure everybody on the internet knows what these are by now but in case you don't read this.

It made me realize it was probably time to start thinking about what I was going to bring to any of the three of these exchanges I will be going to this year. Just yesterday I was shopping at the mall with my husband and brother, and my brother was talking about how he wants to bring the perfect present. He wants it to be something good, but not too good. Something that makes people laugh or have some sort of reaction but not be the obvious gift to get people to steal (like say, alcohol) but also something that will actually get stolen! He was picking up things I thought would be good, a pair of chucks with a receipt so you could exchange for your own size. A mario bros. sweatshirt. Perfect, right? But unfortunately if my 60 year old dad got either one of these presents she wouldn't even know what to do with them, much less my 80 year old grandmother.

It is a very delicate balance, finding the perfect gift if you are looking for something funny. We always have a mix of good and crappy presents, but unfortunately the people who brought something good and get stuck with something crappy feel ripped off twice over.

At my work they decided to solve this by having the swap be called greedy santa so you bring something you would want. That one noone is stuck with something they don't want. Turns out, this does not ease hurt feelings when someone opens those oven mitts you spent the last three months knitting and you loved so much and makes a dirty face and tries to push them off on other people.

And why do we do put ourselves through all of this? So we don't have to put any thought into buying presents for those that we like enough to spend time with but not enough to buy individual presents for.

So since this post has got me no closer to knowing what to bring, any ideas?

Our Weekend

We had a pretty packed weekend this weekend. One of the fun things we did was help out my cousin's wife's dad in the Adolphus Children's Parade in downtown Dallas. He is in the parade balloon business and needed help guiding the ballons. I LOVE parades so I was glad to be able to help. It was pretty tiring, but it was SO much fun!

We were in charge of the jingle bell balloons.

The most entertaining part of the morning was that Darth Vader was in the parade along with all of his storm troopers, Princess Leia, r2d2 (i think), and the rest of the crew. The crowd went wild anytime Darth passed by.

After the parade was over, we helped deflate the balloons and pack them away. This is us trying to get all the air out of Thomas the Train.

I also spend a lot of time doing yard work this weekend. I worked on raking leaves all three days of the weekend. We ended up with seven and a half bags of leaves. The sad part is, only one of our trees even looks remotely empty so I see a lot of raking in our future. After all the leaves were up Travis mowed the yard for the first time! It was actually pretty fun for both of us.

An Adventure - Green Tomato Pie with Whole Wheat Crust

I have been loving the cold weather we have been having here in Dallas lately! Snow in December, who would have guessed. Unfortunately, the freezing cold weather took the life of my poor tomato plants. We had about 20 tomatoes left on the vine so I decided to pick them off and see what I could do with them.

For breakfast on Thanksgiving I made Alton Brown's fried green tomatoes from his book I'm Just Here for the Food. We used corn meal instead of ritz crackers, and they were delicious, but we couldn't exactly cook up 20 tomatoes worth of fried green tomatoes.

I searched the internet for what to do with my batch of green tomatoes and my options seemed to be fried green tomatoes, tomato relish and green tomato pie.

Just like you, I though green tomato pie, BLECH! But this was the only recipe for which I had all of the ingredients on hand, and all of the reviews of the pie were good reviews. I figured it was worth trying, and if nothing else we could make it, taste it, and toss it. No one ever had to know.

As we started, we realized we were out of white flour so we ended up having to use wheat. Again, I figured this was going to be a tosser anyway, so why not go ahead and experiment with whole wheat pie crust.

Well, wouldn't you know this pie pretty much rocks. It tastes like a very tangy apple pie, one of the best apple pies I've had, except for it is green tomatoes. I will admit, there is a little bit of a don't think about what you are eating factor. I didn't take a picture of the pie before we tested it, but I guess that is good because you get to see that the filling looks perfectly normal. I guess if you wanted you could call this a way to sneak in some vegetables.

In case you are curious, here is the recipe I used for the pie (because the reviews said the filling was too runny, I added 1/4c extra flour and this flour was whole wheat as well, and then more cinnamon to compensate):

Green Tomato Pie

and for the crust (I only had 1 3/4 sticks of butter and this was the only recipe I could find that didn't call for 2 sticks of butter. I ended up making 1 1/2 of this recipe so I could have enough for a lattice top. Like I said, I used whole wheat flour instead of white. Also, this recipe needed sugar, so I added sugar on top. You, however, can use whatever crust you like!):

Pie Crust

And while I was writing this blog I found this Paula Deen recipe to try

Green Tomato Cake with Brown Butter Frosting

Oh, and while I was searching for that cake recipe again, I found Paula Deen makes a green tomato pie. See, I'm not such a freak after all, in this instance any way.

Paula Deen's Green Tomato Pie