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

Procrastination

I'm a pro at it!



I don't really have anything interesting to say, but I am in the mood to write and I have a lot to do at work that I am working very successfully to put off. So here are a few things going on in my life right now



-we've been trying to get pregnant for 8 months now with no luck. it is going to sound stupid, but I really had no idea we would have a problem. in fact, i'm pretty sure i was told in the hospital we wouldn't have a problem. i started tracking my temperature so I could better figure out when we were supposed to be trying, and by that I mean having sex in case you aren't up to date with the baby making lingo, and all I have figured out is that I am all messed up. my cycle used to be 28 days to the t. I started on the 3rd Thursday like clockwork. now, not only is my cycle not 28 days, but it isn't anything. every month it is a little longer. since i have been tracking it has been 33, then 35, and this last month 45 days. looking back, i realize that the reason i thought i was pregnant every month that we have been trying (sex) is because each month i was late. that is a lot of wasted pregnancy tests right there. i need to buy some stock in ept.



-along with this same subject i am struggling a little bit to know what i am supposed to do. i don't think i want to go on any sort of hormone to regulate my body, but if i don't it might be impossible to get things back on track. i have always felt very strongly that i was suppose to adopt, but i always thought it would be after we have kids and most likely after our children our grown. now i keep looking into what we would need to do, and it seems like even if we wanted to adopt it would be impossible. it takes so much time and money. we have all the time in the world, but we are about to spend all of our savings on a house. it is going to take forever to build that up again to the point where we can afford to bring a child in our home.



-along that point, why is it so expensive to adopt? i read an article that it takes anywhere from 10-30 thousand dollars to adopt a child. aren't there tons of children who are dying to be in a forever home? according to my economics degree, that means they should be giving them away, but I guess that is not the way it works.



-speaking of the house, we close in a week! we are moving in 8 days. i can hardly believe it. the schedule we have to work with is so tight. we close on a tuesday, are having the house painted on a wednesday, moving on a thursday, have my grandma's 80th birthday on saturday (all day), and have to be out of the apartment on sunday. be prepared to not hear from me at all. if you do, expect a little crazy.



-back to the baby making, why do they make you wait for a year of trying (remember, that is having sex) to see a doctor about problems you are having. don't they know that is 12 months of waiting and wondering.



-related to nothing else here, travis and i have been wanting for a long to time make some couple friends. we have tons of friends individually, and we love hanging out with them, but we don't really have many friends who are in our same position as DINKS. not any that live close any way. well finally, i think they are coming out of the woodwork, that phrase is really gross by the way. i have i hopes for our new sets of friends and they better end up being cool or else i am going to be forced to tp their house.



-speaking of friends and tping houses, we went by to see our house two weekends ago and we saw some people our age-ish moving in down the street!! i have always hoped that we could live on a street that has cool people living on it so we would have someone to sit outside and talk to while we drink margaritas and gossip about the neighbors. these people also better be cool or they are going to experience the wrath. you know what i am talking about (not sex)



there are my random thoughts for the day. maybe i will have more tomorrow, you probably hope not

oh my gee, i just typed up this whole post and then it disappeared. PTL for auto save or else i might have had to tp the computer.

Baking For the Troops

As some of you may have, but probably haven't, noticed, I haven't
blogged in a while.

I started getting behind when I was travelling a ton this summer. I
wouldn't want to blog one thing without blogging about the thing that
happened before. All of a sudden it's October and I haven't told my
loyal blog readers about my trip to Virginia or my very fun family
vacation (the first one we've taken since 99) to Lake Livingston.

Well I've just decided to start over. If I ever get around to sharing
pics about what's been going on, they'll just have to be super late

Anyway, on to the reason for this post. I heard about this Baking for
the Troops group of ladies through an internet forum I frequent. I
thought this would be a great way for me to support our troops, as I
love to bake and I love our troops. I think next time I do it I will
send more goodies, and maybe get more people involved. This was just
so easy to do, I don't see any reason not to get more people baking.

In the boxes are snickerdoodles and chocolate cookies dipped in nuts,
powdered sugar, or cinnamon sugar.

The soldier we are sending to this month is Alex and I also made a box
for my brother who is also stationed in Iraq. I didn't think it would
be cool to send a box to a stranger without also sending one to Patrick.

Please keep both of these men and their families in your prayers.