Cocktail Trivia

Well, it is that time of the year when you have to go to a lot of parties and at times the chit chat can get stale.  What better way to enjoy the season than learning some fun and festive cocktail tidbits of information.

A Louisville, Kentucky company currently known as Omega National Products claims to make 90% of the disco balls used in the United States during the disco craze, and remains the major supplier.  Go figure.

Tuesday Funny

World AIDS Day

The fight is not over.  We cannot forget.

A Wintery Holiday Weekend

From coast to coast there was snow.  Above comes from a friend in New Jersey while we had a dusting of snow here in Seattle.  As the holiday weekend winds down Damon and I looked at each other today and said "we need something other than turkey for dinner."  Gobble, gobble can only last so long.  So we decided on good old fashioned burgers.  He created an amazingly tasty dinner.

Before cutting so you can see just how yummy they were going to be.  And for the record, they were as good as they looked!  Simple dinner and a piece of pie for dessert.  And that was the end to a lovely weekend.

Holiday Weekend

What a treat.  No work for 4 days and we have just reached the halfway point of the weekend.  Today, it is all about the movies.  Damon has been really wanting to watch a few and so we took in several today.  Up first was R.I.P.D.  Veteran lawman Roy Pulsifer (Jeff Bridges) works for the R.I.P.D., a legendary police force charged with finding monstrous spirits who are disguised as ordinary people but are trying to avoid their final judgment by hiding out among the living. When Roy and his new partner, Nick Walker (Ryan Reynolds), uncover a plot that could end all life, they must discover a way to restore the cosmic balance or else watch the tunnel to the afterlife start sending angry souls back to the world of the living.

In the 12 Trees of Christmas, Cheri Jamison rallies the residents of her beloved Manhattan neighborhood to participate in a Christmas tree contest when her cherished local library is abruptly set for demolition. Cheri finds herself up against an ambitious developer Tony Shaughnessy.  You know how it turned out since it is a Hallmark Movie!

Could not believe Damon had not seen Working Girl!  Classic 1988 story of when a secretary's idea is stolen by her boss, she seizes an opportunity to steal it back by pretending she has her boss's job.

Really wanted to like this movie and just could not get into Boxtrolls.  A young orphaned boy raised by underground cave-dwelling trash collectors tries to save his friends from an evil exterminator. Based on the children's novel 'Here Be Monsters' by Alan Snow

Yes, the movie leaked and Damon was one of the millions to snag a copy.  Annie is a young, happy foster kid who's also tough enough to make her way on the streets of New York in 2014. Originally left by her parents as a baby with the promise that they'd be back for her someday, it's been a hard knock life ever since with her mean foster mom Miss Hannigan. But everything's about to change when the hard-nosed tycoon and New York mayoral candidate Will Stacks makes a thinly-veiled campaign move and takes her in.  Totally wanted to like it and was completely disappointed!

Again, amazed that Damon had not seen this classic Disney picture.  Belle, whose father is imprisoned by the Beast, offers herself instead and discovers her captor to be an enchanted prince.  A fun way to cap off a day of movies.

A Thanksgiving To Remember

I present the Thanksgiving dinner.  It turned out quite nice.  The bird was moist and flavorful.  The sides were limited and quite tasty.  But still a few things happened along the way that will make this one a dinner to remember.

So here is the bird.  In the background, you will see the pan it cooked in and we used several sweet potatoes cut in thick wedges as a buffer on the bottom so all the turkey juices and butter dripped down.  we are going to mash those up for leftovers this weekend.  Now mind you, there were 4 gay men in the apartment and not one really wanted to carve the turkey.  Thus, I did and was finding it rather difficult.  Well, the mystery was discovered when I realized I had cooked the bird upsides down the entire time without any knowledge.  As you can see this is the moment when I realized where all the wonderful breast meat was.  Much laughter was shared and deserved.

Now mind you, this was not the only "oops" of the afternoon.  Earlier I had prepped the green bean casserole and set it aside on the counter to go in once the bird came out.  Then Damon went to work and made the wonderful sweet potato au gratin.  As you can see it turned out just beautiful (below).  The only thing was that he put his au gratin on top of my green bean casserole.  This was not discovered, nor shared, until I mentioned it was time to put the green bean casserole in the over.

So here is a picture to try and show you the combo.  It was actually quite good and we have discussed that if we make it again, we will flip them.  It has been christened the vegetarian tur-dun-ken.  

And here is a little bit of everything, less the cranberry sauce which came after the picture.  I did not make it through but it was all mighty tasty.  I went and took a little nap afterwards and the elves were in the kitchen cleaning up.  Pie was not attacked until many hours later.  But they are mighty fine.  I hope that however you celebrated, you had a wonderful day.

Let's Have A Parade!