Christmas Has Begun

My first holiday gathering of the season occurred last night, a snowy, cold, Minnesota evening.

It was definitely not cold in Joey's kitchen! When I arrived his kitchen was in full swing, brimming with friends preparing their contributions to the finger food feast. From left to right we have Justin, Jerri, Joey (our host for the evening) and Genevieve. Not pictured were Mark and Zoe who were staying out of harms way in the living room.

Our potluck contributions yielded this spread:

After eating, drinking, chatting, a little crafting, some Charlie Brown Christmas watching, carol singing (not me, I am still a Scrooge when it comes to Christmas music) and some lounging around, Joey prepared an amazing chocolate fondue.

After that we had a gift exchange, cleaned up and headed home. It was a great way to get the season started and even my typically anti-Christmas-merriment-self enjoyed the festivities. Plus, I got to taste persimmons for the first time. Yum.

Hollywood

When headed to Crafty Planet over the weekend, I saw this theater and just had to take a few photos.

It was boarded up and obviously not in use. A quick google search produced this history that mentioned a renovation project that was to begin in 2004. It didn't look like there was any work being done on it. Another search found this site and this site. It seems there has been a lot of trouble finding the right person and the right funding to renovate and reopen the theater. I really hope someone does, because it looks so intriguing.

Grinding Nuts

Did anyone else have one of these in their family kitchen when they were little? What a simple contraption. I know I can achieve the same results with a knife just as quickly, but when I saw this at the thrift store, I had to buy it for nostalgia's sake.

Naughty and Nice

The other evening we put out a bag for Fanny to play in. She made quite a ruckus running in and out of it, pouncing on it and just generally getting her playfulness out. Every now and then I would toss one of her toys in it. Most of her cat toys are felted wool. She likes wool toys. After an evening of noisy playing, we had to put it up out of her reach so that she wouldn't keep us awake at night.

Paul and I were laying in bed, falling asleep when we heard the sound of Fanny in a paper bag. I was pretty groggy so Paul got up and took care of it, mumbling about how he couldn't understand how she had gotten the bag down. When he came back to bed, I didn't ask him about it, I just fell asleep. The next day I got home from work and found a ball band from a skein of yarn in a very odd place. I then realized that my paper bag from the yarn store was up on the shelf and not on the floor where I had left it.

At that point it clicks in brain and I realize that she had been playing in my little paper bag from the yarn store when Paul had gotten up the night before. When I looked in the bag and only found one of the two skeins, I determined that she had found wool "toys" in the bag and had a grand old time before the bag had been taken away. Paul didn't know what was in the bag and therefore didn't look around for errant skeins of yarn. I eventually located the missing skein.

It could have been worse.

November Recipes

One more month to go! Here are the new recipes I tried in November:

Chewy Granola Bars
These aren't really at all like pre-packaged chewy granola bars. They are tasty, though. I made mine with peanuts, walnuts, dried cranberries and chocolate chips. I used the crumbled bits that broke off from the bars to mix with granola.

Best Formula Three Cheese Fondue
Paul and I made this for our fondue date night. It was tasty, but we felt our arteries being clogged as we ate it :)

Caribbean Sweet Potato Gratin
I made this as my vegetarian contribution to the family thanksgiving. I don't think anyone was particularly thrilled with it, but I really liked it. Next time I would only use half the amount of corn meal it recommends.

Back to Your Roots Soup - Moosewood Daily Specials
This soup was a mixture of turnips and parsnips, neither of which are my favorites. Charleen let me pick up her farm share when she was out of town and it had a turnip in it. I looked for some recipes that included turnips and ended up trying this one. I did end up liking it, but I wouldn't put this on my regular rotation.