Great Times ~ Great Friends

Yesterday was a really great Thanksgiving at one of my good friends' parents home. Their In-laws were there from Washington state... kids were around... there were dogs... and football... and much fun was had at my friend's expense... and her sister enjoyed having someone else to pick on her with...

The food was good. The day was cool (for a change -- fall like, instead of Indian Summer/Hotter than it should be ;-)... and we have so much to be thankful for.

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I want to do a 25 Days of Christmas Cookies -- experimenting with Biscotti, shortbread, cookies I've never made before...and then give them as gifts in decorated bags with hand-crafted Christmas Cards. A noble goal.

I figure finding 25 (or more) cookie recipes to attempt shouldn't be hard -- the hard part will be narrowing them down! Ziplock bags and wax paper should keep them fresh in the freezer until it is time to give them away. I've started the list of people I want to give them to, and dates to have them done by in order to get them to those people before I stop seeing them before Christmas...

This project should help me keep my kitchen clean because I hate cooking (especially baking, for some reason) in a dirty kitchen.

At the same time, I want to put together in a much more organized fashion, my own cookbook of recipes that we've tried and liked and that I should make more often. I have a binder of recipes that look good that I want to try -- some of which I have done with much success... but organizing a recipe book is a bit daunting -- categorizing dishes that could be "main" or "side" or even "Appetizer" -- my few attempts at getting it organized have seen me become incredibly overwhelmed, and just get up and leave the table (in search of food to placate my feelings of disorganization and lack of self discipline for not finishing what I start), and then leave the PILES of papers, recipes, binders, pens, notecards etc... on the dining table; which then makes me feel even WORSE about the lack of organization, self-discipline etc...

Right now I'm making Turkey soup from the Turkey Carcass -- my first time, really... I want to try homemade noodles for it -- but not sure I have enough room in my kitchen to roll them out.

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I watched the last half of the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Special last night, and then another Charlie Brown Mayflower Special that I'd never seen before. I like the Charlie Brown Holiday specials a lot! I wish we had "The Snowman" (A British Holiday animated no-words-just-music special over here...) to watch. I hope to get to watch some of my faves... I need to find out from the website what the schedule(s) will be.