howdy howdy howdy

i'm baaaaack... finally got everything squared away with my isp, and now, here i am! man, if it weren't for the fact that i have a bunch of stuff going on that depends on my pacbell email account, i would have ditched those bastards and gotten a cable hookup. but there you go. it's all good now.

update:
we had a ton of folks over for christmas dinner, less than one week after completely moving into our new home. stuff still in boxes, but nobody complained.
let's see, i was a cooking fool. for main courses, i

• smoked a 12 pound turkey over applewood
• roasted a pork loin, with fresh herbs and white wine
• baked an 8 pound whole tenderloin fillet minion roast in a fresh herb and salt crust (the single most expensive piece of uncooked meat i've ever purchased. you don't want to know)

for sides, we did twice baked spuds with cheese and sour cream and the rest was brought by la familia. we had so much food it wasn't even funny. we had family and a few strays my kids brought in over. it was good. i love the holidays and spending time with family. i wish i could have had my folks/brothers/sister down from washington and oregon, but it wasn't to be. that's ok. we still had almost 30 people here, so it wasn't like we were lonely or anything.

note: the hot buttered rum drinks went fast. the batter is bone simple to make. recipe as follows:

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 1/4 to 1/2 tsp each of the following spices: cinammon, ground cloves, and fresh ground nutmeg
• a pinch of salt

cream the butter and sugar until fluffy.
add the spices and salt, and mix completely.

in a mug, add a shot or so, (in our case, more or so than a shot), a heaping teaspoon of batter, and top off with boiling hot water. for a festive treat, add a cinammon stick as a stirrer. stir and enjoy.

we killed a bottle of light rum in no time, and still had batter left over. guess you might say we used a tad more rum than the recipe called for.

anyhow... hope everyone's holidays are going well. i still have until the 3rd of january to finish unpacking, then it's back to work for me.

later.

for a complete list of my online recipes, follow the link here