Heading toward the downhill slope I have my gifts mostly purchased, partially wrapped, and feel the weight of holiday shopping slowly oozing off my shoulders. As our family has grown, choosing gifts for everyone has become a process. I try to be creative, tucking little hints passed on from loved ones over the year in the storage center in my brain. My mother always proves the most difficult. A woman who is self-described as devoid of patience, if she suggests any items she might want quite often it will already have been purchased before you can retrieve a credit card from your wallet.
Mother and her roommate will be our guests for the holidays this year. I have decorated accordingly, bringing out the extra boxes I often leave untouched when just Rick and I are in attendance. Turkey is on the menu, as I imagine is the case in a large percentage of American households. We had prime rib for Thanksgiving to satisfy Rick’s need for steed, and now it is on to moist stuffing, fluffy mashed potatoes topped with yummy gravy, and creamed onions. My taste buds are throwing a party as I write this. I will be baking my oft requested apple and cheddar pie, as well as a pumpkin pie for my mother. The apple pie is for Rick, not a fan of pumpkin going so far as to tell me my pumpkin pie candle when burning gives him indigestion. Really?
At last our parched hillsides are being treated to a welcome dose of water. Storms have been passing over with enthusiastically received regularity. Our yard looks like a leaf depository, with not a square inch left uncovered. I’ve given it the good fight but have finally conceded defeat running out of places to tuck the darn things once the “yard refuse” bin has reached it’s capacity. Neighbors have their own healthy supply so there’s no relief there so I accept the leaves as a part of living in the tall trees and move on to more pressing problems to concern myself with.
I have allowed the house to go to ruin until this week busy with a thousand other things. As I’ve aged my need for perfection 24/7 has blurred into the need for a clean house but not always a pristine one. My reasoning with this is that if I spent all last weekend cleaning the house to a sparkling shine, this upcoming weekend would be spent in the same pursuit as dust waits for no man. That being said, I will haul my pile of cleaning products out from under the sink on Thursday and begin the task of making the house suitable for guests (in particular my white-gloved mother). After a thorough cleaning Rick always says he finds himself left with a craving for salad. This probably attributed to the large bottle marked “Vinegar and Water” I carry around with me. Vinegar really is the most amazing substance. It works on windows, grease, certainly helps out oil on lettuce, excellent for cleaning blinds, and a myriad of other handy cleanup uses. I even use it to clean my floors. When you compare the cost of a jug of vinegar to the cost of window cleaner there is no way I’m not going to go for a more natural cleaner achieving the same desired result. Insert end of vinegar infomercial here.
I still have presents sitting downstairs in need of wrapping. Back in the day I was a proficient wrapper. Seriously, I could have been hired at a local department store on their holiday wrapping team. Always I made perfect corners, chose just the right paper and accessorized my gifts with little extras or extravagant bows. These days if the paper is on, secured with tape, and you can’t read what’s written on the box I’m good to go. There just isn’t enough time in the day for all the extras. Whatever did I do when I worked full-time? I’m surprised I found time to sleep. Maybe it is that I don’t move as quickly these days, or perhaps the folds in my brain require a little more effort to release information, I’m not sure. Whatever the case I don’t seem to find the hours for the minute details the way I used to. There was a woman on the news who shared a picture of her tree obscured by three hundred wrapped gifts sitting around it. OMG. My hat is off to her. Number one no way did my children open three hundred gifts but never would I have had the patience to wrap them if they had.
Women, so studies reveal, are the multi taskers of the two sexes. Men, it seems, are more likely to focus on one thing and do that well, while we ladies are able to watch the soup on the stove, do a load of dishes, talk on the phone, and let the cat out while balancing the checking account. Makes me celebrate my femaleness. In a world where I’m assigned numerous tasks, was a left to study them one at a time undoubtedly a meal would only show up once a week.
Sometimes I find myself standing at the stove wondering what I want to create there. So many meals have I prepared over the years it can prove daunting some days to keep it fresh (if you will) and interesting. To this end I read a lot, watch cooking shows, and experiment on an unsuspecting Rick to keep us well nourished and not yawning over our plates. I would like to suggest that while creating puppies in a petri dish perhaps they could come up with something new in the area of edibles. I am running out of surprises with the present assortment of foods and would find it interesting to have a new vegetable or meat source to work with. Where is the suggestion box for that lab? I need to drop them a quick note.
So, I carry on with my quest and offer up my version of an old favorite comfort food. When I was young i often had tomatoey little nuggets show up on my plate. My grandmother served them with a steaming pile of mashed potatoes and a vegetable. I always thought that odd, two starches but in truth can you have too many starches on your plate?
Oven Baked Porcupine Meatballs
1 1/4 lbs. ground chuck
1/2 cup uncooked long grain rice
1 onion, chopped fine
1/2 cup water
1 egg, beaten
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. celery salt
1 tsp. salt
1 15 oz. can tomato sauce
1 tsp. sugar
1 cup water
1 Tbsp. chopped parsley
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix together ground chuck, rice, onion, 1/2 cup water, egg, pepper, garlic powder, celery salt, and salt. Form into 1 1/2″ meatballs. Brown meatballs in large skillet over med.-high heat. Drain on paper towels.
Put in casserole dish sprayed with cooking spray. Mix together tomato sauce, sugar, water, and parsley. Pour even over meatballs turning them to coat well. Cover with tin foil. Bake for 45 minutes covered. Remove foil and continue cooking for 15 mins.
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