What a Week!

We did indeed have a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner at my parent's. Besides turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes, there were: peas, carrots, turnips, brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, and sauteed mushrooms. For dessert, there was pumpkin pie, apple pie (made by my sweet husband), and some wonderful pumpkin cheesecake muffins. Delicious! After dinner, we watched the wedding video taken by my 12 year old niece. She did a fantastic job! I told her she could have a pretty good side job, if not a very successful career. :-)

The rest of the weekend was pretty quiet. We were supposed to go away for the weekend, but the extreme cold weather had closed the Falls Trail at Rickett's Glen State Park, so we decided to postpone the trip for better weather. We did go for a hike on Saturday, a long 6 mile circuit hike in the Rockaway River Wildlife Management Area. Not an easy hike! We were wiped out. We were still working our way through the Thanksgiving leftovers through the weekend, but by Monday we were ready for something different. We decided to try Murphy's Hideaway in Rockaway - not an easy place to find, but I have to say it was worth it. Monday happens to be Lobster Insanity - a 1 1/4 pound lobster, 6 clams, potato and salad for $15.95. I thought about it, but we had actually come looking for a good burger. They have 8 oz Angus Burgers, with your choice of "accessories". I went with bacon and swiss, the hubby chose cheddar and onions. Yum. They were excellent! And the restaurant was a great find, lots of intriguing specials and happy hour treats. Something called Oogy wawa is on the blackboard...

The rest of the week was lost in a blur of hard work and late hours. Both of us are in a very intense time at work these days, so we basically just come home, eat something, and collapse on the couch. One day (Thursday?), we made a pasta dinner that turned out really well. I found the recipe on Cooking Light, although I wouldn't necessarily consider it to be "light". I subsistuted chicken thighs for the chicken tenders, and used half and half instead of cream, but otherwise followed the recipe. You can find it here: http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=698596

Friday we decided to live a little, so after working until 6:30 (that's just wrong), we went to Thai Ping in Boonton. It is a beautiful little restaurant, nicely decorated, and they were even playing Christmas music. Everyone working there was very friendly and helpful. We started with the Thai Ping Egg Rolls, 4 small egg rolls served with a zippy dipping sauce. For an entree, I had Yum Nuur (Thin sliced tender charcoal beef marinated with fresh chili herbs, red onions, tomato, cucumber, mint leaves, and lime juice served on a bed of lettuce), which was delicious. I ordered it mildly spicy, but it wasn't really spicy at all. My husband got Mussaman (with pork), which is described as "Sauteed potato, onions, peanuts in a tangy piquant curry coconut milk curry". He ordered it medium spicy, and it was... HOT! Like, burn your tongue, breathe fire, sweat from your eyes hot. But tasty! I found that if you didn't get too much of that "piquant" sauce, it was much less painful. But we brought half of it home. Maybe with lots of rice or noodles, it will be a bit milder! I think the lesson here is to just order the food mild. We had a similar experience at Thai Nam Phet in Rockaway, so now we know. Thai food is pretty darn hot. We also rewarded ourselves with dessert. I had one of my favorites, Mango with Sticky Rice, and the hubby had fried bananas with ginger ice cream. I managed to get a taste of the ice cream before it was hoovered off the plate, and it was very tasty. All told, the bill was about $60 (no drinks, it's BYO), and a very pleasant evening after a totally crazy week.

A Commitment to Kindness

Happy Thanksgiving! I have so much to be thankful for, starting with my wonderful husband of only 47 days. He is truly the very beat of my heart. But wait, there's more! Good health, a beautiful home, and a secure job. My fantastic family and friends. Sunrises, crisp fall days, apple pie, fleece, the library, my car, woodland creatures, and my silly Christmas (well, Thanksgiving) cacti. And the list goes on and on. So lets just say I'm very happy. This year more than ever, I feel the need to give to those who aren't as fortunate as I have been. So, I have decided that every day between now and Christmas, I will try to do something kind for someone else. I haven't really defined what "something kind" is, but so far I have bought cookies from a young woman at a bake sale, volunteered to be a part of The Army of Women (http://www.armyofwomen.org/), and donated money to two local food pantries and a toy drive. I'll keep you posted!

On to more mundane things - dinner last night. Actually, it started yesterday morning by loading up the slow cooker with two small onions (cut into chunks), three boneless chicken breasts, two cans of Ro-tel tomatoes, and one package of taco seasoning. I turned it to low and set the timer for eight hours. When I got home from work, I shredded the chicken using two forks, and added a can of drained black beans and a cup of corn. This recipe was sort of ad-libbed from http://littlehomeontherange.blogspot.com/, in a blog posted back in May. It was ad-libbed mostly because I couldn't remember where I had "filed" the recipe! Anyway, we served the chicken mixture on whole wheat tortillas with shredded cheddar cheese, salsa and brown rice. I'm not going to lie to you - it was MESSY! But it tasted great. Next time, I might add some hot Ancho or Chipotle Chile powder to make it spicier.

Today we travel to my parent's house in Pennsylvania for a true Thanksgiving feast. My mom informs me she has "cut back" on the number of vegetables she is making this year. I'm not sure what that means, as one year we counted nine different vegetables, not counting the mashed potatoes. But she is a fabulous cook, so I'm sure whatever she makes will be delicious. My husband made an apple pie, which I know will be yummy because we had a "test pie" earlier this week. The two of us ate the whole thing in 3 days. The proverbial icing on the cake will be a bottle of wine that we bought in Sonoma Valley on our honeymoon. It's going to be a great day!