Happy Thanksgiving, Y'all!

I hope that everyone else who celebrates our American Holiday O' Gluttony is as stuffed with wonderful food as I am! We had a lovely heirloom turkey cooked with garlic, butter and fresh herbs; collard greens and red kale sauteed in olive oil with garlic and toasted pine nuts; oven-roasted brussel sprouts; ridiculously sweet sweet potato casserole (I tried to cut the sweetness a little bit by using barley malt and molasses in place of half the sugar, but it was still pretty darn sweet); mashed potatoes with sour cream; green bean casserole; cranberry dressing made with my ever-improving homemade bread; homemade cranberry sauce; homemade turkey gravy; chocolate cream pie; and pumpkin pie made from scratch using real pumpkin straight from the shell, topped with freshly whipped cream. Yum! I had more fun in the kitchen this year...

My cooking obsession continues unabated. My mom is visiting right now, and she's loving every bite. This week I've made lots of bread, rolls, breadsticks, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin soup (had to use up all that fresh pumpkin!), azuki bean and sweet potato salad, Chinese 5-Spice stir-fry, amazing from-scratch brownies (I don't remember the last time I made brownies not from a box), granola, Ancient Grain cereal, sauerkraut (this is still "cooking" in the basement), and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember. We also opened up a jar of my pickled beets (remember them from the comedy-of-errors canning session?) and they turned out amazing.

I've also been doing some knitting, although it all seems to be for fun and function rather than work. We've been trying to keep our heat lower this winter to save some energy, so I decided I was finally going to make myself some felted clogs. The nice thing is I'm fast enough now that I could whip them up in an evening in front of the TV. They turned out great! I'd show you a picture but my browser is not cooperating tonight and the photo upload pop-up refuses to pop up. Sigh. My laptop needs some serious help!

In addition to the felted slippers, I also made Sydney a Little Cable Hoodie and pair of Ballerina Slippers of her very own. I realized that Owen doesn't have any mittens that fit him, so I knit him up a pair with a skein of Wool Ease Quick n' Thick that was sitting on my office shelf for some unknown reason. I decided to make him a hat, too, but I didn't start it until after he was asleep so it ended up waaaay too big. He has a big head, but not quite that big. Fortunately my mom loves it so I gave it to her (the only problem is that now she wants matching mittens, and she's leaving on Saturday - I'd better get busy!).

We'll see if this post will actually publish. And I'll try to get back in the next couple weeks (I'll try for days, but you know me - no promises!) with some pictures. I'll have to get the kids to sit still long enough to get photos of their stuff!