Food Stuff

Going on vacation's a wonderous thing, but not only do we have to spend a lot of time getting READY for it, but--and I don't know about you, but I tend to forget this part--there's always A LOT to get caught up on once we come home!

Since our return, we've had a lot of MacGyver meals. That's what I call them, those inventive meals we come up with when we look in a nearly empty refrigerator and figure out what can be made using the last three ingredients residing there--and it's usually something like candied cherries, a partly dried wedge of cheddar cheese, and some baby carrots that haven't been babies for so long they're collecting Social Security income. In some ways, having an empty refrigerator makes it easy--kind of like wearing a uniform to work every day. There aren't very many choices that need to be made. Tonight, though, I finally did the grocery shopping, so we'll have CHOICES now--and we'll probably forget half of what's in the refrigerator until the aroma of aging foods reminds us.

I've started, also, to think about Christmas foods. Last year, I came across a recipe in a blog called Christmas Glogg (the RECIPE is called Christmas Glogg--not the blog). Before vacation, I bought what I thought I needed--mostly that consisted of several bottles of gin and several bags of cranberries. I put the "stuff" together on Sunday and decided it needed more gin and cranberries, so those key ingredients were also on my shopping list. Here it is so far.

Now I just need to stir it every so often for the next several weeks. I think I might be able to take a bath in it--that's a pretty big jar. I kind of thought I was going to give Christmas Glogg as gifts to the family, but then this past weekend, one of my (formerly favorite) brothers-in-law and my sister-in-law came up with a plan to limit our family Christmas gift exchange this year, so I guess I'm just going to have to drink it all myself. I might miss Christmas.

Oh, and did I happen to mention the other reason why we didn't have much food in the house when we got back from vacation? Soccer Son. Yep, he had been here working on the front yard landscaping, and I guess he worked up quite an appetite during the couple hours he was here each day. For instance, I was trying to make a salad on Saturday and couldn't find the bag of avocados I'd bought a few days before our vacation. I called Soccer Son to see if he had any idea. The way he tells it, he did me quite a favor by eating them because they were starting to go bad. And thank goodness we had the espresso machine, Starbucks ground coffee, and milk--I'm not sure where he would have gotten the energy to work in the yard if not from the caffeine. And although fall has arrived here, the temperature highs have still been in the 70s, and that combined with manual labor meant Soccer Son needed to cool down over a Dreyer's Coconut Juice Bar or two. Well, he WOULD have liked to have had more than one or two of those bars, but unfortunately, the freezer didn't latch securely one day, so the door came open and stayed open all night--the rest of the bars turned to liquid (along with some of our other frozen foods).

But you know--it's nice to start fresh sometimes, right? So it's all good. Or at least I think it WILL be in four to six weeks when I can start sampling the Christmas Glogg.