Pretty crafty

I think this year is going to be a mostly handmade Christmas for me, gift-wise.
There are lots of good reasons to go handmade. Depending on how you do it, it can be:

• cheaper
• more sustainable
• sweeter
• higher quality
• more heirloomy
• less annoying to shop for
  

I have need for several of those things this year, so I'll be making some gifts, and buying some handmade gifts (and probably at some point breaking down and buying something not handmade, too, but not yet).

In case you, my friends from the internet, have similar needs, I thought I'd share a list of my favorite craftspeople. This starter list consists exclusively of people I know personally, whose wares I have also bought and can therefore vouch for.

• GH Books
• Polka Dot Cottage
• Fiber of Her Being (note: To be fair, I am not totally sure she's taking new orders. But check out her site anyway. See pictures of me!)

Please, if you have favorite craftspeople, or make great handmade stuff yourself, leave us a link in the comments. Seriously. This is no time for modesty. The Holidays are coming.

Thanksgiving Day parade

"Hey, bzzzzgrrrl!" you say. "Happy Thanksgiving! How's it going?"

Well, medium. Eventful.
So far today, I have:

• Done a bunch of laundry.
• Peeled ten pounds of potatoes and wondered if that's too much or too little for 17 people.
• Started to make mashed potatoes.
• Realized I don't own a potato masher, and that when I try to use an electric mixer, it usually results in gluey potatoes.
• Gone to Walmart and had a delightful conversation with Walmart employee Gary, who knows way more about potato mashers than you would think, and helped me choose the right one for my family's lump preferences.
• Observed that Walmart is emptier than I've ever seen it, but the employees are friendlier, and wondered if there's a causal relationship.
• Decided to pop in a movie as I continued Thanksgiving preparation and discovered the latest Netflix selection is a documentary about Hitler's secretary.
• Watched two Charlie Brown Thanksgiving specials.
• Laughed at the pilgrim explorers in Provincetown in one of said specials as they observe: "Six Indians and a dog! Put down your muskets; let's see if they'll talk. Let's walk slowly toward them. Smile; show them we don't want to harm them. Oh, no! They're running away! They must be afraid. Quick, we must chase after them!" Yeah, nothing assuages my fears like guys with muskets chasing after me.
• Finished making mashed potatoes.
• Tasted mashed potatoes. Delicious.
• Observed that I seem to have another effing plumbing problem, if you can believe it.
• Given up on packing, because obviously I am not sleeping anywhere but here, because I have another effing plumbing problem.
• Had a little beef stroganoff for lunch.
• Thought a lot about Thanksgivings past, spent in meetings and at concerts, with family of origin and family of choice, in D.C. and Groton, Massachusetts and Jaffrey, New Hampshire and Lake Placid, New York.
• Missed a bunch of people but felt very blessed*.
  

But thanks for asking. You?


*Aside from the effing plumbing

Food rules: Holiday edition

After my first Food Rules post, it was brought to my attention that I also have some fairly significant traditions around what I eat on holidays.
Mind you, I am not inflexible; if I'm not with my family for a holiday, for example, I can go with the flow and have a burger on the Fourth of July. But we have our traditions, and we adhere to them when we can, some more rigidly than others.
So, then, in case you are by now desperate to know what I eat on the Fourth of July if not a burger:

Thanksgiving:

• Mixed nuts
• Celery sticks with peanut butter and mayonnaise and raisins
• Little glasses of cranberry juice and lemon sherbet
• Turkey
• Mashed potatoes
• Stuffing (in the bird for regular people, and out of the bird for my cousin, who finds the in-bird stuff gross)
• Gravy
• Acorn squash
• Creamed onions
• Salad
• Pecan pie
• Apple pie
• Mince pie
• Pumpkin pie
• Whipped cream for pie
• Cheddar cheese
• Coffee (also with whipped cream, for those who desire it)
• After Eights mints
  

The day after Thanksgiving:

• Pie for breakfast (and, therefore discussion of who will eat which pie, as my sister dislikes apple, and some people think mince isn't for breakfast)
• Soup and/or sandwich for lunch, at the Monadnock Music craft fair

St. Lucy's Day:

• Some kind of baked good, and some kind of hot beverage*

Christmas:

• Goose
• Stuffing
• Brussels sprouts
• Mashed potatoes
• Roast beef (if my uncle is there)
• Yorkshire pudding (if my uncle is there to make it)
• Salad
• Plum pudding, lit (for those who don't mind dessert made of beef fat and dried fruit and liquor)
• Chocolate cake (for those who do)
  

The day after Christmas:

• Leftover goose, in hunks, with fingers**
• Cheddar cheese, ditto**
• Oranges**
  

New Year's Eve:

• Champagne
• Water crackers with cream cheese and caviar

New Year's Day:

• Black-eyed peas***
• Greens***

Palm Sunday:

• Hot cross buns for breakfast (not homemade)

Easter:

• Lamb****

Fourth of July:

• Ice cream (midday, at the ice cream social in town)
• Salmon
• Peas
• Strawberries (generally in shortcake)

October 31:

• Sara Lee black forest cake for dessert*****

So, what about you? Any inviolable holiday traditions? Any of mine you Just. Can't. Believe?!?!?


*Served by me to whoever else is in the house, in bed, wearing some variation of white dress, red sash, wreath of lighted candles on my head.
** These and other snacks historically consumed in the car, on the way to Washington, D.C.
*** I am actually the only member of my family who does this, and I have only been doing it since 1994, when I lived with a bunch of Southerners.
**** Due to the fact that my parents are clergy, and therefore exhausted by Easter, and due to the fact that I didn't eat red meat for 17 years, there have been many Easters when we went out to dinner. Nonetheless, those who could often ate lamb, and when we do cook at home, it's always lamb.
***** This has nothing to do with Halloween. It has to do with October 31 being my baptismal anniversary, and me therefore getting to choose dessert. And Sara Lee hasn't made black forest cake in about 25 years, but when they did, that is what I chose, invariably.

True story

I just went out for Chinese food with a friend. And at the end of the meal, obviously, we got fortune cookies.

Weird thing #1: We got the same fortune.

Weird thing #2: It said this:

Lookin' good

OK, so I am an utter failure at blogging every other day.
What that means, of course, is that I will blog about any damn thing that comes into my head, and also leave a bunch of half-finished posts in the "drafts" folder.

What should I wear tomorrow? It's supposed to be 60 and sunny. Please elaborate in your response for the sake of other readers whether you have ever seen me before, and whether you have ever seen me wearing anything like the outfit you describe.

Lock and load

If you locked yourself out of your house, how would you proceed? Would you consult me? Yes? Well done.
As it happens, I have a little experience with this. In my experience you would:

Near Washington, D.C.:

• Realize you locked keys and phone in your apartment.
• Try to remember where a pay phone is in this day and age.
• Go to the one that you vaguely remember at the not-particularly-nearby convenience store.
• Discover that urine-smelling phone doesn't really work.
• Try phone next to it.
• Call your ex who still has a key to your apartment and leave a message you don't expect her to return saying you're locked out and need her key.
• Borrow phone book from the convenience store.
• Call locksmith, talk to answering service, explain that you don't have a callback number but will be waiting at your apartment.
• Wait at your apartment for more than an hour and a half, until your across-the-hall neighbor comes home.
• Introduce yourself to across-the-hall neighbor, who you've been living across from for three years.
• Ask to borrow her phone.
• Call locksmith back and learn that they won't come without a callback number.
• Express some frustration that this was not mentioned earlier.
• Give answering service your neighbor's number.
• Continue to wait outside until neighbor comes out to hand you her phone.
• Talk to locksmith.
• Get locksmith to let you in.
• Prove identity.
• Pay approximately $80.

In southwestern NH:

• Gasp, and feel glad your friend is there.
• Call AAA, just in case they'll send a locksmith, and to ask their advice on locksmiths if they won't.
• Call three locksmiths recommended by the very nice and sympathetic customer service rep at AAA.
• Leave messages for all three.
• Try every door forty times.
• Ask across-the-street neighbor, who you know well, to borrow a hammer.
• Laugh at his horrified expression and explain you just want it to remove a window from its hinge, not to smash stuff.
• Try to remove window from its hinge.
• Fail.
• Go to work, assuming locksmiths will call back soon.
• Look up other area locksmiths on the Internet.
• Call three more locksmiths.
  
• Go to dinner with your friend, assuming locksmiths will call back soon.
• Come home.
• Decide you can't bear to smash even a small window, because that's breaking the house you own, deliberately, but hand the hammer to your friend.
• Be impressed both at the strength of the window and at the strength of your friend.
• Return hammer to neighbor who does not at all say I-told-you-so.
• Tack cardboard up over the window.
• Never, ever get a return call from any of the six locksmiths.

Food (and drink!) rules

Whimsy demanded it, and though I am not prompt, I am obedient.

1. There is no place in my life for hot lettuce.
2. It is apparently either impossible or undesirable to make cheap candy that tastes like the fruit it claims to taste like. However, some fruity flavors are nonetheless delicious if you just don't worry about accuracy (lemon, orange, lime, cherry, grape). Some artificial fruit flavors are just gross (watermelon, banana, apple), and will not be tolerated.
3. "Pumpkin-flavored" usually means "clove and nutmeg flavored." I am fine with that in many parts of my life. I am psychologically incapable of handling it in my beer. Please don't try to make me.
4. Chicken salad can be made many ways. All of the good ways involve the addition of something vegetative and crunchy and sweet, generally sweet pickles (traditional) or grapes (fancy!).
5. Given the choice between ice cream (or sherbet or sorbet) and almost any other food, I will choose ice cream. Given the choice between frozen yogurt and starving to death, I will think about it a long, long time.
   
6. If you say "sherbert," I will not correct you, because in general, I don't believe in correcting adults on pronunciation, even if they're wrong. But it is still spelled "sherbet."
7. Hey, while I'm not correcting you on your pronunciation of "sherbet," how 'bout you shut up on my pronunciation of "tomato." And while you're shutting up about that, do not ask if I also say "potahto." Because nobody says that, except that song.
8. Putting a drink in a martini glass does not make it a martini. A martini has vodka or gin in it, and vermouth (or the aura of vermouth). It does not have chocolate syrup. It decidedly does not have Sour Apple Pucker schnapps, whatever the hell that is. See rule 2.
9. Matzo ball soup properly has matzo balls, chicken, celery, carrots, onions, salt, pepper, and anything else you have in the refrigerator or cupboard that seems like it might go at all, to taste. I don't know what you think that bowl of weak broth with a matzo ball in it is, but it does not deserve the same name as anything made by Rhoda Sakowitz or me.
10. Baked potatoes shall be scrubbed very thoroughly before baking, and then shall be consumed thus: Cut potato in half. Put one pat of butter (or the equivalent) on the plate. Using fork, empty potato insides onto plate. Put half of butter onto pile of potato insides, and one quarter in each half of skin. Add salt and pepper to pile and each skin-half. Eat pile, mushing (slightly) to ensure a little butter, salt, and pepper in each bite. Eat each skin-half as if it were a pita sandwich, delicately.
11. Peanut butter sandwiches must be eaten with milk, regardless of what other fillings the sandwich contains.
    

Whimsy's rules are here. What are yours?