SL 701

~ Laura

Why would any parent let their child play a contact sport after reading stories like these?

Libraries don’t want your used books. So sad.

Yes, get the shingles vaccine. I got shingles when I was finishing my dissertation. Stress. It hurts.

What are you cooking this Thursday? I’m side dish girl this year. Yay. So, we’re bringing homemade cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, marinated goat cheese, and wine.

sweet potato pie.png

Published by Laura

32 thoughts on “SL 701”

  1. I never cook on Thanksgiving because I am always driving 3+ hours on Thanksgiving Day. The kids have been in marching band, and here in SE Mass our HS team insists on playing a Thanksgiving morning game with the local rival team every Thanksgiving morning. We were on the road by 2 and arrived in NY at a shockingly early 5:15. We sent the college girl here instead of home, so she got to spend 2 days with her grandmother, aunts and cousins before we got here.

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    1. Wendy said:

      “The kids have been in marching band, and here in SE Mass our HS team insists on playing a Thanksgiving morning game with the local rival team every Thanksgiving morning.”

      Yuck!

      “We were on the road by 2 and arrived in NY at a shockingly early 5:15. We sent the college girl here instead of home, so she got to spend 2 days with her grandmother, aunts and cousins before we got here.”

      AWWWW.

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  2. I got Old Shingles and now I am thinking whether I want to pop for the several hundred dollars for New Shingles, or wait for my insurance to start covering. I think I want a guess on how soon it starts.

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  3. There is a big difference between football and hockey at the high school level, and at the professional level.

    Most years, I bake pies (as many as three, which takes about six to eight hours on Wednesday night). But this year, we went to the Yale Club for Thanksgiving, so no one cooked anything. FWIW, I think the Yale Club has the best food of all city clubs (a low bar).

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  5. Laura said:

    “Why would any parent let their child play a contact sport after reading stories like these?”

    I couldn’t read the story, but I have to add that because a close relative does work on brain and spinal cord injuries, we also feel very leery about gymnastics and the more acrobatic cheerleading. It’s a shame, because our middle child would be an amazing gymnast, but we don’t trust the sport. (On the other hand, we do let him do indoor rock climbing, which also has the potential for spectacular accidents, but we feel it’s more controllable.)

    “Libraries don’t want your used books. So sad.”

    They do want to sell them, though! Our local yearly friends of the library sale has over 100,000 media items.

    “What are you cooking this Thursday? I’m side dish girl this year. Yay. So, we’re bringing homemade cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, marinated goat cheese, and wine.”

    –rotisserie turkey breast
    –homemade cranberry sauce (water + sugar + berries)
    –sweet potatoes with brown sugar
    –box cornbread stuffing (very good!)
    –mixed veggies
    –homemade pecan pie with a hint of molasses and made with nuts gathered mostly by the kids on campus (the molasses was because we were short of dark corn syrup)
    –store pumpkin pie

    The microwave was used heavily. It is just the five of us–we mostly do family travel in the summer..

    Dinner tonight was a bit more gourmet (husband cooked, the rest of us sous chefed). Here’s what we had:

    –crepes
    –little wedges of brie
    –fried mushrooms with a little ginger
    –husband’s sweet spiced ricotta cheese filling
    –apple pie filling
    –whipped cream

    The brie was my idea, and everybody liked it in the crepes with the fried mushrooms. We normally just have crepes with sweet ricotta filling and pie filling and say, “We should do fried mushrooms next time” but today we finally got our act together and did the mushrooms.

    Mushrooms are a vegetable, right?

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    2. 1. child and contact sports. Our ten-year-old Number One Son asked me, ‘When can I play football?’ and I said, ‘When you are 18 and we can’t stop you’ This worked – until he was 18, and now he is playing club rugby at college. Crap. I have expressed the view that I don’t want to spend my declining years bathing him and wiping his quadraplegic ass, and this has done me no good what-so-ever. So, I worry.
      2. cranberry sauce – suggestion. Next time, try orange juice instead of water (my strategy) or red wine (my wife’s). My guess is, you will never go back.

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  6. “Why would any parent let their child play a contact sport after reading stories like these?”

    So, would we all agree that I am the person in this comment thread who would be least likely to let my child play contact sports?

    I’m a neuroscientist with no background in competitive sports and who doesn’t watch sports.

    My son plays hockey. And, yes, I worry. But, I let him do it because, first, he loves it.

    Then in no order of importance, professional (and, potentially college level) is different than the local level (which doesn’t allow checking until they are 14); there are no enforcers; there is no fighting; the hockey community here is oddly diverse, the sport that has the most eclectic group of kids (I think because it is often populated by immigrants to the area, from the predictable Russians and Canadians and less predictable Pennsylvanians to the unpredictable Afghan refugees); because my son is not playing at the super competitive level nor his he the biggest or the fastest (though, I hear that he is among the most annoying).

    Hockey has been a joy from my kiddo, a sport that lets him celebrate being different and added dimensions to his life. Will he continue to play? not at any significant level. But, maybe he will play in an adult, club league some day.

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  7. We are at a nearby island for Thanksgiving; the first year the whole family is staying together and the first year in a number of years where we are not hosting at our house. The house we’re staying in is delightful, on a little inlet of a lake and we have seen eagles, otters, a great blue heron, hummingbirds, stellar’s jays, kingfishers, wood ducks, . . . . and been kayaking on the inlet out into puget sound. I’ve gotten to photograph all of the above.

    I do not cook, but my kiddo made brussel sprouts with bacon. The rest of the dinner (except for carrot souffle and cranberry salsa) and was catered by a local resident (and served on Friday to accommodate the ex-pat in the family).

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  8. The Silver Palate Cookbook! I have a well worn/used copy of the New Basics. Dragged it to Cape Town when I lived there. I find it a bit dated but I do still use some of the recipes.

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    1. We adore that cookbook, and Chicken Marbella was our choice for company dinner so often that our regular guests came to expect it…

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    2. After years of hearing about that cookbook, I found it at the thrift store. It struck me as very dated. It must have been very exciting when it first came out, but I re-donated it to the thrift shop.

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      1. It IS very dated! An 80’s snapshot of what was fancy-schmancy, elegant & rare that for the most part is common/lighter fare. At the time I don’t think there were many brick & mortar prepared foods shops outside of delis. Sarabeth’s Kitchen would be a similar vintage/version of a brunch place – new when it started but commonplace/surpassed now.

        I gave away my Silver Palate cookbook years ago too. It’s just the New Basics that I couldn’t part with for sentimental reasons. Of the two authors, one was a good cook and I think the other more a writer. They split professionally and each went on to write cookbooks on their own. One did reasonably well and the other bombed.

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    3. Honestly, I’m still not getting “fluffy”. I think because I used dried bread crumbs as I’m too lazy to shred up bread myself. Also, I doubled the meat without increasing anything of the other ingredients.

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      3. Your ground meat might be too finely ground or you overhandled them when forming the meatballs. They should just hold together and then they’ll be lighter. Could be overcooked too.

        Similar diagnostics for matzoh balls, says the queen of light matzoh balls and a fab soup to go with them, if I may indulge in some auto praise.

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  10. For us, the decision was whether to let oldest play football for 4 years in high school (NO way he’ll be good enough for more than that) or to let him continue to be mostly sedentary. Our high school football team will take anyone and train them. There’s no other sport he could join where that would work – except maybe cross country, but he is NOT a runner. We would cajole him to work out or kick him out of the house for long periods of time, but he’s pretty sloth like. So when he expressed an interest in physical activity, we went for it after thinking long and hard about it. Given that he has a tendency to overeat and towards being overweight, we thought trying to establish some habit of physical activity would be good. Because the long term costs of being sedentary and overweight can be pretty high too. He really enjoyed being part of a team and is now actually motivated to work out a bit in order to make the JV team. It was definitely a hard decision to allow it, but in the end, I think it was the right one for him.

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      2. Yes, on the self judging, and yes, I understand. It is an interesting aspect of football that it is one of the more open to participation sports at the high school level, at least in the communities I run around in. Folks aren’t playing in the prep leagues as much and the teams are designed to be big. Basketball has a tight roster limit, for example. Soccer doesn’t allow subs, which means no playtime except for the top players. Cross country is accommodating, but it is not a team sport in the same way (though I think a lot of team building can be done through running).

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      3. I know a number of families who have let their freshman boys play football for precisely the reasons you are describing (in addition to the group integration). Most of them plan on their boys not getting much playtime. I think it’s a tougher call if your kid is going to play (as happened to a friend whose kiddo has a strong arm and is very fast).

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  11. I made the apple-cranberry pie – cranberries are a nice tart addition to apple pie, as it turns out – and went along on the run to Honey Baked Ham for turkey. They have excellent smoked turkey and roasted turkey; you can get gravy and sides there too, though we made all the sides ourselves. Did some mashing of potatoes – we get Ore Ida steamers, which makes it tons easier and still tastes good.

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      1. Mock all you want, but they are game-changers. Perhaps even life-changers. Real mashed potatoes for a fraction of the work and mass.

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