Packers Eat Vikes for Brunch

This past Sunday was a great day for Packers football wasn't it? We went to the bar at the hotel across the street like usual to watch the game. While I was drinking a coffee and a beer (simultaneously at one point) the Packers were having Brett Favre and the Vikes for lunch. (As a side note the early games kinda kill us over here on the West Coast, especially since most of us have to go to a sports bar to catch the games, thus requiring the purchase and consumption of alcohol before noon. Not that I mind the occasional excuse to have a beer at 10:00am, but every Sunday for 5 months is a little much even for me:) I'm thinking I should open a Packers Coffee Shop out here that serves breakfast (and beer too)!)

Anyway, Aaron Rodgers was spot on and brilliant, but Jennings stole the show with, count 'em, three touchdown catches! Woodson was superb as usual. And well, long story short we took the Vikes "down to Chinatown" as the saying goes, and not for pot stickers either. It was awesome! To commemorate this momentous occasion, (and Jennings triple-score) I am unveiling my latest piece of artwork. It's titled (quite appropriately) Jennings. Go Packs!!!

Jennings

Leftovers? Yes Please!

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, so you might be wondering why on earth I am already talking about leftovers before it has even arrived. I am already talking about them because I already had Thanksgiving #1 last weekend! I had a "House-Thanksgiving" Thanksgiving with all of my old house-mates last Saturday. It was really fun to get back together with the people I spent most of my 20's with! We spent all day wine tasting in the Santa Cruz Mountains and then came home to a perfectly cooked turkey (thanks mom for putting it in the oven!) and Thanksgiving dinner....and more wine...and more dinner...and...well you get it:) I waddled more than walked to bed that night. Anyway since I hosted and paid for everything I got to keep all the leftovers! WOo hoo! I rationed them out so they should just last me to tomorrow morning which will be Thanksgiving #2 for me:) It should be a smooth transition. (I think you can safely go up to 4 Thanksgivings a year, but any more than that and it's just gluttony:) Anyway, I have made all kinds of stuff over the last few days, but there were a few inventions I thought worthy of passing along in case you are looking for creative ways to utilize those holiday leftovers! Enjoy!

Turkey Day Benedict

Turkey Day Benedict: Take leftover stuffing and or mashed potatoes, and make into small patties and fry in a pan with a little olive oil. Pan fry a couple thin slices of turkey in a pan with some turkey skin (it adds tons of flavor, and you can pick out the actual skin before eating), last either poach or pan fry an egg but make sure the yolk is runny!!! This is super important! Salt and pepper egg and turkey to taste. Heat up some gravy in the microwave. Once everything is done put the stuffing pancake on a plate, followed by a slice of turkey, then the egg, and cover with gravy. YUMMMMM!!!!

Quesadillias...Yum!

Turkey Quesadillias:
Cut up turkey in little pieces and fry with skin (I know, I know we are using the skin again, but it's delicious and not too bad if you cook it down until it's crispy. It's almost like bacon, adds a little bit of moisture to the dry white meat, especially when re-heating it in a pan). Add a little chili powder and cumin (maybe .5 tsp each?), and a small amount of salt and pepper. Or use a packet of taco seasoning.  Add a bit of water to coat all pieces if necessary. If you have leftover corn you can add it to the turkey in the pan. Make a package of instant mexican rice (it's quick, 7 minutes and about 1.50 a package). Grab some shredded cheese and tortillia's. In a pan place tortillia, meat, and some rice and cover with cheese and another tortillia. Cook for a couple minutes and flip. And that's it. You can eat them with salsa if you have it, or sour cream. They are tasty, and aren't too "Thanksgiving-y" if you are getting burnt out on gravy. OUTTA THIS WORLD!

Turkey and Blackbean Chili: OMG! This is so good I am having it for lunch today after having it for dinner last night:) I took a blackbean chili recipe I found on line and modified it to get the taste and texture I was imagining with the ingredients that I had leftover. So while this is a recipe, it's kind of a loose one that you can change around as you see fit.
1 lb cut up leftover turkey
1 yellow onion
2 cloves garlic
3 cans black beans  (don't drain them)
1-2 cups turkey stock (boil the bones!)
.5 cup mashed potatoes (oh yes!)
1 tbsp dried oregano
1-2 tsp cumin
1.5 tbsp chili powder (it's not hot)
.5 tsp cayanne (this is super hot so skip it if you're a wuss)
Salt and pepper to taste.
Cheese and sour cream for topping
Tortillia chips to dip in!
Basically you cook the onions and garlic in a bit of olive oil until the onions a translucent. They you add the turkey and all the spices and mix thoroughly. In a pot add the beans with their water, the turkey stock and the mashed potatoes and stir till blended. Taste and salt and pepper as needed. Then add everything together and let simmer for a while until all the flavors blend, I'd say about a half hour, stirring regularly. If it's looking too thick, you can add more stock, but it should be thick enough to eat with chips (like a dip). After you pour it into a bowl, sprinkle with cheese and add a dollop of sour cream and your done! I don't have a photo of this one and to be honest that's probably a good thing as it's not the most appealing looking concoction I have ever come up with. But for what it lacks in appearance it makes up for in deliciousness! I promise!

 I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving! Go Detroit Lions and New Orleans Saints!!!! And Happy Leftovers!!!

The Christmas Tree, A Biography

Rockefeller Center NY

As I will be getting my Christmas tree on Friday, I thought it might be a fitting week to delve into the origin of this bizarre and unintuitive custom.

Way Back When
Evidence of tree worship (especially evergreens) is recorded as far back as the ancient Egyptians. If Santa was born in Turkey, then the first Christmas tree it turns out, was most likely a date palm. (This would be an interesting twist to the holiday to celebrate it in it's oldest arid traditions:) Worship of evergreens was symbolic of the triumph of life over death, and helped guarantee the return of the sun after it's shortest traverse across the sky on the winter solstice. Holly and mistletoe also remain green all year, and held a similar status in historical times. Many cultures considered these plants to be magical, or specifically chosen by the gods. Pagans would place gifts in the branches of fir and pines to please the winter gods, and coax the sun back from wherever it went every December. Offerings ranged from trinkets to human sacrifice! Holly and mistletoe were hung over doorways to ward of evil spirits, and protect the inhabitants of the home against sickness, disease and death which were all common in the deepest of winter when food was scarce, and darkness prevailed.

Off on a Tangent

Kiss me under the parasite

It's hard to imagine what you'd think about things you couldn't explain if you'd have lived time when there was no way of knowing the truth. It seems silly to think people thought pine trees had magical powers, but what were they supposed to think under the circumstances? Would we fare any better without our microscopes and the Internet? Take mistletoe for example. I was surprised to learn that it's actually a parasite plant! How un-Christmassy is that? Yep, that's why you can't have a mistletoe tree. There is no such thing!  Mistletoe is passed from tree to tree by birds and squirrels and grows into a little bush on the branches and limbs of bigger, stronger trees. Sometimes it grows big enough to kill them! (That's super un-Christmassy). Mistletoe is hard to see in the summer when the leaves of the host are open, but in the dead of winter, it's quite a sight. I know all of this because one December evening a few years back I was sitting on my front porch and noticed a bunch of green leaves on the otherwise vacant walnut tree in front of my house. I thought it was the most bizarre thing! It seemed pretty amazing to me that there was a little green patch among the barren branches. How could that happen? I formed all sorts of hypothesis about how that could be. It took much searching on the Internet, but I finally figured it out, and that was when I discovered that I had mistletoe hanging over my home 365 days a year and I didn't even know it! Who knows what I would have thought if I'd discovered that 500 years ago?

 Sort of Back When

St Boniface: cooking a kid or baptizing him?

Anyway, back to the Christmas tree. Saint Boniface who lived in Germany during in 690's was the beginning of the Christian story, at least as far as most researchers can tell. Whenther teh events actually happened is debatable however. It goes like this. To prove Christianity to those who believed in the old Norse traditions Saint Boniface cut down a giant oak tree supposedly belonging to the pagan god Thor to demonstrate that nothing would happen to him and thus prove that Thor didn't exist. I find this to be a fairly good example of testing a hypothesis.  At some later point, up from the trunk grew a fir tree which St Boniface took it as a sign from God that he was right. He believed God had put the tree there. And I can't help but wonder how history may have been different if a pagan had gathered the nerve to test St. Boniface's hypothesis about God? Wouldn't that have been a great Christmas story with a moral? Unfortunately that did not happen. Instead Saint Boniface declared that from then on the fir tree (or any evergreen tree?) it should be a symbol of Christian faith. I find it interesting and ironic that the literal explanation of this aspect of Christmas so closely follows the metaphorical explanation of the Christmas holiday as a whole. A Christian holiday born from the roots of pagan traditions long since cut down and forgotten. Isn't that something?

Queen Victoria's Christmas Tree

Much later during the 1500's it is said that Martin Luther was walking through the woods one winter night and was struck with awe at the sight of an evergreen tree dusted with snow and sparkling in the moonlight. So he brought the first Christmas tree indoors and adorned it with candles (to simulate the snow) so his children could witness the beauty of a sparkling tree, and to celebrate the birthday of Christ. Candles have always represented life, birth, goodness, and purity, so lighting them to celebrate something makes sense, and that's why we have them on our birthday cakes! (I'm not sure what the blowing out of the candles represents...but I might leave mine lit next year just in case.)
Until the mid 1800's Christmas trees were not a standard in the way they are today. Not every household had one. Part of the problem was lighting it. Before electricity either you had to put candles in the tree (which were an extreme fire hazard, not to mention a perfect waste of candles if you were poor) or you had a dark tree that you could barely see (so you might as well just leave it outside in the ground). And part of it was decorating it. Most people could barely feed and cloth themselves, much less decorate a tree with trinkets and stuff leads of presents beneath them! At any rate a drawing published in 1850 of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert standing along side their candle lit tree finally brought the Christmas tree to aristocratic stardom. Well to do people all over England and the US began chopping down trees and dragging them inside to decorate with candles, and sugar cubes. It was not only pretty, but quite sophisticated since queens and princes were doing it.

Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree

 Except for the lag during the Great Depression Christmas trees have been on a steady rise since the turn of the century. Once electric lights, generic ornaments and fake trees were invented ( the latter circa 1920's) getting a Christmas tree became much more economical and easier for the blue collar working class to afford. And from the 1950's on pretty much everyone who celebrates the holiday has had one!

 Now Day's
Now day's you can get a real tree, one made of purple tinsel, one that revolves on a post, a 15' tall one, or a tiny "Charlie Brown" tree with only one branch capable of supporting a singular red bulb. You can get a Star Trek  Christmas Tree, or a completely edible one. The giant bulbs (which got really hot and could burn a tree down) that are seen in A Christmas Story were eventually replaced with modern twinkle lights, and those have since given way to very cool, very energy efficient LED lights. The possibilities are infinite. The Christmas tree has traveled through the centuries from an Egyptian palace all the way to your living room. Whatever kind of Christmas tree you end up getting this year while you admire your handiwork in decorating it, don't forget to admire it's root's in the past!

 Authors Note
This year I am going to get a living Christmas tree, which is different from a real Christmas tree because it is still attached to it's roots, and can be donated to the city or town and be planted after the holiday season. I think it's a shame to cut down a perfectly healthy beautiful tree just so I can have it in my living room for a month. It always makes me sad when I take down all the ornaments in early January and abandon what was once my beautiful Christmas tree, but now is brown and dying to the curb to be picked up and dumped in a landfill. It just seems like such a horrible ending to such a wonderful season. But at the same time fake trees just aren't the same, and I'm not sure it would feel like Christmas at all if I didn't have any tree to stack presents under. This is the perfect solution for me, and I'd encourage any of you who feel the same way to look into living trees. I love the idea that my tree will have a long life in park somewhere filled with birds and squirrels and where kids will play in the shade beneath it's branches in the summer.

Prepare to be Dazzled

I don't get this.

I was at the salon earlier this evening getting my nails done. While I was sitting I browsed through several fashion magazines. I don't normally go for Vogue or Style or whatever they are called because a.) 99.98% of the women presented weigh in total as much as my left leg, b.) because the clothes, for the most part, are ridiculous and only Lady Gaga could get away with them, c.) I can't even afford a lip gloss let alone a pair of swanky boots that they advertise, and d.) because it's easier to find a needle in a haystack than an article worth reading.
Despite that fashion has always interested me. Likewise high fashion has always confused me. I understand a fitted black evening dress, but I am stumped by a dress with hoops and see through material. Anyway as I was perusing magazines at the salon I stumbled upon something that not only confused me but left me dumbfounded as well. I am not easily shocked, but this new "trend" caught me off guard. And to be honest, I am not sure if I think it's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen, or just kind of obnoxious. So I thought I'd inform you all about it and see what you think.(BTW this is probably not appropriate for little kids.) Here goes!

Vajazzling

Don't get this either.

What is vajazzling? Why it's having rhinestones glued to your hootenanny (you know, your womanly area, ...eh hem...down there, in front). Yep, that's right! Now you can be the ultimate coordinated person by having your earrings, match your wahoo! You can get butterflies, fireworks, Snoopy, whatever you want. It has to be professionally done because they use some special glue so the gems don't fall off when you wipe. And I am pretty sure you'd need to get waxed before otherwise it would be the literal manifestation of the term  "diamond in the rough". According to the article several Hollywood celebrities have done it, and it's becoming quite popular.

I think it's kind of...gross and excessive. But what do I know? I'm not exactly what anyone would call the height of style. What do you think? Is this cool, weird, or a fad that should be locked in a vault along side of MC Hammer pants?

Santa Claus, A Biography

I thought I'd tackle the history of Santa Claus first, since he has become the unofficial spokesperson for the Christmas holiday. Everyone knows he's jolly, but what don't we know about him? I mean where was Santa born?It appears that the birth of Santa is (like most modern holidays) a combination of at least two, if not more, religious persons of different cultures.

The Early Years

Saint Nicolas

One Santa predecessor is the Christian Saint Nicolas, was a Greek bishop who lived in Turkey during the 4th century. He doesn't look anything like Santa, in fact he sort of creepy looking, and emaciated. But he is said to have given gifts to children and the poor including dowries to the daughters of a pious Christian man, who would have otherwise become prostitutes (the daughters, not the father.) In some versions of the story (depending on where you read it) Saint Nic had to drop the coins down the chimney at night because he didn't want the family discover his identity, and all the windows of the house were closed (which was his usual method). As they fell the coins accidentally landed a sweaty stocking that was hanging by the fire to dry (OK, OK I added the sweaty part:).  His "thing" was to give gifts secretly, because he wanted the faithful to believe the gifts were from God. (Obviously he wasn't entirely successful.) Only the Christians on their best behavior received gifts, and so parents began to use Saint Nicolas as a bargaining tool during the year when their children misbehaved. Parents all over Christendom began to threaten no gift on December 6th (Saint Nicolas Day) if their children were naughty.
Suddenly we have uncovered the (possible) origin of 1.) why Santa comes down the chimney and not through the front door 2.) why he comes at night when everyone is asleep, and 3.) why we hang stockings by the fireplace. Cool Hu?
A couple more interesting "facts" about Saint Nicolas are that in addition to being the patron saint of children, he is also the patron saint of thieves and sailors, which are the antithesis of innocent youngsters. I have no idea why this is, but it might have something to do with the fact that there weren't that many saints back then, so they had to double and triple up. Kind of like a small town drugstore that serves as a barber and vacuum repair shop.
Apparently after he died, several of his bones were distributed as relics among several churches throughout Europe. Most of them settled Bari, Italy and the bones there are purported to ooze a clear, watery, rose smelling liquid on Saint Nicholas Day every year. This "miraculous" material is collected by the clergy and put in a sarcophagus. Never mind that it's impossible for thousand year old bones to produce anything much less nice smelling rose water. It's like a double miracle: dry bones make water and it doesn't smell like moldy bacteria-infested remains. Either way, I think anything oozing out of bones or dead bodies is gross and should be avoided at all cost.

Odin and Sleipnir

Another proto-Santa, and one that predates Ol' Saint Nic in fact,  is the pagan Germainc god Odin, who had an eight legged horse that could leap great distances through the air. Odin is described as having a great, long beard and is usually depicted as an old, but strong man. He looks much more like the modern-day Santa Claus with flowing white hair, and he gave gifts as well. He would take  his octi-horse (called Sleipnir) on a long hunting trip during the Yule holiday on December 25th each year. As the story goes children across the land would put carrots, sugar or hay in their boots and set them by the door on Christmas Eve. As Odin hunted he would stop and let Sleipnir eat the snacks left out for him (to help keep his strength up), and replace the hay with candies as a "thank you" to the kids. And there you can see the origin of leaving cookies out for Santa Claus, the flying reindeer, and a holiday on December 25th (as opposed to December 6th).

The Teenage Years

Father Christmas

Although we can see a lot of similarities between Saint Nicolas and the god Odin with our modern day Santa Claus, we haven't addressed the red suit, or the jolly personality. But before we do that we need a little background. In the mid 1800's there were several versions of the Santa Claus character, but none actually called Santa Claus, in the red suit we know today. The English had Father Christmas, the Dutch Sinterklaas, etc. When Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol Santa didn't exist yet! It's hard to imagine that Charles Dickens is older than Santa, but there you have it. In fact, some people say that our modern fat man in red is partly based on the "Ghost of Christmas Present".

Coca-Cola Advertisment

During this time the Santa figure began being associated with happiness and holiday fun. I guess you could say he was finding his inner jolly-ness. As people began immigrating to the U.S. at the turn of the century, they brought their version of Santa with them. Over time they all adopted the American version: Santa Claus. Despite having finally found a solitary name, depictions of Santa remained varied and inconsistent throughout the early 1900's.Some renderings have him with a hat, some without. In some he is wearing a long robe, in others a more familiar suit. But in the 1930's that all changed. Who do we have to thank for our rotund, rosy cheeked Santa Clause? Believe it or not, it's the Coca-Cola Company! Their depiction of Santa in a furry red suit sipping an ice cold bottle of Coke is the birth of our modern day Santa. It's hard to believe that a Christmas staple like Santa Claus is only 80 years old, but those are the facts.


Modern Day
Today you can find a homogeneous looking Santa Claus on everything from underwear to greeting cards. He's got a red suit, a white beard, lots of presents, flying reindeer instead of an eight legged horse, and he always sneaks down the chimney on Christmas Eve. From his humble origins as saint, and god (which might account for his immortality and ability to reach all the children in the world in one night), to a modern non-religious hero, Santa has changed with the times. Now he uses GPS, and gives out Nintendo Wii to good children. He has an email address, and in the off season vacations in Hawaii. He might have been born in the Middle East, and reside in the North Pole, but he will always live in my heart as a symbol of jolly tidings and holiday cheer!

Christmas List 2010: Item 3

The long awaited (and I mean 100 years long) Mark Twain autobiography has finally been released!!! I believe it was unveiled November 14th. I am very excited about it and look forward to getting my hands on a copy. 2010 has definitely been a Twain year for me, and I think this would be the perfect way to round out the end of it.
I shall add it to my ever-growing Christmas list (which I have arranged by price, and store, and in most cases a photograph of the item:) What are my other items? Well, soap shaped like peppermints, a lobster Christmas ornament, a puppy, a cast iron skillet, and this book! But I'm not done yet!!! What do you want for Christmas?

Bye Week

Since the Packers have had a bye week, I decided I would take one too! I will try my hardest not to post any football blogs until next Monday after we take on the Vikings on Sunday morning. (Except for right now, where I am writing about not writing about football:) Happy Bye Week!