Gobble Gobble When? And Howard's Hieroglyphics, Part Two

There it is, in big bold type, right at the top
of this blog post.  10 days until Thanksgiving.

So what is this Happy Frank's Giving Day I keep hearing about?
 Is there really a giant roasted parakeet involved?

Ten days, people!

Woo-hoo!  Now it gets interesting.  :-)

(I work best under pressure.

In fact, I pretty much only work at all under pressure.)

For a look at this year's original TBDBT list
 click here!

On Sunday, while I was working my dealer day at

Somerville Center Antiques, my dear hubby oiled

our soapstone counters.  Bless his heart.

I can tick that off my TBDBT List.

Sigh . . . I wish they were always so uncluttered.

But part of this whole deal is putting things you took off, back!

Of course, that also means you can sort, give away,

toss, and tidy, so it's all good.

Really, Jaba the Hutch does not always look this crowded!

Sometimes, it looks worse.  (Ba-dum-dum.)

*********************************

I use vintage flatware at the holidays,

which always needs polishing beforehand.

Click here, if you want to know my Lazy Lady's system,

whereby you can shine up your silver in a jiff, using stuff you

probably already have, while you relax with your feet up.

No kidding -- it's the easiest-ever silver polishing, and it works.

I bet that if you, too, are hosting Thanksgiving,

that you, too, are focusing in on what needs to be done,

and not the things on your To Be Done By Thanksgiving

list that are, well, optional.  Like, curtains!

This is the fabric that's waiting to be made into new

dining room draperies.  I just need to overcome my fear of

my new sewing machine, which now is a year and a half old!

Daughter Anne has sewn miles on my "new" machine;

I'm counting on her to get me going, and shepherd me through

this project, this week.  I've already got the panels cut out!

Anyone taking bets on this?

****************************

And . . . a followup to my October 11th post

about Howard's hieroglyphics -- now revealed.

In that post, I offered a million dollar reward

for a full and accurate translation of H's chicken scratches.

My pretend million is safe; no one got it right!

What did he scrawl?  In English?  Here goes ...

Scarlett

Dean

Graziano

Tues

Men Cook

Pastor

Butler

100th

Believe it or not, I understand what he meant by this.

But I'd never have been able to read it!

  -- Cass

P.S.  We took Dylan Dog to Petco on Saturday to get a new collar

(he came with a PINK one -- How humiliating for him).  

Dylan cut up so badly at the store, biting his leash and whirling, 

that Howard toted him around the aisles in what we refer to as 

"The Carry of Shame."  

That's our Dylan.  A work in progress!

Not A Banner Day . . . .

Some days you eat the bear.
Some days the bear eats you.

Image from Karen at The Graphics Fairy.

Today?  Not the best day.  The bear seems to be winning.
Election results?  No comment.
Weather?  It's snowing!  Just what New Jersey and New York need.
Driving?  My minivan is rear ended by a Saturn.
Our roof?  Turns out it will need to be replaced and the
starting estimate is more than my first job's annual salary.

But you know what?

We're still lucky, and that bear won't keep winning.

My sister sent more pictures of what

Sandy did at our beach house out on Long Island.

 Side yard -- full of debris from our neighbor's broken down

bulkhead that was destroyed in Hurricane Irene and should

have been repaired, but was not.  Oh well.

Now that neighbor can play Pick-Up-Sticks with what's left.

The dock, minus its steps, and looking as tipsy as a certain blonde
ABC anchorwoman appeared on election night.

Third floor, some fascia board missing its trim.

And the crawl space, flooded.

All in all, not bad.  Fixable.  Yes, lucky.

Those who need our consideration and prayers are the tens of 
thousands of people in NY and NJ who are without homes.
And the hundreds of thousands who are in their homes,
but still without power or heat. 

Some coastal people are evacuating because of

Winter Storm Athena, dropping rain and snow and quite possibly

another storm surge in the region.  Just ten days after Sandy.

Athena is a Nor'easter.

That's one very nasty kind of storm.

Why is it that every summer I totally forget what winter is like?

-- Cass

A Dock, A Dylan, A Dearth of Trick Or Treat

Since last Monday's monster storm, we've been
wondering how our family beach house, out on
the North Fork of New York's Long Island, fared.

On Sunday, my sister and her husband managed to snag a full tank

of gas, and headed out.  She sent me a couple of phone pictures.

Our dock stretches out into an inlet off Peconic Bay,

and at the end there are steps down to a floating dock.

Well, there used to be steps.

What happened was, the tides and winds came through,

raised the floating dock up to or above the level of the

stationary dock, twisted it, and tore off the steps.

Otherwise, except for water in the crawl space, and signs that there

had been water in the garage, and lots and lots of

flotsam and jetsam on the lawn . . . all's well.

Even the power was back on.  Lucky, and grateful.

****************************

After several years of having geriatric dogs in our house, 

it's a bit of a surprise to have a young, energetic pup.

At 3 years old, Dylan's got a lot of goofy in him.

Sometimes his plans don't quite pan out.

A little pictorial:

 "What do you mean - the back of the sofa
is not a good place to nap?"

 "See?  I'm hanging on . . . just fine."

 "Well, so maybe there is a little slippage."

 "Uh-oh.  I see what you mean."

Dylan is giving us a lot of laughs, and is well on his way to
walking nicely on lead, and to having acceptable house manners.
Fifth day with no belly band!

He naturally tests his limits, but he is a quick study,
and - like most dogs and husbands - he is lucky he is cute.
And what's even cuter?
Dylan, and a husband!

It's hard to get good pictures of Dylan.  He is so dark,
and moves so fast that often pictures of him turn out blurry!

Well, even though this is New Jersey's official
"Halloween," I have not seen hide nor hair of any
Trick or Treaters.  Sad.  Now, whatever will we do
with all those 3 Musketeers Fun Bars?  -- Cass

Whoa! Creepy Guest on Fake Halloween!!!

BOO!
Last Wednesday was Calendar Halloween,
but because of Superstorm Sandy, our mayor
moved the holiday to Saturday, and then our
governor moved it to today, Monday.

So we have been prepared for

Trick or Treaters for 5 days.

Halloween decorations are still up.

The 3 Musketeers Bars are snuggled in their basket, waiting.

Howard and I have been keeping each other honest.

Black paper bats are great fun at Halloween.

Back in 2010, I had them all over our fireplace wall.

In real life, bats are not as cute.  Read on.

We've had no trick or treaters yet.

Unless you count this one, which Howard

found when he went to take pictures of

another disconnected gutter on our second floor:

Yeah.  A real bat!  Hanging inside a bedroom window.

Talk about Eeeeeekkkkk!

This poor little guy had somehow squeezed himself between the screen and the storm window.  It took some finagling to free him.  Sadly, he had perished before we even found him.  We like our bats here at That Old House.  They do a bang-up job of keeping our yard pretty much mosquito-free, and they are also kind of neat when they fly out overhead on summer nights.

As long as they don't nest in our attic, they are most welcome.

No jokes now, about my being batty.

'Cause we all know . . . I am.

*************************************

Also still decorating the porch and the side yard,

our Jack-O-Lanterns.

It's hard to get good pictures of them because it is DARK

when they are lit.  Duh.

Daughter Anne's haunted house pumpkin.

Carved days ago, by last night it was showing its age and

beginning to crumple in on itself.

Carved pumpkins don't have much of a shelf life.

And what would Halloween be without a 

Shoe-O-Lantern?

My handiwork.  Oy.

Tonight we'll candle up all 4 of our carved masterpieces,

and hope that we get at least one group of trick or treaters.

Who don't have fur, wings, and hang upside down.

********************************

Sunday night was our last normal dinnertime until next weekend;

Howard doesn't get home from work until 10PM during the week.

So I set a very casual Halloween table, and served up what I realized,

after I filled the serving dishes, was just

about the whitest, most colorless, dinner possible.

Really.

Cauliflower.

Mashed potatoes.

Roast chicken bazooms.

Remember when every home in every home dec magazine was

slathered in white and beige?   Page after page of . . . no color?

This is the dinnertime equivalent of that.

At least I had bright place mats, and Halloween napkins I sewed back in the day, when I sewed dozens of napkins for all occasions and holidays.   Hey, getting your first serger is a heady experience!

If you are in New Jersey,

Happy Halloween on this November 5th!

And I hope you have power by now; so many still out!

Now I need to find a roofer and a gutter guy (do gutter guys have

names?  Gutterer?).  I know we'll be at the bottom of their priority

list, as we still have a roof even though it's compromised,

but I completely understand that.  

Tuesday, Election Day -- A Post about Dylan our new dog,

and how our beach house fared in Sandy.  And remember to vote!

-- Cass

Holy Turkey Day, Batman! And a Cake. Of Sorts.

3 weeks from yesterday, we'll gather 24 people
at That Old House, to celebrate America's 
favorite family holiday - Thanksgiving.

Is my T.B.D.B.T. List done yet?  Nope.

Have we had other fish to fry,

more important than sewing dining room curtains?  Yup.

Am I panicked?  Not yet.

Plenty of time for that later.

There's always room for Jello, and there's always time for panic.

******************************

We have so much to be thankful for, even while we
weather some recent challenges and trials.

There's a new boy in our life, 3-year old Dylan,
a 13 pound bundle of energy and passionate affection
whom we adopted on the Sunday before Sandy
from Cavalier Rescue.

Dylan's first days at That Old House involved a lot of rain.  Yes, he was damp.

***********************************
And, today, I ordered a really gorgeous looking roasting pan - 
one that can handle any turkey my husband decides to haul home.

I may regret this.
I emailed Howard and told him I'd ordered a great big roasting pan.
He answered: "You have thrown down the gauntlet, my dear."

Howard, 2011, with a bird he considered
woefully inadequate.  In my defense,
 I roasted two of them!

Since my husband has been known to hunt out 32-plus pound
turkeys on the day before Thanksgiving, even though I didn't have
a large enough roasting pan to cook that big a bird,
I may, as I said, regret this.

********************************
. . . and now for something completely different.
A Cake.
At least, it's billed as a cake in any recipes I found.

Anne made it, and she says "It was odd, but delicious.  Too sweet."

So here it is, something called a Dump Cake.
Because you take 3 or so ingredients, and dump them,
bake them, and then . . . eat them.

You need:

Yes, boys and girls, we used canned apple pie filling, and discovered
that it is wicked sweet.  So -- in went some big squeezes of lemon, a
pinch of salt . . . and still too sweet.  Like scrunch your face sweet.

Hmmm . . . what to do?
We happened to have a can of tart-sweet whole cranberry sauce in the pantry.

Plop - plop - plop - dump.  Right onto the apples.

 Next step -- the cake part.
You dump the cake mix right over the fruit.
Yup.  That's it.

Dumping layers.  Apples.  Cranberries.  Cake Mix.

Then comes the odd part.  Butter.
Our recipe said two sticks of butter, cut up and distributed over the cake mix layer.
Anne and I thought, "Yikes, two sticks?"  She did a stick and a half.

Into the oven.  350-degrees, preheated.

 For . . . until it's done.  It took awhile.
About an hour.  Maybe a little more, as we wanted the top nice and brown.

The sugary fruity parts got nicely caramelized.
But you can't cut this like a cake.
Well, you could, but it would be a holy mess.
Anne scooped out bits, topped them with whipped cream,
and served her grateful parents.  In bowls.

It was good. More like a cobbler than a cake.
But eventually, it all disappeared.  Like Magic.


Join Michael Lee West at Rattlebridge Farm
for Foodie Friday.  Click here!

And enjoy!  -- Cass 

Adorable Dylan Dog, Abominable Sandy Storm

We are so very lucky that the damage to
That Old House was limited to some gutters that
decided to part ways with the house  . . . 

. . . and bits of our roof that went

flying off in the high winds.  Landing on the ground.  

Oh my, those poor weeds!  Just smashed flat by Sandy.

All over the place.

On the sunroom roof -- doesn't that hunk of shingles look like a Muppet face?

We checked up behind the house to see where

most of the shingles came from.  We found it:

That's down to the tar paper there.  Ooops.

But compared to the heartbreaking losses, of life and property,

and the misery of continued power outages, food shortages, and
no gasoline, all up and down the East Coast, this is nothing at all.

******************************

Our little Dylan,

a rescue Cavalier we adopted on 10/28,

is keeping us occupied.

If you think he is adorable, you are right.

The thing with a small, adorable dog is . . . it's too easy to let him be a brat.

Because he's just so cute.

"Look Ma, I'm a real boy!"

So Dylan is in Doggy Boot Camp here at That Old House.

We'd gotten used to running a home for geriatric spaniels over the past few years,

and having a bouncy, curious, untrained 3-year old dog in the house has us digging

back into our bag of dog-training tricks and methods that we'd almost forgotten!

But there's no such thing as not being able
to teach an old dog new tricks.

I'm sure Dylan will be able to teach me plenty!
-- Cass