I've been doing a lot of things, nothing really very interesting to blog about...I was still shelling pecans, making/canning applesauce, and making/freezing cubed potatoes, french fries, and twice-bakeds.
In my last post I'd mentioned finding the great deal on the Green Giant potatoes and bought 5 bags (50 lbs) worth. I was cubing some up for potato salad, and slicing a lot into fries. We love french fries.
But they were such big, fine, nice potatoes it seemed a dang shame I couldn't make some of them last to have baked potatoes over the cold winter months.
I wanted to find out if I could somehow freeze baked potatoes, and I found out about twice-baked, or loaded potatoes.
Basically you bake the potato, scrape the innards out, mix in some stuff like sour cream, bacon bits, cheese, put it back in, and freeze.
Mostly I used the Loaded Potatoes Make 'em and Freeze 'em recipe from Southern Plate, with a bit of a mix with the Twice Baked recipe from Pioneer Woman.
If you "flash freeze" things on a cookie sheet, you can put them in a ziplock bag and they won't end up demolished or making a mess in the bag. (I learned you can even do that with frosted cupcakes!)
We had a pretty nice Thanksgiving, not as many in attendance as usual due to some unfortunate health issues, but there was still a house-full, and plenty of good eatin'!
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| Aunt Diane carving the Turkey |
I realized later on I don't know how to cook a turkey. I never have before.
I keep meaning to FB my Aunt and ask how she cooked the Thanksgiving turkey, because it was sooo gooood! but it seems I don't have enough hours in my days anymore to do everything I want to do!
The day after Thanksgiving, it was Black Friday and the Shopping was On!
Naw, I didn't go out and mix it up with the crowds at the stores. Been there, done that, too freaking old now! lol.
I did my Shopping online. Got some good deals, I think. I had in mind what I wanted to buy, whether it was on sale or not, and I did end up finding sales on most of the things, so that was good.
One of the deals I got was a flat-screen TV for our bedroom. We had an older tv in here, on a stand, that took up a whole corner of the room. I wanted a flat-screen to hang on the wall, and not take up space.
That ended up involving flipping the whole bedroom around. The bed had to be turned to go against the opposite wall, and my desk/computer moved across the room to where the bed used to be, underneath the tv on the wall.
But it wasn't just that easy. First, J had to install the electrical sockets he'd planned on installing for...um, years, probably. The room is so small, we ended up having to completely disassemble the bed and take it out of the room before we could install sockets and hang the tv mount and move my desk. My vacuum cleaner ended up breaking a belt and Walmart didn't have a replacement so J had to go borrow his cousin's.
It ended up being a full, two-day, hard-work job.
It seemed that once the Shopping floodgates opened, there's been no closing them back. I was liking all the deals I was getting, and seeing a lot more deals being posted, I somewhat got back into my deal/coupon shopping so I've been out running my Shopping Route a couple of days.
Among my other deals, I ended up finding bags of 1lb bags of Cranberries and 3lb bags of Sweet Potatoes on clearance for 25¢ each at Aldi's.
I put the Cranberries in the freezer. I have no idea what to do with them, but I guess I'll be looking for recipes later, when things are calmed down some.
The Sweet Potatoes I need to get on the stick and figure out how to Can them, I guess. Or make Pie filling and freeze. Or something!
Oh, and in attempt to rid myself of some of my stuff and also to try to make a little extra dough-ray-me for Christmas spending, I listed several things on Ebay. Sold half of the stuff I listed. Fees and mostly Postage ended up eating me up.
December 1st came along...which is the first day I'll allow myself any Christmas decorating (or candy buying).
Well, here's what happened:
I've mentioned before how a lot of times some of the other FF's at J's station will bring stuff to throw away in the dumpster at the station, and it'll be - not perfectly good - but you know, fix-up-able, or usable, so J will fish it out and bring it home.
One of the things he brought home earlier this year was a "Gemmy 5 foot Singing Dancing Santa".
Apparently Santa didn't sing and/or dance anymore (don't know, didn't try), and his head wasn't attached to the body.
I didn't care if it sang or danced, and it's head sat back into place just fine and stayed there if you left it alone. I knew it would be a great display for my front windows!
For storage, the Santa compresses down to half his height and fits in a box maybe 3 feet tall.
I went out and pulled the box out of the storage room. It was bulky and big for me to carry, so I turned and sat it - maybe a bit too hard - onto the carport floor.
Next thing I know, Santa-man comes SPRINGING up out of his box, and his head flies off and goes rolling across the carport!
It scared the toot out of me, and I screamed like a girl - AHHHHHHHH!!!!! But it was the funniest thing ever, ROFL!
