Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Cleaning Day at the Riverside Rest

Awoke to the phone ringing. It was Mom, who wanted to know if I was bringing bread. Sounds like we're going to have another head for dinner - my brother Keefe is bringing his new girlfriend from Norfolk. You bet I am. I'd be making the pumpkin bread as soon as I ate. Called Rose right after that to confirm when we're leaving tomorrow. Sounds like it'll be between 10 and 10:30 at press time.

Moved into breakfast and a Three Stooges short after I got dressed. The Stooges are sent "Back to the Woods" when they're sent to England to protect the pilgrims from the Indians. They're immediately enamored by three pilgrim lasses, but their father the Governor would rather they get out and do their jobs. The Indians prove to be a lot harder to track than they thought! Larry almost loses his curly scalp, but Moe and Curly come to his rescue.

Ran Planes, Trains, and Automobiles while making Pumpkin Bread, then while vacuuming. Ad executive Neal Page (Steve Martin) is not having the best Thanksgiving. Thanks to bad weather in the Midwest, his own increasingly mounting temper, and just plain bad luck, he keeps getting bounced from vehicle to vehicle as he tries to get home for the holidays. Worse yet, he keeps ending up with Del Griffith (John Candy), a shower curtain ring salesman who's the nicest guy you'll ever meet, but is also a chatty mass of bad habits. The two men finally call something like a truce as they journey across the frozen landscape. When he realizes why Del is really on the road, Neal learns a lesson in being thankful for having a home and family to travel to.

Though the premise is now a little dated (a lot of Neal's travel troubles would be solved with an app or a cell phone call today) and the sentimentality at the end feels slightly forced, this does remain a must for fans of Candy, Martin, or director John Hughes - it's some of their finest work.

Switched to Perfect Strangers while finishing the vacuuming and pulling the bread out of the oven. The seventh season episode "Wild Turkey" has Balki, Larry, Jennifer, and Mary Anne celebrating their first Thanksgiving in their new, larger home. Larry gets the idea to bring home a flock of live turkeys to sell for last-minute shoppers. Larry's idea becomes (pardon the pun) a real turkey when Jennifer thinks one may have swallowed her ring. The guys go to the house of a family who bought a bird to get it back.

The vacuuming was a little more thorough than usual and took a bit more time. I vacuumed under and behind all the nooks and crannies and around all the furniture that I normally ignore. It had to be done. Not only do I have my friend Amanda visiting next week, but I'll be putting up the Christmas decorations. I washed the windows, too.

Did an episode of Good Eats while sticking broccoli and a leftover chicken breast in the oven for lunch. Oranges are another fruit frequently consumed during the Thanksgiving and especially the Christmas season. "Orange Aid" shows what to do with those oranges kids get in their stockings. While the orange sherbet and the Orange Julius variation both sound delicious, the one I may try someday is my own orange marmalade. I love marmalade, but it's often expensive in the store.

Work was pretty much the same as yesterday - steady when I came in, crazy for the rest of the night. This is hardly surprisingly the day before the biggest food holiday of the year. Thankfully, there were only a handful of cranky customers. Most people seemed to be in pretty decent moods. Other than my break was almost and hour late, there were no major problems, and my relief was right on time.

Had a quick dinner of leftover chicken-vegetable soup while watching one more episode of Good Eats. Alton Brown's feeling a little nutty as he explores the culinary properties of pistachios, cashews, and macadamia nuts in "Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut." While I love macadamias, they're crazy-expensive in the store. I'll stick to white chocolate-macadamia nut cookies. I'm not a big fan of pistachios...but I do like cashews. The cashew butter and cashew sauce recipes might be worth trying when nuts are on sale.

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