This is my favorite time of year…The wonderful holiday season filled with lots of love, family, friends and great food! As you all know I love to cook and especially during this time of year.  As the years go by the food tends to get a bit traditional and boring so I thought what I could do differently this year to still provide that comfort food that everyone loves, but come up with some new dishes.

During Thanksgiving in our home while growing up we would always have the same traditional dishes every year. And while these dishes were absolutely delicious and I will always eat them. They do get a little boring. We would have both turkey and ham because my dad was a meet man. Always need to have protein so we could grow up big and strong. Then we would have the traditional sides like mashed potatoes, stuffing, corn and my favorite green bean casserole.  Oh and of course we would have yummy homemade gravy to serve over top.  They would also have cranberry sauce, but I was never a fan of that and nothing has changed. I am sure there are other dishes served during these times…I would love for you to share some of your family traditional dishes to help give me some new ideas.   

Last year I attended a holiday dinner party and tasted an amazing dish that I have craved all year long. It was a Cauliflower and Gruyere cheese. Oh my goodness; this dish was amazing. The wonderful lady who made it started off by making creamy rue and then mixed in the cheese and cauliflower, followed by baking it and it was the hit of the dinner that night. I also had a dish that a girlfriend made for me about 4 or 5 years ago that I cannot forget about.  Apple sage stuffing and boy is it yummy! Now prior to having this I was not a big stuffing fan because it was boring. Cooked bread with chicken flavors…yuck! Today you can actually buy breakfast sausage that already has sage in it and then diced apples for a sweet flavor along with your traditional stuffing mix, onions and celery. It over flowed with sweet and savory flavors that melted in your mouth.  While these are previous year recipes they are on my list of favorites that I do not get to have that often.  

This year I have been watching my traditional Food Network channel and trying to come up with some new ideas for this year’s Thanksgiving dinner and I have found a few tasty recipes thus far. The vegetable of the season seems to be Brussels sprouts. And while this was not my favorite veggie as a kid I am curious to try cooking it a few different ways that might peek my liking. My dad would just steam or boil them and my mom would put the cheese sauce on them to help cover up the bitter taste of them. I have found two different recipes that might be really good. One was a Brussels Sprout and cheese casserole. It reminded me of the cauliflower dish I mentioned earlier.  Another one was Brussels sautéed with nutmeg, salt, pepper and think pieces of pancetta bacon. Looked very tasty too! I do not have many green bean fans in my family now so the traditional green bean casserole is out of the question. I also saw a recipe for Leek bread pudding made with cream and cheese. Hmmm cheese seems to be the theme. I promise I can eat vegetables without cheese it just so happens to be the trend in the recipes that I have found this year. Any other ideas are welcome for sure. I am responsible for a few side dishes this year so I am collecting ideas.

If any of these dishes sound good to you let me know and I will pass the recipe along. If I happen to try any of them I will let you know how they come out too. In the meantime please send me some of your favorite dishes for the holidays! And I wish the best to you and your family during your Thanksgiving Day of Grace!!

Here we are starting week six and we are half way through the semester already. Man where does time go? I could say that about the whole year; well I could say that about the last five years, but we are going to talk about this semester. I have enjoyed this semester as I am taking a very interest class called Communications. I wanted to update everyone as to what I have learned this far and how it truly is important in day to day life situations.

Thus far we have touch based on several topics including culture and communications, perception and the self, listening, verbal messages and nonverbal communication. Not only have I learned a lot about myself during the last few weeks of class, but I have learned a lot about others around me. We need to understand communication to help us understand our selves, but also to help us in personal relationships and employer relationships to help understand others.

Now for most of us we live in a melting pot which means we are surrounded by people from all over the world. Therefore it is important to know other cultures and how they communicate. For example we shake hands to introduce ourselves, but in China they do not shake hands. So when you shake their hand it is not natural to them and they do not have a firm handshake. We think of it as being weird; until you understand their culture and then it is no longer weird.  Also understanding how we perceive something may not be the same way you perceive something. It is also important to understand how to say things. When telling someone that they make you mad when they do something; you should change the verbiage to “I feel angry when you interrupt me.” It comes across better and allows the person to understand where you are coming from. This is very useful during work hours as we need to be careful when saying things.

So I highly recommend the Communications class to everyone as it is important to know how to communication with your loved ones, friends and co-workers. By understanding people, knowing how to communicate your thoughts and feelings, and interrupting others will add value to your life. So as I communicate with all of you on how I am doing throughout the semester; I hope all of you will reach back out to me about your accomplishments – share your stories – and communicate.      

It’s always a fun time of year for most as we get to dress up in costumes and parade around town without a care in the world. The question I have is do we really know how Halloween got started or where it originated? I am sure many people do not and there are many others who do not even celebrate the holiday as they feel it is celebrating evil.  So I thought I would share a little history with my fellow trick- or-treaters.

According to Wikipedia the roots of Halloween came from the Celtic Festival of Samhain and the Christian Holy day of all Saints. It originated in Europe and then came to America by immigrant settlers. The word Samhain means the summer end. The Celts believed the border between this world and the other world became thin during this time allowing evil spirits to enter into this world so they wore evil customs’ to trick the evil spirits into thinking they were evil too so they did not harm them (Wikipedia.com). They use the colors orange and black to represent Halloween because orange represents the harvest and black represents the evil spirits. It gives you a better understanding of the holiday and the history behind it.

I personally love this holiday because I enjoy dressing up. I have never been much of a creative person so I enjoy watching the creative minds of others. Over the years I have seen some really neat costumes. One year I saw a guy who dressed up as a night stand. He wore a lamp shade and then made a table around him and dressed it up with an alarm clock, reading glasses and a book. It was pretty neat!

 For Halloween I normally just go out and buy something to wear verses trying to come up with something on my own. However this year I could not afford to go out and buy anything so I needed to come up with something using whatever I had from past years and clothes in my closets. So I decided to be a Greek Goddess because I already had gold rope, gold jewelry and a white dress…put it all together, do my hair and you have a Greek Goddess costume. It was very easy and I got a lot of compliments on it. My boyfriend was a pimp using parts of a Halloween costume from a few years ago. His brother and sister-n-law dressed up as gothic punk rockers using old costume parts and his cousin was a 70’s guy using some of his parent’s old clothing. No one spent any money and we put together some great outfits.

It’s a fun time of year and I can’t wait until I have children to celebrate with and carry on the traditions. I see Halloween as a time to go trick-or-treating, have fun dressing up in costume, telling ghost stories and carving pumpkins. For those who celebrated, I hope you had a great time dressing up and carving pumpkins.