Turkey Trot

Thanksgiving morning, we participated in the Silicon Valley Turkey Trot; we being my husband, my daughter, her husband, and me.  The colors this year were the worst so far ...

Here's a picture of us pre-race ..

This is evidence that I am really bad at selfies ..  maybe I need a selfie stick.

 

Our ribbons ...

I finished in 57 minutes; an 18:21 minute mile.  I need to work on my time.

and a post race picture...

 

Cocktail Wednesday - Eggnog

Every year my husband makes a most excellent eggnog (recipe from here).  He made it for our pre-Thanksgiving Wednesday night cocktail. 

  

My OS and DIL and YD and SIL (my oldest son, his wife, younger daughter, and her husband) were all there.  It was delicious and lots of fun ...

 

I never liked eggnog before, but that was the store-bought kind.  This is so very much better.  I highly recommend you try it -- even without the rum.

Christmas Decorations

One of my goals this year was to make or buy new Christmas decorations.  This picture is my first attempt .. quite a fail.  I'll try again to see if I can get it right ...

Deer Quilt

 In July, I finished the quilt top for a boy quilt for a girl ...  I finally finished it this weekend.

 It'll be a gift for the friend of my son's. 

Finally .. another finish

 Finally another finish.  The picture doesn't do the colors justice. 

I machine sewed the binding - my second time.  I'm not super happy with it, but it turned out okay.  I hope she's happy with it.

The quilt is a gift for a young friend (well her baby).  We have a baby shower tomorrow night.

and another picture of the diaper cake ...

Soup #12 - Enchilada Soup

Recipe from here. No pictures, but I swear I made it.

This is a picture from the website where we got the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 cup diced white onion (about 1 small white onion)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup masa harina (corn flour)
• 3 cups chicken stock
• 2 cups cooked, shredded chicken
• 1 1/4 cups (or 1 10-ounce can) red enchilada sauce, homemade or store-bought*
• 1 (14-ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 (14-ounce) can diced tomatoes, with juices (I prefer fire-roasted)
• 1 (4-ounce) can chopped green chiles
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 8 ounces sharp cheddar cheese, freshly grated
• 1 teaspoon salt, or more/less to taste
• optional toppings: tortilla chips/strips, diced/sliced avocado, grated cheese, sour cream, chopped fresh cilantro, and/or pico de gallo

and then we had Cocktail Wednesday  (not the same week but whatever) ...

Silver fizz, from here.  We went with this because we had all the ingredients on hand :).

Ingredients:

Gin (2 parts)

Lemon juice (1 part)

Egg white (1 part)

Simple syrup (1/2 part)

Soda water  (as needed)

So you take the gin, lemon juice, simple syrup, and egg white in the shaker (with ice) and shake.  Pour over more ice and top off with the club soda.  A very light, refreshing drink. and not too sweet.

We had had this drink before, but it was good anyway!

Whatever you do, don't BLINK ..

I received a wonderful surprise from a friend yesterday ...

Soup #11 Pumpkin Soup - again

So, yesterday we went with the grandkids to the "pumpkin patch" and bought pumpkins for carving.  I did the carving -- probably should have figured out how to get the kids to do it (I'll try harder next time).

They didn't take the pumpkins with them so I cut one of them up for soup.  Recipe from here. Obviously, I used pumpkin instead of butternut squash.

Since that's my favorite butternut squash recipe, I knew it would be really tasty -- it was.

I also cooked up some of the seeds.  Those were great!