The Great Beyond....

You know how some times your external hard drive will make that weird little grinding noise when it's in use and is spinning the internal disk thing-a-ma-jig?
And you know how it doesn't do that very often and so, understandably, when you hear it you think it's actually a voice, muttering in low tones just beneath the edges of your hearing?
So you ask your husband "Did you say something?"
and your husband says "No I thought that was your stomach."
So you laugh and then hear the noise again and feel pretty dang confident that it is indeed the external hard drive for your computer.
But joke out loud "I should say hello in case it IS some voice from the great beyond trying to communicate."
So you say "Hello" and 4 seconds later there's a high pitched unintelligible answer from beside you, and you screech a little, curse a little, just enough to tinge the air around you slightly blue while your husband laughs and says it's a dog outside.
But you know how you have to have a hug after that, because for a half of a second you thought the great beyond was actually answering you...?
You know..?

Rebellious Decorations!

Holiday decorations are cool!
No, I'm not slow that way. Just now in my almost 30th year realizing "HEY, every one is really on to something." I've actually been hip to this idea for years now....but I'm now just verbalizing my enjoyment of it all.
This whole decking the halls thing is a blast, it's like Christmas doesn't just come once a year, it explodes into our living rooms with the force of a small (albeit pretty) nuclear explosion.
Every last little bit of space, and even some spaces that are physics-ly impossible and shouldn't exist are trimmed out with garland and lights and bits of cinnamony smelling things that torture you with their home baked goody good scents. Not to mention mock you cruelly with their non-edible, glue based dough ways.
I just love it, I love the whole dang month. The fervor with which people will throw themselves in altering their daily homes and lives for the month of December. I love the millions of strands of pretty lights that go up. I squelch my other wise eco-friendly soul with a piece of chocolate anything and ooh and awww over all the neighbor's efforts. I look past the energy gobbling strands of lights, feeling only slightly superior with my own energy efficient LED ones and bask in the neighbor's good will.
I could give a hoot about them all the rest of year. Don't wanna see em, smell em, hear em or really even be aware of their existence but come Christmas time...tinsel and mistletoe infect my soul and I gaze upon their sloppily decked out decks with twinkling, sporadically flashing lights and feel a glow in my heart that is all about neighborly love and not a bit about the eggnog.
We some how squeeze all of our most handsome Christmas decorations, that are banished to storage for most of the year like a relative we're ashamed of and only drag out for *special* occasions, into our already overcrowded homes...and we LIKE it.
Everything looks better with a little ceramic Santa standing next to it doncha think? Doesn't matter if Santa has to suck his stomach in to fit next to the votive holder, the bowl of pretty stones, the vase of fake flowers, the clock and the cool wooden dragon. (all essentials to our daily life and couldn't possibly ever part with bits of pretty, that hold down the surface of the table all year.)
You might realize (in the back of your holiday humming mind) that a little side table is so full to the brim already that the ominous groaning is actually the foreshadowing of it's legs giving way and not in fact a ghost that you have to catch a recording of on your mp3 player......but it doesn't matter.
You slide in a an itsy bitsy, absolutely adorable wooden reindeer and suddenly it looks like a million bucks, like you channeled a designer for those 3 crucial reindeer sliding seconds and now that table is no longer cluttered and dusty but FESTIVE and FUN!
I love it!
Too much....hey don't blame me Alan does it too.
It was he who started it all....all innocently, giant baby blue eyes batting away one fine Christmas season past (as in the January AFTER a holiday) "That holly garland looks good there, we should leave it up."
Well he's right, it did look good, I mean it wasn't shouting "LOOK at ME I'm Christmas in July!" so we left it. And soon it was absorbed into the fabric of our every day lives as a normal and pleasant bit of eye candy around the window. Maybe a stranger or relative would see it as what it really is, a Christmas decoration that should have been taken down 5 years ago? I don't know, we don't let people into our home, that would spoil the effect we're going for.
And so with every holiday that passes the amount of decorations I have to pack up seems a little less, not insanely, qualify for an intervention less, but in all truth there's always a bit of Christmas that refuses to leave.
Who rebels against being smothered in bubble wrap, being silenced with it's tomb of cardboard and hidden away like a dark and dirty secret in the spidery depths of the garage.
It yearns to be free and live life with the elite of our decor, to experience a March, a July or dare I say it......even October.
So we have happy holly garland over the window, and a tiny little high spirited Santa ornament hangs near my computer and gazes lustily about in satisfaction at defeating the packing process. He's so tiny and stealth like he just slips into the background noise of our life.
The occasional strand of LED lights curls itself ever the more tighter around our ficus tree, it shows me the full glory of it's warm colours and begs with an articulateness that is astounding for a glorified electrical cord to be left free. To bring a little warmth to the room in an April. So I agree, but the lights on the bedroom window have a fit, in in a weirdly prissy accent demand to be left out as well, if the ficus lights stay in the living room then it shall have the bedroom and would I please call it Mr.Finkle as I offend it's sensibilities with my LED label....ummmm o.k.......it can stay.
Our pretty (year round) twig tree that makes me feel like nature has burst forth in our living room, reclaiming a bit of space that should have rightfully been it's own anyways looks glorious. Dripping in pretty icicles, that thanks to modern technology can be hung and look perfectly frozen for...well...ever. They sparkle and shine and I turn a blind eye to their shimmeryness as I pack the not so fortunate Christmas decorations away.
Who wouldn't want a bit of holiday sparkle on a chilled evening in February?
I feel reckless and daring, like I am breaking a forbidden rule. The largely unspoken, agreed upon by many...
Though shalt not leave your holiday decorations up as regular decorations!
But ya know what? It feels good.
There's a certain joy we get from living life our own way and not necessarily by a calendar.
And more importantly...
the Christmas Police have yet to knock down my door for reckless and dangerous use of a holiday ornament.

Eyeing My Memories.....

When I picture my late Grandma Shirley I always see her faded blue eyes, looking at me, a small smile on her face. There were other things about Grandma that really stood out, her love of a good bargain, a handy treat every time I visited, calling me baby doll...... But always my memory zeros in on her blue eyes, a sort of sweetly vacant expression in them.
Alzheimer's does that.
So, imagine my shock when I recently had a dream about Grandma's blue eyes and in the retelling to my Mother she says "they were brown."
What?
I mean what the F*%$?
All these years, I would have swore on a stack of anything you want me to swear on that Grandma had blue eyes.
I have memories of her and crucial parts of those memories involve her faded blue eyes.
I have had 3 or 4 dreams of Grandma Shirley since she passed away many years ago, and in 3 of those dreams a key part was her blue eyes. They were the star of my Grandma Shirley dreams.
Because in each of those 3 memorable dreams she would turn and stare at me, but unlike real life her eyes are vivid blue, incredibly sharp in colour and mental alertness. Intelligence and humor I could see and an awareness I don't think I remember in real life.
Alzheimer's takes that a way.
The last dream I had, literally last week, my husband and I are living in some house I don't recognize and suddenly all these people show up. Relatives I haven't seen in years. It's practically a party. Some one says Grandma Shirley is here. I get excited because I want to see her, in my dream I don't remember she's no longer with us.
In my dream my Grandma doesn't look much like she did in real life, but I know it is her. She is tall and thinner but she turns and stares at me with the most amazing blue eyes. In fact they are huge, almost one and half times the size they should be, they are so blue they start edging towards green. We stand, about 2 inches apart and she stares into my eyes and I in to hers. As before, in other dreams her eyes are sharp, they are aware and it feels good to look in to them. Then the moment passes, the dream progresses, I start looking for a coffee pot big enough to make coffee for a crowd because I know my little bialetti won't make enough.
I wake up.
I tell my mom about the dream the next day and just like that the fabric of my reality and memories is torn, just a little bit.
Brown eyes...not blue?
I confer with cousins, their Mother is Grandma's daughter.
Interestingly enough one cousin says blue, the other brown.
At the end of the day the general consensus is that Grandma had brown eyes.
Ummmmm........so......my brain just made that up? The whole blue eyed thing? Why? What's the purpose? The fact that I had significant dreams that I remember clearly, that showcased her blue eyes supports my entire belief in her eye colour.
I could have passed a lie detector test, I was that convinced.
A wee part of me is still convinced they were blue and that all those other relatives are the wrong ones.
They might possibly be conspiring against me...Hmmmmmmmmm.......
Or maybe they were blue in another time line and I have shifted from that to an alternate one where her eyes were brown. (I think like this, it's true.)
My cousin has a theory that Grandma's cataracts made her eyes faded looking and that might have made me think of them as blue.
But if I could be so wrong about Grandma's eyes then maybe every one else could be so wrong as well. Good golly, Grandma is laughing her ass off some where in the great beyond because her eyes were probably green or something.
Now I am stuck though, I can't photoshop my memories. I can't just change her eyes to brown, they are blue in every picture I conjure in my brain.
Makes me wonder what other things a person could be so wrong about about, utterly believing a false thing and being entirely convinced it is truth.
Kind of freaky.
I am going to go look in the mirror now to double check on my own eyes..umm..brownish with a bit of greenish right?
*sigh of relief...*
yep, they are.......for now.....I'm going to keep my eye on them.
p.s. Alan's are still blue too, thank goodness, as I'm partial to his pretty blueberry eyes.

An Edible Kick-Butt-er.

If my sandwich and your sandwich got in a fight...my sandwich would totally kick your sandwich's butt. If a sandwich had a butt, which it wouldn't...unless it was maybe some sort of roast something or other type sandwich. That'll turn you off of meat in a hurry, here's a nice bit of shredded pig butt between two slices of bread.
Life is weird eh? Some times I feel that odd waffling sensation of falling into the category of being a vegetarian. (dairy loving, fine with fish, vegetarian if any)
But we have not fallen yet, who needs a label, we just generally don't eat a lot of meat save for seafood and in all honestly that's not so very often as we'd like. (Mostly because we have the combined patience level of a 2 by 4 and if the fish guy isn't at the counter within 3.7 seconds of us arriving, then we're on to bigger and better things, like pasilla peppers.) Maybe it's good to only be passionate about things like coffee and ice cream and port and whole wheat bread, that way you don't cause a lot of ripples in your social life at family Bar-B-Q's and buffet style all you can eat fried one of every animal part you can imagine type suppers. We get the best of both worlds, a satisfying and filling dinner of shredded beef enchiladas with the in-laws and a satisfying mostly veggies and occasionally fish meals at home.
I'm often amused at how little effort it takes, or more accurately NO effort at all to not eat meat. We just rarely get it any more. I don't know when it happened. It started with just buying the boneless, skinless chicken breasts and ground buffalo and the very very rare (as in occurrence not cookedness) t-bone steak. Our meals were occasionally punctuated with a tasty buffalo burger or chicken something or other. Then I started using less punctuation.....it just happened. We reached for garbanzo beans, black beans, refried beans and pinto beans a hell of a lot faster then meat. Cheese is our constant companion. We walked by the meat sections of the grocery store with out even slowing down.
Can you understand that?
We just didn't even THINK of buying it, so it wasn't some big moral/dietary lifestyle change, we just kept forgetting to buy and pretty soon it was months and months since the last big meat at home moment! I double checked myself here to make sure I'm not inadvertently perpetrating some big fat juicy lie and I am pretty sure the last time we bought meaty meat for our household was back in March or maybe April of last year. The last time I blogged, showing off my super delicious Bar-B-Q buffalo burgers was March 28 last year. If we bought meat after that it was only once or twice or maybe even not at all. Occasionally we've bought a frozen pizza that had salami on it, or had meat dishes at other people's homes but it's been on the very very rare occasion.
Why is it so easy for us to start forgetting to buy meat and and eat it? Why start leaning on meals that are almost considered vegetarian. I'll tell you why. Have you ever ate a bit of meat, a roast, a sandwich or what ever and felt something in your mouth that didn't belong? Some bit of something extra that got included with the meat, like gristle, bone or some other equally icky bit of God knows what? It's the little bit of something that quickly, with a speed that's terrifying, reminds you that what you're eating isn't a fillet, a steak, a t-bone or burger. It was an animal, with bits and pieces I don't care ever pass through my lips ever! Now, we got a bit tired of Russian Roulette with meat. The nasty bit extra every once in a blue moon is a nasty surprise we can do with out, it's an uncomfortable reminder of what it is you're actually ingesting. A salad...a salad starts tasting pretty damn amazing after that. A salad never let me down by including a bit of carrot guts..see the beauty of that? Carrots don't have nasty bits, heck you can eat the green tops, the whole dang thing!
Soon you find you're enjoying all your favorite foods and not missing the meat at all, perhaps there's even a little relief, no more poking the steak to see if it bleeds, no more yanking the chicken apart to see if it's raw and will make you sick. Nope, don't miss it. Though like I said we're not fanatical about it, we can chow down on a fully loaded pizza with the best of them.
It's just been quite strange though. Becoming aware of our meatless diet. I have one lonely, pathetic boneless, skinless, chicken breast in the freezer that I have yet to throw out (even though I try damn hard not to waste food, and it's a zillion days past expiration and is so completely encased with nasty freezer ice it's like my own little ice age prehistoric creature) the thing is meat has so sneakily and completely slipped from my recipes that I can't even remember to throw it in the garbage.
So we're not meat snobs, or firm veggy lovers, or against meat, what we are is forgetful, and happily so, about the former bad experiences with meat we've had. We're some how easily satisfied with the lack of it in our lives. It could be interesting to point out that my husband is a former Vegan, so maybe he's been slowly brainwashing me these past years into converting to a completely animal product free lifestyle.............hahahaha ( first off that's impossible...we have cats) Actually if he was weaving a master plan of dietary lifestyle around me it's completely balanced and counteracted by my addicting him to frozen dairy food of the *oh la la* kind, coffee and any home baked bit of goodness I pull from my oven. So...vegans we shall not be. Plus if I recall correctly cheese is made of milk and milk comes from an animal...sooooooo...if there's such thing as cheese-a-holics we're it. Cheese is like our second family, it's always always invited to dinner.
But all of this meandering down the meatless path of our meals has distracted me from my amazing sandwich that is so flavorful and amazing it does that mouth squirt thing when you go to take a bite. You know what I mean right? Your taste buds are so geared up for the tongue-blowing phenomenon about to be unleashed upon their wee little pink existence and some how your mouth squirts saliva like you're a wee fountain in a park. No one is ever gonna eat with us again are they..? *sigh*
But this sandwich is a thing of beauty, no photo will ever do it justice. It's consistently the tastiest thing you can make in a few minutes that is filling and satisfies all your cravings. It's creaminess balances out the sourness, the greens offsets it's richness. It's hearty and full of crunch and chew and oh good golly...you just KNOW what I'm going to go make for supper as soon as I'm through here.
So here's my sandwich:

• Two thin slices of homemade 100% whole wheat bread.
• Slathered with praise and a good dollop of vegenaise on each slice. Vegenaise is the most amazing mayonnaise type spread I have ever met. It's so good I swear you could use it by it's self as a dip.
  
• Dotted with little splotches of good mustard, in this particular case I used grey poupon.
• Then one slice (usually the mustard/vegenaise side if you're particular about such things) is sprinkled with chopped red onion.
• Next, the cheese of the day, and on this day it was an aged Vermont cheddar is cut up in to wee slices. Not extravagantly big slices, wouldn't want to over power the entire sandwich, this isn't a cheese sandwich after all.
• Then, the star of the sandwich, a nice big heap of homemade sauerkraut, icy cold from the fridge. So dang flavorful that I can't even begin to appreciate the miracle that is aged, fermented cabbage with a bit of salt.
• On top of that I place a healthy handful of chopped red lettuce.
• THEN......the other slice of vegenaise slathered bread, joining all the parts to complete the whole, the sandwich that can kick your sandwich's ass.
• Slice, take outside for a quick picture or two, hope the neighbors aren't peering at you through their blinds wondering why you always walk your lunch around the patio before taking it back inside to devour.

I think I need an official name for this sandwich, so that I can refer to it snootily as something people should be in the know about. Like the "Hammer" or the "Kick-Butter". You know, something catchy and elegant, what do ya think?

p.s. this sandwich originally developed as a wrap, it's equally delicious be it whole wheat bread or whole wheat tortilla wrapped around the glorious delights within.

Because that's the kind of people we are...

A cozy Saturday night made more cozy by lighting a log in the fireplace.
As I perform this happy chore I can't help but notice the abundance of ashes underneath the little metal grill-a-ma-jig the logs sit on. I should clear them out soon. Then I think (because I'm me) what a fabulous place to hide something. Like if you had to hide some small bit of valuable what not from who ever you need to hide things from, then where better than the ashes in the fireplace....has this been done?
I share my fabulous idea with Alan, he contemplates it, seriously contemplates it (because that's the sort of person he is) and I can see the idea rolling around inside his pretty mind. He isn't thinking I'm crazy for interrupting our companionable silence with a place to hide things we wouldn't want snoopers to see...but deciding whether it truly is the best place.
I elaborate before he can comment.
"It could be in a little fireproof metal box, and we could have a live fire on top of it. Wouldn't that be cool?"
He silently chews this additional bit of information over before answering, "What about in the toilet?, like down the drain and into the pipes a bit...."
I imagine we were both thinking the same thing, that you'd need a bit of clear string or something attached to your valuable so as to fish it back out when they'd gone...who'd gone? I don't know...just them.
"The toilet's been done an awful lot." I respond, gently so as not to crush his pipe dreams. "You always see them looking behind or under the lid, in the tank etc, so down the pipe might not be such a great place."
He nods, a slight tilt of his head as if to say without speaking "touche"
Then a light of inspiration ignites behind his blue eyes, as bright a flame as the fire now crackling in the hearth.
"What about in the septic tank?"
"Ahhhhhhhhhhh." I breathe, impressed.
"Good one!"
While it might be a bugger to dig up a septic tank to get back what you'd flushed down there it wouldn't be impossible. Perhaps not the best place for your every day run of the mill item you don't want people to see but if you had some 40 million dollar thing-a-ma-bob...well then the expense of ripping up the yard and busting open the septic tank would be worth it.
We share a smile.
But he's not done.
"What about one mile, straight down below the septic tank, buried in the earth?"
"Umm...er.....what?" I raise an eyebrow in question.
"In a metal box!" he elaborates.
"er........what?"
But he's on a roll. I decide to play along, amused by his passion. His imagination is galloping at speeds no man made vehicle will ever outrun and I want to hop on for a ride.
"Well I was going to say that's just crazy and out of the question but...if it's in a metal box..well then that's completely different. If it was a sphere though, a metal sphere...impossible. So good thing you said box."
"ohhhhhhhhh a sphere....even better..." I can see him roll the idea of a metal sphere buried one mile beneath a septic tank around on his tongue, but perhaps it's not to his liking as suddenly he bursts out "THE MOON!"
"what? What about the moon?"
"We could hide it there." There's a feverish look about him now, a man possessed, completely enraptured with figuring out the absolute best hiding place for..what? I don't know but we'll have a hiding place for it.
"No one would look on the moon." He steeples his fingers together, peers at me over his hands and his eyes have narrowed to sharp slivers of blue.
I realize he's no longer in the room with me but somewhere else, off in space, investigating the moon as a hiding spot.
When he speaks again, his voice has dropped to a whisper, a dreamy quality infuses his every word.
"At the core of the moon, hide it in the center of the moon.....ahhhh...even better........"
he trails off, I hold my breath awaiting....it appears he has had an epiphany....an idea so profound that even I can see the peaceful transformation wash across his features.
"What? Tell me...." I am caught in his spell, I don't want to know I now NEED TO KNOW...where is the best place to hide something.
"Not the center of the moon....no not the center..." he cackles. A shiver crawls across my skin...this is going to be big..I can tell.
"NOT, the center of the moon, oh no.....but just off the center a bit. A hundred feet to the left of the center of the moon......THAT....THAT is the best place to hide something."
I absorb his knowledge into my own being. I make his realization my own. We sit, once again in silence. The flames from the fireplace cast a golden glow over the room. We share a smile and slowly return to our tasks before the whole hiding place conversation began.

Because....because that's the kind of people we are.

Drawer Cat!

Woohoo it's the latest version of cat. Much like the cats of yester years but with new and improved existence-ness. It's Drawer cat, the perfect conversation piece and taker-upper-of-space. The best part is the regular original style cat will upgrade itself automatically when space becomes available.
Drawer cat, remember it's like a regular cat only better.....

I won't Mince words here....only pies....

I'm going to brag about my fried pies here but don't ask me for the recipe...no really. I'm not being coy. I'm not clinging to some tiny bit of home maker glory to make myself feel superior to you. I'm certainly not trying to hide it in an attempt to make that scrunched up whiny look appear on your face. Heavens no, that's just a bonus. The truth is I don't have a recipe.
Did these lovely little morsels of fried pie goodness just appear in my kitchen of their own accord, unaccompanied by earthly means?
Well...noooooooo...not exactly.
It's just that so often (and really it's more like more often then not) I do not follow a recipe. Or if I am following a recipe I am changing so many things in it during the first trial run that what I end up with can not possibly be anything but a distant cousin to the original recipe, heck maybe not even a cousin, maybe more like the person your distant cousin dated for 3 days when they were 17.
If I were to give you the recipe of something I made that you 'd sampled and liked and you tried making it yourself you might be tempted to shake your fist at me and call me a cheat. Why? Oh did I forget to mention I changed the butter to coconut oil when I made it, I added cinnamon and dark rum instead of vanilla....oh hmmm well are you saying you didn't guess I would leave the water out and replace it with Kefir? And ummm...shall I confess that I can't remember the last time I baked with white flour....suppose I should have mentioned that I changed it to stone ground whole wheat........
See what I mean?
It's first time out alterations like those that make sharing a recipe hard. I probably should have tried to remember to write every thing down that I was changing as I went....snoooooooooooooooooze... Sorry I was boring myself already. If I can't even finish the thought I'm hardly likely to do the actual work of recording my alterations. And that's just the recipes I'm sort of actually following.
What about the made up as I go along, completely pulled from my own brain kind? The taste as you go and see what it needs a pinch more of kind?
Perhaps it's not even fair to brag about those.....
Well hell who ever said sweets are fair??? The fact that they're loaded with little nasties called...(psssttttt cover your eyes if you're sensitive to reality) ahem, as I was saying sweets are loaded with...(deep breath) CALORIES.
Cripes I hate calories.
I remember the exact moment I learned of the existence of calories. When I was a kid every one was yakking about fat this, full fat that, half fat the next thing. I was no dummy, fat was the big bad scary wolf of the dessert world. I munched my way through bags of gummi bears in smug delight. I scoffed at the fat fear-ers as I delighted in my boldly emblazoned bag of "NO-FAT" gummi bears. What's that saying about all good things....? I bragged one too many times to the wrong person...or the right person depending on how you see your glass. I'm seeing this one half empty till I get over the horror.
"Look" I say, "They're fat free."
"Yeah but they have sugar...." he says.
At this point I was hovering in the nicely padded, cushioned zone of ignorance is bliss. Little did I know my world was about to change for ever.
"yeah but, they're fat free, so you can eat as many as you want." I was so confident, so much that if I didn't vocally add a "DUH!" at the end of those words I'm sure a "DUH!" was written all over my face.
"Yessssss but..." (has there EVER been a good but?) "they have sugar, so they're full of calories."
Insert that perfectly appropriate sound of a *record player needle being dragged across the record ending the harmonious beauty of my calorie innocence* right here.
*sigh*
They say life changes when you hit puberty, pbbbbbbbbbtttt, big frigging deal it's not puberty that messes us up it's calories and the knowledge of their existence.
I have a theory about this too. Physicists say there are actually particles that behave differently just because of the fact some one looks at them, acknowledges their existence.
That's...mind blowing...BUT I've known this for years, calories only start having their evil little caloric effect on people AFTER they become aware of them.
That's why kids run around in glorious sugar highs asking for candy for breakfast, donuts for lunch and ice cream for supper. They don't KNOW yet......but they will.......Some one will burst their strawberry flavoured bubble. Some one always does.
Sweets just aren't fair. They're mind numbingly delicious, life changingly scrumptious, make-you-sneak-out-to-the-fridge-for-one-last-nibble addictive it's true.....but they aint fair.
So that's why I can brag about what I made and how tasty it was and not even give you a recipe for it. Suffer. It's ok, it's just the sweet life.
O.k.....now I feel guilty and I can feel your giant puppy dog like eyes staring at me with shock, blinking back tears as you sniffle and hiccup unbecomingly.
So just for you cry babies, a quick run down of my spur of the moment mince fruit fried pie.
A quick and delicious filling made from a blob of coconut oil, frozen cranberries, half an orange, the juice of an orange, raisins, salted pecans, one red delicious apple chopped up, the zest of one orange cut into satisfying little strips, cinnamon, ground cloves, nutmeg, a sploosh of molasses, a splash of dark rum and a wee tiny bit of cornstarch to thicken the whole lot. Cooked up till it was thick and dark and smelling like Christmas in a pot. (which is a good thing)
When it was cool I rolled heaping spoonfuls of it in eggroll wrappers, sealed it with a bit of beaten egg and fried it in coconut oil till golden and crisp. Sprinkle with more cinnamon and...yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmm.
Actually if I recall the exact words of my husband when he bit in to his first friend mince fruit pie they were and I quote. "Ohhh, oh yum....." Then a breathy silence as his tongue absorbs the flavours followed by "Oh man, that's good, that's really good. Yummm. Wow what's in this?"
So, that's why I'm bragging up my fried mince fruit pies and not even giving you an exact recipe. Because I don't have one and sweets aint fair.

New Year's Resolutions: Or how I can not fail!

(Writing my resolutions, bet I can keep mine up more then you can keep yours)

• I resolve to swear more often and use the Z%$#^ word in creative ways at least 3 times a week. (and one of those times will be in front of the baggers at the grocery store, is there anything more fun then making teenagers cringe?)

• I resolve to buy more ice cream. Piling carton upon carton into my super market basket. Especially when skinny minny women and big eyed children are present, so that they may weep with envy at my icy cold gluttony. So they shall turn green with jealousy over my wild ice cream ways. Store clerks will raise an eyebrow, just one, as they ring through my purchases and ask if we're having a party, and I shall pertly answer with just the right amount of acid on my tongue (as in tone not drug) that no, we're not having a party we're having ice cream.

• I resolve to drink more port and solve every one's problems whilst tipping back a few. Is there any issue in the world that couldn't be solved whilst in the hazy glow of a port warmed brain muddle?

• I resolve to buy newly released Nora Roberts books so soon off the store shelves that the covers are still warm from the stock boy's hands.

• I resolve to talk loudly in public about our secret rendezvous with the french embassy and that we have the goods hidden in a cracker box at the grocery store. Just so some house wife can have a little thrill....and possibly some crackers.

• I resolve to learn more words in Spanish because even though I can apply "caliente" to a lot of things it would be cooler if I could say "mucho caliente". Like I would like a mucho caliente new hat, or wow that baby has the cutest mucho caliente dimples I've ever seen. For you Canadians mucho caliente= tres chaud (approximately I think)

• I resolve to reduce the amount of trash we throw out every week to even smaller amounts then last year, so that I can prance my tiny can down to the corner and throw my hands up in a gesture of "TAKE THAT!" attitude as our neighbors put their overflowing trash bins next to ours. Then I will dance a little "ha ha I'm hurting the environment less then you" kind of dance whilst they slink away, possibly even in tears.

• I resolve to watch Talladega Nights at least once a month, or at least this scene which is the BEST movie scene EVER. I dare you to defy me. Saying Grace