h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This has been an odd Christmas.

First of all, Amy+ has been in the UK since September, working on her Masters, and wasn't able to come home for Christmas this year. She won't be able to get home until late March, and even then only for a couple of weeks, then she'll be back there again until at least September.

So right away, Christmas is very different in the Scott household.

Shorty finally made it home from her university on the 20th, so it's been nice to have at least one child at home - even though she's definitely an adult, not a little kid!

Since we didn't have any kids here urging us on, we were really late getting the Christmas decorations up, so that was another odd thing.

The weather has also been unusually warm for this time of year, so it hasn't really even felt much like Christmas. I don't know how people who live in say for instance Palm Springs can stand having Christmas in such warm weather. Something just seems so wrong about it, especially when you're used to cold Christmasses. But it was a very late Spring this year, a very late summer, a very late fall, and now apparently we're having a very late winter. Some years are like this. There was a year a couple decades ago that Christmas day was in the 80'sF, so it's not unheard of, even though this year hasn't been nearly that warm since about October.

We normally go to my mom's for dinner on Christmas day (2-1/2 hours from here), but she's getting on in years, and for the last couple holiday meals, I've gone to her place the night before, in order to be there early enough to help her cook the big family meal, since it's just too much work for her to do all by herself any more. But Lord Scott really wanted me with the rest of our little family on Christmas morning, and didn't really want to do Christmas morning at Mom's instead. So we suggested to Mom that perhaps we should do a Christmas Eve dinner at her home instead, and after talking to my siblings, they all agreed that it was a good idea, since they both always have Christmas day plans with their inlaws too, which makes for a very long, rushed day for them, what with all the travel involved.

Rather than cooking a Turkey, with dressing and the whole works, on Christmas Eve,since I knew everyone would be having turkey at their various dinners on Christmas day, I suggested that perhaps we should have a beef roast instead. It's a bit simpler meal to prepare too.

So Mom bought a standing rib roast, which I'd never cooked before (Are you kidding? Like I can afford something like that! ) and neither has she, so I had to look up how to do this on the internet. Now you have to understand that Mom believes all meat should be cooked very well done, not even the least bit pink in the middle, and the directions I was finding said that it would truly ruin the meat if you cooked it well done. Uh-oh.

I explained all this to her, and decided I'd try to get it as well done as possible, without ruining it. The meat thermometer read 160F, but when we cut it, the meat was still quite colorful inside. Everyone in the extended family said it was wonderful that way, and I made sure Mom had an outside slice, which was well done enough for her tastes.

There were 14 of us at the table. And another in a baby carrier. And another on the way. The baby is my great-nephew, who looks just like my dad. He was born about 6 weeks ago, but wasn't even due until tomorrow, so he's still a tiny thing, and his cry sounds like a kitten. So sweet. Everyone had a chance to hold him, cooing and fawning over him. My other nephew's wife is also expecting, but hopefully she'll wait until her baby is full term to deliver!

So the meal yesterday went very well. Everyone loved the beef , except for my sister who doesn't really care for beef to begin with, and her daughter, who as a teenager seems to have decided that she doesn't really need to eat much of anything at all. She apparently thinks of herself as a vegetarian, although she will occasionally eat chicken and fish, but doesn't eat vegetables. I'm not quite sure how the designation as a vegetarian applies to her.

We had to leave Mom's to head home before the entire kitchen was cleaned up though, and there were still serving dishes and pots and pans everywhere, although we'd managed to finish up all the plates and such before leaving.

Just before crossing back over the Pennsylvania border on our way home, as it was getting dark, we were on a twisty-turny country road, and suddenly about 3 white-tail deer ran across the road in front of the car. I'm used to the hazards of driving on those narrow country roads wtih the blind corners around embankments and little hills that you can't see over in the southern part of Lancaster County. What with Amish buggies all over the place, you need to be very careful on those roads, especially at dusk and after dark. However, I'd completely forgotten about the hazards of deer on the roads, especially at this time of year. Luckily, we managed to stop in time, and had no more close calls with deer.

Sometime yesterday, we realized that I'd completely forgotten to buy any cranberry sauce to go with the turkey I was planning to cook for our Christmas dinner. I don't eat it, but the rest of the family does. We could have stopped at the one grocery store along the way, which just happened to still be open as we passed it, but were in too much of a hurry to get home.

So after we got home, and had something to eat, we remembered about the cranberry sauce, and Lord Scott decided to go out in search of some. I'd offered to go instead, but for some reason he wanted to do it himself. Of course by that time, all the places that would be likely to have it were closed, which he found out as he drove from place to place, and the few places that were actually open don't carry cranberry sauce.

This should have been my sign that things weren't going to go well on the cooking front today....

I got up around 5:30 this morning to get the turkey into the oven. The turkey, which was only 14 lbs, had been thawing in the fridge since Thursday morning. According to the label, a 14-18 lb turkey should have thawed in the fridge in only 2-3 days time. For anyone who cares to keep score, that's 4 full days. I gave it some extra time, because experience has taught me that these things always take longer to thaw than the directions say.

The only problem though is that what I retrieved from the fridge this morning was a turkey that was still frozen rock solid.

So thus started my day of one cooking problem after another.

I floated it in a sinkful of cold water, checking every now and then to see if it had thawed enough to be cooked. After about half an hour, I was able to pry the tip of a wing away from the body. One wing, I mean, the other one was firmly frozen in place. Another half hour later, I managed to pry the other wing loose. Still later, I wrestled a leg loose from it's icy grip, and finally the other leg. The only challenges left were getting the giblet pack out of the one cavity, and the neck out of the other one. By this time, it was already nearly 8am. I had emptied out the water and refilled the sink with cold water several times by then, but kept running cold water over the cavities to try to loosen their contents.

Finally, I managed to pull out the giblet pack, but the neck was firmly stuck in place. I ran water over it, repeatedy. Over and over. I chipped at it with a knife, and ran more water over it. Repeatedly. Finally, along about 8:30, and only because I gave up and ran HOT water into that cavity, I managed to pry the neck from it's terrible, frozen grip. I know, I know, that's not considered safe, but I was planning on popping it into the oven as soon as I could get that neck out, which is what I did.

And this was a turkey that had been "thawing" since Thursday.



In between going 15 rounds with the turkey, I remembered that I had a bottle of cranberry juice concentrate on hand. I wondered if it would be possible to make cranberry sauce to go with the turkey? So I went on an extensive internet search for a recipe to use. Most of them called for fresh cranberries, which was really no help at all, because if I had cranberries, that would have meant I'd have been planning to make my own cranberry sauce all along.

Finally, I came across a cranberry jelly recipe that could be made using only the juice from the cranberries - well, now we're getting somewhere! Easy enough to make too, just use 2/3 the amount of sugar that you have of juice. So I reconstitued a little cranberry juice, and got out my container of sugar...

Only to find that the sugar was nearly all gone. I was a little short on that 2/3 of the juice amount, but decided to give it a try anyway, since there wasn't much other choice. So I boiled it up, added the sugar, boiled again, and poured it into a small bowl to "set", since that's what the directions said it would do.

Well, it didn't.

So I decided I must not have boiled it long enough, and back into the pot it went to be boiled again. By this time, I'd nearly boiled it back down to the original un-reconstituted strength, with the addition of the sugar, so I figured I'd better just pour it back into the bowl and see if it would "set" this time.

Somewhere in there I cut up a loaf of bread, some onions and celery to make the dressing. At least that went well.

My timer eventually rang, which meant it was time to cover the turkey with aluminum foil to finish cooking, so I reached in the cabinet and pulled out my great big roll of aluminum foil to put over it. I reached in the box, started pulling on the sheet of foil... and pulled out all 8 inches of it.


By this time I still wasn't dressed yet, and had turkey stuff splashed all over me. When you expect to put the turkey in the oven at 5:30 am, you simply don't get dressed first, and I'd been messing with this stuff for 4 hours by this time. Lord Scott was up and dressed so he called the closest convenience store, where not only were the open on christmas morning (), they actually *had* some aluminum foil in stock , so he went out and bought some for me.

Once the turkey was finally taken care of, I had a shower, then we had our Christmas morning gift opening fest. By this time I was so worn out with the frustrations of the morning that I headed back to bed. When I woke up, I pulled the turkey out of the oven, to find that he was pretty much falling apart, which would seem to indicate he wasn't frozen any more, and might have even been cooked all the way through.

The cranberry "jelly" however still hadn't "set", it was just a thick liquid.

Shorty helped me with the rest of the meal preparations, but I almost forgot to cook the dressing. She reminded me just in time though. Our take-home lesson from this? Don't take a nap when you have a turkey in the oven!

We had our meal, finally. Shorty didn't eat any of the cranberry sauce, but Lord Scott seemed to kinda like it, different as it was. The leftovers are all put away now. It looks like we'll be having turkey everything for the next month or so.


On the good side, we called Amy+ twice today. Both times we managed to interrupt her meals. But it was really good to talk to her.


What I can't figure out about all this is how I can cook everything so well one day, and fail so miserably at everything I attempt to cook the next.

I admire your patience, Lady Scott. I would have taken a blow torch to the turkey, thrown the cranberry debacle in the loo , and done enough cursing to turn the air blue above the neighborhood for a week.

I avoided cooking altogether. We had TV dinners.... and we really didn't care.

Bah! Humbug!

I really really really hates Christmas, I do.

By some strange coincidence, my sister in law cooked a rib roast today, and kept us hungry guests waiting an extra hour and a half, because the dang thing would not get cooked enough in the center.

We were supposed to eat at 1:00, but didn't get started till almost 3:00. Given the extra time, I was appointed the sous-chef, and helped by peeling potatoes, grating ginger root, and pouring the cider. (hey, give me an impressive title and I'll do 'most anhthing,tongueout>.)

Being part of putting the meal together, I pigged out on my sister's jelly-filled cookies, had seconds on my sister-in-law's mashed potatoes with buttermilk and chives, and have plenty of everything else as well. I will try to work some of this off in a few minutes .

My nephew's baby, Barbara, was cute as a button, all full of smiles. I could not think of what to get her for Christmas (she's ten months old), so my sister-in-law helped find something I could give her. I discovered that baby quilts might be a good gift for her next Christmas.

Poor Lady Scott!

I give you credit for trying with the cranberry sauce. If I had forgotten, that would have been it! They'll enjoy it more next year!

Cranberry sauce? We didn't have any either, but it didn't matter because we were having beef, not turkey.

I stopped for a can of *real* cranberry sauce on the way home from the gym yesterday, since we were having leftover turkey last night.

Of course we had leftover turkey tonight too.

And will probably have turkey again tomorrow night.

We have enough leftovers from Christmas to last us until the next big holiday meal.


That would be Easter, right?

Doesn't New Year's Day rate a big meal?

One time I tried to roast a duck in a toaster oven for New year's. I was young and inexperienced, and I ended up having to use *two* toaster ovens, both of which smelled of duck grease for years .
I will *never* do that again

I had a friend who was lacking a saucepan so he tried boiling an egg in his kettle. It worked, but he couldn't use the kettle for making tea afterwards without it tasting of egg

The things we do when we're young

Hootoo is driving me crazy... I've been trying to see the replies to my last post since last night, but no matter how often I refresh the page, it won't give me anything beyond the post this one is linked to.

I've been having this problem a lot lately. Either I can't even see that there are any new convos (the old convo list loads in repeatedly, with no updates, no matter how often I refresh it), or when I go to a convo that's supposed to have new posts, I get the old posts.

I'm in frames, so sometimes the posting list will even have more posts than will show up in the posting frame.

So don't think I'm ignoring all of you - I just can't see anything you've written.

"o don't think I'm ignoring all of you - I just can't see anything you've written" [Lady Scott]

Did somebody just say omething?

A lot of people - most, or possibly all of us in the US - have been having problems with cached versions of conversations coming up but they usually update on refresh. There's a thread about it here F94020?thread=3742453

It seems that pages are getting cached somewhere between the BBC and our PC but Jim Lynn isn't able to find out where. Your example sounds a bit extreme though Lady S - when it happens to me I find that one refresh brings up the current page.

What refreshing news.

I just tried switching to non-frames and it seems to refresh fine for now - Hypatia said that she was able to eliminate the problem for a while by switching skins. I figure I have a few skins to go through yet, I'll just keep switching as necessary.

By the way Paul, are you not having any problems with convos refreshing?
It seems to be mostly a US problem, although someone from Spain said they were having a problem too.

For about a week, I was having the problem too, but the last few days have been okay.

Same here (not that I've been on much the last couple weeks) but it's gone wonky again today.

The weirdest thing it's doing to me lately is not recognizing me when I come on. Have I changed that much? --->

No dahling, you're the same you've always been!

Just different jelly beans to toss?