Chicken Soup for the Soul
Goodness me. Only 2 weeks left of fall and Christmas is nearly here. This is by far my favoritest time of year. Normally I dislike extra clutter in my house but after 5 weeks of Christmas decorations the sparceness left behind from the clean-up on New Years day is downright depressing.
I guess that’s one reason to make sure you’ve got something to look forward to not long after the holidays. Our next family vacation is coming up. Where to you ask? Don’t you know us well enough by now? Where else would we go but to a Disney park? Back to sunny Florida we head where we’ll spend a handful of days at Disney World followed by 3 nights on a Disney cruise. Super excited as always.
Ella’s doing well in school. I think. Her student-led parent/teacher conference went well. I think. I was informed well enough on the things the class had been working on and I did get a report card but otherwise the teacher didn’t speak on Ella’s performance in class. I guess no news is good news?
I’m well past time for a braces update. I took pictures at the time of my last adjustment, which was October 30th. I’m a deadbeat braces updater. I know. I guess I’m feeling past the initial excitement of it all (are we therrrrre yet?). The next set of before/after will be something to behold though (January 5th). The orthodontist will be building up my front teeth. Which is to say he’s going to fix (if only temporarily) my broken and worn down teeth.
Now, when looking at the following photos I think the easiest thing to look at are the wires and the placement of the brackets. Initially the wire was up and down and all around crazy. Brackets were high and low and squished together. You can see things have sorted themselves out pretty well. I’ve probably still got 2 years to go so don’t be surprised at the state of my teeth still.
Week 19
Of course the other miraculous thing at this point is the full appearance of the tooth that had been hidden behind my right front tooth (top).
chicken stock
I felt compelled to blog this evening because I undertook a large cooking project. I’m going to start doing this cooking club and the next meeting is Jan. 10th at my brother-in-law’s girlfriend’s place. Each meeting has a theme and the next one is soup & salad. A bit bummed this is the theme for my first cooking club meeting as neither soup nor salad are my faves. I’m set on doing a soup (you try eating lettuce when most of your teeth don’t touch), and so today I tried out a chicken and noodle recipe. I did everything from scratch, from making my own chicken stock, to making my own noodles. It took 3.5 hours overall, but most of that was simmer/cook times.
My sister now makes what my great-grandmother was famous for (well, famous amongst the family at least), and that is homemade chicken and noodles. It’s the best thing on the planet. Even though my head knew the recipe I made today would in no way taste like my sister’s noodles, I think my heart still hoped and so I ended up a bit disappointed. Which is unfortunate since there is now a large tupperware bowl full of it in my fridge.
I’ll have to look for another soup recipe. Maybe some sort of cheddar/bacon thing. How can you go wrong with that???
home-made noodles
Parmesan bread
finished bowl of home-made chicken noodle soup
I also found a recipe for the Starbucks Cranberry Bliss bar that I’m going to do for Christmas, and I’m going to try and make the cookies my sister (there she is again… when did she turn in to one of the best cooks I know???) made 2 Christmases ago. She could seriously make me a large batch and present them as my present and I’d be as happy as a clam. Best cookies ever (yes, even better than the ones I made for my friend’s baby shower). I’ve tried them once but they just weren’t the same. Worth a second shot!
It’s December 6th and I’m done shopping for Christmas presents. Yea! Waiting on 3 packages to come in the mail before I start wrapping things up.
Happy Holidays!