Although I am aware Thanksgiving and Christmas are long past, I took a lot of pictures of these events and, since it's not often that I have a lot of pictures to share, I figure we can travel back in time to November and December 2008 in order to see what I have been up to besides studying.
Thanksgiving is not my favorite holiday, but I do like turkey.
Von's, my new favorite grocery store, was selling turkeys for $10 each so me and Chad bought the biggest one they had. We were so smart -- we had it all planned out to the minute. We'd watch the Thanksgiving parade and read the paper, then start the turkey preparations at noon. All was going according to plan until we unwrapped the turkey and found it was frozen solid! I know you can cook a frozen turkey, but this turkey had gizzards and plastic bags of gravy inside and we couldn't get them out. So we re-wrapped the turkey in a garbage bag and floated it in the bathtub during one-half of the dog show.
The turkey was supposed to take 5 hours to cook but instead, it took about 3. We had just started taking the potatoes out of the bag and cutting up onions for the stuffing, so the turkey sat on the counter for about an hour while we prepared our sidedishes. Even though we left that pesky gravy bag inside after all, it was a mighty fine bird.
Here are my plates of food -- we had corn, cornbread, mashed potatoes and really lumpy gravy, peas and baby onions, turkey, and homemade stuffing. I also made squash soup, but that was kind of a failure. During dinner we watched
Planes, Trains and Automobiles in an attempt to begin a Thanksgiving tradition, but I guess I prefer the turkey coma and Must-See TV tradition of yore. After dinner, there was pumpkin pie, jello, and
David Letterman's mom's pies. And then, for the next week, we had the same things twice a day. There is more turkey in the freezer too. Best $10 spent in a long time.
I wrote papers for most of the weekend, but we did find time to sneak in a few more Thanksgiving rituals. We decorated the Christmas tree and went shopping on Black Friday. Several people
lost their lives here in California on Black Friday fighting over toys and such, but here in Riverside, people have the Christmas spirit.
Riverside is the proud site of the
Mission Inn, an ancient mission-turned-high-end-hotel. It is here that the lack of snow and cold suddenly seems irrelevant: it is Christmas in California when you see the light display at the Inn. Chad and I went to the lighting ceremony. If you're curious, go to
You Tube, type in "
Mission Inn Festival of Lights," and watch "Mission Inn Festival of Lights 2008" to see what we saw (we were right under the arches). Or you can watch the video called "Historic Mission Inn's Festival of Lights in Riverside" for actual information about the display.
A few weeks later, I went to the Inn again with my grad student cohorts: Amanda (top), Mindy (center), and Kaycee (right). We braved the crowds to see not just the lights, but the weird mechanical figures on display throughout the interior of the Inn.
You can see me seated next to a super scary elf down here. Even scarier, there was a line of people waiting to sit next to this guy. In addition to the lights and mechanical figures, there was a quarter-sized ice rink and food vendors. Kaycee was really excited about the gingerbread vendor and she was right to be... they were good cookies!
Thanksgiving is not my favorite holiday, but I do like turkey. Von's, my new favorite grocery store, was selling turkeys for $10 each so me and Chad bought the biggest one they had. We were so smart -- we had it all planned out to the minute. We'd watch the Thanksgiving parade and read the paper, then start the turkey preparations at noon. All was going according to plan until we unwrapped the turkey and found it was frozen solid! I know you can cook a frozen turkey, but this turkey had gizzards and plastic bags of gravy inside and we couldn't get them out. So we re-wrapped the turkey in a garbage bag and floated it in the bathtub during one-half of the dog show.
The turkey was supposed to take 5 hours to cook but instead, it took about 3. We had just started taking the potatoes out of the bag and cutting up onions for the stuffing, so the turkey sat on the counter for about an hour while we prepared our sidedishes. Even though we left that pesky gravy bag inside after all, it was a mighty fine bird.
Here are my plates of food -- we had corn, cornbread, mashed potatoes and really lumpy gravy, peas and baby onions, turkey, and homemade stuffing. I also made squash soup, but that was kind of a failure. During dinner we watched Planes, Trains and Automobiles in an attempt to begin a Thanksgiving tradition, but I guess I prefer the turkey coma and Must-See TV tradition of yore. After dinner, there was pumpkin pie, jello, and David Letterman's mom's pies. And then, for the next week, we had the same things twice a day. There is more turkey in the freezer too. Best $10 spent in a long time.
I wrote papers for most of the weekend, but we did find time to sneak in a few more Thanksgiving rituals. We decorated the Christmas tree and went shopping on Black Friday. Several people lost their lives here in California on Black Friday fighting over toys and such, but here in Riverside, people have the Christmas spirit.
Riverside is the proud site of the Mission Inn, an ancient mission-turned-high-end-hotel. It is here that the lack of snow and cold suddenly seems irrelevant: it is Christmas in California when you see the light display at the Inn. Chad and I went to the lighting ceremony. If you're curious, go to You Tube, type in "Mission Inn Festival of Lights," and watch "Mission Inn Festival of Lights 2008" to see what we saw (we were right under the arches). Or you can watch the video called "Historic Mission Inn's Festival of Lights in Riverside" for actual information about the display.
A few weeks later, I went to the Inn again with my grad student cohorts: Amanda (top), Mindy (center), and Kaycee (right). We braved the crowds to see not just the lights, but the weird mechanical figures on display throughout the interior of the Inn.
You can see me seated next to a super scary elf down here. Even scarier, there was a line of people waiting to sit next to this guy. In addition to the lights and mechanical figures, there was a quarter-sized ice rink and food vendors. Kaycee was really excited about the gingerbread vendor and she was right to be... they were good cookies!
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