The Bandwagon Stops to Play
My daily treadmill for thirty days goal has been reached so now I am switching to every other day. I still have a couple of pounds to lose and the entire month of February to do it.
(image stolen off the internet)
What I didn’t say when I started this exercise thing was Wii get a Wii-ward for meeting the first goal.
I couldn’t really say it because I needed to sell the idea to Blane. I’d been wanting to get one for a long time and tossed the idea out quite a few times. Mostly like this:
Me: We should get you a Wii for your birthday.
Blane: We already have two game systems.
Me: True, okay.
Repeat that same exchange every time one of the kids had a birthday or when Christmas came around.
I always kept my best argument up my sleeve. Yes, we have XBox 360, yes, we have Playstation 3 (got that mostly for the BluRay player), we have several Gameboys, Nintendo… Everyone in the family has had at least two game things. Except for me.
I, personally have never had a game system in my entire life.
That was my argument and it only took five seconds to convince Blane to happily say, “Okay.”
Don’t get the wrong idea, I get what I want when I want it. He’s not my boss. The thing is, I knew he was adamantly opposed to getting one. I completely understood his point of view. He just didn’t know mine. I wanted him to be okay with it.
If it weren’t for WiiFit, I wouldn’t have even considered it. That’s what it’s all about and that’s what I’ll be doing every other day between treadmill days.
The WiiFit game was hard to find. I went to several stores and they were sold out. Blane Jr. told me to call all the Blockbuster Video stores, people don’t think to look there for it. That’s how I found mine yesterday.
I did one little workout on it, not much because I had already done my exercise for the day on the treadmill. What surprised me was when the thing calculated my weight, it read 10 pounds under my home scale. I’ll try again tomorrow, but I’m pretty sure my home scale is accurate.
In just 30 days I have gotten into good shape. It was a lot of hard work, but it only took about an hour each day. I did it wisely, working my way up to harder workouts each day. What I can do now compared to when I started is pretty shocking. And no major injuries.
I am having some problems with my foot on the steep inclines. There’s a knife-like jab to the instep every time my foot hits the ground. It’s been like that for two weeks, some days it’s worse that others, but maybe now that I’m switching to every other day, it’ll get better.
I haven’t had much sweets in the last couple of months and feel much better for it. I ate a little chocolate the other day and felt sick about five or ten minutes afterward.
Mireille (the dog) is looking good. I haven’t weighed her yet but can feel her ribs much better. She likes the longer walks too. So does Scrappy.
Time to go check and see how everyone else is doing…
When is food too old to eat?
I cooked a gumbo about eight days ago. Normally, if it doesn’t get eaten in about 3-5 days, it gets pitched. Gumbos are big so I usually portion some to go in the fridge for leftovers and some for the freezer.
So, for lunch yesterday I was digging around for some grub and noticed the one I made for the freezer was still in the fridge. I felt rotten and irresponsible for not putting it away, what a dumb assed thing.
It smelled okay. It was seasoned up pretty well too, I mean, what could grow in that?
So I put it in the micro and ate it.
Sometimes I wonder if I have a stomach like a dog. I have never had food poisoning in my life. Not once.
Yogurt? I have eaten yogurt three weeks past expiration.
Cheese? That stuff doesn’t go bad until the furry stuff grows on it. And I have cut that off and eaten what’s inside.
I wouldn’t feed that to my kids though. I have a whole different set of rules for them.
So here’s what I want to know. When are leftovers too old to eat?
Chicken?
Beef?
Pork?
Spaghetti?
Fish?
Rice? (I recently had a cousin insist 10 day old rice in the fridge was still good)
Yes, I know I can look it up on the internet, but I want to know what y’all think, because see, yogurt? That expiry date is too conservative.
Finally, what’s the craziest outdated food you’ve ever eaten?
Bugs
I don’t believe in fate, destiny, predestiny…
But sometimes there will be a string of coincidences that are just fantastic and I like to just get in the moment and pretend there is just a thing. Just to see what else happens.
I got a new lens for my camera last week and while researching it, I read about how I could buy a reverse mount ring adapter and turn it into a macro lens (for photographing tiny things such as bugs). So for less than $10, why not? I ordered it.
A few days ago, the thing came in the mail and as I walked up the sidewalk I thought, won’t be using this for a while, there are no bugs in winter.
Get in the house, the kitchen, look over at the stovetop, and there is a ladybug crawling around on it. Out of all the places in my house, the stovetop is the best spot for a photo of a bug (yes, I get it, a bug on the stove, gross). I’ve got two recessed halogen lights directly above it and the stovetop surface is a highly reflective stainless steel.
I thought for a second, this could be a sign or signal that I should get my camera out and set that thing up and maybe I’ll take the most amazing photo I’ve ever taken. Ever.
I got a tiny jar and put her in there while I set up the camera.
One thing about using this type of lens setup is that it is all manual focusing and the aperture can’t be set, so what that means is there is a very tiny spot in there that is in focus.
Also, every little bit of camera shake is magnified.
Here’s a good example of how tiny the focal plane is.
See the edge of that paper, how only one part of it is in focus?
See the writing on the paper, how only the top part of the “t” is in focus?
You know how fast ladybugs crawl?
So what I did was wait until she stepped into focus to hit the shutter. This was handheld and I was also holding the paper she was on, so really, now that I think about it, this photo’s almost impossible to take.
Everything was lined up just right and I had a lot of good luck.
So did she. I flipped her over so I could photograph her underside.
She thrashed about helplessly, so her arms and legs were all blurry in all but one photo. I thought about Gregor Samsa in that story “Metamorphosis”. Then I thought about how I didn’t like it that it was all up to me whether this bug lived or died.
I brought her outside where she can enjoy the woodpile for the rest of her life.
And I can’t for the life of me post a photo of her underside, because, you know, she is a lady.
The Last Time
Yesterday was an exciting day for one reason only. It was the very last day of Bush being in office.
I know today is really even better, but I like the feeling of something about to happen, like the beginning of a new era.
Excitement everywhere.
Calling all my friends just to tell them, “This is the last time I’ll talk to you while Bush is in office.”
Kissing the kids goodnight, “This is the last kiss while Bush is in office.”
Saying goodnight to Blane over the phone (he’s in San Francisco) and calling him back because I forgot to tell him, “This is the last time we say goodnight while Bush is in office.”
You know what song is stuck in my head? That one from “The Wizard of Oz” when they’re all singing, “The wicked witch is dead.”
I thought about and savored this moment in my head for eight long years. Sometimes I wish I didn’t care so much about politics. It can be so divisive.
To the rest of the world out there (non-Americans), we are all Americans today. Join us and celebrate President Obama!
I have to add this one sour note: George Bush is moving to Dallas today. I gotta get the fuck outta here.
Carry on!
P.S. This is my last post while Bush is still in office.
Unearned Burden
One of my best friends, a guy I have known for over twenty years, grew up in Iraq. He and his family (he married an American) used to live here near Dallas until just after the first Gulf War started. He had the misfortune of having the last name, Hussain.
Try living around here, a place that is known for developing and manufacturing military equipment with a name like that during a war with a leader of the same name. My friend worked in the field of encryption. He briefly considered changing his name to avoid all the hassles, then decided to just move from here to another city out west.
If you’d have told me fifteen years ago that people would become immune to that name, that one of the coolest guys on the planet would also carry that name and that burden, I’d never have believed it. It is probably one of the most amazing cultural turnarounds I’ve ever witnessed.
This is a friend we’ve kept up with despite the fact that we haven’t lived in the same state in over 15 years. He and his wife are like family to us.
His mother and siblings still live in Baghdad and I can’t imagine the years and years of mindfuck that must be for him, the bombings every day, and other hardships. He’s tried several times to get them out of the country, to move them to safer places in the Middle East. He’s spent a lot of money, made some long and dangerous journeys, but each time his plans fell through in the end.
Last summer his father had to have surgery. He’d been shot in the hand at some market but ended up with some other complication with his abdomen. He couldn’t just go to a hospital. The way it worked, he had to pay for a room at a hotel and pay a surgical team to come out there and do the operation in the hotel room. He did okay from the surgery, but died of a heart attack the next day.
Despite all this, my friend has managed to maintain his sense of humor. We visited with him just after 9/11, and he was feeling the heat of being an arab. He’d say, “I’m going to try to start passing myself off as hispanic.”
I just talked to him today and he mentioned how he was excited about Tuesday. I’d been calling it “The 20th,” so didn’t catch on right away, “What you got going on Tuesday?”
Oh Tuesday! Hell yeah!
I asked him how it felt to share a name with the President-Elect.
He said, “There is a God,” and laughed.
So for all of you out there who tacked the name Hussein to your screen name during the election to make people stop being afraid of that name, I thank you. My friend’s unearned burdens are less heavy today.
She Smokes Cigarillos
There’s a woman (50ish) who walks the perimeter of my neighborhood every evening. She walks the other side of the brick wall which goes on for another mile or so, the side that lines the six lane thoroughfare.
She’s a tubby Asian or Latina woman who wears a pancho almost every day of the year. Her long dark hair is somewhat matted, her face, moon-shaped and weathered.
The first few times I saw her, I was pulling out of the neighborhood. It was dark and she appeared out of nowhere, like a phantom, right in front of my headlights as I was about to hit the gas.
It’s not so much that she seems to jump out of thin air that’s so scary. It’s the lunatic grin on her face that has my knees knocking.
I’ve seen her at the stoplight waiting for traffic, same blank stare, same grin.
Lately she’s been hanging out by the drugstore. I passed her on the sidewalk there a couple of weeks ago and later regretted not having the time to say hello to her. Fact is, neither one of us acknowledged the other. I was in a hurry and she was in her own world.
Yesterday evening as I drove into the parking lot of the drugstore I saw her sitting on the sidewalk. I parked right in front of her and just sat there for a second. She was hitting on a long thin cigarillo, every breath a puff, as if the stuff wasn’t killing her fast enough.
The way she was sitting was one of the most awkward positions I’ve ever seen. She was stooped with her feet turned outward (like a ballerina’s feet in first position).
I got out of the car with my camera and asked if I could take a photograph. Her arms were in a panic, waving through all the smoke as if to say, “No, no, no,” but she kept staring out into infinity along with that big grin on her face.
So I left her alone. (I would only have taken a photo of her feet.)
I’ve worked with the insane before. It is the area where I feel the most discomfort, not because I’m afraid of what they can do to me, but because I know at any given time any one of us or our loved ones could become one of them.
Sleep
I was talking to a friend about sleep and before we got to my disgusting sleep habits she said she gets in the bed, shuts her eyes, and wakes exactly eight hours later.
Then she said why this was so. She said she was a good person with a clean conscience and that people who can’t sleep have done a lot wrong.
I wanted to trip her.
I sleep in little chunks here and there. Walk, talk, and even eat in my sleep. Rarely do I sleep more than two hours without getting up.
This I blame mostly on my years as a night nurse. Sleeping days while working nights and switching back to a regular schedule on the days off so I could raise my kids. It was like jet lag every single week.
I think my friend is wrong.
In other matters, the exercise thing is going good. I”m on track with my goals and only missed one day which was yesterday. I don’t have a good reason for skipping other than my personality demands I rebel against things sometimes.
Actually I’ve been feeling sore and run down. Just needed a break. I’m sipping on my Venom Mojave Rattler right now and will get going in just a second.
In a few weeks I don’t think I’ll need these energy drinks to get me going, but right now I do seem to need them. It’s just one more of those things that keeps me up at night.
Here’s a cute post Ruth did about jumping on my exercise bandwagon.
Miles walked so far: 85. Pounds down: 4. (That’s 2 pounds per week, now I know why I took a guilt free break yesterday, I’m ahead of my goals.)
Debride
Besides the obvious reasons for exercise, I like to get on the treadmill to debride my mind and soul of all the dead and unnecessary junk that drags me down. Whenever and wherever I roll, I pack light.
The best exercise equipment I have is my iPod. I don’t think I could do it if I didn’t have music to take me away. Actually there is not much at I can do without music.
I am constantly making new playlists as I don’t want to create song aversions, that is, I don’t want to hear a song and think oh, exercise.
I’ll share my most recent playlist with you in hopes that one of these songs will get you too off your butt and on the bandwagon.
For warming up/stretching out, I must have a great song to get me motivated for the entire ordeal. So I like slower paced songs for this. Meditative type songs.
Razor by Foo Fighters.
I love the acoustic guitar in here. I especially like the line, “Day after day, cutting away.”
10,000 Days (Wings for Marie part 2) by Tool. One of the best songs ever made, and it makes me cry sometimes.
The tempo builds toward the middle of this long song so it’s a good one for increasing the grade of the treadmill while it’s playing.
I need faster paced songs for the climbs. Thirty minutes of brutality and I turn it up loud so I don’t have to hear myself gasp and groan.
Love Lockdown by Kanye West. The percussion in here is amazing. The video is pretty cool, especially when those people jump out the frame.
w.a.m.s. Fall Out Boy.
I love the line, “Let’s meet in the purgatory of my hips and get well”.
Tear Away by Drowning Pool. The ultimate narcissist song, but the last thing you’ll think of is you when you listen to the lyrics. I love the refrain, “I don’t care about anyone else but me.” Know someone like that?
Piece of Me by Britney Spears. I know, but yeah, I do listen to pop sometimes.
Let It Rock by Kevin Rudolf ft. Lil Wayne. One of those songs that gives me a burst of energy. Lil Wayne has the midas touch, he’s in everything on the radio right now.
Land of Confusion by Disturbed (remake). I like this one better than Genesis‘ original. I know, shame on me, but I do tend to be open to remakes of old songs.
Sam’s Town by The Killers. Love the crazy keyboard opener. Like a circus show! I love every note of this song.
Enter Sandman by Metallica. That one’s on just about every playlist I’ve ever created. That is my second wind song. It’s funny, I think I have trained my body to pump out adrenaline when this one comes on.
Save Yourself by Stabbing Westward.
Wake Up by Rage Against the Machine. Love the bass in here.
Riot by Three Days Grace. Why not start one?
Hypnotize by System of a Down.
Snychronicity II by The Police.
15 Step by Radiohead.
Revelry by Kings of Leon (Every song on their last CD, Only by Night is excellent)
And how’s this for strange? I have a classical one on there:
Rain by Ryuichi Sakamoto. Great for a fast paced walk. Gets slow in the middle, so sometimes have to skip to the next song.
Some world music, too.
Jai Ho by AR Rahman. From the soundtrack Slumdog Millionaire. Westernized Bollywood. This is an uplifting song, I can listen to it three times back to back.
Sometimes I won’t make a playlist, I’ll just target a certain artist and listen to that.
What do you listen to when you work out?
What Am I Doing Up?
I was in the all night grocery store at 2 AM a few nights ago, just there for one thing but hell, when can I get out of there with one thing?
Grab some milk, bread, see some pretty eggplant and have a sudden urge to light that biatch and photograph it. Goes into the basket.
Get to the register and this dude at the counter, he asks me what I’m doing grocery shopping so late at night.
I’m quite stunned that someone has the nerve to ask me something like that. I’m not a bitch so I didn’t ask for his manager.
Besides, I like settling my own problems.
What I’m doing…
A million things cross my mind and not a single one of them is the truth. I didn’t owe him that. Nah, truth can be boring. Had he actually paid attention to what was in my basket, he wouldn’t have asked.
I could have told him I was a cop who just finished a stake out.
A doctor just finishing up an emergency thoracotomy.
A ghost hunter.
An insomniac musician with a craving for eggplant.
A bartender.
Hooker.
Stripper.
In the end I gave him the truth and something he deserved. I said, “Je ne comprends pas.”
My God What Are They Doing?
Blane asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I told him I want a big-ass cake, big enough to jump into.
I was kidding of course. I always thought it was a bit backwards that people jumped out of cakes and not into them.
Anyway, I didn’t think anyone would make me a cake today because it is a work and school day, but this house does smell the cake right now and I’m not allowed in the kitchen. They are all saying I will have a monster cake.
I’m ready to take the dive, man, ready.
I’ll update with photos later tonight or tomorrow.
This is also the last day of Holidailies and I’d like to thank Jette and Chip and everyone else who participated. It was just as enjoyable as I thought it would be.
Update: Here’s what they were up to.
The girls made me a monster cake with 5 layers and bought a healthy torte. I had made three layers last night and left them to decorate since the girls had school, but Spanky said, “No way, I have to bake it.”
So she baked two more layers and Kara did the icing.
It was so big the cake cracked while we were out eating.
I lit the candles with my little shotgun lighter.
Want some?
There’s enough for everyone, even the dogs got some.
Delicate Destruction
I love it when we have ice storms. Today was a strange one because the temperature fluctuated betweeen freezing and dripping (32-34 f).
Which means icicles. Yay!
This one is of the last minute of sun shining through the little spikes on the street sign. Reminds me of a lamp I used to have.
And Vegas dancing girls’ costumes.
So Spank and I went out to that bridge by the frozen woods and found a lot more icicles.
Just after I took this photo she did what any self-respecting kid would do, she ran her finger along the rail and sent every single one of them tumbling to the ground.
It sounded like a tiny piano, when you run your fingers across all the keys real fast.
I like that kinda stuff.
sock it to me
Years ago while Blane and I were in school we took a friend over to my parent’s house for Christmas. He was Jewish and all of his family were gone, so he didn’t have anything to do that day.
This guy came from super wealth, like industrial strength money, and we weren’t used to having guests like that over. My parents house was this little wooden one by the railroad tracks. So close, the house would rock when the train passed.
Anyway, when he walked in everyone was quiet for a while. They knew who he was, knew of the family he came from.
It was sorta funny, the house was full of people, our people, and this guy, he didn’t stick out like you’d think. His appearance was a bit on the sloppy side whereas we were all probably wearing new Christmas threads. But mostly, it was his background that made him seem so different. Right now I have this little Sesame Street tune in my head, “One of these things is not like the other…”
We didn’t have enough chairs for everyone to sit, so this guy, when he got tired, he just sat on the floor. When he did that, everyone realized he didn’t have any shoes on. AND, his socks didn’t match. Not even close. One black one and a white.
It was so quiet at that moment, maybe everyone was expecting the guy to have on designer socks.
My older brother Shane broke the ice, “Oh, you have a pair of socks like that, you, too, huh?”
All I can remember from the rest of that day was everyone laughing nonstop. It was that sort of good time.
Which brings me to this:
I finally found a use for all those mismatched socks that have been hanging out in the washroom. My kids have been stealing my good socks and I had to have something lest I get blisters on my feet. Can’t believe I never thought of this before.
I’m on my ninth day of the treadmill thing and am sore all over, I tell you. The exercise habit is well set and I’ve lost a couple of pounds already. Maybe a little more, not sure what is water weight, but my jeans are fitting a little better already.
How are you guys doing with that? Don’t make me come over there, now.
Collision of art, commerce, past, and present
There’s a shopping center near here with a bunch of cowboy days bronzes. I went there today to the camera shop and happened to have my camera with me. What a coincidence.
There are so many people there and so many cars, it’s difficult to get a shot of just the bronzes.
But I thought this one was funny because of the type of store it was in front of. Seriously, it’s a bronze cattle drive spread out right in front of a barbeque pit store.
I had to stand in the street to line it up like that and risk my dear dear life to oncoming traffic which was determined as hell to spend every last drop of Christmas money. There are sales and there are stampedes.
The next photo is just one part of a circle of cowboys around a campfire. I like the expression of wonder on this youth’s face as he listens the other bronze men talk. The Men’s Wearhouse sign behind him cracks me up.
I keep a fairly updated photoblog over at TheCuckoosNest if you like that kinda stuff.
I’ll be cleaning up some of the photos I took and will put them over there in the next day or so (all the good stuff goes there).
Without a Guide
Despite his alcoholism, my father was a brilliant man. He was in the Army Intelligence, so he had to be smart. It was that part of him I patiently waited to come out day after day. Walking home from the school bus, I used to wonder, What I am I coming home to today?
He wasn’t abusive, it’s not that. He did tend to have depression and would sometimes accuse us of things we did not do or complain about things we did not do enough of. The thing is, the alcoholism was a mask that went between what was an amazing person and the rest of the world. He would turn into this obnoxious and embarrassing person. Sober, he was a quiet and pensive man with an endless amount of patience.
That was when I had a real father. He had worked all over the world and knew so much about so many different cultures. I was fascinated with this. Still am. He was the sort of person to step off the trail or go past the “end of road” sign and explore The Beyond without a guide. He especially liked seeking out nomads in the deserts of North Africa and in the jungles of South America. I greatly admired his fearlessness with regards to the world and The Unknown.
This is a photo someone took of my dad in Tunis
At home however, the things he did know caught up with and devoured him. Too much time to think about them, I guess.
One trip he never talked about was that two year hitch in Korea. The War. We always thought that was the thing that made him drink.
If my father was working Stateside, he was extremely unhappy and restless. He was always mumbling, “I want to work overseas.” That was his mantra. But we never thought he was trying to outrun us. He wasn’t.
One time, he tried to take us with him. When I was fifteen, we were inches from moving to Spain. Everything was lined up, he had a place there, and the details sorted out. He was working in Libya at the time and the plan was for him to meet up with us in Spain during his off days. At the last minute something happened between the US and Libya and the entire thing was called off. Americans were forced to leave Libya, so he lost that job.
So I never did get to travel abroad with my father. Not physically. Through his stories and thousands of photographs, I did. I also inherited his restless spirit, that need to explore new places, new people, to get the flock outta here.
After I became a nurse, when I’d get new issues of my nursing mags, I’d skip all the way to the back, to the ads about traveling nurses. I looked at all the different places I could go and daydreamed. There’s been a worldwide nursing shortage for a long time and I worked with a lot of nurses who did this thing.
All I could do was dream though, Blane always had the higher paying job, so his career plans trumped mine and eventually I stayed at home to raise the kids and quit nursing.
This I want to go overseas thing became my mantra, but not until after my father died. I didn’t need to have a job abroad to travel. We could just go there. And we did, many times. Always took the kids with us, too.
I can’t say I took them to all these places because that is what I wish my father had done with me. I don’t wish I had a childhood like them.
I’m glad I didn’t go until I was an adult and wanted to explore all these new places. It is very different when someone takes you somewhere versus you taking them along.
I still have these daydreams about being a traveling nurse. I haven’t worked in the field in years, but you know where I see myself one day? On a medical sailboat (it exists) that travels the world giving immunizations to people in remote locations.
Not all of my dreams are nomadic in nature. I also fantasize about sitting at a typewriter in a cottage somewhere in the English countryside writing a novel. About what, I don’t know, but the image is in my head along with one of me in a wooden house near the French Quarter doing the same thing.
None of my “visions” have me here where I sit writing this blog post. Not one.
That is a a photo one of the girls took of me on this trip.
Don’t Smother Me Bro
The only traditions our family had for New Year’s were to eat some black-eyed peas and cabbage. One is for good luck and the other for money, but I always wanted both so I just knew to eat a bite of each and I was good for a year, no need to memorize what goes with what.
I do think cabbage is the money one since lettuce is slang for dollar bills.
So I went to the grocery for the ingredients. There is no tasso (smoked pork chunks) here, but I did see some smoked hog jowls. I have never eaten that before, but what the hey, I’m a Cajun and it looked ghetto enough to go in my smothered cabbage.
Does that sound scary? Smothered cabbage?
It always did to me, especially when I was little. How about smothered chicken? I could just hear the poor chickie squaking as my mom shoved the lid down on that pot.
Anyway, I’ve been gone from Louisiana so long I second guessed myself on how to smother cabbage. I think my mom used to boil down the cabbage first, then smother it. But I don’t know, it seems like that would boil out the vitamins.
So I checked the trusty internet and found this recipe on cooks.com:
Okay, I know you won’t hit that link so I’ll just show you an excerpt. This is a real recipe.
Saute onion, garlic and bell pepper in butter. Remove all stuffing from pillow and replace with sauteed seasonings. Set aside. Wash heads of cabbage using warm water and a mild shampoo. Dry thoroughly using a blow dryer and diffuser. Place cabbage heads on a soft surface. Cover the cabbage heads with the pillow and press firmly until cabbage is completely smothered.
(You will know they are smothered when they stop screaming). Remove pillow…
Noooooooo.
Anyway. Here’s how I do mine.
2 heads cabbage
some bacon, tasso, or hog jowls
salt and pepper
onion and bell pepper
garlic
can of chicken broth
Cut cabbage into two inch cubess. Put in a gigantic pot of boiling water or steamer and cook until wilted. While that’s cooking, fry bacon and drain off almost all the fat. Throw your onions, peppers, and garlic in there and saute. Add can of chicken broth, then toss in the steamed cabbage a little at a time because it can’t all fit in the pot at once. It cooks down a lot. As it shrinks, add more cabbage. Keep the lid on tight while it cooks on medium low flame. Stir often.
That’s my steamed cabbage being added (upper right) and the smothered cabbage (left). This is how much one head cooks down. The whole deal takes about a couple of hours to cook.
And that’s it for the holiday cooking season. I’m exhausted and damn glad it’s all over. I feel like a new person already.
