Currently I am:
Puzzling over the last paragraph I'll have my students write for their final, sitting in Yusi's empty (though very clean considering the festivities of last night) apartment, sipping coffee, wondering if my cell phone battery will survive until Tara calls me about dinner.
So how was your Thanksgiving?
Mine was fun. It began with me winded and lightheaded on Yusi's couch after I'd biked my heart out with a backpack full of cooking ingredients and equipment plus a large thermos in the basket throwing off my steering. I still had to get more to buy however, so I took a cab to the supermarket. Cold-wind/exercise induced headache aside, the taxi turned out to be a good idea because I bought a lot of semi-heavy stuff. Such as a big (2 liter?) glass bottle of apple juice.
This brings me to the dishes I then cooked starting at 3:30 and continuing until guests started arriving around 6:30...
Apple cider was at the top of my list, as I figured I could mull that stuff up and throw it in a thermos and pretty much forget about it without any heat loss. Surprisingly, it's really easy to make spiced cider (ok, neither was it made from unprocessed apple juice nor did it have any brandy, but I still like calling it cider instead of spiced processed apple juice). Thank goodness for those cloves I was able to find, in Baoding (indeed!), last semester. It was a big hit and got drunk all up and down. I'll make more for Christmas. Perhaps I'll even experiment with brandy this time. I just can't say.
Other culinary experiments included:
-Reconstituted crasins into cranberry sauce (a Townhouse 65 original)
-Mashed potatoes sans sour cream, but I did make a batch with some ranch seasoning. Thanks Katie.
-Pumpkin bread (not as good as the last batch I made, might have been that I got lazy and bought a pre-chopped up squash instead of but I was still ok with the result)
-Toasted garlic bread with cheddar atop.
-Faux-poultry delite (this was Yusi's creation. I had at this point joined the guests who were arriving. Earlier, he had bought the fake bird meat [some of which was shaped like a duck, in fact] at the all-veggie-meat shop down the street. Yes, we actually have one of those down the street. Go figure. I always donate my change to the orphanage fund with a picture of an altruistic looking Buddhist monk on the box.)
We proceeded to eat; pass around assorted liquor ranging from Chinese beer, Jameson, and Dan's homemade wine; discuss; encircle Kim while she sat in one of the armchairs (which turned out to be some sort of weird social Bermuda Triangle that sucked everyone in at one point or another during the night); recite French dialogues we we remembered from high school; and eventually get around to pulling names for Secret Santa.
I won't tell you for whom I am a Secret Santa. You can't make me tell you. You'll just have to wait until the holiday party and see.
But seriously now, my cell phone keeps screaming at me in Chinese to just plug it the eff in. I should go bike back to my own empty apartment now.
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