PLANET3RRY

It was looking like some of my Christmas Traditions were going to be broken this year…

I had wanted to bake a bunch of stuff this year, but that didn’t happen. We did almost make gingerbread trains and I did successfully make some Peanut Butter fudge using my grandmother’s recipe. The recipe makes 2.25 lbs of fudge. The street value of this fudge is like $63! Seriously… if you go to The Fudgery at the Outlet Mall, they charge around $7 for a “slab” or 1/4 lb of fudge. Now out of all the fudge I made and brought to South Carolina, I must have eaten about $56 of it myself in about 3 days. Oh, it was so good… mmmm Fudge.

So, although I didn’t get to bake everything that I wanted, I made something.

Next was Christmas Specials…

Christmas TV specials used to mean something before the advent of DVDs. I used to wait all year to hear that CBS special music intro that a special event was getting ready to air. Now that all the kids that loved those shows now have full time jobs and can pay money to relive their childhood, the shows are all on DVD ready to be seen anytime of the year.

In the early 1990s while I was in college, I would watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas every chance that TBS aired it. Sometimes they’d even have a mini-marathon of shows. But then as I grew older, I moved toward movies.

A Christmas Story was the first movie that I paid my way as an adult. And well, no matter how often I watch it, I can watch it again. I hadn’t seen the movie yet in 2008 before arriving in South Carolina, but I knew that TBS (or was it TNT) would (I hope) have a 24 hour A Christmas Story Marathon (like they have in the past). And they didn’t disappoint. I watched part of the movie late Christmas Eve and the rest of the movie Christmas Morning.

Christmas Vacation I have on VHS but I should get it on DVD. Seeing that we only have the cable hooked on down stairs, we don’t watch much regular broadcast television. And I don’t spend much time at the TV, but I could fire up the computer and watch the movie on the laptop. Funny, funny movie. I was worried that I wasn’t going to see the movie this year. I hadn’t seen it before leaving for South Carolina and I honestly thought I would miss it. Luckily on the 23rd, I flipped through the channels and catch “most” of the movie. Not my favorite part, but enough of the good stuff and since I had seen it many times, I didn’t actually have to sit down and “watch” it. I could be up and active with the kids when I needed.

Elf is more recent movie that has made a place for itself. The main character in the movie, Buddy, brought the slang word (as far as I can tell) Ginormous to our slang vocabulary. It’s a great movie and the kids actually sat through the entire movie, so that was nice that we could enjoy the movie in it’s entirety. My Lovely and Talented Wife love it so much that we don’t even have to see certain parts of the movie, just knowing that a funny scene is coming up is enough for us to start laughing hysterically. And we make references to the movie all the time.

So, I think I end there for last year’s Christmas season recap. Now, hopefully it won’t be February when I get around to the New Year’s Eve recap…

SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!!!!

Yes, it’s the Eve to Christmas Eve and we are ready to shop! Being near Myrtle Beach means one thing… okay it means a few things… but for the womens in the family it mean SHOPPING. And nothing says shopping like OUTLET MALLS. I mean, the beach needs something to do when it’s raining, so the outlet malls have began to fester in the Myrtle Beach area.

I was able to coordinate meeting with Devaney and Andy (DevAndy) to meet us at the Beach. They live in Wilmington, NC which is about an hour away. It had been over a year since I had seen him. Devaney is one of my best friends from Longwood College and also my Big Brother in my fraternity.  We met up at Wal-mart (since it’s a good location and EVERYBODY knows where to find Wal-mart) and went to eat over at BoJangles. The Rice Bowls at BoJangles (as far as we know) are Gluten Free Casein Reduced (has some cheese) and are very tasty and filling too. We were pleased.

DevAndy and our gang said our goodbyes and headed off in our own directions. Them, back home; us, OUTLETS. The first thing we did was unleash our Au Pair to go shop. She wasn’t able to arrange anything for Christmas so she came home with us. We instructed her NOT to work, since it was a vacation for her and there were plenty of family members to take care of the kids. Now, when you mention the word “Shopping” to our Au Pair, her eyes light up and a smile grows on her face. Clothes, especially Brand Name, are crazy expensive in Brazil… therefore the Outlet stores are like Crack Houses to her. The regular store price of something might be $100, well, the outlet price might be $50-70 if it’s still in-season… in Brazil it’s like $200-300. So either way she wins and so does her sister and boyfriend and other friends. Let’s just say we were glad we brought the van…

****cousins****

The Elder loved His Cousin when he came to visit a few years back, but now he got to meet his other Cousin too. The Older Cousin is 8yo, with very much the intelligence beyond his years. I’m sure if he’s doing recreational calculus in the school playground, but he’s well read and well spoken. And boy, does he enjoy to speak. The Younger Cousin is 6yo and more of the observer when it came to processing new people. In the first 30 seconds of coming into Lolo & Lola’s house, The Older Cousin was already telling us something while the Younger Cousin was seeing if these new creatures were friendly or not.

It didn’t help that Lola was demanding hugs from the grandsons. The Older Cousin reluctantly gave her a hug and the Younger cousin tried to run away and did the “Hug-My-Back” maneuver. All the kids seemed to hit it off pretty well from what I remember. There wasn’t a trip to Emergency Room, so things worked out okay. At some point in time I think The Cousins became bored with my kids, perhaps do to the fact that The Elder and The Younger were relishing in the brain rotting televisions all over the house. I think they were watching some Christmas Scooby Doo episode.

So, needing an adult conversation, the Older Cousin starts asking about The Elder and what videos and video games he has. We proceed to talk about different things, such as Harry Potter and Star Wars. He had a one sided with me about the Lego Star Wars game along with some other video games that I had never played. I kept throwing curve balls out to him about different topics. I asked him who shot first Han or Greedo.

The Younger Cousin tried to chime in the conversation but he couldn’t talk fast enough to get in what he wanted to say. His dad even stepped in sometimes to help but the Older Cousin would pip in… he did tried to show restraint, but it was very difficult for him. I asked the Younger Cousin questions point blank so that his executive function could catch up with him. It’s not that he didn’t know what he wanted to say, it’s just that getting it from the neurons to the mouth was slower than the Older’s Cousin response time and patience. But I think that Younger Cousin was appreciative of the attention that I gave, which in all respects, he deserves. And with no prompting, the Younger Cousin asked if he could sit on my lap… why sure!

The Cousins became instant best friends and we were one day closer to Christmas.

It’s been like a year since I have posted any content. So now, I got quite a bit of stuff to blog about but I don’t want to just dump it in one post. I’ll have to feed you the elephant one spoon at a time.

So when we last left our hero, he was getting ready to pack up his Wild and Crazy Family and head to visit the In-Laws in South Carolina. Not only were the human kids going but we were bringing our furry kid. Typically when we travel, the dog (Skip) gets to go to doggy jail were he gets so excited that they have to give him a sedative so he won’t hurt himself. So, on Saturday 12-22 and ON TIME, we headed out for Carolina: Southside.

****The Travel****

The trip wasn’t all that bad. It was definitely longer because of eating and potty breaks. We ended up eating KFC and trying to take all the breading off to keep the kids Gluten Free… so it was really Gluten reduced. I got an early Christmas present… I was walking Skip at a rest stop when I went over to the  “Pet Walk” which is in the much inconvenient place. As I passed by a drain gutter, I noticed President Andrew Jackson look at me from the mouth of the drain. There in plain site and right on the ground was a $20 bill. KA-CHING!

****Lolo & Lola’s House****

Lolo and Lola are Tagalog (Tuh-GOL-ig) for Grandfather and Grandmother. So we kept prefacing that we were going to Lolo & Lola’s house and the kids were so happy that we were finally there. And course so were Mommy and Daddy. From the first time that the kids stepped foot in the house, Lola (very loudly) wanted to get hugs from the kids. The Elder (with sensory and aspergian traits) prefers to scan and acclimate to his new surroundings, then once he is comfortable will show affection with some prodding. The Younger, well, he just loves to hug and get the attention. So while The Elder was trying to avoid getting hugged, The Younger was having blast.

One of the things about Lolo & Lola’s house that fascinated the kids were all the new choking hazards and potential injury play stations. Another thing were the large TVs on the same level of the house. Our biggest TV is around 36″ and downstairs. They had a 42″+ flat screen in the den, plus a 36″ TV in the eating area and then a huge TV in their bedroom. It’s like going to Sam’s and seeing the 3lb bag of M&Ms for the first time. Another “fun” feature for the kids is that the light switchs are lower and easier to operate. Thus Little People can make manual strobe light effects, which doesn’t make the Older People all that happy.

****Skipper Run’s Free****

More on Skip in a minute, but he had the BEST time. Not only did he get plenty of attention, he got a huge amount of exercise. He actually did very well off the leash… I was impressed, but if there were other dogs around, it might not go over so well.

Thanks for Christmas
Thank you for the love and happiness that’s snowing down, all around
Thanks for Christmas
Thank you for the winter friendliness that’s snowing down, all around the worldIt’s nearer, children’s eyes shine clearer now
As they decorate the trees, all across the seven seas
It’s nearer, yule log fires burn clearer now
In the winter’s frosty air, sing with us and we can share our

Thanks for Christmas
Thank you for the love and happiness that’s snowing down, all around
Thanks for Christmas
Thank you for the winter friendliness that’s snowing down, all around the world

It’s dawning, Santa’s reindeer yawning now
All their festive work is done, filling houses up with fun
It’s dawning, here is Christmas morning now
Greatest day of all the year, listen out and you will hear our

Thanks for Christmas

It’s such a shame it’s only one day every year
Three hundred and sixty-four days full of doubts and fear
You’ve been saving your love up, let it out, ‘cos Christmas is here

Thanks for Christmas
Thank you for the love and happiness that’s snowing down, all around
Thanks for Christmas
Thank you for the winter friendliness that’s snowing down, all around the world

Thanks for Christmas

Yesterday we had our Christmas party for my place of work. For the second time we had a local pub within walking (or stumbling) distance host our lunchtime celebration. The Old Guys provided the ham and turkey and the bar provided the fixins. We had green beans, mashed potatoes, rolls, gravy and cranberry sauce in addition to the meat. I passed on the gluten ladened dinner rolls, but I did get some of the gravy. Most gravies have flour in them as a thickener.

Funny aside story: My Father In-Law was making some gravy and was using cornstarch as a thickener. If you’ve never used cornstarch, not only will it soothe a baby’s bottom from diaper rash, but when used as a thickener, you don’t need a whole lot. So, he puts some in, stirs and stirs, still liquid, puts some more in, stirs and stirs, puts some more in… by the time that he was done, you could ask for a slice of gravy with your potatoes.

In the past, after the lunch, we have a gift exchange and a dessert feast where everyone brings in a dessert from home. However, this year, we were doing a chocolate fondue for the dessert. Fancy huh? Here in East Tennessee we pronounce the “t” in Gourmet! So, we signed up for items for dippage. I chose the fat free, gluten free, casein free Marshmallow as the item I would bring.

So we were in the conference room dipping and eating and more dipping and one of the items on the table was chocolate brownies. Not the normal made from the box chocolate brownies. These were homemade from one of the respected bakers in our workgroup. The looked so moist and packed with chocolate. I sat there and fantasized about eating one of those brownies… but NO, they had gluten in them. Sure, I was eating a bunch of casein in the milk and white chocolate fondues, but I had been pretty good about the gluten (from the gravy).

But then, some how a brownie ended up on my plate. In front of Congress, I would have to say “I do not recall picking up the brownie.” THat’s my story… hell, it has worked before. So, I had the brownie with some chocolate and oh my, it was so moist and delicious. It was SO worth eating. I mean, if you are going to break the rules, it should be worth it. And since I had ONE brownie in one flavor of chocolate, I had to eat ANOTHER one, right?

So, I had maybe 4 brownies all in all. I had a normal afternoon and evening. Even the morning was shaping up nicely, took The Elder to school and then it hit me. BAMM! The Gluten Effect started in… as I was driving into work, I was feeling my eyes get heavy… very heavy. I made it in to work and sitting in my chair things began to dim. I’m not exactly sure how long I was out, but it must have been a while. I was dead to the world.

Once I was back in reality, things were fine and I didn’t feel tired or exhausted or bad at all. And so now, we’ll be in SC and there will be plenty of Gluten temptations around… I just know.

No Holiday Shopping experience would be complete without going to The Mall. That stress free place where everyone is happy to be there and order and peace are shared with a cup of cheer.

When My Lovely and Talented Wife suggested that, I thought I would rather poke sharp sticks in my eyes, eat shards of glass and roll around in hot coals. Then I reconsidered… glass has a high silica content. I drove tentatively heading East to Hell The Mall, waiting for any chance to have to jump on to the back streets to get through the heavy traffic of other shoppers heading to Hell The Mall.

Surprisingly enough, I didn’t have to make any drastic off road ventures. No Road Rage. Parking was a little more difficult though, we didn’t find anything right up close, but the parking lot didn’t look like it was the Christmas holidays.

Upon entering Sears, there was no large crowd. Making our way through the extra racks of Must Haves, we made our way to the Mall Highway. Again, there was a lack of human beings that made it seem subdued. Perhaps, Monday had a bigger effect than what I imagined. And that it was a little later, only 7pm, but even at 9pm the volume of people didn’t seem to have waned any. So has the volume of shoppers been consistently down?

Hell The Mall is about the same as it ever was. It had been months since I had been to Hell The Mall, most of the same shops were there, but a few were moved. The Kiosks that disease the middle aisle of Hell The Mall, had changed a bit to fit “The Next Great Thing” or the “Coolest New Crap”.

We stopped at Starbuck’s Wannabe Barnie’s to get our snobby over priced coffees. Although we did have to ask for “Soy” (at a premium) we didn’t have to use weird size names, I got to say “Small” when I wanted the diminutive size. I was pretty excited because I saw they had the White Chocolate Sugar Water Flavored Syrup. I am one Frothing Mug Short of being able to play Starbuck’s at home. “NO, Curse You get it RIGHT! Tall does NOT mean Large, and It’s GRANNN-DAY not GRAND and I don’t care you can’t say Venti… JEEZ, you are 2 and A HALF Years old, how are you going to survive in world? Oh yeah, you’re dang cute… that’s be $17.50″

However, the guy behind the counter recognized the TMBG Fleece sweatshirt that I had on. Apparently, he had one too. Wow, cool, yeah…

I was really hoping that I would have some great material about our experience in Hell The Mall, but sadly, it was just about as mundane as  every other trip.

Oh, one store that had a relocation and an noticeable increase in store volume was Victoria Secret. They have started Marketing even younger now, trying to get the girls branded earlier so that when they do need that Wonderbra or lace teddy, VS come to mind faster than the Lingerie Department at Wally World. I called I Love Pink or something like that based on Pink University, which on a lot of different levels is just wrong, but let’s pretend it’s about being in love with the color Pink. The Marketeers definitely have that store coated in Pink. Pink this Pink that… pink pink pink. I *heart*Pink. Yeah… Aerosmith “Hearts” pink… no sexual overtones there *cough cough*. So another “Sex Sells” Marketing ploy… where else but in Hell The Mall.

The Sprint Store, which we went into go look at new phones since I am eligible for an upgrade, but the 1 guy that was there was on the phone the entire time and didn’t make one move to try to help us. No big problem though, he wouldn’t have made a sale. But I think I did decide that the Katana DLX is very sexy (sorry, still thinking about Victoria’s Secret - effective marketing)  but I might wait until after Christmas just to see what the new stuff they bring for their after Christmas sales.

After Sprint, I drooled over… not passing the Victoria Secret store again, but the Godiva Chocolatier store. Go figure… another woman reference, except she’s TOTALLY naked, not just wearing silky skivvies. So where am I? Oh yeah… Mmmmm Chocolate. However, my fatigue overpowered my desire to window shop over Casein rich treats.

We did see a minor Knoxville Celebrity… Mayor Haslam. He was out carousing the malls for something. We technically live in the county, so he’s not my Mayor, but he’s a public servant and in the community’s eye.

Another store of no interest was one that had nothing in it but Black and White clothes. How utterly DULL. Come to think of it, that’ were Victoria Secret used to be…

We spent a good time in Williams Sonoma looking at the nice dreamy kitchen appliances. Of course, the nice plump pink Kitchen Aide stand mixer with the all the “attachments” was top of the list. They had some great stuff there, but we had to leave Hell The Mall and bid Adieu. So we left and went to a more practical store, Target.

My Lovely and Talented Wife were commenting on how in our subdivision there has been many more houses that I have put out lights this year. The “Main Drag” seems to be a runway of Christmas lights and “That House” which always has the tackiest Christmas lights seems to have grown since last year.

One house which is always fun to see is the Christmas Dolphin house. These people have their hearts in the Tropics and their home in Knoxville. We took the kids on an abbreviated Christmas Lights tour over the weekend and I tried to capture video of the Christmas Dolphin to share with everyone.

If you can’t quite make out the sun, it’s on the left behind a tree, unfortunately, there is no good place to park to film. There are 2 palm trees and a pink flamingo in the lower right hand corner. The thing that moving across the screen is a dolphin with a Santa Claus hat on! There’s even a splash effect for the dolphin.

It’s 8 days until Christmas, why didn’t anyone tell me? Holy St. Nick Batman! I haven’t even seen Christmas Vacation or A Christmas Story yet! Actually, I am safe with A Christmas Story, TBS (or is it TNT) will play it for 24 hours straight right before Christmas (Damn, what a great country!).

Saturday we “tried” to make “cookies”. Remember when you were younger less mature, when you thought you’d mess with your Mom and take the labels off all the cans and let her “figure” them out? No? Oh. Well, the equivalent happened to us with our Gingerbread Mix. Seeing that we don’t have a good consistent All Purpose Gluten Free Flour Mixture yet, we have had to rely on boxed mixes for our baked goods. The Gingerbread mix that we had was for Spice Cake and if you changed up the recipe you could make it for gingerbread.

The “plan” was to make a batch of Gingerbread mix so the kids could make some gingerbread trains. Then we could make some frosting and the kids could make a huge mess of the kitchen while being hopped up on crack sugar. Apparently, when you open a box of mix, the Box Fairy, will come and remove the most important boxes to orphan the bag of mix, leaving you with a bag of mix. Unless you have a photographic memory, another box just like it or some creative juices, you are stuck with a nice paper weight. However, my secret weapon is My Lovely and Talented Wife and her uncanny ability to play free cell surf the internet for answers to questions that plague us.

She secured us a recipe from the same company of the mix that we were using. However, the amount of stuff “seemed” a little odd, but what do I know? I’m just a buffoon guy and she is the all-knowing hot chick woman, so if I didn’t want to sleep outside, I just better agree with her. It’s always better to have to fix things than try to argue in the beginning, because us guys are better at fixing things.

The batter seemed a little “runny” and at the time, it didn’t seem odd that we had the kids spooning the batter into the train stoneware mold. I was just thinking that the fine details of the train would show up because the more liquid mix would find those small cracks and crevices.

The result, although tasted good, did not turn out very well. Apparently, we made something that was airy like a cake but hardened like cookies. And the there was no way to get the cookies out of the mold. So there was no Christmas Train cookies. But it was fun to make the cookies with the kids. If we were staying in town, I would make some Monster Cookies, because I can make them GF (and really even Casein Free too) but it takes a couple of hours to bake them all, even with our double oven.

Here is My Lovely and Talented Wife’s Account of us “making” “cookies”

******

I’m thinking about making Reese PB Clone using the White Chocolate Wonderful Peanut Butter. I just have to make sure that we have the ingredients, however, this can be time consuming because of the chocolate dip. However, our Au Pair has brought some delicious peanut butter treats from Brazil that are the equivalent to Naked Reese Peanut Butter Cylinders. So Maybe, I don’t need to worry about the chocolate coating. Maybe I’ll make Peanut Butter Christmas Trains…

*******

I had also wrote about the need for a Casein Free Heavy Cream. Well, I never found a Casein Free Heavy Cream, but I did find Soy Whipped Topping, which was the heaviest thing I couple find. Now, the cookbook that I have, did say that I could use Soy milk and Butter as a substitute for heavy cream. So that might be another disaster experiment to document.

******

And one final baking note, I did start (but did not finish) a photo-documentary on making my own potato starch. Apparently there IS a difference between Potato Starch and Potato Flour and I have no potato flour. Potato Starch can be made fairly simply with squeeze the crap out of potatoes… definitely a stress relieving activity. I was able to get the starch out the two potatoes that I had but the turned a red color. Not sure why… I didn’t cut myself, no bloody nose or anything.

So, I will probably Buy a bag of potato starch and then try to make my own. I think that I can make my own White Rice Flour with our Vitamix… I think all I need to do is put it in the Vitamix and then grind the Hell out of it.

 I was tagged by Maddy over at Whitterer on Autism for a Christmas Meme, so here are my answers. Feel free to play if you would like

“When people say ‘Christmas’ you immediately think…”

Time to make a Christmas Music Playlist

“Favourite Christmas memory…”

When I was younger, baking a ton of stuff with my mom

“Favourite Christmas song/carol…”

This one is hard for me because I love Christmas music. I guess that I will go with “Thanks for Christmas” by XTC. Not only is it from my favorite group, it’s a great optimistic look at the world at Christmas time.

“Favourite Christmas movie…”

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

“Favourite Christmas character…”

The Three Wisemen. Yeah, I know, those are 3 people, but they always come in a package. They are part of Jesus’ first visitors and they brought some fine swag with them.

“Favourite Christmas ornament/object…”

In 1992, Hallmark came out with the Star Trek Enterprise ornament for Christmas. It was a HOT ornament. Retail value was around $20, but by the next year, I saw it at a Sci-Fi shop for $200. And a couple years after that it was going for $400 on eBay. Not sure what it is going right now…

“Plans for this Christmas…”

Travel to South Carolina for Christmas

“Is Christmas your favourite holiday?”

Yes, but not for candy… that’s Easter!

Our Sunday School Soiree wasn’t too bad. Although I should have had something to drink, just to take the edge off… it was okay. I think there were only a few times that I had to wander around trying to get into the conversations. I found out that one guy is home brewer and was going to travel 2 hours (one way) just to get specialty beer. (I need to hang out with him more) and another guy has the saem cholestoral problem as I do. Borderline high (around 210ish) and no matter what we do, is doesn’t go down… curse you genetics!!! I was telling him about the Smoothie (or ’schmovie’ as The Younger calls it) that I have almost every morning that has premium flax seed oil and that has helped a bunch.

The gift exchange was a riot. Everyone who brought a gift pulled a number out of the hat. And in order, you picked a gift OR you could take a gift that was already chosen. For Example, the person who was picking 8th could take the gift that the 3rd person opened. The 3rd person would then either chose someone else’s gift or pick a new one. An open gift could only be taken 3x, meaning the person taking it the 3rd had it forever. Our Elvis clock was the first to be “taken” by another couple. Two gifts stood out, a wig and a Mrs. Claus nightie. The wig (as we found out) was a wig that was used as a spare and for “replacement plugs”, but it looked between a cross between Mrs. Brady and 80s Mullet. It actually got “Taken” by another person who was going to wear it to work (he is a little on the receeding hair side). The Mrs. Claus nightie was a red, wrap around (not much in the “around” part), lingerie that had a santa hat. You can imagine that there was quite a bit of comments going around.

Ours was the Blue Suede Shoes Elvis Clock

The glasses are surprisingly REAL glass!

Our gift was something that we could actually “use”, sort of. We got a pair of butt ugly wine glasses and two decorative wine toppers. The tree wine stopper actually looks nice. The Santa one, is just plain gross hilarious. If you look at the Santa topper, it makes it look like Santa is taking a huge dump right into the wine. Granted, some wine doesn’t taste too far off from a nice porclein libation (ask your Dog which flavor is best), but do I need Santa “looking” like I was on the “naughty” list AND he ran out of coal?

What I had forgotten was that The Elder was having his Christmas Party on Saturday. My Lovely and Talented Wife had an appointment so this meant that I would need to being the kids and she would meet me there. Easy enough. In fact, we made it the place 20 minutes early and we drove around the country backroads so that The Younger could sleep some more.

All but one of The Elder’s classmates were there. So, the house was full of kids, parents and two babies. It was very nice and easy to chat with these parents. They are in the same situation as we are with The Elder. I don’t think I brought up running once! I did take out Stella and have to download pictures from her. Not sure that I got any good pictures, but I’ll check.

It was very nice to network with some other parents with kids the same age as our kids and some with even siblings who don’t have Aspergers, so it’s very similar.