Take Back the Holiday!

ENOUGH ALREADY! No more of this nonsense! Black Friday starts earlier each year. Walmart and Toys R Us are opening at 8:00 Thanksgiving evening, Target at 9:00, etc. This is insanity. Half my family works in healthcare, the other half in a combination of retail & hospitality. Obviously, healthcare workers, police & fire people need to work holidays. I understand restaurants and hotels being open on holidays. But who needs to go to Michael's on Thanksgiving? Seriously? You can't wait until tomorrow to get that latch-hook tree-skirt kit? Come Christmas morning, Sophia is not going to know when you bought her VTech Tablet. Aiden will not care that you left Thanksgiving dinner to go buy him a Dreamlight Pillow Pet. He might, however, remember that you weren't there to read a bedtime story.

Have I mentioned Holidays are at my house? We actually like that, it's our choice. The restaurant my husband works at is open most of Thanksgiving for people too lazy to make their own meal. For years now, we've dealt with him not being home until evening. Holiday dinners are already tricky. Now that my parents stopped doing the snowbird thing, they're here for the holidays, and they're old. Really old. "I don't understand why they call it an 'Early Bird Special'. It's served at dinnertime" old. Now the store my niece works at is open Thanksgiving and she may have to be late. My son's store starts Black Friday Thursday evening. A couple more years and it will be impossible to find a time when everyone can be here for dinner.

Peanut prepares for a holiday dinner.
My family may prep differently than yours.

I'm planning for eight to ten people. What on Earth do people with big families do? It is time we Take Back the Holiday! Refuse to shop those Doorbuster Specials. Resist the urge ~ you can do it. Do not shop until normal store hours on Friday. It may take a couple of years ~ but we can win this. We can get our families home for Thanksgiving. Don't shop on Thanksgiving at all. So you forgot the mini-marshmallows, be creative, make a streusel topping instead, or put sugar on it, pull out your blowtorch and have Yam Brulée. Actually, I'm kind of intrigued by yam brulée. Forgot the wine ~ have bourbon instead, it's more American. Forgot the dinner rolls? Tell everyone you've reduced carbs in the meal so we can all have a bigger piece of pie! Who'll argue that?

Can't wait to save thirteen cents on stocking stuffers? Get over it. Buy one less present to make up the difference, we have too much crap anyway. Take Back the Holiday! Don't just not shop. E-mail those corporations and let them know that you have a life and therefore will not be spending money in their stores between 12:01 Thursday and 9:00 Friday so they needn't be open. As sales go down, they'll catch on. Don't you miss holidays where everyone hung out for hours, eating, watching the game, talking about whoever didn't show up? I know I do. Refuse to cooperate with mass-merchandisers (by the way ~ small businesses can't afford to hire the people necessary to be open for twenty-four hours straight, if this becomes the norm, what do they do?). Live your life on your terms. When the L-tryptophan from that turkey dinner kicks in, you should be safely on someone's sofa with your pants unbuttoned, snoring. Do not encourage people to drive to mall while groggy ~ that's dangerous. Take Back the Holiday! It's a matter of public safety.

COOKIE!

I even make cakes that like cookies!
BTW ~ I'm posting this on Joey's
26th birthday.
Happy Birthday, Sweetie!

As Thanksgiving rolls around and the furnace (despite its amazing skin-drying abilities) becomes one of my nearest & dearest, I start thinking about cookies. I like to have at least ten kinds of cookies by Christmas, and at least two candies. I love cookies. I love baking cookies. I love eating cookies (one doesn't become "The Spherical" by shunning sweets). I love experimenting with cookies ~ one of last year's experiments, a cookie that was supposed to be green and red, turned out so ugly it was dubbed "reindeer turds". At least it tasted good. One year, again trying to get red & green, I created a cookie that looked like  moldy, raw hamburger. Even the reindeer turds were more appetizing. One creation, the stained glass cookie, was beautiful. It really was. It tasted like food coloring. Blech.

Oh no! The aliens have arrived!

This year, I've already tried two experiments, in my first batch no less. Candy corn and salted peanuts make a tasty combination, so I thought candy corn in peanut butter cookies, sprinkled with salt instead of sugar, would be wonderful, plus, the cheery fall colors would make a terrific Thanksgiving cookie. I was wrong. Candy corn melts. I knew it would, just not quite so much. Instead of a cheery fall cookie, we were invaded by aliens. Really nasty tasting aliens.

The second experiment worked much better, except I forgot to take a picture. Peanut butter and bacon cookies! Since it was an Elvis inspiration, I think I'll call them King's Cookies. They were nummilicious. I still need to work on the proportions, but it's definitely a keeper. As I progress through my Christmas baking, I'll keep you apprised of the successes and disasters. Especially the disasters, they're usually much more entertaining. Seriously, I wish I had a picture of the moldy-raw-hamburger cookies, you'd be amazed that a cookie could look that bad.