The Annual Christmas Shirts

Here is this  year's almost-finished pair of shirts I've been making for son #4.
He's the musician-mountain climber with a passion for cleaning up the planet and he lives his life that way, frugally and tidily.

If the distance isn't too far, he takes a bus to his gigs and fortunately he plays small instruments that can be toted.

The bird or animal patterns began years ago when  as a joke I made him a shirt with sea turtle  pattern; he loved it and asked for more. The shirt above on the right is an owl pattern.

I've been working my way more or less through the endangered species  and I've covered a lot of them.

Last year the gorilla shirt was a big hit.

This year, on compassionate grounds, I made one "normal" shirt to accompany the owls.

You're a good sport, #4.

The Case of the Missing Shoe Polish

These basement shelves are action central in my house-- I  label anything that can't argue and keep like with like so my system makes it easy to locate items.
Unless I change my system--then there's trouble..

 I was putting away the summer stuff  and thought I'd better give the winter shoes a polish but the polish was missing.  

In the past it had been stored in an open pink  plastic basket on those shelves--really easy to spot.

I vaguely recalled that I had switched the container for a smaller plastic bin with a lid. So how hard can that be to find?

It took days to zero in on it. I scoured the basement and then moved my search upstairs.

The logical place to keep it was in the sewing room; that made sense because the shoes were kept right across the hall.

The elusive box is in this picture but it took me three days to actually locate it.

See that shelf to the left of the clock? That's where it is.

I was ironing and idly glancing about with the dratted polish in mind and the box almost jumped out at me.

I blame it on my gem of a label maker. It's digital and lots of fun but the label is  tiny.

See what I mean?
Now that interfacing label is calling out to me to give it a tidy do-over.
The good news is that my penny loafers are gleaming.

Saturday Night Family Dinner

Saturday night is family night at my house. Come if you wish, take a night off, it's okay.The only rule is that I want to know how many I am cooking for.

Tonight is individual Beef Wellingtons along with baby carrots and Brussels sprouts in a brown sugar glaze, oven fried sweet potatoes and dessert is coming with one of the girls.

The veggies can be partially cooked earlier in the day, then blanched in ice water to stop the cooking, drained and stored in the garage. The garage is a great walk-in cooler in the winter, especially when there's a lot of action in the kitchen. The fridge won't be loaded with stuff teetering on the shelves.

This is how it looked at serving time after a short time re-heating in the prepared glaze.. The idea is that the colors will be pristine but I messed that up by adding the leftover mushrooms and onion from the wrapped tenderloins. It tasted lovely.

The beef tenderloins were browned in butter and seasonings earlier and also stashed for later and the above mentioned mushrooms and onion were prepared separately.

This left time to get some decorating started.

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Under the red stained glass is a lighted wreath. Trust me on this.

It's getting close to show time so the beef is now wrapped in puff pastry. The directions said let the frozen pastry thaw in the fridge. Done. Then the directions say to roll each pastry sheet into a square. What it doesn't say is how to separate the sheets. If anyone knows, please tell me.

I finally had to slice the sheets apart and as you can see the front ones are on the bulky side.  Included in the parcel is a handful of the sliced mushroom and chopped onion, sauteed until soft and a dash of sherry added. A beaten egg yolk is brushed on the pastry and it's ready for a few minutes in the oven to brown the pastry and re-heat the meat.

The directions called for 25-30 minutes but in the future I'd do some serious checking at the 20- minute mark.

And here we are, ready to roll. My people have arrived so there will not be a display of the finished product neatly arranged on platters. Everything tasted just fine.

We have some catching up to do.