Come on In and Sit a Spell

After about three months with almost no where to sit, we finally saved up and bought a couch (new), two chairs (Craigslist), a coffee table (Craigslist) and a wool rug (new) for the living room. I'm excited to have everything all homey in time for our first Christmas in Seattle.

Belated Thanksgiving Dinner

We had planned to eat Thanksgiving dinner with friends on Thursday but because Ollie still had a fever then, we canceled. I considered scrambling to pull a quickie-turkey-dinner together that day but neither of the boys had much of an appetite, so we agreed to postpone our Thanksgiving dinner until Sunday.

So...Happy Belated Thanksgiving. It was a relaxing day here. I started brining my turkey on Saturday morning (before we left for Port Angeles). On Sunday morning, I shopped for groceries. The menu was pretty pared back; just our favorite dishes and a store-bought pie.

Merrit made deviled eggs. I made Alton Brown's brined and roasted turkey, Rachel Ray's Brussels sprouts with bacon, and my mom's cornbread and shrimp stuffing (I think this originally came from Epicurious.com, but I don't know for sure). We also had canned cranberry sauce (not my favorite, but again, just keeping it super simple this year) and that store-bought pumpkin pie with Reddi-whip.

The day in pictures...

Since the bird was only eight pounds, it fit right in my
stock pot to brine for a day in the fridge.

My favorite Thanksgiving dish. To die for.

Mixing it up in my "Charleston girls' weekend" apron!

Thyme from the garden. For the stuffing.

Sage from the garden. Also for stuffing.

Threw some rosemary sprigs in the brine. Why not? :)

Impulse buy at Trader Joe's: This greenery wreath. Dolled
it up a little with some bells and silvery stuff.

This was a first: Baking our stuffing in individual ramekins. Super cute!
The kids thought this was fun.

Halved Brussels sprouts. 

Merrit handled the deviled eggs from start to finish.
"Doubled eggs," as he used to call them
when he was about five, is of his many specialties...

Ollie snags some cheese, crackers, and summer sausage
while Merrit and I work (and snack!) in the kitchen.

Slicing the eggs in half.

The finished product! (We made the leftovers
into egg salad for school lunches. Merrit made
a lot of deviled eggs for four people!)

Working Girl wine that we bought in Port Angeles yesterday.

I cook my bird dark-meat side up for 30 mins at 500, then flip it over,
put it back in and cook it at 350 until a thermometer in thigh reads 170.
Then let it rest for 30+ minutes under foil. PERFECT every time! (Thanks Alton.)

Mike, who didn't even put on real pants today--spent all day in flannel PJs--
popped some champagne for a Thanksgiving toast.

Getting ready to dig in! (Nobody finished all their stuffing...I think I need
smaller ramekins if I were going to do this again.)

Cheers!

Our Ho-Hum Adventure to Port Angeles

Hello Er'body, Mike here. The plan was simple. Mir had the flu along with Merrit and Ollie. All three have been cooped up for 2 weeks. They needed to get out of the house!

Mir did some recon and decided we would go to Port Angeles. I've been enjoying sleeping in for 3 days straight and was happy to comply. 

Mir had a great plan, we would go to PA, stopping along the way at a winery and have our very first wine tasting. Then we'd go to the lighthouse, go for a hike and have dinner in this historic waterfront town... 

Look how hopeful Ollie is as he surveys the boots and coats ready for
splashing and hiking.

Mir's seat is on HIGH, so her ass is toasty for traveling.

We're on our way, chasing down blue skies, hopes and dreams.

We like traveling by ferry...it's like a mini cruise with your car.

Mir was soooo excited. She waved at this lady and said "Hey!" while the lady
 continued to do the same thing she'd been doing for hours on end. Look how
 excited she is!

I have an awesome wife btw. She loves to take photos of the moments we'd soon forget.

We're living the beige lifestyle baby!

On board the Edmonds/Kingston ferry, Merrit looks like he's having a great time.

There's our boy! He was just watching seals play in the sound.

And Ollie enjoyed just being free.

View from our car, beautiful blue skies!

Once we landed in Kingston we were looking at a 1 hr drive to Port Angeles

Crossing the Hood Canal bridge.

We stopped at this weird Native American spot. We thought it
would be cool or informative but the whole place looked like a
Cary medical campus. Clean, sterile, and empty.

We did walk through the Native Art Gallery (aka, gift
shop full of overpriced, machine-crafted crap made in China).

Hey kids...look at the tunnel of forgotten dreams!

This reservation looked like it had been built in about 2005. It had a fitness
center, a planning office, a Native American art center, a post office,
a deli (huh?), and a business center. Oh, and a casino.

Our host in the renovated reservation was a Caucasian teenager with her nose
 and lip pierced (who sold us these ornaments). I asked her where we could find
 someplace to eat nearby. She made a very ugly face and said..."You can try the casino...
but...your kids.." and then darted her eyes back to me. "No thanks." She was nice
 enough to recommend the Black Bear Diner 10 minutes down the road. She
 said "That place is pretty good." Awesome, a local recommendation.

Hey Kids look!! An elk crossing sign...maybe we'll see some elk!

Here we are, bearly (get it) able to make it on down the trail without some grub.

Time machine.

I scrambled around for a while before I noticed the newspaper in front of me
 was the menu.  Pretty cool.

The chairs, benches, floors, ceiling and biscuits are all made out of
 natural wood.

Proud Dad. Proud Ollie.

Mir's plate looks great. Pecan crusted trout and mashed
potatoes! Too bad it gave her heartburn for the next
nine hours!

I asked for a small salad. The salad was tremendous in size. Enough to feed several
 families.I totally expected to find a family of rabbits in there.
 I asked for ranch dressing, but the waitress said..."we don't have ranch...but we
 do have our special bacon flavored ranch." That sounded good. Now, with at least
 12 hrs behind me (get it), I'm convinced that the dressing was a foul poison.

Time to improve. Things were falling off scale, we were not having fun! Mir digs into
the free Olympic Peninsula Visitors Guide and finds what could save the day!

The Olympic Game Farm in Sequim. This drive-thru safari promised close
engagements with bear, wolves, donkeys, tigers, lions, yaks, and buffalo. You
could even feed them bread from your car window! The kids are going to love this!
A great find indeed. Did you know that this is where Disney would keep their
animal stars back in the 1950s?!? Neither did we. We also didn't know that
they closed at 3pm.  we arrived at 3:17 exactly. Sorry kids...

But HEY!! There's a cat!!

And a PEACOCK! In a parking lot!!

And if you look closely, through 4 layers of chain link fence, you'll see a
shadowy figure OR a bear!

AND A SEAGULL!!!!

So we finally make it to the winery. Or hobbit hovel, which ever you like. 

Have a glass of wine, relax.

Yep. This is the stuff sitting around outside. Looks legit!

We bought a bottle of wine. The folks here are not that friendly or interested in
heterosexual relationships.

We finally made it to Port Angeles. We didn't find the lighthouse, but we did read that we would need to walk to the lighthouse (during low tide) and that the round trip walk would take five hours. It was 3pm and getting dark. So we decided we would at least walk the town streets.

We did find this killer comic book shop. They had toys
that I played with when I was a kid. Toys I promptly
gave away or sold because I wanted a normal adult life
complete with a relationship with a real woman.

HAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHHAHAH!!!! Oh, here's a good one...
Why did we drive all this way to see your town?!?!

Twilight was set in the nearby town of Forks. I bet they love that movie.

Yes, we are that far North. Good thing too, because further South they
 HATE the Canadians, and their polite ways, and weird accent and stuff.

We made it just in time! PA's annual tree lighting ceremony
begins at 4pm...we made it! Oh...it's not lit. It's 4:30? Just a
little girl singing Christmas carols and one tiny blue ornament
on the massive tree. What's going on here?!

Creepy flowers.

Back to the ferry landing at Kingston. We walk through the rain to an ale house
that serves local beer. It was very good. The boys and I split a smoked cheese ravioli.

Local beer: Hood Canal IPA.

Mir had the "soup of the moment," a really good corn chowder.

Time to leave. It was 7pm. I told Mir we'd be home by 8pm. And that concludes our day in Port Angeles.

Yeah, I'm good...