Pro-procrastination

No, I did not misspell the title.  Yes, I might have made up a word.  Get over it my friend, and get into the idea of being “pro” procrastination!

Putting things off is, in most circles, considered to be a less than ideal way of living your life.  There are all sorts of adages about this, most notably “never put off til tomorrow what can be done today.”  Today, I am a fan of the opposite: “never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.”  Not that I haven’t gotten anything done today, quite the contrary.  This is a more specific sort of procrastination.

I have volunteered to be head chef for my family’s Thanksgiving.  I am nervous about this undertaking, considering that we will have a decent crowd.  There’s a lot to live up to in my family when it comes to Turkey Day.  I think I have the pie thing down, but I am somewhat stumped in terms of actually cooking the bird.  Plus, everyone likes different sides.  I want to make sure there are the staples, like mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, and so forth, with a few healthy items thrown in for good measure.  What I am procrastinating on is actually committing to a menu.  It would help in so many ways, get me organized and such, but I just won’t do it.  At least not until next weekend probably.  Or maybe the middle of the week.  Actually, I’m working my way up to it now.

On a completely different track, I made these pumpkin doughnut muffins this morning.  They were as good as they sound.  Pics are on my pinterest under “Recipes Galore.”

I just realized a much more interesting post would be about my recent jury experience.  Whelp, I guess that’ll have to wait til next time!  Stay tuned my friends!

Triceps

I have discovered a really good way to work out those triceps.  It’s called rolling out 14 pies in 5 days.

Last night was the second wedding I have catered pie for.  This time, 12 pies were requested for the reception, as a substitute for the traditional groom’s cake.  The extra 2 pies in my total count towards the slab pie that I made for the rehearsal dinner on Friday night.  Here is what I made:

Slab pie = cherry-peach; 3 peanut butter chocolate pies, 3 cherry pies; 3 apple pies; and 3 pumpkin pies.  I also made a huge bowl full of whipped cream.

The wedding itself was beautiful.  So were the pies.  🙂  Fortunately, there was not a lot of pie left over.  Oddly enough, there was exactly one of each kind of pie left that I had to take home.  So if anyone wants some pie, give me a ring!

Halloween at Arrowhead

I am exhausted.  Fatigued, sleep-deprived, drained.  I am happily writing this post though!  Partly because I am watching “New Girl” and it is hilarious, and partly because this last Halloween weekend may have been my best yet.

I’m not sure if I mentioned this before, but over the last few weeks, I was helping some friends build a haunted house in their basement.  It was incredible.  The basement was scary in and of itself.  However, with our forces combined, we managed to make this basement a legit haunted house.  It’s hard to describe really.  We had people hiding under things and grabbing ankles, people popping out of coffins, a scary guy feeding fake human limbs to a fire…I’m not so sure about that last one, but it was effective.  I had the honor of creating the back story for this ghoulish affair.  In the process, I got to learn a little about KC history.  I decided the story would feature real people from KC, and more specifically from the area that the haunted house was in, which was Little Italy or the North End of KC.

The gist of the story was that Johnny Lazia (notorious mob boss in the 1920s and 1930s) exacted brutal and fatal revenge on the four perpetrators of the Union Station Massacre (which was a real thing that instigated the formation of the FBI — look it up!).  Our haunted house was called “The Crematorium” so one of the criminals was killed by being burned alive in a human-size oven.  It was good stuff.  The haunted house was a raging success I think.  Everyone seemed to be pretty scared I think!  I think the slide down into the basement set the tone for the rest of the deal.  Good times.

So that was Saturday night — the culmination of weeks of work, into one scary night with a really fun party afterward.  I was a Flapper Girl for halloween by the way.

 

I think I rock that look 🙂

Anywho…Sunday.  Also a good day, although I have to admit the fatigue started on Sunday.  I did hardly anything all day except bake.  I made a cherry pie and a whole bunch of miniature pumpkin whoopie pies.  Not for no reason at all, this was not an arbitrary baking day.  No, we had a neighborhood block party, for which my house was the last stop and in fact the dessert stop.  It was a fun evening, and the neighborhood gossip was rampant!  It amazes me how even in a big city, there are small town crowds.  Afterward, I relaxed with some Harry Potter, 7 part 1.  Which was the last movie of scary movie month.  I’m not exactly sure if it qualifies though, because we didn’t finish it, and it’s not all that scary.  It is incredibly dark though.  The whole movie is mostly in shades of black.  Which sets the tone I suppose, so it works.

Yesterday was the day itself.  All Hallow’s Eve.  I kind of kept forgetting about it, because I was going to the Chiefs game against the San Diego Chargers at Arrowhead Stadium!!!!  What a fun night!  We tailgated for close to 3 hours, playing bags quite successfully I might add.  Our one loss was a fluke I think.  The weather was perfect, and the icing on the cake was that we WON!  That game was ridiculous people.  I had never been to a Chiefs game before, and I was impressed.  Did you know that whenever the Chiefs score points, a horse runs across the field?  That might be slightly more strange than the guy that cuts meat at Sporting KC games when they score a goal.  Actually, the Sporting KC thing is weirder.  Anywho, there was a flag on almost every play, there were some terrible calls by refs, and we won the game in overtime after the Chargers fumbled the ball epically when they were just about to win the whole thing!

Yet, what captured my attention more than anything else was the people.  If you are at all a fan of people watching, Arrowhead stadium is the place for you.  The best of the worst was the unfortunate man standing in front of us.  This guy was a little crazy throughout the game, definitely very knowledgable about the game and the Chiefs in general.  Right around the time of the epic fumble, something happened.  None of my companions nor I saw what caused it, but this guy ended up face planting into the seats two rows in front of him.  He seemed to have been knocked out for about a minute, and when he came to, he was visibly shaken and I would put money on it that he had a concussion.  Did this guy get help from his friend out of the stadium so that he could seek medical attention?  No, he continued to try to stand and cheer on his Chiefs, while visibly twitching and struggling to keep his balance.

Yikes.

I have to admit, today was rough.  We stayed all the way til the end of the game, including overtime, so it was a slow-moving day.  But totally worth it!

Ok, that’s enough rambling.