I'm watching a terrible movie that I love - Love Actually. This actually dovetails nicely with today's household theme, Holiday Sentimentality.

Basically, it snowed for a second, and we all went over the edge.

Eric called me from the supermarket - he was delerious, buying bread cubes and cranberry sauce. We made a chicken, though, rather than a turkey. This was our faux thanksgiving, as we are going over the river etc etc for the buffet at the officer's club, as we do every year, an excellent way to do the holiday together.

But tonight we had nuclear family mini-Thanksgiving: roast chicken, apple-raisin stuffing, le suer canned peas, yummy cranberry sauce (not homemade, sadly - Eric makes this BRILLIANT fresh cranberry-orange sauce every year for Christmas. I think the recipe was in Parade Magazine, like 10 years ago. Eric has it memorized. I think we have to postage-stamp-sized clipping pinned to our kitchen bulletin board. In fact, let me see of I can find it on the web.)

Oh! Here it is! You can see why it fits on such a small clipping. I can't remember whether he puts anything else in it (grated ginger, maybe?) Anyway, it's great, plus it's easy. And fast.

Hey! Songbird should make that!

We followed up mini-Thanksgiving with a mini-viewing of a Christmas movie - the kid doesn't have the patience for a whole movie, so we just watched a few musical numbers from Scrooge before bed. Will I ever not cry at this story? At "I haven't missed it?" No kidding - I cry at the Bill Murray sarcastic version.

This week has been pretty rough, frankly. One might even say sucktastic. I was doing pretty well last week, spending time planning a funeral for my friend David, thinking about what to say, what to wear, running out to buy shoes (didn't think I should officiate my first funeral in Doc Martens). This week, though, there has been little to distract me from thinking about...things. (Little besides my husband, my pre-schooler, my congregation, looming freaking ADVENT ALREADY, not to mention Christmas gifts.)

So maybe a little stuffing, and a little terrible Albert Finney dancing, was just what I needed.

Triple Feature

So I was familiar with the Who album Tommy

(side note: my husband was born in 1961. There's not even a full year separating us. Somehow he grew up being a Who/Moody Blues/Beatles person, with a decent dash of Herman's Hermits. While I - born in 1962 - grew up a Clash/Talking Heads/REM/Devo person. My point is this - I was familiar with Tommy the album because of Eric.

And he is completely, utterly sick of Stop Making Sense and Murmur because of me.)

So while I was waiting for Project Runway Season 5 to start, I tuned into VH1Classic (oh, don't start) and watched the last third of Tommy the Ken Russel movie. I think I missed all the good parts, and was left with the too-long messianic holiday camp part. While this is not actually a good movie in any recognizable sense, I would certainly watch it again - and especially if I had copies of Godspell and Superstar on hand. That would be quite an afternoon.

Dinner tonight was this, which was wholesome, nourishing, and tragically dull. It needs SOMETHING mixed in with the potato filling, some texture, some big flavor - maybe roasted onions or big chunks of olives. Or some capers in the pan sauce.

Hmmm, sounds like I'll be making this again, doesn't it?

Since dinner was boring, I made cupcakes. They are delicious.

Honestly, I am not a dependable cake baker at all. I like making cakes, but they don't usually come out delectable. I have a couple of go-to recipes - an almost-flourless chocolate cake from an old La Madelaine cookbook that my brother found for me, and the very best pound cake in the world - and they always work. But chances are that other recipes will be a little dry, a little heavy, just not as lovely as I imagine.

I actually have a suspicion that these are a little dry, from being overcooked, but I ate two earlier and cannot possibly squeeze in another, even for the purposes of critique.
The flavor is great, though.