Sunday Dinner, December 7, 2008

First of all, in the interest of full disclosure, I have a confession of sorts to make.

Remember the last 2 Sundays when I've said I was going to make homemade chicken and rice and stewed potatoes and white sauce? And Sunday before last we ended up eating barbecue sandwiches instead of me cooking?

Well, this past Sunday we ended up eating out so I didn't make the chicken and rice or potatoes and white sauce last Sunday either.

I finally gave up on the chicken and rice so I froze my broth and the chicken for some other time. After 2 failed attempts I figure it's time to just give up on it until a later time.

And so we arrive at this week's Sunday Dinner. It's cold and windy in my little corner of the world right now. Our high for Sunday is forecast to be only 39F so soup and cornbread sounds good to me.

I'm making my tried and true standby, MY HAMBURGER SOUP and HOMEMADE BUTTERMILK CORNBREAD.

What's on the menu at your place for this Sunday's Dinner? Just share your plans/menu in the comments if you'd like to participate this week.I got most of my monthly shopping as well as my Christmas shopping done on Monday. I forgot a few household necessities Monday so had to pick up toilet tissue (!), trash bags and Kleen*ex Friday when I did my monthly grocery shopping.

Friday was December 5th and I was amazed at the crowds in Wal*mart when I was there. I'm telling you, a person is taking their life in their hands just to do his grocery shopping! People were ramming into grocery carts and pushing and shoving. I was never so glad as when I got done and got out of that milling crowd of crazed shoppers.My vet friend has asked me to make 4 batches of my homemade dog biscuits for her so I need to get that done either this week or next.

Sometime in the next couple of weeks I'm going to make several batches of MY HOMEMADE BUTTER SHORTBREAD cookies to eat and to give away as gifts. I also make savory seasoned, toasted pecans, and I usually make glazed pecans and meringue pecans to have on hand and also to give as gifts.

Usually I make multiple batches of marshmallow fudge, white chocolate fudge and peanut butter fudge, not to mention vanilla cream bon bons, coconut, pecan, cherry centered and peanut butter bon bons. But I think this year I'm going to give those a miss.This Christmas season I'm feeling the need to simplify and not just because I'm feeling the pinch of higher prices at the grocery store. We've never had the money to be extravagant with gifts but this year we're being even more frugal than usual.

It just feels right and necessary to simplify and draw family and faith close this Christmas season. After all, they are the most important things anyway, right?Friday night I finally mustered up the gumption to tackle all the clutter in my spare room closet and drag out all my Christmas decorations, wrapping paraphernalia and most importantly, the tree. I also pulled out the wreath that I hang on my front door. It was a little worse for the wear but I fiddled with it a bit and decided that it would do for another year.

After I got everything out and then got everything else put back to rights in the closet, I discovered that the plastic feet that attach to the bottom of the artificial tree and hold it upright weren't in the box with the tree.

Argh! By that time I was exhausted and disgusted so I just quit for the evening. Which means that I still have to turn that closet inside out and find the feet for my Christmas tree before I can actually put it up and decorate it. So I hope to do that sometime this next week, among all the other things I need to do. I also have to wrap the few gifts I've gotten for family and friends. I like to light some of my scented Christmas candles, turn on the lights on the decorated tree and have some of the classic Christmas shows playing on the VHS player. A nice cup of eggnog or hot spiced cider, or maybe some hot Christmas tea is another good thing I usually have on hand when I start my wrapping marathon.

But last year when I tried to watch some of my classic Christmas shows like "Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer", "A Garfield Christmas" and "A California Raisins Christmas", for some reason my VHS tape died. I can't imagine why. It was only about 20 years old and was one I'd recorded myself. I loved that tape!

So this year I guess I'll be at the mercy of whatever Christmas shows I can find when I get ready to do my Christmas wrapping.As you can see I still haven't found time to work on my Christmas header yet, but I hope to get it done this week. I really don't have a particular graphic I want to use so I'll have to work on several and make up my mind.It's nearly 11 pm and I still haven't made my hamburger soup so I suppose I'd better get after it if I don't want to be up all night.

Y'all have a great Sunday. May God bless you with all you need and enough to share.