Katrina Christmas

This year, I spent Christmas with my family. Two years ago I went to Gulfport for Thanksgiving and celebrated Christmas at the same time. That was also the first time I got to meet my brother Chris, and his wife Michelle. All of us were there this year, and we gathered around the Christmas tree to open presents, ate roast turkey and a deep-fried caijun turkey. You can check out my flickr pictures for more of that.

The caijun turkey was certainly a highlight, as well as some fresh gulf shrimp at a local joint earlier in the week. There! Now that I've mentioned food, I can go on to the truly important part of this post.

On Christmas eve, we toured the communities destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and later attended a candlelight service at church in Gulfport, close to the beach, but was miraculously spared. It's been a while since I have been in a church as traditional as this with pews and stained glass, a very different experience from CentrePointe. The pastor was as casual as could be despite the long robe and sash of his office. He reminded me of the Menards guy with a deep drawl. He talked about angels. He of course mentioned the famous ones who appeared at the first Christmas, but he also talked about some other that had effected the people in this church directly.

The CEO of the Weaver popcorn company had contacted the pastor about making a donation to the church to help with hurricane relief in the local community, and that it would probably be about $4,000. During their correspondence, the pastor mentioned that someone had once donated an old popcorn machine to the church. He told the CEO that after people in the church had treated it like their own, cleaning it, and as the pastor said, "loving on it," it made some great popcorn. Well the CEO wrote back and after finding out more about the machine, sent along a gift of 75 lbs of popcorn and oil for the popper in easy to use envelopes. This was nice, since the church hadn't been able to make any popcorn lately and it would be much appreciated. Some time passed and the CEO wrote back with a bad-news/good-news story. The workers had taken up their Christmas charity collection and it had not come to the $4,000 the CEO mentioned. Instead it was going to be more like $10,000. The workers at the Weaver popcorn company had taken in this little church as their own. Rather than give to a faceless charity like the red cross, the CEO and the workers connected with the people who needed their help and they stepped up. The money arrived with personal cards and letters from the workers to the church. They are building a relationship with the people there, and taking them in as if they were their own family.

That's what God did for us. He took us in as if we were His own family and when the time came, he made a supreme sacrifice for us. It wasn't money or popcorn, but his own life. And we should take him in as our own as well. That little baby needed a family to take him in and take care of him. He needed someone to hold him and love him. So, God relied on us to take him in as our own. That means we get all the benefits of having the Christ child in our lives, and all the pain that goes with taking responsibility for that child. We have to be willing to do whatever it takes.

As it turns out the people in the Gulfport church took in a popcorn machine, and the Weaver popcorn company took in the people at the church. During the communion portion of the Christmas eve service, one of the deacons told the pastor that the family who donated the popcorn machine all those years ago had lost everything in the hurricane. The pastor let us know, and said, "I think we can take that family in as our very own, don't you?"

This visit with my birth-family was better than I had hoped. At Thanksgiving, I wrote about how I hoped for a better relationship "with Chris and David, my brothers, Chris' wife Michelle, and Bruce - my stepfather." It's grown so much since the last time we were all together. I felt more like a brother and a son than I ever have before. I still can't believe how they took me in.

...maybe it's just me?

Caramel... everything and a Hot Dog

Saturday night I went to an unofficial Christmas party with a few friends. Everyone brought something to share, I brought vegetables. (I know... what was I thinking? - seriously, I really try to bring healthy snacks whenever I can.)

The hosts provided some spicy Hawiian meatballs, candy, and other people brought taco dip and other salty-snacks. New to me was what I have since learned is called "Caramel Delight", but at the time I called "Caramel Everything". It was caramel popcorn with pretzels, chex cereal, and pecans. Oh sweet crunchy goodness! So much for my attempt at weight loss.

Meet Walter
In case you're not in the loop, I have been looking for a dog to adopt. Sorry Mom, you'll have to settle for being a grandmother to another pet.
I'm headed to Gulfport to visit my family for Christmas, and then picking up Walter on the way back from the Lansing airport. I'm pretty excited about the whole thing. I've purchased the requisite dog bowls, a couple of toys, a bed and the breeder is providing a kennel and a bunch of other doggy things. The only thing I have yet to purchase is food. I grew up with a couple of dogs raised on Purina Dog Chow. I never knew that dog food had come so far until the breeder mentioned that she's raised the puppy on a Raw Food diet. The web site is worth mentioning, www.barfworld.com, maybe even reading, but don't worry BARF is an acronym. This kind of BARF is not nearly as much fun as "Barf" (Barfolemew) from Spaceballs.

maybe it's just me...

feeling sneaky

Is it wrong to bring one's own food into a movie theater?
I've been going to movies most of my life and I've never seen a sign or anything. There really should be some big-ole "No outside food or drink" sign on the door if they want to enforce that. Often, when I go to the movies I bring my popcorn bucket and I smuggle drinks in. Sometimes I also have beef jerky or candy stuffed into my pockets. I've even gone as far as bringing in cheeseburgers. I've got a coat with big pockets to enable this surreptitious gastronomy. It makes me feel like Harpo Marx.

I've always believed it was somehow wrong to do this, but I did it anyway. On Wednesday, while enjoying the roller coaster ride that is King Kong (special effects suck early on, but get a lot better!), it occurred to me that there's no sign or anything. How do I know you can't bring in outside food? I decided that I'm going to keep doing it, but I'll look more carefully for the sign, and enjoy the espionage.

maybe it's just me...

Snow Day

The Grand Rapids area got anywhere between 4 and 10 inches of snow overnight and most every school is closed today. When you are an adult, you don't really get those snow days, and I think that's one of the biggest rip-offs about growing up. A snow day is like a surprise vacation day. The neighbor kids are sledding down the hill next to our driveway (I kinda wish they would stop by, say hello, and ask first...) and soon they'll head back inside for Hot Chocolate!

Hot Cocoa is possibly one of the greatest inventions for a warm beverage ever, and one of the few things that doesn't suffer from microwave preparation. What I mean by that is - you can warm up the milk in the microwave. Here's a way to make a nice batch of it - about 4-6 cups worth. There are some people who would add powdered milk to this, but they can get their own blogs and talk about the food they like. Here, they are just plain wrong. And it turns out that Hot Cocoa is really very good for you!

2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup cocoa (unsweetened)
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cornstarch (mmm... thicker...)
1 pinch cayenne pepper (adjust for your taste)

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and incorporate evenly.
Whatever you don't use right away, seal in an airtight container, keeps indefinitely in the pantry.

The trick to making it is to add 3-4 tablespoons of the mix to a mug, add just a little cold milk (less that 1/4 cup) and mix that into kind of a syrup. Then add hot milk to fill your mug. That makes sure the cocoa mixes evenly and doesn't leave any lumps - it also stays mixed longer after the cocoa stands.

If you don't like chocolate or cocoa, but like the hot milk - try adding a few drops of vanilla or another flavoring to some powdered sugar or artificial sweetener, and mix with hot milk just like the above.

Something wacky for you!
Those goofy Canadians have come up with a new ad campaign for drinking milk. The intro is worth seeing the first time so you get the caveman premise, but after that, you can skip the intro to get to the short commercials. Brilliant! Thanks to my friend Rachel for that Wacky submission.

Meanwhile, if you do decide to make the cocoa on the stove top, and that skin forms on top of it... save some for me, I love that.

...maybe it's just me.

something in my food

I find stuff in my food all the time.

I used to think I was cursed in some way, but then I realized that I am the god of foreign-matter-in-food. Material that should not appear in a served meal follows me everywhere in order to laud, praise, worship, and generally find a way to become one with me by attempting to find its way into my mouth. Fortunately one of my god-powers is that I can detect things that don't belong in my mouth with the efficiency of an assembly line owned by a company that wants to move their operations to Mexico. The smallest hint of any accidental content sets off an alarm I can't ignore. I'm working on spotting things before I ingest them and I occasionally succeed. If you've been to more than a few meals with me, you've seen it happen. Others of you will have to wait for your opportunity.

If there is a cherry-pit in the cherry pie, it will show up in my piece. I once found an egg-shell the size of a half-dollar sitting on top of an omelet. It wasn't cooked-in or anything, just sitting there on top when it arrived from the kitchen.

Salad poses a particular problem, because it's often filled with a variety of things and textures. Several years ago at an Applebe's I found most of a ladybug in my salad. Not a whole ladybug mind you, but most of one. I had a nice healthy bite of lettuce perched on the end of my fork as I talked with my friends around the table. I tend to talk with my hands, and the fork looked like an orchestra conductor's baton, keeping the conversation's tempo. Finally, I moved the bite toward my mouth. There it was. I sent the salad back and had a burger instead.

Once, on a date, in fact I think it was a first-date, I bit into a piece of glass concealed in the fried rice at a Chinese restaurant. I'm pretty sure it was a bead from a necklace or something, but I bit it right in half between two molars. Getting it out required an oral lavage courtesy of the tall glass of water that came with dinner. I managed to extricate it without injury.

Friday night I had a cup of white chicken chili at a barbecue joint in Muskegon - Brutus' Barbecue. Part-way through it, I saw something odd. It was kind of grayish-greenish-bluish. It was lumpy. There were multiple incidents of it. I asked my server to see if she could figure it out. My friend Steve thought it looked like a few puddles of pneumonia-induced lung-butter. It turned out to be a few dollops of bleu cheese dressing. Well, that's what the restaurant said it was. I think I won't go back there again.

Et tu Brute?

maybe it's just me...