happy turkey day!

HAPPY TURKEY DAY!

(sorry been out of commission for a while, had a cocktail of sicknesses, ranging from severe cold and cough to upset/sensitive tummy and loss of appetite - my worst nightmare! my tummy is still not 100% but on Nexium so it's on its way to recovery hopefully)




i love thanksgiving food, the way it's done in the US... somehow in Canada, thanksgiving was never a big deal, especially in a chinese family. at best my mom would make a whole steamed chicken for dinner. one time one of our neighbours gave us a portion of turkey with stuffing and gravy, but typical of most asian parents, mine thought the turkey meat was 'dry' and could've been more moist had it been cooked a different way...

but i got to hand it to americans, you guys really know how to feast for this holiday - i love the food! turkey with gravy, home-baked rolls hot and fresh from oven, yummy stuffing made with the drippings of the cooking bird, garlic mashed potatoes - rich and creamy, i even like candied yams... optional sides includs mac and cheese or a good macaroni salad, and then dessert has pumkin pies, cheesecakes and any kind of pies and cakes that satisfies the toughest sweet-tooth critic.

i'm sure most have heard this story, but my 1st US Thanksgiving here was quite ambitious and eventful. Deviline was visiting and i still had corporate-sponsored fully furnished housing in downtown; we felt ambitious enough to tackle the Cooking Thanksgiving Meal together; sounded like a great idea since she's hosted a lot of our annual Christmas parties back home and cooked for us through the years.

the night before Thanksgiving, we mozied onto the not-so-safe area where the only supermarket i knew was located. man, almost all the frozen turkeys were sold out, we had little choice and i think we had to pick the smallest one remaining, which was a 15-16lb monster.
back at my place, the realization dawned on us that if cooking time was about 6 hours, and we had less than 20 hours to serve it on a plate, this completely frozen bird was going to require extra effort in defrostation.

for the next few hours, Deviline and i took turns rubbing the turkey down with butter, lukewarm water, massaging the meat in the hopes of helping it defrost quicker. never having to defrost such a huge thing before (and it didn't fit into the microwave), we didn't want the turkety to sit in a bath of warm water without knowing exactly when the risk of salmonella might set in (great if our first thanksgiving dinner is so unforgettable that our guests get to leave with the parting gift of salmonella)

in the end the turkey was MOSTLY defrosted (which required us to eat dinner at like 10pm instead of 7pm, extra cooking time). i think we slightly burned the turkey, and the little pop-up widget never did pop up. oh and we left the bag of giblets INSIDE the turkey cooking the whole time (the bag never melted under the heat). by the time dinner was 'done' our guests were so sleepy that we zombied ate the food and then left all the dishes for the next day to clean up.

not having full implication of what "Black Friday" meant, we decided after all the publicity about it that we would try to join the ranks and go at 6am to the stores to shop! After a dizzying hour at Best Buy, we realized that NOT all cds were on sale, only a selected 5 or 6 titles. and standing in line to pay was as painful!

when we got home we were finally ready to tackle the dishes, but like Cinderella's fairy godmother, everything was magically done! I mean, we'd used EVERY SINGLE utensil/dish/pot/pan in the place during cooking & eating. Then i remembered that the weekly maid service must've come by and i was a bit embarassed we left them ALL the dishes to clean!
but guiltily i am grateful that they did the cleaning instead of us...

Speaking of thanksgiving, well just a sentimental moment here to be thankful for good health, family & friends

and leave something more entertaining here for your amusement, here are my top 3 funniest analogies in my book, but i'll put the link here in case you want to read the entire list of The 25 Funniest Analogies

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.

He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

interesting read, stoll down cartoon memory lane

8 important lessons learned from 80s cartoons

i'm still sick in the tummy, which is really frustrating, since food is my primary love...
now at mealtimes i dread it, because i know for 2 hours after i eat my tummy battles mild heartburn and potential sour/acid reflux. taking rolaids and tums help a bit. i'm hoping my body will recover naturally.

yesterday i left work at 5:30pm and was in bed asleep by 6pm. felt sooo good. body working too hard to digest. kind of a nightmare, my love of food is now creating fear - i'm afraid of the after effects of it.

i also have zantac and rolaids/tums ready by my side, but trying not to rely on it too much.

severely sick with a bad cold...

sorry i haven't updated this blog in a while, my cold got worse after the marron ice cream that fateful Sunday when we all got together for dinner... the cough turned into a loss-of-voice, runny-nose, congestion, cough after i came back to california...

dragging my body throught the powerwalk of 13.1 miles and a hockey game was borderline abusive (but i had commited to the half for 6+ months i can't bear to not have gone) then i stirred fry some veggies and shrimp with LOTS of garlic (10 cloves) without giving it a thought... i think my body was on the way to collapse from all the physical exhaustion and weak from the severe cold, then the garlic was very acidic since it wasn't cooked long enough to temper it.
anyways, since last week my tummy's been queasy and nausating...
so bad that i missed more than half of work... i've slept from 12 to 20 hours a day... my body's screwed up... i wake up 3am or 6am feeling a bit hungry or queasy...

once i eat anything (and i've been watching what i eat) it seems my body overworks to digest the food and i feel a sour taste in my mouth...
i've been off coffee for 2+ weeks - and haven't gone shopping once (that's how sick i have been!)

today i feel slightly better, i took zantac from my doctor friend T.'s advice, i bought tums and softchew antacids so i'm prepred...

it's been humbling being sick again. at least my cold/cough is 90% gone. but when the tummy's not feeling well it feels like the whole world is darkened and all i wanted to do is crawl into bed and sleep so that when i wake up i'd feel better...
hopefully the antacid will bring my tummy back to normal and i won't feel sick anymore... just wanted to update.. i miss u all.