Beau Jackson

Happy new year every one!

Well, our latest child failed to show up in time to save us a bunch of money – we’ll just have to pay the deductibles again. Easy come, easy go. He also failed to show up early enough to be “first baby of the year” which would have been a conversation piece at least. No, he’s decided to take his own sweet time and just come when he feels like it. I guess all babies are that way really, but it sure is making Allena uncomfortable.

We didn’t do anything exciting for New Year’s Eve – we figured out several years ago that the kids get up early even when we stay up late, so we were in bed by 10:00. True to form, Julianna was up at 6:00am, so our strategy paid off.

Anyway, I hope 2010 is a wonderful year for everyone, filled with many blessings!

Merry Christmas everyone!

It was a white Christmas for us here in Southwestern Missouri, but coooooold!  Brrrrrrr!  It was about 15 degrees today, and the wind was howling.  Needless to say we did not go outside to play in the snow.

It was also kind of a humble Christmas for us.  We did things a little differently this year.  We didn’t put up our Christmas tree until the 24th.  Heck, we didn’t even do any Christmas shopping until the 22nd.  We opened the vast majority of presents on Christmas eve – St. Nicholas only brought candy and one toy – a “Little People” nativity scene for the two youngest kids (although the older girls still play with it too).  Our Christmas day dinner is just a roasted chicken, with mashed potatoes, green beans, and some cranberry sauce.  We didn’t have lots of family over, or go to their house either.

We tried very much to keep Christmas (the day of Christ’s birth) separate from all the other things that we tend to get caught up with in the holidays.  Sadly, we weren’t able to go to Mass today – the roads were not in good shape, and Elizabeth was running a fever of 102, so we wouldn’t have gone regardless.

In any event, I thought it was a nice day…we’ll probably do it again this way next year too.

Once again, Merry Christmas to everyone!

Now that Allena is driving me to work in the mornings, sometimes the kids get up early and want to come along too.  Given the time of year, we’re frequently heading out right around dawn.  Today all of the little kids were with us and Teresa said “Oh, look!  What a beautiful sunset coming up!”

We had to go to Springfield this morning for yet another doctor appointment for me.  This time to a pulmonologist for a pre-sleep-study consultation.  There is the strong suspicion that I have sleep apnea and that it’s contributing to my seizures.  Woohoo!  But I’ll tell you about that another time because  that is NOT what this post is about.  This post is about fine French dining!  How’s that for a segue?

After the appointment, it was near lunch time so we stopped in at Panera Bread, which is a nice bakery/sandwich/soup/salad type cafe.  They’re all over the place – most likely you’ve seen them.  We had soup and some delicious bread, and Dominic had a gigantic cinnamon roll, and the girls had some pastries, and everybody shared with everyone else.  Somehow the subject of how French people eat in courses and such came up, and the kids all agreed they’d like to try that.  So we bought a couple of extra baguettes at Panera to bring home, and tonight we ate like the French.

We started with fruit – slices of apple and pear, and bunches of grapes (hey, not a whole lot of variety this late in the season!).  Wine was served – a Chardonnay in the “table wine” class, but nice all the same.  We even let the kids try some.  Theirs was predominantly water with a little splash of wine in it.  They were *still* not impressed.  lol

Course number two was baked brie with almond slivers on top, served with the aforementioned baguettes.  We haven’t had that in a long time, but let me tell you it’s fantastic!  I’m sure it did terrible things to my cholesterol levels, and it was worth it all.

The third course was soup.  We actually found the recipe on line for Panera’s Broccoli Cheese Soup, and I must say it’s a very close match.  Highly tasty.

For desert, we got all the ingredients for crepes, but everybody was full by that time so perhaps we’ll make crepes for breakfast tomorrow?

It’s nice to eat in a different manner once in a while.  Dinner was at a very leisurely pace – we spent over an hour at the table just talking about food and things.  I can see why the French enjoy dining this way.

We still haven’t gotten around to making hasenpfeffer yet, but perhaps tomorrow night we’ll extend our international dining experience to cover Germany.  Anybody know how the typical German family sits down to dinner together?

If you’ve ever watched a Bugs Bunny cartoon that involved Elmer Fudd, you’re probably familiar with the term “hasenpfeffer”.  I recall asking my folks what hasenpfeffer was as a child, and though I don’t remember the exact answer, it was something like “rabbit stew”.  Thus was a misconception born.  I have held this misconception since childhood until last night when Allena and I actually looked a recipe for hasenpfeffer.

Oh.  My.  Goodness.  It is NOT rabbit stew.  The recipe looks WONDERFUL, and we will be trying it soon.  It’s apparently one of those dishes that everyone cooks just a little differently, but every recipe we looked at sounded outstanding.  Check out the Bavarian Grill for just one variety.

So why all this interest in hasenpfeffer?  Well, because we butchered some rabbits on the ol’ ranch last night (five of them) and we were searching around for good ways to prepare them.  Allena has fried rabbit before, and rabbit stew would be easy enough to figure out but we like to try new stuff.  Hasenpfeffer is definitely on the list – we only lack some dry wine to cook the sauce with and that will be acquired today.

We probably won’t make it until the weekend, but I’ll definitely let you know how it was.  Bon Appetit!