Remember how I said I was going to blogging five days a week from now until infinity? And how I was going to try to build up a portfolio of "timeless" posts for times when I was too busy to spend my morning crafting one?

Um. Yeah. About that ...

Crazy busy weekend here, with Conor's grad party up near the Poconos. Thanks again, everyone, for your gift suggestions; while we weren't able to afford them all, and couldn't find some - I'm still annoyed that oversized coffee mugs that can double as bowls are not in vogue right now and therefore impossible to find - we did use a good deal of the ideas you shared. And, despite Grammy advising us to go with cash instead, Conor whispered to me as we were leaving that he liked our gift best, because it took a lot of thought and was really fun and personal. Afterward, Grammy told us that Conor hates getting gift cards for presents, so yeah - Freshman Survival Kit FTW!

Got back really late from PA, as we spent some time at Grammy's house before heading home. Didn't actually reach our front door until just after midnight, and then spent the next two and a half hours prepping my stepfather's brunch for the next day. Originally, we'd planned to have an early breakfast and then go see UP in digital 3D at the theater across the street, but Joe and I were so amped from cooking that we didn't even crawl into bed until 5 a.m., and my mom had a sinus migraine from the near-constant rain, so the movie idea got scrapped and we did brunch closer to 11. Still a really fun day - the baked French toast is always a hit, and we did this sausage-and-English muffin strata (with veggies, cheese, and bacon on top - I joked, "Happy Father's Day! How do you like that heart attack we're giving you?") that Mom says she liked better than the pumpkin-and-sausage strata I traditionally make Christmas morning.

So, we didn't actually get to have time at our house until late Sunday afternoon, though in between all of the traveling and cooking and family visiting, I did manage to sneak in some really important e-mails and a few loads of laundry. Also exciting was receiving this link from Cindy Dobrez, about her and Lynn Rutan's review of THE SWEET LIFE OF STELLA MADISON for Booklist's blog, Bookends. Almost as exciting was her offer of another blueberry recipe, this one featuring a cookie crust and a cream cheese layer - I'm so making that for Fourth of July, and it will definitely become a Recipe of the Week.

One point that Cindy brought up in her review was that she was disappointed that the cover didn't look entirely as I'd described Stella - namely, the cover model lacks Stella's prone-to-frizz curls that she obsesses over. I have to admit that, I, too, wasn't crazy about the model's ambiguous hair (is it straight? wavy? curly but blown out?). Even so, I'm still very much enamored with this cover. And its designer, Vicki, was very gracious about making some requested changes from the original image. Many books use what's known as "stock photography" for their covers, and mine is no exception. The actual model on this cover is blond with pale blue eyes, and she wore a baby pink tee that clashed with the salmon, red, and purple of the font. So, I asked my brilliant editor, Jodi Keller, if we could make some alterations - like turning Stella into the brunette I intended her to be, tinting her eyes violet as referenced in the book, and making over her t-shirt in a more complementary color. All in all, I'm pretty pleased with the final result, lack of curls nothwithstanding.

Making beef stroganoff for dinner tonight - anything in a mushroom and onion laden sauce thickened with sour cream is aces in my book.

So, if I had to give last week a title, it would've been A Series of Unfortunate Events. It started with the whole running out of home heating oil and Monday, continued with my car breaking down only minutes before we were supposed to meet with a potential wedding caterer on Wednesday, and culminated in Joe's car breaking down the very next day - with a whole lot of messy family drama and minor-league trauma in between (nothing I want to go into - but suffice it to say, it was a VERY bad, bad week).

Here's an example: Thursday night, Joe and I baked our traditional Valentine's Day red velvet cupcakes with white chocolate cream cheese frosting. The cupcake part was fine - they came out REALLY red and tasted divine. But when we went to do the frosting, we realized we'd left the cream cheese out too long and it somehow got rancid in our 67 degree house. We were also planning on using leftover white chocolate chips, instead of buying bars, for the frosting, but chips have a stabilizer in them that don't let them melt the way bars or chunks do. So we wasted 3 cups of powdered sugar trying to turn rancid cream cheese and unmelty chips into frosting. Which meant that Joe had to run out to the grocery store after midnight to buy replacement cream cheese, chocolate bars, and powdered sugar. This after two earlier stops at the store for ingredients we neglected to stock ahead of time.

(The sweat equity was worth it, though. The cupcakes are always a huge hit, and this year when I was frosting them I had the brilliant idea of skipping swirls and instead piping a white chocolate heart on top. It was beyond precious.)

So then Saturday was Valentine's Day, and the icky turned into de lovely. We started the morning by topping some Trader Joe's whole grain french toast with bruleed bananas, then groomed the dog and took him over to PetCo (where the pets go) for a $6 family portrait. After that, Joe and I got haircuts (one of those quick, cheapy places over by Shoprite) and then hit up GameStop, where Joe proceeded to convince me that we needed several games for the Wii. This after $1,100 in home heating oil and car repairs. I relented, though, because he got a nice little bonus at work and the week before was putting in 14-hour days trying to make headway on some projects. One of the things he picked up was actually my Valentine's Day gift - My Fitness Coach for the Wii. I'd had the Xbox version when I was staying with my parents, saving up for the house, and really loved it. We also put a $5 pre-order depost on EA Sports Active, which looks so freaking cool that I can hardly stand it.

Afterward, we grabbed our Scrabble board and headed to Panera, where we snagged - and I still can't believe our luck - the two leather club chairs in front of the fireplace. We spent the next two hours playing Scrabble in front of the fire, sipping hot Chai and soliciting tons of "awws" from people who walked by or sat near us. It was so cozy, and so romantic, and so very us.

Back at home, we started to prep the very elaborate Valentine's Day feast we'd planned. The first course was to be Ina Garten's shrimp bisque. The recipe calls for seafood stock, but since I couldn't find that, I went with Better Than Bullion's Lobster Base. Oh. My. GOD. It was a disaster. The bullion was super salty, and I made the rookie mistake of NOT TASTING IT before adding the two teaspoons of salt the recipe called for. (In my head, I could hear Tom Collichio chastizing me for not tasting my food.) We tried everything we could to rescue the bisque - adding more tomato paste, adding more cayenne, adding more roux-thickened half and half ... finally we realized we were going to have to pick up more shrimp and add more leeks to make it palatable, and put the soup away for the next day. Then Joe started having stomach cramps, so we decided to postpone the entire romantical feast for Sunday.

The next day, I made us blueberry-and-Greek-yogurt smoothies before we hit the gym. Then it was off to Shoprite to pick up more shrimp. We came home to an odd-looking poop from the dog. There was a thing sticking out of it that resembled a giant earthworm. We scooped the sample and put it in a bag, put the bag in a Tupperware container, and put the container in another bag before popping it into the fridge. Then we spent the next hour Googling intestinal parasites to see if we could identify what it was that came out Skitty's body. Joe was so creeped out he didn't even want the dog kissing him. It was ... yeah, not good.

After we recovered from the "ew" factor, we headed into the kitchen. We sauteed an extra leek and the new pound of shrimp before pureeing it and adding it to the super-salty bisque. It tamed the flavor some, but not enough so that I could enjoy it. I had a very small portion before deciding my tummy still couldn't handle it. Such a disappointment! Expensive ingredients + lots of labor should = yumminess, right? I was afeared that our Weekend of Loveliness was morphing into A Series of Unfortunate Events, Take II.

But then Joe saved the day by making Alton Brown's chocolate mousse - my absolute favorite dessert - and it was AMAZERFUL.

Soup + mousse = full tummies, so we postponed the Valentine's Day Feast yet again. Which meant that Monday morning's breakfast consisted of a petite filet mignon (that we butchered ourselves, I might add), accompanied by sauteed mushrooms and topped with a homemade blue cheese chive sauce and a fried egg. I could only get through half of my filet, but even so, it was ... decadent.

A quick trip to the vet revealed that Scouty's foreign object was not, in fact, a giant mutant Earthworm, but something resembling waxed paper. Suddenly it dawned on us that while we were out on Saturday, a spurned Scout most likely raided a trash can, fished out a cupcake wrapper, and promptly swallowed it. Even though I was annoyed at the dog for trash munching, just knowing that he was okay and not infested with mutant worms brought such a sense of relief. The rest of the day was spent catching up on work and chores, and after I taught my final creative writing class of this session at the Y, I came home to help Joe finish off this totally scrumptious Curry Cauliflower Soup and a batch of Lavendar Blueberry Muffins for breakfast the next day. The latter recipe came from Recipes for Life After Weight-Loss Surgery, which my mom got me for Christmas, and they, too, were super yummy. You make them with oat flour, yogurt, and unsweetened applesauce, so not only do they taste awesome, but they're also really good for you. We used plain Greek yogurt instead of the traditional kind, so the muffins pack even more protein.

After we cleaned up the kitchen for the upteenth time, we took the dog out and ruminated on how much we'd actually cooked in the past five days. Out of everything, we only had one unmitigated disaster (the first batch of cupcake frosting) and one minor one (the too-salty shrimp bisque). Which isn't bad, considering everything that came out perfectly, including our home-butchered filet.

And now I just realized that I've written a novel here, AND that it's already 9:15 a.m., so I better wrap up.

Hope everyone had a loverly long weekend and a happy kicky sticky sweet V-Day!

I have been riding an incredible high, the result of making excellent grocery purchases and turning them into seriously good eats, since last Thursday. For the past year, I've been doing the majority of our menu planning based on A) what we've got in the house and B) what's on sale at Shoprite each week. I also try to use coupons whenever possible, and I'm lucky in that my mom will clip ones from the paper for us. Plus, I also discovered that even though the coupons for BJ's Warehouse have expiration dates on them, they're like Bed, Bath, & Beyond coupons in that they don't ever actually expire. By doing these things, and making sure Joe and I pack our lunches, we've been able to cut down quite extensively on our grocery bills. Even so, I'm always looking for more bargains, better bargains, and a way to buy the food I want to cook without sending us to the poor house.

One day while flipping through sale ads, I saw an insert for the Newark Farmer's Market, which sits right across the street from our gym. Joe and I had gone there once last winter and at the time I was excited by the variety of produce offered. Things I can't get readily anywhere else, like Japanese eggplant and every kind of chili pepper imaginable. They have a large selection of speciality items for Asian and Mexican cooking, too. But for some reason, after that first trip we never went back. Anyway, this sale insert I saw advertised a pint of fresh blueberries for 99 cents. At Shoprite, that will easily cost you $3. And they had bananas for 29 cents/lb. At Shoprite, it's at least 20 cents more. Etc.

So, last Thursday after class, I headed to the Newark Farmer's Market with my shopping list. An hour later, I walked out $35 poorer but loaded up with so much amazing stuff that I felt like a kid at Christmas. Pickling lime for $1? A pint of gorgeous grape tomatoes for 99 cents? A huge box of lavender green tea - 50 bags for $2.99? Ooh, baby. My biggest score was the fresh thyme. See, I know fresh herbs taste way better than dried ones, but it's not usually cost effective for me to purchase them. Even Trader Joe's charges $1.99 for a small package. But at the NFM, I found this enormous package of fresh thyme with very few bruised leaves. I needed the fresh for a recipe I was making over the weekend (more on that in a bit), but not nearly as much in the package. However, we recently ran out of dried thyme, too. And I thought, well, what about the dehydrator? I'd bought Joe one for his birthday two years ago, so we could play around with making our own beef jerky. But then I thought, what if we dried the leftover fresh thyme and ground it up in the old coffee bean grinder we use for spices? That's got to be fresher than the dried thyme you buy at any store, even Whole Foods (which, sadly, we don't have yet in DE anyway). Cost of the fresh thyme? $2.50. Cost of a tiny jar of dried thyme at Shoprite? $5.49.

Then, on Friday, I made my weekly pilgrimmage to Shoprite. I was especially excited because they had whole beef tenderloin on sale for $3.99/lb (marked down from $5.99). I dug through the bin and managed to find a little 4 lb. tenderloin - which means I got about four dinners' worth of potential filet mignon for $16 (and, if you read my list of 33 things I want to accomplish in my 33rd year, fabricating my own whole beef tenderloin was item #10). I picked up 5 lbs. of bone-in chicken thighs, 3 lbs. of sweet Italian sausage, 2.5 lbs. of hot Italian sausage - all of which were on sale as well - plus half and half, heavy cream, cream cheese, shredded cheese, a new 9x13 cake pan, and a cart full of other things for a whopping $70. Since the previous week I was able to pick up some top round London broil for $1.99/lb, and next week I can pick up boneless pork loin for $.99/lb and bottom round roast for $1.99/lb., I will have effectively stocked our freezer with enough meat to feed us roughly four to six months - and all for about $100.

Can I get a woot-woot?

On Saturday, I made Rachael Ray's recipe for portobello pizzas, which she intended as an appetizer but seeing as how one small mushroom cap was a Lara-sized dinner portion, we made a meal out of them. (Yay for the cheap but delicious grape tomatoes I scored at the Newark Farmer's Market, not to mention the reasonably priced portobellos!) Then, on Sunday, Joe and I made this recipe for eggplant lasagna that I saw on RESCUE CHEF - the sauce for which we also made from scratch. Okay, first of all? The sauce is amazing, and the recipe yields enough not only for the lasagna but extra for freezing. But also: how freaking ingenious is it to create a lasagna using roasted eggplant slices in place of noodles? I mean, I adore traditional meat-and-cheese lasagna, but oh. My. GOD. Between the homemade marinara and the sweetness of the roasted eggplant and the intense punch of the fresh herbs ... this was like a big ol' pan of love. And with the exception of calling for whole milk ricotta, instead of part-skim or fat-free, there is absolutey NOTHING unhealthy about this dish. Plus, it makes enough for eight normal-people servings, and since I get two full meals out of one normal-people portion, there are leftovers galore.

This is the thing that Joe and I realized over the weekend: as long as we stay excited about food and leave time for home cooking, we eat really healthfully. When we first moved in together, we were spending probably three times what we do now on food, and most of it was going to heart-attack friendly take out - a constant rotation of pizza, cheese steaks, jalapeno poppers and chicken fingers. Nowadays, creative and healthy eating is like this bonding ritual for us. We watch cooking shows together, go shopping for ingredients together, make delicious meals together, eat those delicious meals together, and even do the dishes together. It's nice. I like it. And I honestly don't miss BK bacon double cheeseburgers, not even for one second.

Other good things: our Wii arrived on Saturday, so we finally got our Wii Fit on! Ohmigod, it was so much fun. So. Much. FUN! It doesn't replace a gym workout - not by any stretch - but holy cow, were we laughing ourselves silly. Plus, by Sunday, the two of us were experiencing soreness in muscles that apparently don't get used much at the gym, so I think it will round out the weekly routine quite nicely. And because we're such dorks? Saturday night, we created an Alton Brown Mii, so now we get to work out along side our favorite Food Network chef.

Do you know how every now and then you feel so enormously happy that you think your skin might explode, because it can't possible contain all of that happiness? I've spent the better part of four days feeling like that, save for several hours on Saturday where every single thing that could've gone wrong did (including me losing my temper at a particularly snotty customer service rep from Citibank, and then bursting into tears because I really don't like losing my temper at anyone, no matter how snotty they are). Yes, money is tight, and yes, wedding planning still sucks (though we are making progress with a great caterer). Yes, I have 125 unanswered e-mails again, and yes, I'm behind on several deadlines at the moment. But so freaking what? Joe is amazing. Our dog is adorable. Life is really, really good. And I am really, really lucky.

Yeah.

So, it's officially that time of year when I start to get so stressed/overwhelmed that if I let my brain think too hard, I literally start shaking. Christmas is my family's big holiday, even though I was raised a full-blood Jew (long story), and my mom and I have a tendency to go nuts. This Christmas had to be different, though, mostly due to the economy but also because we're hosting extra family members. Since this year was particularly difficult for Joe and me fiscally, and since we're trying to save up for a wedding in the not-so-distant future, we thought we'd put our craftiness to good use and make a lot of gifts. Only, the second bedroom - the one we've been trying to turn into an office/craft room for me since August 2007 (note: 2007, not August 2008) - was still unfinished as of last month. Which means we've been hustling our butts off trying to finish it, seeing as how nearly all of my craft supplies are stored randomly in what we refer to as the Jungle Room (a bonus room off the side of the house that's getting zero use because it's crammed full of everything we have no place for).

Anyway, Saturday and Sunday were largely spent working on the craft room. And, as of 6:15 p.m. yesterday, all of the painting is officially DONE! The walls are my favorite shade of robin's egg blue; the trim, which Joe sanded down to bare wood practically, gleams a bright white. Now he just has to finish pulling up tape and getting paint drippings off my hardwood floor and we can move me in. Well, that and installing the black glass chandelier I purchased on deep sale sometime last spring. And measuring the window for a roll shade I want to fix up with fabric and trim like I saw on DECORATING CENTS. And taking down the doors and sanding/painting those to match the trum, cleaning and sprucing up an old floor lamp by attaching fabric that matches the roll shade to its drum shade spray adhesive, painting the pegboard white and attaching some peel-and-stick trim in glossy black, painting my old Target bookshelves white and nail-gunning the luan backer boards to the wood after painting them the same robin's egg blue as the walls ....

Okay, so we still have a little ways to go. But we were able to get one corner fixed up enough to move my "new" desk in (it was purchased on deep, deep discount last December, assembled in August, and taking up major space in our bedroom since we dug back into the project last month). And my old dining room table is about to become a craft table, thanks to some lovely black-and-white oil cloth I'm going to staple to its top. The larger is issue is that of the projects we need to get underway, the first of which must be ready Friday, since that's when Joe's team at work is doing the holiday party thing. We thought it would be fun to put together jars of homemade cocoa mix and make homemade marshmallows to go with them. I'm using Tyler Florence's recipe from a Christmas special the Food Network did a year or two ago. Most of the ingredients were wicked cheap at BJs, and we decided to substitute semi-sweet chocolate chips for bittersweet chocolate chunks, since neither of us are a fan of bittersweet.

Yeah, so there's that and I'm making soy candles and coffee foot scrubs and crayon-batiked picture frames, and then for Joe's dad in Mexico we wanted to get one of those photo books you can order from the Kodak Gallery. He hasn't seen Joe or his brother in several years, and I probably won't even meet him until our wedding, so the book is kind of a recap of our last 18 mos. together. But I was up until 3 a.m. Photoshopping pictures (yay for the zit-removal tool!) and designing the pages, so I am officially teh exhausted.

The good part is that except for the last few supplies I need to purchase for crafty-type things, I'm finished with my shopping and just need to get wrapping. And cooking, of course, since it's never a holiday without me having to make several dishes. For Christmas Eve, I'm making Alton Brown's Christmas Soup (mostly because kielbasa was on sale at Shoprite last week), and then I'm making some sort of strata for breakfast Christmas morning (recipe to be determined). For dinner that night, I'm making this scalloped corn thing Joe's grammy made at Thanksgiving, and for dessert I thought I'd give Ina Garten's old-fashioned gingerbread a whirl. Finally, for day-after-Christmas dinner with Joe's friend Mike's family, I think I'm going to attempt another tiramisu. I'm determined to beat that thing into submission.

Our weekend wasn't ALL work. We hit the gym twice (arms = owie) and took time out to watch TROPIC THUNDER (hilarious) and WALL-E (best. movie. ever). And I got a little caught up on sleep before last night's marathon Photoshopping session. So, you know. All in all, a good time.

Happy Monday, everyone!

P.S. Did anyone else read this article in EW and want to run right out and buy a DVD of THE ROOM? It's totally sold out on Amazon, but I'm so getting my hands on a copy as soon as it's back in stock.

I used to love cold weather. Like, really love it. In fact, that's why Joe and I are getting married in February - because it's the only month of the year that I can guarantee with almost 100 percent certainty will be cold. And possibly snowy, which I find lovely and romantic.

But damn.

It's freaking COLD.

This morning I woke with the skin on the right side of my face peeling off in sheets. Guzzling water and moisturizing three times a day doesn't seem to be doing the trick, so I resorted to more drastic measures and slathered on some generic Aquaphor to see if I could get rid of some of the flaking. It's disgusting. And it hurts. Fix it! Fix it! Fix it!

Saturday night, it snowed and it was so pretty and I was all happy and whatnot. My mom hosted a dinner to celebrate Joe's birthday (which was on Friday) and Mark's birthday (which was on Saturday). She made this kick-ass anti-pasti platter that had everything you could imagine on it (including a big ball of fresh mozzarella stuffed with soft cream cheese - yum! We arrived at the Italian theme because I'd been dying to make the bolognese sauce recipe that appeared in O Magazine last February. Only, the recipe turned out to be not so great. I don't know if I just had skewed ideas about a traditional bolognese sauce, but this was bland and lacked any kind of tomato-y impact. With an hour left to go on the cooking, I made some major adjustments to the recipe (which I will post tomorrow) and it turned out fantastic. We served it on top of bucati, which are like straws of pasta that are hollow insiide (perfect to soak up sauce) and with homemade garlic bread that I also made. For dessert, Mom made mini bundt cakes using this amazing Earl Grey chocolate pound cake recipe, and Joe and I made tiramisu from scratch. Only, I used the traditional Bel Gioso recipe, which fails to specify clearly that you should layer the mascarpone mixture with the ladyfingers dipped in espresso, so instead of three layers of cookies/cheese mixture, I had a thick layer of cookie topped by huge blobs of creamy stuff. Not my finest hour. I so understand why Rachael Ray hates baking. Cooking is so easy to fix and mess around with. Baking is science. I am not a science person. I am a tinkering person. Hence, cooking is better.

Other than taking time out to celebrate birthdays and enjoy a bit of snow, I've been working round-the-clock on a freelance project that initially seemed like a breeze but turned out to be hellish. I've logged like 50 hours on it so far, and I'm still not done. By the time this puppy is finished, I will have made maybe $6/hour from it. SO NOT WORTH MY TIME/EFFORT. Not to mention the sacrifice of sleep. Only three hours last night, and I've still got a ways to go before I can crash.

No rest for the weary.

In more uplifting news: in about 30 minutes I get to leave to go meet lizgallagher for breakfast. She was in town for a wedding and is flying back to Seattle today, so unfortunately we only get about an hour or so of catch-up time. Still, seeing even a little bit of Liz is better than no Liz at all, so I'm excited.

Woot!

Sunday, 11/23

Boarded an early flight to Atlanta, where I caught another flight to San Antonio, for the ALAN conference. Checked into my hotel around 1:30 p.m. local time, took a 15-minute stroll around the Riverwalk, and then back to my room for a hot shower, a little relaxing, and then some major primping. Met my speaking agent, Catherine Balkin of Balkin Buddies, for drinks in the hotel's lobby at 4 p.m. Then met up with the Random House crew and walked over to the Marriott for the ALAN cocktail reception. Spoke to two very nice, bubbly teachers from a Catholic school and discussed how to get an institution with a very strict moral doctrine to accept books into the curriculum that went against that doctrine. (My answer: if parents pay all of this money to go to a school that will instill strong moral values into them, then why do they thing reading a book that goes against those values will immediately strip said children of all morals?) Got to meet some friends I've known online for a while, like the lovely and fabulous Jennifer Lynn Barnes (aka jenlyn_b), as well as catch up briefly with old friends like David Lubar (aka davidlubar) and E. Lockhart (aka e_lockhart). Eventually was shuttled off with the Random House crew to a dinner in a wine cellar, where I got to meet with several spunky teachers and a newish RH editor who looks half my age but was so smart and fun and really made dinner a delight. Had to leave the dinner early due to a disagreement my stomach had with the salmon and ended up missing this kick-ass authors-only party. At hotel, tried to watch WILDCATS on TV but passed out at 10:30 p.m. Ah, the glamorous life!

Monday, 11/24

Woke up around 7 due to fiance calling and forgetting that I didn't have to be up until 8. Got a few more minutes of shut-eye before hauling self up and getting ready for the day's activities, which included speaking on a panel with David Levithan, Laura Ruby (aka lauraruby), and Tanya Lee Stone (aka tanyaleestone). The panel was called "I Feel Good: Positive Portrayals of Sex in YA Novels," and it was wonderful except for the fact that we all felt like we were preaching to the converted (we were a breakout session instead of a general session). The highlight of the panel: when David Levithan suggested we break the last tabu of sex in the YA novel - the orgy - and write the book as a "group project." I laughed so hard he thought he was giving me a heart attack. Oh, my goodness! Got to meet (and hug) Coe Booth (aka coebooth), spent 20 seconds telling Virginia Euwer Wolf how she inspired me at the beginning of my love affair with YA, and signed some books. Throughout the day I got to spend chunks of time with Jen and her good friend, Ally Carter, who's absolutely delightful. I also got to have a few short conversations with John Green, who I'd somehow never met in person, and was shocked to find out that he gets nervous before speaking in public. Jen, Ally, and I had all bonded over our collective fear of the cocktail party. Put me on a stage and I can talk like nobody's business, but stick me in a social setting and I want to blend into the walls. Got to hear maybe five minutes of John's speech before rushing out to meet my ride to the airport. Flew back on a direct flight and got home a full forty minutes before expected. Crashed hard.

Tuesday, 11/25

Decompressed from trip. Unpacked, did laundry, caught up on some DVR'd TV, rebonded with dog. Was fortunate to have finished 98% of all holiday cooking supplies prior to leaving, but that night had to hit two grocery stores to find suitable stuffing mushrooms and two liquor stores to find a small bottle of Frangelica (a vital ingredient in my mother's semi-famous pumpkin and sausage soup). Picked up Chinese takeout and then spent the rest of the evening just hanging with Joe.

Wednesday, 11/26
Was supposed to spend the whole day cooking, but spent most of the morning answering e-mail and catching up on online business. Worked on a freelance project and got the call that Joe was getting off at 3 p.m. This made me post-pone cooking even later, because we like to cook together, but I totally misjudged the time. On our list to prepare: sausage-stuffed mushrooms, the aforementioned pumpkin and sausage soup, coconut buttermilk pie, and Southern pecan pie. Stayed up until 2 a.m. cooking/baking/cooling pies. Joe crashed around 1 a.m. but I prevailed to the bitter end.

Thursday, 11/27 (aka Thanksgiving)

Up at 8 a.m. to shower, get the dog groomed/ready, pack the car, and drive to Bethlehem for Joe's family's Thanksgiving. Was nervous as meeting several new-to-me family members. Also nervous that pies looked over-baked or that the mushrooms (new recipe) would suck or that I'd somehow managed to screw up a soup we've made every Thanksgiving for the past seven years. Fortunately, the new-to-me family members were awesome, all of my dishes turned out perfectly and got major kudos, and I was introduced to Joe's family's tradition of watching NATIONAL LAMPOON'S CHRISTMAS VACATION immediately after dinner (my family's traditional post-dinner viewing = RUDOLPH). Had an awesome time and drove home happy, happy, happy.

Friday, 11/28 (aka Thanksgiving Part Deux)

Joe worked from home while I prepped two more dishes for our second Thanksgiving dinner, this one with my parents. Made another batch of sausage-stuffed mushrooms and another coconut buttermilk pie. Scouty was in heaven, as he spent Thanksgiving with his boyfriend Terry and the next day with his aunt Daphne and uncle Jake. Dinner was awesome; my mom had made her sausage and cornbread stuffing, sweet potato casserole, and pumpkin and sausage soup - great because we didn't take any leftovers from Joe's family's dinner, but Mom loaded us up big time. Watched some of the Christmas classic cartoons, including SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN, before catching the tail end of BILL AND TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE on TV. Once again, I was exhausted and crashed by 10:30. I am getting old.

Saturday, 11/29

Worked on the craft room with Joe. This is the project we started August 2007. Now we're very close to completion. Most of the day was spent sanding trim, if you can believe it. At night, after we lost the natural light, we watched some more FREAKS & GEEKS on DVD. Another early night.

Sunday, 11/30

Second day of work on the craft room. My main job was brushing away sanding dust, tack clothing everything, taping off trim, and cutting in on the walls/trim. Joe repainted the ceiling and then finished up my trim work. Still need to put a final coat on the walls and repaint the trim, but the floor needs to be masked off because neither of us are precise or neat painters. Why do these jobs seem to go so quickly on TV? Are there secret crews they don't film who come in and do all of the work? Throughout the day we'd take quick breaks to watch more FREAKS & GEEKS. Only two episodes left; I've already added UNDECLARED to our Netflix queue.

Monday, 12/1

Today is the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day, and to commemmorate the occasion, Joe and I are attending a vigil tonight sponsored by AIDS Delaware, where my friend Ebbie works. Still reeling from the impossible feat of losing four pounds over Thanksgiving weekend. Who does that?

Tomorrow I'm starting a new feature on this blog: recipe of the week. This is in part a nod to THE SWEET LIFE OF STELLA MADISON, my next book for Random House, which comes out in July. There's a lot of food and cooking in that book, and since I like food and I like to cook, I thought I'd share some of my favorite recipes and cooking sites/blogs with you. First up: the recipe to my mom's pumpkin and sausage soup, which everyone should experience at least once.