Why I Oughta...

The holidays ALWAYS go by so fast, so like in year's past, I tried to take a look back to chronicle the things that made this year special.  This is the 3rd year of putting together a list of My Favorite (Holiday) Things.  Sorry, this isn't like Oprah, so I'm not giving out any of these things to you guys just yet.  But, perhaps they can make your holidays next year brighter by including them in your plans. 2009 Edition 2010 Edition 1.  Tammen Tree Farm - The ONLY honoree that has appeared on all three editions of MF(H)T.  Each year, we head down to Wilmington to cut down a few trees with the Morans.   Our 2011 tree - a 8 foot Fraser Fir - looked great in our living room.   2.  Having a project - This is a two-time honoree.  This year, I had a MASSIVE project in the basement, but I also took some time to make a DIY Basketball rack for Equation Boy/Man for our gift exchange.  I have bigger aspirations for next year, but I'll hope to at least keep do

Over the weekend, we were lucky enough to have the Babe's Aunt Cici and Uncle Bill look after her for a night so Nat and I could go out to see our good friends off to Austin Texas.  While we were out, Uncle Bill got creative and - with chalk markers - drew this masterpiece on this piece of chalkboard that sits atop the Babe's puppet theatre.  Pretty spectacular stuff and this will probably be the second 'temporary' drawing that Bill has made that Nat will want to be made permanent via the use of lacquer or something.

Every time I see a restaurant - or in this case Mike's Meat Market - claim something as "Homemade" it drives me crazy.  There is nothing appetizing about the notion of going to a restaurant and thinking about someone making their specialities in their own home kitchen, packing them in the car and then hauling them into their restaurant or store. Housemade on the other hand is much better - because it tells me that whatever this particular item is - it  isn't bought from a distributor.  Rather, they're putting it together back in the kitchen. I know it is an odd request. Please restaurant operators:  Stop with this homemade madness.  I don't want homemade. (Oh, and while you're at it, please stop calling anything the "First Annual", too.)

This morning, I received a nice surprise:  this thing that I've been carrying around in my pocket for 3 weeks is finally more than just a wifi paperweight.  LTE time!

Elmhurst's own, Joe Newton the legendary York High School cross country coach is featured prominently in this NBC Sports Network commercial.  Couldn't think of a better guy to open the network up for business.   (If you are reading this in your email and cant' see the video above, click here  to watch on YouTube.) First time I ever heard of Joe Newton was when I was a high school junior and my High School brought him in for an all-school assembly.  Since then, I've heard him talk to the Elmhurst College Football team on 2 occasions and my admiration for him has only grown.  Pretty neat to see him get this recognition.   

Since documenting the variety known as Grandma Pizza back in October of 2010 , I still had not introduced it to my rotation of homebaked pies and  tried to bake one myself.  That all ended last night. *UPDATE on Feb 3, 2012* I recently bought 2 Detroit-style Blue Steel Pizza Pans and changed my recipe a bit. We had a few friends have babies recently, so Nat decided to bring them over a ready-made meal.  I was able to help and put together a few deep dish pizzas.  While I was making the skins, I threw together the ingredients for a 3rd one - that we could keep.  I modified my deep dish dough recipe a bit by adding more water and oil to make it more match the Grandma recipe from Slice .   I modified the recipe for both the dough and the sauce a bit, but the science behind it is all Kenji's from Slice. For the Dough 3 cups all-purpose flour 2 teaspoons kosher salt A couple of scoops of rapid-rise yeast (I have a big tub of the stuff so I don't measure that well, unfor

What's this?  Another stinkin' Christmas post?  WTF?  This is January you say.  It is, indeed.  But...the sad truth of the matter is that I still have Christmas on my brain.  And, I'm sad to report that the deluge of vintage Christmas shopping didn't stop with our little Christmas girl .   I couldn't put these (above) 3 vintage Santa cake toppers down at the Antique Mall .  I'm not sure we're going to keep them because they seem to be more in the wheelhouse of my mother-in-law.  While Nat bakes a MEAN cake (and other sweet treats), her Mom has used cake toppers of all sorts - including some vintage ones that her Dad brought over - so she's likely be geeked to have them. They've been packed away in one of our Christmas tubs, so come this November, we'll see what Nat thinks when we unpack them and if we're going to keep 'em.

The turn of the page on the new calendar year didn't slow down the Christmas insanity in my world.  While we were up in Michigan, we went to the Great Lakes Antique Mall - in Coloma - and came away with a few treasures.  We go the Mall often - almost everytime we go up to Michigan - but have never come away with any Christmas stuff.  Seems like we must not be up there in the weeks/month leading up to Christmas, so I've never seen the booths stocked with vintage holiday stuff. Sure...there's a lot of junk and because of the setup (vendors in their own booths), the prices are often a tad high, but as we usually do, I came across a few gems including this darling little Christmas girl.  She's wearing a pink dress (you can barely see it in the photo) and carrying a few packages.  It has a great "Made in Japan" sticker on the bottom that you find on these 50's and 60's items. She'll go great in our display next year when she's sitting next to o

Every year, a number of folks around town participate in what I call the " Elmhurst Front Yard Christmas Tree Tradition " - where we put up small(ish) Christmas trees in our front yards and light them up to celebrate the season.  Above is a photo of our tree this year.  You'll note that most of the lights are off to the side (on the bottom left of the tree) - and that's because I was taking the tree down today and realized that I hadn't take a photo of the tree to post!  So, mid-disassemble, I grabbed this photo - to mark the annual tradition before I shipped it off to the curb. Here's my post from our 2009 tree . Here's my post from our 2010 tree .   I kept putting this off, thinking that I'll wait for snow to be on the ground to make it a bit more seasonal.  That snow never came. The trees are $17 and are a fundraiser for the Elmhurst School District.  One of our neighbors organizes it ever year and distributes slips of paper to each of ma

Couldn't imagine another way to ring in the new year than with ice cream sundaes and my favorite people.