Merry Christmas to all who read my blog

We had a great Christmas.

A close friend is recovering from surgery and we didn't go to our annual midnight mass as couples. It is Sharon with her husband Allan and me with my wife Annette, but next year it will resume.

We had a traditional ham prepared by Cajun Cookers of Jackson TN. It was GREAT! The ham was seasoned and smoked. It was very reasonable. The ham was about 15 pounds and cost 27.00 tax included.

We had gifts for our two pups, Peanut (Double Dapple Dachshund) and Buster (a Bassett Hound). My parents stopped by and had a piece of after dinner pie with us.

It was a quiet and relaxing Christmas.

So merry Christmas to all the readers of my blog. I hope everyone had a quiet spiritual and peaceful Christmas.

Well to catch everybody up,

Dad did finally get moved to Milan. He came by my house Sunday and borrowed my hand truck to help move around some boxes at the new house. Now the little things like getting the cable started have to be done.

He really likes the town of Milan and he likes being closer to me as I am glad he is closer to me as well.

I paid for the Christmas party at work, but I am also going to experiment with a recipe for a Chess Pie like they used to make at Britlings Cafeteria in Memphis. This will be my food donation. It’s not a hard recipe to follow, and I hope it’s legit enough to taste like the pies of my youth.

I guess this is my sensitive side, but I like to cook. I make a mean Lasagna and spaghetti sauce. I make a real good apple sauce pie. I can also make a pretty good Irish stew (sans the mutton), and also a great Brunswick stew (the secret is adding a little chicken and beef to the pork ingredient).

By the way, the secret of spaghetti sauce is brown a pinch of ground pork (sausage if you must) and ground lamb (this can be omitted if you are unable to find any ground lamb) in the beef for the meat sauce. Brown the meat in olive oil. Chop the veggies, such as onions as small as possible is another secret tool for good sauce. Microwave the bay leaf before including it in the sauce (keep the bay leaf whole so it is easy to remove at the end of cooking). Boil the noodles in chicken broth, because the broth unlocks the noodle flavor. Also add a little olive oil to the boiling noodles. There you have it, some of the secrets to great sauce and meal.