I personally hate the "Texas Tuxedo" for myself, but who cares if it's in, or what anybody thinks? If you like it and feel good in it, rock it!

"There's no crying in baseball" from A League of Their Own. We say that one a lot, about many things. "They could be fascist anarchists for all I care...it doesn't change the fact that I still don't have a car" from Ferris Bueller's Day Off In general, though, we quote TV shows more than movies

I Love Lucy M*A*S*H Once Upon a Time Rick Steves' Europe Downton Abbey

I think the whole response to her surgery and recovery has had a very "Mean Girls" vibe about it, particularly in the way people (and especially women) feel a need to speculate and comment on what should be her private medical business. Let's call it what it is...gossip. We really don't need to know everything just because information is usually so easy to come by.

I absolutely hate it.

I think I saw a hairbrush back there!

I remember it! I have no idea why, but I do, and I always liked upples and bununus best, too!

1990, Chicago suburbs. Cereal for breakfast. I usually took a lunch that was probably a PBJ on white bread, a piece of fruit, and maybe a baggie of chips? I think we *had* to drink milk at school, so I probably had that with lunch even though I hated it. Sometimes I had a juice box in my lunch, too. I went to a private school, and they didn't start providing hot lunches on a regular basis until I was in junior high...I occasionally bought my lunch once they started offering that. Dinner...I don't know. There were a lot of casseroles. Sometimes TV dinners. I remember pork roasts that I disliked, served with an iceberg lettuce salad that I also disliked. There were sometimes pork chop or chicken breasts that were baked in some kind of cream of something soup. Fresh vegetables sometimes, but maybe more often frozen? You know that line Captain America has that's something like "Food is better now. Everything was boiled in the 40s."? I feel like a lot of the food I ate was boiled. We probably went out to dinner more than was average back then, and by the time I was in high school, we ate out a lot. Not fast food (although there was some of that too), but sit-down, both casual and more formal places. Looking back on that, I'm shocked, because we would get an appetizer (sometimes to share, sometimes we each had our own), a main course with soup or salad, and dessert, too! On the rare occasions my family goes out to eat now (a few times a year), we might get one appetizer for all of us, dinners, and never dessert! One thing I do know...I'm pretty sure the only water I drank in the 80s and early 90s came from a garden hose!

Wrap the slow-to-arrive presents, buy a few stocking stuffers, and bake A LOT of cookies (that's the part that's scaring me...I got a late start on them this year!).

I was just going to say the exact same thing!

I hope you like it as much as I did!!!

40 oz. crushed pineapple with juice 1 cup white sugar 6 Tbsp. cornstarch 2 Tbsp. lemon juice 2 pie crusts 1 egg 2 Tbsp. milk 1 Tbsp. white sugar Preheat oven to 425. Combine crushed pineapple with juice, 1 cup sugar, cornstarch, and lemon juice in a medium saucepan. Cook and stir over medium heat until thickened, then boil for 1 minute. Cool slightly. Line a 10-inch pie plate with crust. Beat egg and brush crust with it to prevent sogginess. Pour filling into the prepared pie dish. Cover with remaining crust; press and flute the edges to seal. Cut a few steam vents on top (or do a lattice crust), brush crust with milk and sprinkle with 1 Tbsp. sugar. Bake until golden brown, about 35 minutes. Serve with whipped cream and flaked coconut if desired.

Most of mine come from The Phantom Tollbooth: “You must never feel badly about making mistakes, as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons…but it’s not just learning things that’s important. It’s learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learns things at all that matters.” “That may be true, but you had the courage to try, and what you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do.” “But it’s just as bad to live in a place where what you do see isn’t there as it is to live in one where what you don’t see is.” "For instance, from here that looks like a bucket of water…But from an ant’s point of view it’s a vast ocean, from an elephant’s just a cool drink, and to a fish, of course, it’s home. So, you see, the way you see things depends a great deal on where you look at them from.” “In this box are all the words I know…Most of them you will never need, some you will use constantly, but with them you may ask all the questions which have never been answered and answer all the questions which have never been asked. All the great books of the past and all the ones yet to come are made with these words. With them there is no obstacle you cannot overcome. All you must learn to do is use them well and in the right places.” And a few from Anne of Green Gables: “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it?” "That’s the worst of growing up, and I’m beginning to realize it. The things you wanted so much when you were a child don’t seem half so wonderful to you when you get them." "It is ever so much easier to be good if your clothes are fashionable. At least, it is easier for me. I suppose it doesn’t make such a difference to naturally good people." Finally, one from Little Women: “Mothers have need of sharp eyes and discreet tongues when they have girls to manage.”

I bought a book, Time for Cranberries, almost a decade ago, which I felt gave us a good basic understanding of how cranberry bogs work and the effort that goes into the harvest. This particular issue never came up in the book, and I can't tell if I'm relieved or upset that we missed this vital detail!

I think this year's turkey was one of the better ones I've made...I didn't really think it was too dry, and I always think the turkey is too dry! 🙂 I made a pineapple pie for the first time, mostly because it sounded intriguing, and it was a huge hit. Definitely a recipe I will keep. Everything else was pretty standard, and it was all good, so I think Thanksgiving was a success!