Holiday Shopping

When I finish this, I have to go to the Amazon website and shop for myself. This should be a giddy thing, all abuzz with promise and excitement. I dunno -- I may not be in the mood for the holiday. I'm not entirely sure I'm ready for December.

Mind you, I love to shop. I have the shopping gene. I have the gift giving gene. I even have a color gene that allows me to match the item I'm holding in a store with colors in a house a thousand miles away. But for some reason, the excitement isn't there this year. Yet.

We had guests over Sunday night, and while it was still daylight, we took them up the road to see our acreage. We were blocking the road when our neighbors, G & G, came down their driveway and started toward us. They were off to do Christmas shopping. I flinched at the thought, and then flinched to notice myself flinch. But I like shopping, I thought.

And it's not like I haven't already started. I've got a half-dozen gifts for Starman already, three gifts for Hub 1.0, and even a present for Coffee Jones. Starman has two nieces and two nephews we're buying for this year (the adults in that family lack the shopping gene, I gather, so they've agreed to skip the adult-to-adult presents and just concentrate on the kids), and we have almost all the presents for them we need. And Starman already has all the presents for me he needs (he says). All that remains is for me to transfer my Amazon.com wish-list over to him.

So, off to shop for quilting books!

But before I go, I promised to recreate the post that Google gobbled on Monday. Basically it boiled down to two things: Make this recipe (unless you hate mushrooms), and read this blog. The blog is the more heartfelt recommendation; it's written by someone I don't know (his dad was one of our dinner guests on Sunday evening), and it's great fun. I started at the beginning , so that's what I've linked you to, and just read forward. There are only ten months' worth of entries, so it's not a life-long commitment. And if I tell you it's educational, you won't want to read it. So I won't. I'll tell you instead it's got funny lyrics about a translator named Farhad, set to the tune of "Rawhide." Can't miss that, can you?

And if the wild mushroom bread pudding doesn't appeal (because it's not healthy enough?), try this recipe for strawberries in wine. We had it over mango ice cream, and it was super yummy. Relatively healthy, even with the ice cream.