use real butter

Yay! I found liquor-filled chocolate bottles at Cost Plus Imports yesterday. I also bought more chocolates and other interesting things for Ben’s crackers (a mini gummy hamburger which is nice and squishy). When I unloaded all of the candies into this large bowl on the table, I told Jeremy we may have more candy than can fit into the crackers. He assured me this was not a problem.

Baked more brownies and this morning I got up super early to bake some cakes, make more crackers and print some little cards for my mom. I’m totally wired but I know I’m going to crash later in the day. We’re having a small potluck today at work. It was originally a “white trash” potluck lunch, but folks got a little bashful about the white trash part. I think true white trash food is kinda scary, but the standard casseroles and dishes that I saw growing up in Virginia – that’s good stuff. It’s bad for you, but it tastes great. I’ve found that white trash is not a Southern thing per se, because you find this stuff anywhere in America where white people can’t really cook (the midwest comes to mind, rural locales, upstate NY…) No, I take that back – there are few really good recipes that come from the midwestern “white trash” category. The best ones really are from the south. I brought potato-cheese casserole. I got the recipe from my ex-boyfriend whose family is from Kansas (there ya go!).

Oh, Kaweah isn’t seven years old, she’s six years old. Carrie pointed out to me that Hailey is only six and a half – and Hailey is older than Kaweah. I hate to say this, but we never remember the year Kaweah was born, only that we got her close to our second anniversary. And we couldn’t remember which year we married… So Kaweah gets a year back!

My photos tanked from the Geminids evening. It was the f-stop. Doh! So stupid of me. I was too tired last night to try it again, but we did walk outside to see some really nice meteors. With the heavy light pollution from Los Angeles, we could only see the fairly bright ones. At that rate, it must have been slightly better than what we were getting at our dark sky site the night before. Very exciting, even when walking the dog to the dark hill in the neighborhood. Note: colored Christmas lights are generally very tacky and rarely pulled off well without corporate sponsorship.

To make up for the photo fiasco, I decided to create a birthday dessert for Kaweah tonight as she turned seven years old today. Here’s the dessert (it looked delicious until I added the dog biscuits):

I met some Chinese people last night who don’t know how to order good food in a Chinese restaurant. I know that sounds odd, but EVERYONE in my family knows how to order GOOD Chinese food in REAL Chinese restaurants. I always assumed that came with being Chinese. Last night put that assumption to rest.