Bacon of the Month Club:
http://www.delish.com/entertaining-ideas/holidays/food-of-the-month-clubs?click=main_sr
I bought my wife a Radio Controlled toy… a zombie toy, specifically, from ThinkGeek. Apparently he/it shuffles.
The remote controllers is shaped like a little brain.
(What? She’s hard to buy for.)
The kids tell me something they want…a pair of boots, an unattractively gross PS3 game, a coat…and I buy it.
Then I collect stocking stuffers.
The end!
I envy your gift-fu, Emmline.
Do you have any tips for parents / step-parents who already have everything?
Amazon has gift ideas based on my past purchases.
“Kreg” is apparently a maker of carpentry tools. I was trying to figure out why Amazon thought I might be interested in the “Kreg R3 Junion Pocket Hole Jig System” and the “Kreg Jig K4 Pocket hole system” – then I noticed the word “jig” in there and remembered various MP3 purchases I’ve made… heh.
I’m surprised Amazon isn’t also trying to sell me fishing reels.
I just finished making fifty orange-cranberry cakes for friends, family, and staff. I always forget the fun I have making these each year. Every cake needed the zest of two oranges. We now have small droplets of orange oil all over everything in the kitchen including the walls, ceiling, fridge, stove, toaster, microwave, cabinets, floor, dogs, etc. If I don’t see that zester again until next year it’ll be too soon. But everybody loves the cakes! 
In fact I find a large number of people like food, so that is often what we give, like Harry and David’s Royal Riviera Pears. I really don’t care much for pears but these are a whole different animal.
Sometimes we get dog (or cat) in the food. I think about cinching all three into hair nets when cooking, but they don’t care for it.
By end of the day I’m certain there will be dog and cat hair stuck to every droplet on orange oil in the kitchen, and our dogs shed a puppy’s worth of hair everyday.
I really like this inflatable toast:
What an utterly Dada bit of “Why?”. But I’d like it better if I could come up with an actual use for it. Me, I got nothin’.
And, I don’t know whether it’s better to give OR receive this one.
That inflatable toast would make a better Christmas gift if it had an image of the Virgin Mary on it…
receive of course silly
then you can regift it!
Yeah, right. For sure you’d want it after I’d blown it up.
Ya need two pieces to hold the inflatable P&J or top with the inflatable creamed chip beef. I use my stove to toat the bread.
sorry, forgot I wasn’t normal … again
Food and/or drink can be a good choice. Everyone eats, well most folks do.
For the few that are too particular even for gourmet foods, and tend to have everything, newly released DVDs, books or CDs are a good way to avoid, the “they probably already have it” syndrome.
For some folks, cash is cold, but greatly desired, even better than gift cards.
When I have the strength and energy, I make whole wheat sourdough bread.
Materials Needed:
Souring container (1/2 gal to 1 gal, I like to use a 1 gallon crock)
Wooden spoon
Raising container (I use a 5 quart 10" steel bowl)
Shortening to grease raising container
Kitchen towel to cover crock while souring and raising the dough in the raising container
Loaf shaping bowl (again, I use a 5 quart 10" steel bowl)
Thin cloth, floured to keep dough from sticking
Dry measure cup
Tablespoon
Bread (high gluten) flour
Whole wheat flour (optional)
Sugar
Salt
Yeast
Preparing the faux sourdough: The day before the bread is to be baked:
Stir togther 2 cups bread flour
2 cups warm water (105-115 deg F)
1 Tablespoon sugar
A pinch of yeast
Note: For real sourdough, omit the pinch of yeast and let sit 5-7 days until sour.
The baking day:
Stir down batter and add 1 tablespoon of salt and rest of the pack of yeast. Mix well until you can’t see any lumps of yeast.
Add 3 cups bread flour (substitute one to three cups of the flour with whole wheat for whole wheat bread), stir with wooden spoon until all flour is mixed in and dough will pull away from the sides of the container. Grease raising container, and flour the kneeding surface.
Kneeding the dough: Scrape dough out onto the kneeding surface, dust hands with flour, then flip dough over and start kneeding. Fold dough over and press down with a rocking motion repeatedly until most of the stickiness has disappeared and the dough feels lively and springy.
First rising: Pick up dough and bounce in hands until excess flour falls off, then put the most wrinkled side down in raising container, then flip dough over and shake to coat dough with a light coating of shortning. Cover with cloth, sit in warm place and let raise approximately 1 hour.
Second rising and loaf shaping: Place thin cloth in loaf shaping bowl, then dust with flour to keep dough from sticking to the cloth. Punch dough down and fold edges of dough over, grasp with one hand, twist and lift dough out of raising container and drop into the loaf shaping bowl, cover with free end of cloth, let raise approximately 1 hour in a warm place.
Preparing moist oven for baking: While bread is raising, and at least 30 minutes before baking time, place a pan filled with water into bottom of the oven, and pre-heat the baking stone at an oven temperature of 450 degrees F.
If a baking stone isn’t available, a cookie sheet or baking pan large enough to hold dough can be used, but crust will not be as hard and crunchy and bread may possibly mold faster.
Baking the bread: Remove baking stone from oven and place on metal holder. Sprinkle the stone with cornmeal, then dump the dough onto the stone. Place in oven, reduce the heat down to 400 degrees F and bake for 40 minutes or until bread is browned well. Remove and place on kitchen towel to cool, brushing off excess flour if you want a prettier loaf. The crust will be very hard when hot, then soften when it cools down. As the crust “cures”, the hardness will return.
Cutting the bread: A 10" bread knife is ideal for this large loaf. Use a slow, sawing motion if crust is still soft, but you can be more forceful once the crust cures and gets hard. Do not wrap the bread as the crust will not cure and the bread will more likely mould if bread is wrapped.
Cover the cut end of the bread with tin foil, leaving rest of the loaf exposed to the air for the best crust curing. Once you learn to cut the bread properly, you can stand it up on the cut edge on the foil so as to keep the cut part from drying out and to leave the crust exposed to the air.
The bread is best if eaten before 5 days (if it lasts that long), although I have had bread 10 days old and it did not mould and was still good tasing, but with a thicker, harder crust than usual.
Healthy garlic toast, Mediterranean style: Toast plain bread slice until lightly browned, scrub one side with a garlic clove to taste, then paint the bread with extra virgin olive oil.
Sourdough whole wheat bread will have the lowest glycemic index of any bread, so diabetics can enjoy it as well.
See http://www.glycemicindex.com/ for further information.
Thanks to Lenora Rose, who gave me the basic recipe.
Authentic Working Wood Trebuchet Kit
Build your very own working medieval trebuchet!
http://www.vat19.com/dvds/authentic-working-wood-trebuchet.cfm?adid=sdc