It's a Wonderful Tur-Duc-Hen! *Christmas Entry*

I didn’t think I’d be here until after the holidays, but after having the Christmas that I had, I simply couldn’t resist. Plus, I did something new, or rather ate something new, so I figured that it’s only appropriate to share it with you all.

As you may know, I had my family out from WI this past week as Kevin was gone in WI to see his. A couple days before Kevin left he surprised me with a tur-duc-hen that he had special ordered a few weeks ago from Louisiana. He had it delivered to the Harp so I had no idea what he was up to until he had me go pick it up.

For those who don’t know what a tur-duc-hen is, it’s a de-boned chicken shoved into a de-boned duck that shoved into a partially de-boned turkey. I have to use the word ‘shoved’ or it loses its humor factor. Oh, and in between the shoved birds is a layer of stuffing with Creole sausage. Yum. Kevin and I had wanted to get a tur-duc-hen for Thanksgiving or Christmas the very moment we heard of its existence. However, by the time Thanksgiving and Christmas came around, we had forgotten to order it in time and had to settle for a boring turkey with nothing what-so-ever shoved into it. Kevin getting the family and I one for Christmas was the most awesome-est present ever. The only sad thing was that Kevin wouldn’t be around to enjoy it.



After opening prezzies Christmas morning (I got the Harry Potter movie box set…*squeal!*), I went ahead and put in the tur-duc-hen. I didn’t tell the family what we were having and up until I pulled it out of the refrigerator, we all simply referred to it as the ‘mystery meat’. They were pleasantly surprised that we weren’t having ostrich or buffalo balls.


A thawed tur-duc-hen should take about 4 ½ hours to cook. Kevin had warned me that it is easy to dry out the bird(s) so I took plenty care to baste it every 45 minutes. I have also never basted anything before, so I guess that’s a non-exciting new thing as well.


The tur-duc-hen ended up taking 5 hours to cook all the way through (as indicated with my brand new meat thermometer) and when it came out it looked delicious regardless of what my father’s finger is indicating.


Everyone loved the tur-duc-hen, even my step-mother who didn’t have hers until the next day due to the illness of drinking the Bloody Mary’s I prepared for her. Sorry Mom! We accompanied the meat with mashed potatoes, green bean casserole (Kevin, there was nary a serving of green bean casserole left when dinner was over…you are the only one in the ole US who doesn’t like G.B. casserole! Hee hee), gravy and rolls (a typical Midwest dinner without a speck of non-dressed vegetable in sight). It was excellent.


After dinner, my dad stayed at home with our still very ill mother, while my brother, sister, cousin and I went down to the pier to meet Patrick and Michele for a Duffy ride. If I thought I was having fun before, I was about to be blown away.

Things started out simply enough. We cruised around the bay for a few hours, drinking wine, eating cheese and crackers, talking and looking at all the fancy houses decorated with Christmas lights. It was fairly quiet on the bay and with all the tur-duc-hen in my stomach I became really relaxed to the point of sleepiness…but in that good way.




About an hour or so in, we ran out of wine. There was no place on the bay to stop and get more, so instead we floated over to Michele’s parent’s house where Michele’s ex-husband’s boat just happened to be.

“You have to be really really quiet”

“Why?”

“We’re going to steal some wine off of the boat.”

So Patrick and I became the official pirates of Newport Beach. Except there wasn’t any wine on the boat so we took some Bailey’s and Kaluha instead. Michele wasn’t happy with our plundering so she snuck into her parent’s house for wine and the most delicious eggnog I’ve ever had.


After another hour or so, we floated past the Balboa Bay Club and noticed that they were indeed open. Even though we weren’t dressed properly, we went in anyhow and had a couple cocktails courtesy of Patrick. We talked with the gay bartender, Stephen (who gave my brother and my cousin free beers but not my sister and I), and watched Michele sing with the pianist. We might have been having too much of a good time as the manager kept giving us the stink eye the entire time and looked a bit too relieved when we finally left.




We floated around for another hour (Michele had tried to head back but all of us, included Patrick, pleaded for just another 20 minutes more on the boat) and finally docked. My car was parked at the Shamrock, so we all decided to go in for a cocktail courtesy of me.

Michele and Patrick were pretty tired so they left right after their drinks were done. My sister, brother, and cousin who are all in their early twenties wanted to stay, so stay we did. We ended up talking with Finky and Nads most of the night.


It was at the Shamrock that my sister taught me the Christmas Tree Dance. The video explains most of it (with the actual dance of course) but I’ll describe it as well. The dance goes as following: First you make the tree, then you hang the garland, then you put on the ornaments, then the star, then the presents, then you chop it down and take it to the curb. It’s an awesome dance as Maggie will demonstrate below (even though the music isn’t optimal for it).



At about midnight, we took a cab back to my house. Of course the KIDS (they yelled at me before for calling them that but I don’t care) didn’t feel like they were done so we walked over to a very dead Pierre Street Annex. I made the KIDS fill out Lotto ticket slips for me (didn’t win a thing by the way) while my sister did the Christmas Tree Dance with the DJ. Thankfully the bar closed after about 40 minutes of us being there and we finally went home to pizza and tur-duc-hen.

Best. Christmas. Ever.

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas everyone! Just as last year, I’m going to take a little break from the blog over the holidays. My Dad, step-Mom, brother and sister are all coming out to California from Wisconsin for Christmas and I couldn’t be more excited. Unfortunately (but good at the same time), Kevin will be in WI visiting his family and I’m going to miss him terribly. However, his days will be filled with snow and mine will not, so I’ll have plenty to be smug about when he calls. Hee. I’m evil.

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday and a fantastic New Year!


Waiting for Santa...

Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Milwaukee, WI *Guest Entry*

With the holidays fast approaching, and with my family coming out to CA to visit me during them, and with the recent events, etc. etc. I have been, well, not doing anything new this weekend….for a couple weekends. BUT! Never to fear! My best friend, Beth, who I have sung her praises in the past, has agreed to do my something new this weekend for me and write about it here. I will, of course, have to interject occasionally within her post as that’s just the kind of thing I like to do….interrupt.

So without further ado, I present Beth’s experience at the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert in Milwaukee, WI.:

Oh What Mine Eyes Have Seen and Ears Have Heard!

Trans-Siberian Orchestra…

Words are not going to be able to give this concert due credit. I think if I even used a video recorder, it still couldn’t do it justice. This was the most PHENOMENAL show I have ever seen. Extremely loud sound system, heavy guitar riffs, the Milwaukee String Orchestra, guys with long black hair and girls with long black boots, crazy good vocals, piano duels, killer female violin player, lights, lasers, fireworks, pyrotechnics, I’m telling you, the show had it all…all except an on your feet, scream your head off, dance till you drop crowd. I think that is the first concert I ever sat through. One of the musicians even told us to sit back down after we gave a standing ovation for one of the songs. WAA?! I guess that is what they are used too. Cool for me because it saved my feet from hurting. We all did our fair share of clapping and WOO!ing to make up for it.

[That reminds me of the time I was told to sit down and be quiet at an Anaheim Ducks hockey game…damn Disney]

If you are not familiar with Trans-Siberian Orchestra, you probably celebrate Hanukkah. [But…I don’t celebrate Hanukkah and I’ve never heard of them] They are one of the more popular modern Christmas song composers today. [OH…Christmas songs…that’s why] They rock out songs like the Nutcracker Suite, Christmas Canon, and Hark the Herald Angels Sing. If you heard some of their music, you would definitely recognize it. My mom (who came with my husband and I) aptly described it as “Christmas music for baseball players, you know, on steroids.” Try trans-siberian.com for some sample audio and video. [Or, you can watch that Miller Lite commercial with the house lights]



This particular concert was held at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee, WI. [I saw Duran Duran there. See? I like to interrupt] It started with lights blazing and flashing everywhere and them playing one of their signature songs. Then a narrator with a voice to rival James Earl Jones came out to start a “Twas the Night Before Christmas” like poem. It had the same rhythm, but a completely different story. And so the musical story began. Narration, rock out, narration, ballad, narration, guitar duel [oOoo], narration, ballad, so on and so forth all the while with lights and lasers a flashing. It was a beautifully moving story about an angel trying to find the spirit of Christmas and his trials along the way. He eventually finds it in a bartender who helps a girl get back to her father by giving her all the cash from his register. It was a little more involved than that, but you get the picture.



After the story, it was time to ROCK out. Proud Mary, Charlie Brown, Opera, Classical, Jazz, Christmas music, all in rock star fashion as we were entertained by the best light and laser show EVER. It was absolutely fantastic. If you have never seen them before, I suggest you do. You will not be disappointed. Best show I have ever seen.



I think my favorite part was when they finished. [That is the funniest line in the whole entry] One of the guys came out and said “We’re not going to play the game where you cheer for 15 minutes and wait till we come back. We got another show in an hour. How about hearing a couple more?” Hallelujah! I hate the encore clapping. We all know that they are going to come back out. Why must we scream and clap? Some would say that they need a break…shut up. Try working with 10 three year olds for five hours straight before you get a break. I must be jealous. Any way, the encore was fabulous! Fireworks, pyrotechnics, lights, all flawlessly choreographed to music. Have I said best show I have ever seen enough yet?



Well, unlike a rock concert, I have no fabulous exit. I can only say I ended the evening at my favorite Indian restaurant, with my favorite dish, and 2 of my favorite people: my husband and my mom [Readers, I’d like to think that if she was listing her 10 favorite people, I would be included. I’m hoping anyhow…she has a lot of relatives]. Plus the Packers won yet another game [WOOO!] so it was an Awesome day all around.

In memory of Grandpa Lach 1918-2007

In the summer of 1986 I took my first paying job as a dishwasher at my grandfather’s custard stand in Milwaukee, WI. I was thirteen years old and I made minimum wage, which at the time was $3.35 an hour. My first day on the job, my grandpa took me back into his office to give me a scoop of custard and to hand down the following law, “When you are on the clock, you are not my granddaughter, you are my employee. I expect you to behave as one.”

Regardless of my employee-only status during dishwashing hours, I had a great time working there. There was a 3 by 1 foot hole by the dishwasher’s station that was used to bring in the trays of dirty dishes. Mostly it was a peephole to look out into the restaurant and gossip about some of the crazy customers with my 60 year old co-worker. I don’t remember all the crazy customers but I do remember the guy who would come in and put salt on his chocolate sundae. The job had other perks for a 13 year old….like going down in the basement cooler to get a big can of Hershey’s chocolate syrup and licking the spoon after I was done pouring it into the serving jar…like making the soup in a pot I could have sit in (I’d like to mention now that there wasn’t much besides the custard that was homemade)…like carving the cheese slices on the big carving machine…like custom ordering your burgers and hot dogs from the cook at lunchtime.

It was a great first job and true to his word, my grandpa always treated me like an employee, but an employee that he really liked a lot.

My grandpa passed away this past Wednesday. I am very fortunate in the fact that he is the very first of any of my immediate family to die, however, that fact alone made me take the news as a bit of a shock. I was honestly beginning to think that my family would live forever. I am not as close to my grandfather as I wished I would have been. But I do have my memories and if you will excuse the slight switch in posts, I’d like to list a couple more of them here, sans pictures.

When I was much younger than 13, when we would go to visit my grandpa at the custard stand, he would let any of the grandkids keep any money they found on the floor of the office. He would count the money of the day back there and change was due to fall. My grandfather was big man. Well over 6 feet tall and almost as wide, picking up a fallen dime off the floor to even out the books would be way too much effort for a big man in a small office to muster. The floor of the office was covered in a layer of grease and dust tracked in from the kitchen (the kitchen was always cleaned, the office…never) but that didn’t stop the grandkids from getting grease and dirt under their fingernails for the $2.47 the floor was bound to contain. I think I once garnered over ten bucks but that was due to a lull in other grandkids visiting. With a pocket full of dirty money, I could saunter into the kitchen and make myself a huge custard sundae with chocolate, caramel, chocolate sprinkles (aka: Jimmies), and not one but four cherries. Yeah, I was a big kid.

Speaking of big, the other great memory I have is at my brother’s 5th or 6th birthday party. Grandpa had showed up as a passenger in our Uncle Dennis’s new corvette. Grandpa, as I mentioned, was a big man and the Corvette was a very small car. Not understanding how he managed to get into the car in the first place, he had a hell of time trying to get out. I’m sadden by the fact that we didn’t have a camcorder at the time as seeing my grandfather stuck in a little gold Corvette like Pooh Bear - with my father pulling on his arms on one side and my Uncle Dennis using his feet to push grandpa from the other - was a classic.

I’ll miss you Grandpa Lach.

Paul Frank Warehouse Sale (Part Duex -Holiday Sale)

Holy crap! People are stopping in to the site in droves because of the Paul Frank Warehouse Sale post! Always wanting to give the people what they want, here is the information regarding the Paul Frank Holiday Warehouse Sale going on this weekend and next weekend.

Two points I want to mention before you click on the below flyer link:

• You people in Europe and Asia that are checking in….are you planning on flying out for the sale or is there something you want me to pick up for you? If it’s the latter, I’m kinda broke, even at sale prices. Send me money and I’ll do it though (shipping and handling charges do apply!)
• Now that I’ve provided you the information that you were so desperately searching for, you should do me the honor of reading at least one other post. Not the one directly below, it’s not my best work….maybe the one on Irish Stew? People seemed to like that one.

Laguna Festival of the Arts (and Mom's visit) - Various, CA

It’s December already? How the hell did that happen? Last I checked the knob on the air conditioner didn’t go past 10 no matter how bad I wanted it to (“Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?” “[pause] These go to eleven.”) and now I’m shivering when I get up wondering why I didn’t turn on the heat the night before. I haven’t even gotten my Christmas cards written out yet! How are all of you to know to send them to me if I don’t send them to you first? AHHHH!!!

Heh.

Speaking of holidays, it was recently Thanksgiving; and for Thanksgiving, my lovely mother came out to visit me. The visit was good, but busy. My mom was always cold except for about 15 minutes on the last day during the afternoon when she was sitting in the sun with only TWO long sleeve shirts on, rather than three long sleeve shirts (one being long johns) a winter coat and a pair of gloves. Seriously. I honestly don’t know how she manages being in WI where it is easily 40 degrees colder than it is here. I questioned whether or not she had her own heated ‘bubble’ environment that she uses. I think she said yes and I don’t think she was lying.

But besides her being cold, it was good. She arrived on Thanksgiving Day and we spent a long time talking while we waited for the turkey that was only suppose to take 3 hours to cook took 5. I didn’t have enough foresight to provide proper snacks so for those 5 hours, we nibbled on crackers and Pringles while slowly getting tipsy on holiday cocktails. Ah, a proper Thanksgiving. We also played Children’s Cranium (she won) and I forced her into watching the latest episode of ‘Pushing Daisies’.

The next day Kevin stayed home to do what he does best (which I’ll jealously say ‘is nothing’ but what I really mean is ‘having a good time puttering around in pajamas’) while my mom and I tried to go whale watching. Unfortunately the whales are currently on holiday in Baja, Mexico and won’t be back until December 17th (They are consequently not checking voicemail either). We ended up going for breakfast and playing a hundred and one rounds of “What do you want to do?” “I don’t know, what do YOU want to do?” before pajama clad Kevin texted me and suggested we go to the Laguna Beach Art Festival that was having its Christmas themed art…thing.



I’ve never been to the Festival of the Arts building so we ended up parking all the way on PCH (and paying $10 for parking) and walking the mile and a half to the festival (where parking was $3). I wasn’t expecting much from the festival so I ended up being pleasantly surprised. There was your standard fare of paintings and jewelry, but they also had a live glass blower demonstration, a snow making machine (!!!), and the most real looking Santa I have ever seen. My mom kept asking me if I wanted her to buy me something, (“Do you like that? Do you want me to get it for you?”) but I kept turning her down. By the time I did find something that I wouldn’t have minded having (a gorgeous paper origami on oil painting) she had stopped asking.


My mom also got in trouble for taking pictures of people’s art without asking, and I managed to snap this picture of her with two older ladies who weren’t actually purposely dressed as elves.



My mom showed them the above picture. The woman on the left looked at it in the digital camera window and said, “Oh dear! I need to wear more color!”


We stuck around for a good three hours before trudging back the mile and half to the car.

After a dinner with bad music in Dana Point, we headed back to Costa Mesa to pick Kevin up so we could all go to the Harp. At the Harp my mom drilled Brian on the materials and methods he used for his recent flip. I don’t know if Brian was happy or uncomfortable talking about it. My mom really likes discussing siding and travertine floors. I basically know where I got my love of TLC remodeling shows.

We did nothing worth mentioning on that Saturday, but on Sunday, we all woke up early and went to Catalina. That’s right, Catalina Island on golf carts! And yes, it was still awesome. We had dinner at a so-so fish restaurant (I got a burger) and then went for drinks at Luau Larry’s. Luau Larry’s was having a drink special…I don’t remember what the drink was, but it came with a straw hat. Of course I had to have one. After Kevin saw my hat, HE had to get one. And because of that, we have these awesome mementos:





Our last stop was at the Cantina. My mom stated to the waitress after asking what time the last boat left, “We’re not from around here.” Because we were still wearing the hats (among other things), the waitress responded, “That’s pretty obvious.” It was a good moment…almost as good as other Catalina tourists taking our picture and someone making the following comment when my mom climbed in a tree to get her picture taken, “Look! It’s a hat model!”




My mother admitted the next day that it was the most she has had to drink in a long time. I’d like to respond, “That’s pretty obvious.”

Heh.

On Monday while poor Kevin had to go to work, my mom and I drove around taking pictures of palm trees. Or rather, I drove and she would yell, “Stop Stop Stop!” when a photographic palm made an appearance. I’ve told people that story since then and they always suggest that I get her a palm tree or a light-up palm tree Christmas tree for a present. To that I respond, I can’t- she already has them.


My mom left on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and it was sad to see her go. I’ve got more family coming in for Christmas so it’s definitely a nice but busy holiday season this year. Evil cat Chloe has been sharpening her claws and perfecting her hisses for the occasion. One of these days I’m going to have to create a new website called, “I swear our cat isn’t normally like this” with videos to support my cause.