The Joy of Things, including Christmas

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! Our Christmas here was good - lots of food, had some fun, presents of course. Invariably people will ask me what I got, so here is a list of some things:

• A keyboard - earlier this year Liz and I were talking about playing music, and I said that if I could play any instrument it would probably be the piano. So, she bought me a keyboard for Christmas. I'm looking forward to trying it out - though am also quite intimidated at the same time...
• A beginner's keyboard book - luckily, because I had no idea where to start...
• DVDs - The Dark Knight, Hot Rod, Inception (jointly with Liz) (all of which are great movies), and Liz also got me the entire first season (also called Book 1) of Avatar The Last Airbender!!!
• A slanket
• A lot of Star Wars stuff (an apron, pancake molds, ornaments)
• A Clapper (for the lights, according to Liz "They're not just for old people - they're for all lazy people!")
• A shirt from Ireland
• More stuff that I won't list because the list would get too long

Also, yes, we did get a lot of snow. We didn't have a White Christmas, but instead it started snowing on the 26th and it didn't stop for quite a while, along with very strong winds. Reports about depth vary widely, the deepest point on our back deck was about 18 inches or so deep. I've never seen so much snow. Unfortunately due to "blizzard-like" conditions, there is no snow on the trees, which is often what helps add to the photogenic nature of it. We lost power, but luckily it was restored after about 25 hours.

On Sunday we made a quick run to the grocery store to get some food for dinners before the snow got too heavy. While there, a kid was climbing on a display, and their mother took them down of it. I looked down where the kid was climbing to see the item I was looking for! Still looking at the shelf, the lady looked at me strangely, like I had been watching her child suspiciously or something. I explained:

Russell: "Thanks! I was actually looking for that (pointed) and didn't know where it was!"

Lady (in thick accent): "You're from South Africa, too?"

Russell: "No, I'm Australian..."

Lady: "Well, they're all pretty much the same!"

Russell: "Hahahaha"

Note: I actually said "Hahahaha" instead of laughing. That was when I walked away.

Now, to the meat of the post. You'll notice later that that was a very punny statement to make.

We had ham as part of our Christmas dinner. It was absolutely delicious. Everyone knows that I think bacon is great, but the pig really needs to be given credit - it produces a lot of tastiness. When we were cleaning up, Andrew noticed a piece of ham sitting in the ham drippings/run-off. He ate it, and told me how delicious it was. I took some ham and dipped it in there. It was amazing - it was like ham coated in ham. So I took the run off and put it in the fridge. I decided I would dub it "Ham Concentrate".

The next day Liz and I were heating up some left overs for lunch, so I took out the Ham Concentrate and noticed that all the fat from it had settled on the surface. I scooped off the fat and noticed that the remaining Ham Concentrate was now like a jelly. I took some out and put it on top of the ham, peas and carrots and then put it in the oven. It was incredible - ham coated peas and carrots and hammy ham.

Tonight we made pizza for dinner. The plan was to make pizza for dinner last week, but the night we were going to, Friday, was Christmas Eve and we were busy and didn't get around to making dinner. So, I decided to modify last week's pineapple and onion pizza idea. Sure, ham and pineapple is a classic and the obvious choice here, but with the ham supplies dwindling in the fridge and the rest frozen, I reached again for the Ham Concentrate. I spooned some into a small pan and heated it over a low heat to get it liquidy again. I then put the pineapple and onion in there. A word of warning, though. Even though I dubbed it Ham Concentrate, it works best if you use a lot of it. Three spoons wasn't enough to flavor the pineapple and onion. Or, perhaps it works best on things that don't have much taste of their own or something.

So, next time you bake a ham, remember the Ham Concentrate. You'll be glad you did.

In case people wanted to see, here is a slideshow of pictures from the last few days, featuring Christmas, snow and Ham Concentrate.

Winter's here... damn bitch.

Winter has now arrived in the US. But you'd be excused for thinking it has been here for a few weeks already given the cold weather.

Yesterday was a day of rare occurrences. The one that was most widespread was a lunar eclipse. I love that sort of stuff, but was also really tired. Totality (the moon being completely covered) was supposed to start at 2:41AM local time, so rather than set the alarm I agreed with Liz that if one of us woke up during the eclipse we'd wake the other. I first woke up at 12:55 to see everything bathed in the glow of the full moon. Hadn't started yet, so I went back to bed. I later woke up at 3, and it was dark. "Awesome!" I thought as I walked downstairs. Unfortunately the darkness was because of the complete and total cloud cover that had engulfed the sky. I even went out the back for a few seconds (that was long enough in the cold) to check there weren't any breaks in the cloud. There weren't, so I came back inside. Liz was awake and asked me what the story was, so when I told her we both went back to sleep. I took this photo of the moon earlier in the evening, before it was eclipsed...

The second, more isolated incident, occurred in our kitchen. I was making breakfast, and I cracked an egg. Double yolker! Some people might not think that was too weird, but given the amount of eggs we use and the infrequency with which we see double yolkers it was certainly awesome.

Tonight I killed some time by taking some photos. It's good to get out and take photos for fun - something that I really should do more often. I didn't do it for too long tonight, the cold and the breeze were small obstacles. I took photos of the moon again, well, more things in front of the moon. They were of my Lego clone trooper captain.

The breeze blew it over...

Black Holes: They don't suck

We went to Hamden today, which is just outside of New Haven to visit one of Liz's college friends, Steve, and his wife Kristen. Tiff was also there and we went to the Yale Peabody Museum for a couple of hours. It was fun - they had a black hole exhibit. That's where I learned that black holes don't suck. Apparently you more fall into them if you get too close.

Other exhibits included the dinosaurs in the Great Hall, the mammal exhibit, meteorites and the birds of Connecticut. The birds were cool - every bird in Connecticut was represented (in stuffed form). I liked looking at the raptors. They also had skeletons for saber-tooth cats, prehistoric "homo" specimens and dinosaurs. I found out that the dinosaurs were skilled surgeons. When a human badly breaks a leg they would have a metal rod inserted in there to help the healing. There was a dinosaur specimen that had a big metal beam running through it's entire body, so to be able to insert that must have taken incredible surgical skills - and also metal working knowledge. They also had a massive prehistoric turtle skeleton.

We got kicked out of the museum at closing time, then went and had some Japanese food for dinner with Tiff.

Also, I must tell everyone about a cool movie we saw this week. Both Liz and I enjoyed it immensely - it is up there with the best movies I have seen this year. It was Scott Pilgrim vs the World. It was really cool. To me it seemed like a mixture between a movie, video game and comic book. I liked the style, the way people played their parts, the story and even the Universal logo and fanfare in 8-bit form.

One of the stars was Keiran Culkin - yep, Fuller from Home Alone. When the movie first started I said to Liz "I know that's Keiran Culkin, but he looks like someone else to me..." It took me almost the entire movie, but I finally announced to Liz "Why the hell does Keiran Culkin look like Tobey Maguire?!?!"

If you haven't seen it, you should - Scott Pilgrim vs the World.

Thanksgiving 2010

Today marks the 1st Wednesday of December. That means that last Thursday was the 4th Thursday of the month, better known as Thanksgiving. I could bore you with the history of Thanksgiving, but I won't, and will concentrate on what we did for the day instead.

Psyche! I found something interesting out about Thanksgiving, as long as you trust Wikipedia, which I do. Apparently, Thanksgiving is celebrated in Australia, but only on Norfolk Island (I know, who cares, right?!). From Wikipedia:

In the Australian external territory of Norfolk Island, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the last Wednesday of November, similar to the pre-World War II American observance on the last Thursday of the month. This means the Norfolk Island observance is the day before or six days after the United States' observance. The holiday was brought to the island by visiting American whaling ships.

I looked into it further, and it referenced the Attorney General's website, so it's actually legit.

Now, Americans, that doesn't give you free rein to start running around saying that Thanksgiving is celebrated in Australia. To give a sense of scale:

• Norfolk Island is only 13.3 square miles (just over half the size of Manhattan). Australia, as a whole, is 2,941,299 square miles.
• Norfolk Island has an approximate population of 2141, compared to the nation's population of 22,540,116. That's .0095% of the population.

Back to the story of our Thanksgiving.

Because Thanksgiving dinner was being held at our place, preparation for us began on Wednesday night, when we cooked up some cranberry sauce and Liz produced some pumpkin pies. I say Liz produced the pies because as soon as the Ashes cricket started streaming I was out of the kitchen.

Cranberries in the saucepan...

...turned into cranberry sauce!

Thursday we woke up ready to cook. The turkey, which I took under my wing, took about 3 hours from start to finish. It was a 12 and a half pound masterpiece of meat and basting. After baking for an hour I started the basting process - every 15 minutes I would open the oven and put more liquid from the bottom of the pan over the turkey. It worked out awesomely well - the turkey wasn't dry at all.

The turkey, as it entered the oven

Basting - note the dollop of liquid under the baster

People - Richard, Barbara, Gail and Bruce (Gail's brother) - started arriving at around 2, so they got to witness the final preparation of sides and the carving.

Liz prepares to carve it up

The complete meal consisted of turkey, sweet potato and apple, gluten free stuffing, peas, mashed potatoes (from Gail), shallots, carrots and stuffing (from Barbara), parsnips (not pictured) and gravy. We also washed it down with sparkling (from Richard) and regular apple cider.

I've never been full on Thanksgiving, but I thought this could be the year. I started off with this:

After I ate that I loaded it up again. And then one more time for good measure.

After eating we needed a little time to digest, so we waited a while before having pumpkin pie and rice pudding for dessert. Some people had tea, and others had warmed apple cider.

Liz with a pumpkin pie

Mission accomplished: everyone fed and happy, and me, I was full for the first time ever on Thanksgiving.

Of course, there were leftovers. A lot of leftovers. Here was my dinner on Friday night:

Reheated and eaten from an oven safe dish. For convenience. We also had leftovers for breakfast and a full Thanksgiving dinner again on Saturday night. There are still some turkey scraps...