Week 52, Day 2 - Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa Hansen's

Breakfast: egg, sausage and potatoes muffins. Basically it is breakfast casserole in muffin tins. She has made some variant of it before but it is never very good. Usually dry. This was the best yet. We also had mandarin oranges from gheir tree, bananas and apple slices. We finished the cranberry, pecan, rye bread that Michelle LaVanaway made us for Christmas.

Lunch: not a formal lunch. Olives. Chips and dip. Candy from stockings, etc. 

Dinner: pot roast with onions and carrots, garlic mashed potatoes wih heavy made from the pot roast juice, steamed broccoli and steamed beefs. Dessert was either Christmas candy or cinnamon apples. 

Week 52, day 1 - at Grandma and Grandpa Hansen's

Breakfast: French toast, Larry's specialty

Lunch: bean burritos for everyone except Dai who had oeNut butter and jelly. They only have chunky peanut butter but even forewarned, she chose it

Dinner: Papa Murphy's pizza. We really like Hawaiian in our house, buy apparently Larry doesn't do ham so we got half Hawaiin and the other half chicken garlic and a cowboy pizza.

Also much junk food. Almond rocha. Chips. See's candy. Popcorn. And do on. Before dinner though we did have cucumber stocks do that's something, i guess. 

week 51, day 7

Breakfast: the girls got processed foods from heather Castro. They were thrilled and I think it was easy for her. So this morning thy had instant oatmeal packets. She put in two. The maple and brown sugar variety. Phyllis didn't like it. She had only made one packet to start so she gave her other unopened packet to Dai. I didn't eat.

Lunch: dim sum with Jason and a co-worker and his daughter. The last couple years we have gone to dim sum over winter break at a place up in Sunnyvale. I think it is officially a tradition. The first time it was just us the next we went with one of Jason's co-workers from NetApp. This time his coworker was Chinese so we tried some new dishes. Whole baby octopuses and chicken feet and sticky rice. Crews liked the sticky rice but the other two weren't big hits with the girls or Jason. I ate three octopuses at least. Cresida's tentacles, Phyllis's head, I ate most of cressida's tentacles jn a spind one that her tried and I had two of my own. I actually thought the chicken feet were so much. Rotter than my last experience with them that I ate mine and most of Phyllis's and Cressida's. We had never had sticky rice before. It is really filling. I ate half of more of Phyllis's and one of my own and the last couple bites of cressida's. She did like it but was full.

Dinner: not much. We were packing and getting ready. Jason had two bean and rice burritos. I ate more homemade almond rocha than I should have. Cressida ate th rest of the leftover carrots.

Prep ahead: we packaged and froze the pumpkin purée from yesterday and the chunks from the second half that we did not get pureed. Actually letting it sit all day really dried it out. It is almost like the canned stuff! Last time we learned that trick only a few hours before we had to start the pie, so it drained off some liquid but not as much. We took most of our produce  and  some bread up with us to Larry and Lisa's house where we I'll spend Christmas and the weekend. 

Week 51, Day 6

Breakfast: Jason ate at work and we ate lazily over the morning.  We had oatmeal and persimmons and some of Aunt Michelle's Christmas bread she sent last night.  It is a cranberry, pecan, rye bread.  Dai and Cress didn't care for it.  Phyllis ate theirs, except the crusts.  I put cream cheese on the two toasted slices that I had.

Lunch: chicken salad sandwiches on regular store bought sandwich bread, leftover steamed carrots and/or Brussels sprouts and Cheez-its.  The girls had some of their ginger bread houses for dessert and I am having leftover pie.

Dinner: bean burritos. We didn't bother to season and refry the beans even. We just cool them in chicken broth and use whole. That sure makes it easier and faster. We had lettuce and tomaotes and rice, even, if you wanted it.

Prep ahead: we roasted the second pumpkin. Dai looked up different instructions on line. They had us cover it in tinfoil. Let me tell you- don't do it. Toasts muchich more quickly uncovered. We puteed one half of the pumpkin. It is over half a gallon of puree I bet. We put in the salad spinner with a cheese cloth  to let the water drank off. We poured off quite a bit of liquid even just in the few hours before we went to bed. We didn't have time to puree both and we don't have two salad spinners to let it drain so we just peeled the other half, cut it up a bit, put it in container and covered in it plastic in the fridge. 

Week 51, Day 5

Breakfast: oatmeal for the girls.  Fried eggs and toast for Jason and I.  Cress and I also had a persimmon.

Lunch: I had church baguette toasted with cream cheese and a persimmon (our neighbor gave us a bunch.) I had a bit of a headache, so I am not positive but I am pretty sure everyone else had turkey sandwiches on some sort of church bread.

Dinner: Christmas dinner at my dad and Susan's place.  My brother Sam also came.  It was traditional turkey, gravy, stuffing, rolls, cranberry jelly and we did roasted maple bacon Brussels sprouts (recommended by Susan) and steamed carrots.  Dessert was indulgent.  Black cherry pie with whipped cream, brownies, Ghiradelli chocolates and snicker doodles.  

Week 51, Day 4

Breakfast: rice cereal for the girls and an egg burrito for me and Jason

Lunch: Turkey sandwiches for lunch with persimmons for Cress and I

Dinner: Soup and corn bread at the Tervalons.  We brought stuff to make cream biscuits, which were a big hit.  Also, others brought various hors d'oevres.

Week 51, day 3

Breakfast: breakfast burritos

Lunch:Dai had left over combo pizza, pickles ,cucumber, carrot, and salt water taffy. Cress had left over combo pizza, pickles, cucumber, prunes, and cookies.  Phyllis had left over combo pizza, cucumber, carrot, and cookies - and a third produce that she cannot recall.

Dinner: Dai ate at Kaitlin's. Phyllis ate at Gillian's. Jason played volleyball in Sunnyvale with his brother after work so he didn't come hone until after 10 PM. So, cress and I didn't really have a plan. We ended up going to Heather Castro's and they were eating and we are some of their food.