Cookies and Carcasses

I was all set to have a good long paragraph's worth of a rant about how some people have less common sense than a slice of bread, and blah blah blah blah...

And then it snowed today.  And I am just not someone who can rant about useless things that I can't change (senseless slices of bread masquerading as people, for example) during the first snow of the season.  I'm certain that there are people who can rant about useless things they can't change (the snow itself, for example), but I just can't because, gosh darn it.... I just think it's so pretty.  Even though it's more like sleet than snow, it has still left a little bit of a greyish slush on the ground, which is more than enough for my imagination to turn everything into a Winter Wonderland.

It's probably for the best anyway.  I vaguely remember promising to my very wise brother that I would not turn my blog into another one of those blogs where people you don't care about explain their opinions on things about which you care even less.  So thanks to some snow and my brother Joe, let's head straight into last week.

warning: you can expect a lot of close-up faux-arty photos until I learn how to appropriately utilize options on my camera that involve more than just the zoom - just give me time, we'll get there... eventually

It started with some cookie baking with my base school's English Club.  The club consists of ten girls who really just want to hang out, which is fine with me, particularly when it involves cookie baking.  We made ginger-molasses cookies because 1) they are my favorite - and guess who was choosing the recipe? - and 2) I figured that this would be a new taste for the girls to try.  They were BIG fans, taking countless swipes at the batter before it reached the baking sheet.  Unfortunately, the cookies turned out flat, like whoa flat, and crispy, but they were still delicious, so all was not lost.  I thought it must have been the ovens we used at school until the same thing happened to me just last night with my oven.  The flat part, not the crispy part, I'm still blaming that on school ovens. 

A quick Google search revealed that melting your butter in order to get it to mix with the sugar is a no-no-no-no-no.    

"You must creeeeam it with the sugar," said Google. 
"But how, Google???"  
"Well, with your fancy-schmancy electric mixer....obviously." 
"But Google, I don't haaaaave a fancy-schmancy electric mixer.  In fact, I don't have a mixer at all."
"*shocked silence*  oh... well then I suppose you should just set it on your counter until it gets to room temperature, then make like Laura Ingalls and beat the crap out of it."
"....but Google?  The room temperature of my kitchen is 46 degrees Celsius...."



It was at this point that I stopped anthropomorphizing Google and resolved that next time I would give myself enough time to put my butter on a plate in front of my kerosene heater until it reached a reasonable semblance of "room temperature".  Now, if it hadn't snowed today I might be tempted to go on a rant about recipes that require things to be "room temperature" or "rise overnight in a warm place"?  Like where, dear recipe writer, where?  Under the electric blanket with me?  Your use of "a" instead of "the" is callous in it's assumption that I might have multiple places of warmth from which to choose.  Boo.  Good thing it snowed today.

Anyway, that was Wednesday afternoon.  On Thursday afternoon I went to a high school across the city and up a mountain to help my friend out with the annual Christmas party.  His school hosts exchange students for two week periods throughout the year, including a whole bunch around Christmastime.  Most of the students were from Australia or the Phillipines.  They made cards with me and Daniel, cookies with Kendall, and then did a Secret Santa.  The 6'3" Australian kid didn't look particularly excited about the unusual Japanese snacks he got, but about two seconds later he was tossing the offending snack foods to a crowd of shrieking Japanese girls.  'Twas a very merry Christmas party indeed.

On the way home, Daniel and I took the bus the wrong way.  When we arrived at the end of the line and didn't get off, the confused bus driver asked us where we were going.  Oops.  Getting on the wrong bus in Japan is particularly frustrating because you have to pay for every bus ride.  Nothing like having to literally pay for your mistakes.  Luckily for us, the bus driver kindly let us off scot-free.  However, because of the mix-up, I missed my kerosene delivery which I had to reschedule, in Japanese, for the next day.  It arrived Friday evening 5 minutes too late for me to walk the 20 minutes to the train station to catch the last train to Kanazawa station to catch the last bus to Wajima for Katy's English Club Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner the next day.  My life is a game of Cosmic Dominoes.

It turned out just fine though and gave me a quiet night at home which I was sorely in need of.  I arrived in Wajima the next morning having missed the stuffing of the turkeys, and the resulting looks of terror on Katy's students' faces, but in time to see the quartering of one bird in order to make sure it cooked through in the schools miniscule movens.  The other bird seemed to be a lost cause, and we took it back to Katy's that night to finish it off in her more-reasonably-sized moven.  I was reminded of a story Linda told me about trying to cook a turkey in pieces in a toaster oven in Kanazawa.

We had an adorable "cultural difference" moment when the girls flipped the pumpkin pie over onto a pot lid so they could serve it more easily.  Trying pretty unsuccessfully to rein in our smiles, Katy righted the pie and demonstrated the "fork under-finger on top" method of pie piece removal.  Perhaps not as classy as the girls were going for, but you can't mess with tradition.

After a lovely sleepover with Katy and Karen, I headed back down to Kanazawa with two turkey carcasses triple-bagged and stowed in my purse.  When I found out Katy was thinking about ordering two real, whole turkeys, my first question was "Can I have the carcasses?"  And oh my goodness, the awkwardness of toting said turkey carcasses on a 2-hour bus ride, to lunch in town with Anna and Loki, and then on another bus before finally arriving home was totally worth the result: Turkey Noodle Soup à la Halbur.  On Monday night, after a reassuring phone conversation with Mom, I had the basic recipe, the timing, and the secret key to not making a pot of Turkey Noodle Goop.

I was ready.  I opened the bags and surveyed the mess of bones, turkey bits, and gelatinous chunks, mixed in with a little stuffing and mashed potatoes.  Taking the bull by the horns, or rather... the turkey by the spine, I set to breaking the first carcass into smaller bits.  The second one had already been hacked to pieces on Saturday.  Did you know that breaking a turkey skeleton into pieces is not particularly easy? 

Actually, I just imagined a few of the women who make up about 97% of my readers, and I am guessing that a disproportionate number (if not all) of you do know exactly what I am talking about.  I am honored to finally join the generations of women who have, post-Thanksgiving, pulled a turkey to pieces, thrown it into a pot with assorted stock-making things, and boiled this Skeleton Soup into deliciousness before straining the whole thing and picking through the (literally) hot mess for all the delicious bits of meat. 

Did you realize how much meat is hanging out around a turkey's spine?  Yes, I suppose you probably did.

The resulting Turkey Noodle Soup is, in keeping with tradition, stored in tupperware of various sizes - enough to feed me well into January.  It tastes just like Mom's, which, incidentally, brings me to.... nostalgia!

Last and possibly least, the first (in what I imagine may be a series) New Camera Feature: Nostalgia.  This makes your photos look, can you guess?  Old!  What is even MORE fun is that, by turning the snazzy-wheel-thing on the front of the camera, you can seamlessly move along the Scale o' Nostalgia.  So here we go, back down memory lane...

 Can't you just hearing the time whooshing past?  Also, this is pretty much Picasso and my standard set-up at any given moment, like now, for example.

  

Oh wow, I am feeling nostalgic for last Sunday already.

Next up you can look forward to such wonders as: an elementary school Christmas party, drunken Christmas caroling for charity, an orphanage Christmas party (involving more caroling, minus the booze), and Karen and my departure for Tokyo by night bus!