Avuncular

avuncular adj. Of or having to do with an uncle. Regarded as characteristic of an uncle, especially in benevolence or tolerance.

This post is in memory of George Kile, my dad's cousin, who passed away suddenly last night of a heart attack. He was close in age to my parents, and since we are a pretty tight-knit family, I always just thought of him as my uncle George.

Rest in peace, dear uncle George, we will miss you. You left this world far too soon.

T-Day pictures

Thanksgiving Day, as told in pictures:

There's nothing quite like a big, raw bird...mmmmmm:

(please excuse the extremely unflattering angle/pose, which makes it look more like I am the butterball in the picture)

Todd pitched in, too--here he is chopping potatoes:


Ta-da! the completed buffet:


What it looked like on my plate:

(it may not look as good as the pictures in the cookbooks, but it was mighty tasty!)

Oh, and in the midst of it all, we re-arranged the kitchen:

--and we also decided that we need a bigger kitchen!

The biggest miracle of the holiday, though, was not the fact that my first turkey turned out juicy and perfectly cooked, or that the only thing I forgot to put out on the table was the cranberry sauce. No, the biggest miracle was that, even though I spent two full days around a hot stove and sharp cooking utensils, I managed to only cut myself once (on the plastic trash can lid, no less) and burn myself once (please note, the handle of a cast-iron skillet will stay hot for awhile, especially if it has spent 20 minutes in a 350-degree oven). That, my friends, is what I call success.

Now, who's ready for Christmas dinner??

menu for success

Before I give a full report on the Thanksgiving dinner project, I wanted to give a shout out to one of my favorite websites, allrecipes.com. Every single recipe that I used for Thanksgiving dinner was new, never-tried-before in my kitchen, which I admit is a pretty big risk when cooking a special occasion dinner for guests. But, I felt pretty confident since I garnered 90% of my recipes from the allrecipes site, where people who have tried the recipes can rate them and offer suggestions on tweaking the recipe to make it even better.

The final menu:
Winter Salad
Deviled Eggs*
Herb Roasted Turkey
Grandma's Cornbread Dressing (which I tweaked to make vegetarian)
Garlic Mashed Red Potatoes
Parmesan Asparagus
Green Bean Casserole
Roasted Vegetable Medley
Broccoli Cauliflower Bake*
Corn Pudding*
Fresh Cranberry Sauce
Yeast Rolls
Double Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake
Spiced Apple Cake
Coconut Pecan Pie*
(*in fairness, I can't take credit for these items--they were brought by guests)

My favorites of the bunch were the Winter Salad, Roasted Vegetable Medley (who knew I would enjoy turnips so much?), and the Pumpkin Cheesecake.

Cooking everything was a 2-day enterprise, but it was worth it. My least favorite part was, yes, preparing the turkey-especially dealing with the innards. At one point, in removing the bag of junk from the body cavity, one of the reddish-purple body parts slipped from the sack and fell into the sink. Ugh. And I thought to myself, this is one of the reasons that I am a vegetarian, because I don't like having organs fall out of my food while I am preparing it. Although, I have to say that it felt like quite an accomplishment when I finished it. And, according to my guests, it was quite good. I think I'll just take their word for it.

I will post pictures soon...I hope everyone had a wonderful and delicious Thanksgiving (and if you're still hungry, feel free to drop by--we've got plenty of leftovers!)

**new editor's note: I goofed in this post...I gave a lot of credit to allrecipes for the success of my dinner, but I failed to recognize the woman who actually taught me how to cook. So, thank you, Mom, for helping me learn my way around a kitchen. Next time I bake a cake, I'll save the batter bowl for you...

thanksgiving

So for the first time in my life, I am hosting the Thanksgiving Gluttony Extravanganza at my house. This should be extremely interesting because:

1) I am a vegetarian and have never cooked a turkey in my life, but I now have a 12 pound butterball sitting in my fridge, just waiting for the basting to begin.
2) There are 7 people coming for dinner. I only own 6 plates that match, 6 forks (total), and a table that seats, you guessed it, 6.
3) About 80% of my recipes require cooking in the oven. My oven is small, and will mostly be inhabited by the aforementioned 12-lb turkey. This is where being an engineer might come in handy.
4) The entire time I am running around my tiny kitchen cooking, I will be followed around by this monster, just waiting for me to drop something:


(please note the remnants of whatever-he-chewed-up-last still dangling from his lip)

Yes, it is going to be an interesting day. I will try to remember to take pictures to document and share.

stink

Apparently, I stink at blogging. I started two blogs a year or so ago, and they have both been stagnant for quite some time now. I tried to psycho-analyze myself based on this blogging-failure...do I lack commitment? am I the type who has grand ideas but no follow-through? is my life so un-interesting that I have too little to blog about? But when I thought long and hard about it, I realized that the great blogging drought of 2007 was primarily due to two things:
1) I don't have a computer with internet at home (Hi, my name is Tiffany, and I live in the Dark Ages), and
2) I have been far, far too busy at work to even think about writing.

So, life isn't exactly less hectic now, especially with holidays quickly approaching, but I am going to try, try, try to be better about this whole blogging thing.

Here are a couple of pictures from the year-in-review:
We took Tucker camping and canoeing for the first time (that was interesting)


The family went to South Carolina for a beach trip, and the women got a little wild:


We took part in the Tomato Art Festival...one of my favorite events in East Nashville:


Ok, so that's all for now, because I don't really have that many pictures stored on my work computer (unless you want to see pictures of the alumni golf tournament...probably not).

beauty

I had to take a break from hiatus long enough to post a picture of my newest niece...isn't she adorable? I can only hope that if I ever have children, they are half as lovely as the ones my sister has produced.

hiatus

Well, as much as I like to think that I can sustain two blogs at once, all of the other obligations in my life tend to prove otherwise...so for now, I will be focusing my attention on my "Coach T.'s Quotes" blog. Perhaps in the future there will be more musings from Aunt TT...but at this point, I will just be piggy-backing off of the words of wisdom of others...

knowing and doing

In addition to being an aunt, I am also a lacrosse coach. Since I never really played lacrosse, and didn't know much about it when we began our season, I decided that my contribution would be encouragement, and I appointed myself the quote guru. Each day, I email all of our players a new "quote of the day" to inspire them, which inadvertently tends to inspire me, too. One day, I came across a quote that really made me stop and think-- "at the center of your being, you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want." (lao tzu)

And it occurred to me...why is it often so difficult for us to make decisions? A majority of people I know are indecisive...they waver incessantly even on the smallest of decisions. And the thing is, I think a lot of times we really do have the answer...we know in our hearts what we want or what sounds right to us, but for some reason, we have trouble committing to it. Some type of fear holds us back...fear of being wrong, fear of missing out, fear of hurting someone or getting hurt, fear of failure...the list goes on. And so we either decide not to decide, or we let someone else make the decision for us. Shouldn't we begin claiming those decisions for ourselves?

Back to the lacrosse team, I have to take a minute and brag on my girls. They just earned the Division II state championship title. They knew what they wanted, and they got it, and I feel like a proud parent. Way to go, champs.

redefining home

I have noticed, in the last couple of years, a shift in the definition of "home" for me...and I think it happens for everyone at some point in their lives. When we are kids, "home" is usually the place where our parents, or family, lives. When we think of going home, we think of going back to that place where we originated. All throughout my college years, and even in the years since, I have always considered my trips to Chattanooga "going home". But, lately, I find that going to Chattanooga is simply going to Chattanooga, and that returning to Nashville is what I consider "coming home". It's a simple shift in rhetoric, but I think it represents a larger shift in my heart. Perhaps it has happened because I recently purchased a house of my own, but maybe, and more likely, it is because I feel that I have established a family of sorts here...my heart has become connected to the friends and associates I have in Nashville, and even to the city itself. And I do not mean this in any way to belittle my family or my original home, because my family is more dear to me than anything else...but I have come to establish a home of my own-- a residence for my heart and soul, and it always feels good to come back...

bad sign?

Hmmm...is it a bad sign that I have only just begun my blog of musings, and I haven't felt much of a muse lately? I think that I am going through a bit of a dry spell with my philosophizing, or perhaps I am also a bit overwhelmed by the infinite possibilities of topics on which to ramble. Maybe once things slow down at work a bit, I'll have a little more time to focus on the other issues of the world...

hence the name

I'm feeling like I should first address the naming of this blog...

I am an aunt. This title was first hoisted upon me 4 years ago with the birth of my sister's little girl, Kaelyn, which also happened to be one of the most incredible moments of my life, being present for the birth. What had been just an idea wrapped in the bubble of my sister's bulging belly was now a tiny, squirming, miniature person...an extension of my sister, and somehow it seemed, also of me. In her, I could already see the Townsend trait of big, expressive eyes and the beginnings of a smile destined to steal hearts.

Now, there is another jewel in the auntie crown, as my sister just brought a second beautiful girl into the world, Sienna Marie. Kaelyn has taken on the ever-important role of big sister (for which I have offered to train her, although this offer met with a skeptical response from my sister!)

Being with these children is truly a joy, and nothing matches the warmth I feel in my heart when Kaelyn catches sight of me and runs to me with her arms outstretched, yelling "T.T.!" I can't think of a more noble thing in life than to play an important role in the life of a child, and I feel honored to be a part of the adventures of my nieces.

Thus, there are musings from Aunt TT, which will not always deal with the subject of aunt-hood, but are merely meant to be observations on life...which I may someday share with my two favorite representatives of the next generation.

and so it is

I feel like this moment needs a "tah-dah!" Here it is--the birth of my blog. No fanfare, no little blue or pink bubblegum cigars stamped with "Congratulations!"--just a tiny little blip appearing in the infinitely large web of life we know as the internet. It seems a little odd to just throw my thoughts out there into the world, but here goes nothing--and maybe, just maybe, it will become something...