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December, 2011

  1. A Delicious Nightmare: New Year’s Eve and Plans

    December 31, 2011 by The Yum Yum

    Finally, New Year’s Eve has arrived!

    2011 has drawn to an end, and we’re getting ready to bring in 2012.

    Make sure to have a safe night and call a taxi if you have too much too drink.

    With this entry, Post a Day 2011 and its challenge comes to a close for Beaux. A few exceptions exist, but I have literally updated every single day of this year or at least created the equivalent number of posts. Writing 365 posts with a daily deadline is not nearly as easy as it might sound. Then again, I noticed that toward the end, I began writing shorter and shorter posts, and sometimes my posts were actually updates that let everyone know that there wouldn’t be a post that day.

     

    Either way, I’m proud of myself for having taken the challenge and made the effort to meet my daily deadline, especially since my blog had a dedicated theme of eating.

     

    But what about 2012? Will I continue the Post a Day challenge? Will there be a new challenge offered? I’m not totally sure! I really have enjoyed writing every day, though my major concern has been over the dwindling quality of my posts.

     

    Also, did you guys know that it’s still technically Christmas? That’s right! Today’s the Seventh Day of Christmas. The official end of Christmas will be in just a few days with the celebration of Epiphany, the oldest holiday continuously celebrated by the Church since ancient times!

     

    I haven’t decided what exactly I’m going to do to celebrate the New Year, but I should probably get on that. I’m not really keen on going out anywhere tonight, though I may end up doing so anyway.

    Tomorrow, I’m planning on having a boiled egg with vinegar. The idea for this recipe came to me when I was trying to go to sleep. Many nights, I lie awake in bed, hungry, because delicious ideas for recipes begin floating into my mind and bugging me. It’s a delicious nightmare!

    Anyway, since poached eggs require a bit of vinegar, and vinegar and eggs go well together, I figured the same will apply for boiled eggs and various other styles of eggs. Plus, an egg is a symbol of prosperity and new beginnings- a perfect treat to have on New Year’s Day!

     

    Have an egg-cellent New Year’s!

     

    Beaux

     

     

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  2. 2012 is on the Horizon! Pizza, Omelets, and More

    December 30, 2011 by The Yum Yum

    2012’s apocalypse seems to be arriving a little early for Hickory Shade. We’ve had the most trouble with appliances this year.

    Our latest adventure involves a plastic piece of our brand new refrigerator breaking. This is not good; I happen to adore our new fridge. In fact, I should probably do a video about it one day soon.

     

    Anyway, Gigi told me not to open the fridge…after I had already opened it…and then she re-opened it to show me what had broken.

    Also, please keep Gigi in your prayers; now she’s turned around and fallen ill again.

    I had actually planned to cook something tonight, perhaps an omelet; I don’t know if I told you guys, but I attempted a French omelet last week and managed to fail miserably at it.

    But on the positive note, my French omelet, which was filled with cheese, became cheesy scrambled eggs, and they were my best scrambled eggs ever!!!

    Instead of making an omelet, though, I opted for a Totino’s pizza. I did my normal ritual of chopping up tomatoes, onions, and adding garlic salt, red pepper flakes, and cheese to it. Oh, yeah, and I tossed in a bit of basil with the tomatoes. I had to cook the pizza longer than the package said, but it turned out amazing. My entire career as a foodie should be based around taking not-so-great food and making it taste amazing.

     

    Also, I’m randomly craving Chinese donuts…oy…

     

    Everyone, have an egg-cellent day!

     

    Beaux

     

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  3. Beaux’s Sorta New Year’s Traditions

    December 29, 2011 by The Yum Yum

    My first attempt to create my own New Year’s traditions began in 2008, when I decided that I would establish the tradition of eating Hot Pockets on New Year’s Day.

    But as awesome as Hot Pockets were in my youth, and as much as I still love them today, the sad reality is that 99% of available Hot Pockets are not oriented towards vegetarians of any sort.

    Not long into 2009, I became a vegetarian, and so the great Hot Pockets tradition had to be modified.

     

    The beginning of 2010 brought an interesting shift in the idea: I would eat noodles and donuts. I have no idea how or why this sounded like a good idea to me. I think the noodles come from the Asian notion of eating long noodles for a long life, and the donuts came from the notion of eating something sweet for a sweet year.

    The issue? The donuts, which were actually powdered donut holes from from Wal-Mart, tasted like Play-Do. That is, they were stale, stale, and stale. The noodles were good, though.

    It seems like I ate something else that year.

    Anyway, I discovered the other day that Russia transplanted most of its Christmas festivities to the New Year when Christmas became officially outlawed during the Soviet rule, and guess what one of their traditions is? CHOCOLATE! Christmas chocolate became New Year’s chocolate, and that makes me a happy panda.

    Now I have an excuse to get more chocolate and eat it for the new year, yay!

    But also, another great Russian tradition for New Year’s is having pierogies. And you know how much I love pierogies!

    So, that solves the problem: pierogies and chocolate for New Year’s will be my new set of traditions.

    2010 also brought with it the bonus of having raw oysters on New Year’s night. I love raw oysters, of course, and that just totally made my day. Of course, I ate so many that my stomach ended up hurting, as I’ve heard oysters actually expand in your stomach. I’m not sure how true that is, but I remember my stomach hurt for a day or two after eating so many delicious oysters.

     

    Now, as for Japan: they have their own New Year’s traditions, and New Year’s lasts for three days. Many people are off of work, and there’s an essential sending of New Year’s cards that are all mailed on the same day in December so that they all arrive on New Year’s day.

    Also, children tend to receive money on New Year’s. Van Tilden expressed how she was sad to hear that Japanese kids don’t really get presents for Christmas or don’t get very many presents at least only to discover that they receive incredible amounts of money from various family members. The year she originally blogged about this, she mentioned that one girl on TV had received something like the equivalent of $500 US dollars for New Year’s.

    Wow! Can you imagine? That’s better than Christmas for a lot of people!

    Well, I hope everyone’s having an EGG-cellent day! I’ll try to figure out a special recipe for New Year’s this year, and then I’ll post it on here. Look forward to it, everyone!

     

    Beaux

     

     

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  4. New Year’s Traditions in the USA

    December 28, 2011 by The Yum Yum

    Traditions for the New Year vary in the USA. Most of the traditions with which I’m familiar come from the South. Anyway, here we go!

    New Year’s Eve typically involves parties and lots of drinking. People get drunk and shoot fireworks, though not everyone actually gets drunk.

     

    At midnight, everyone yells, “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” and many people sing “Auld Lang Syne.”

    Tradition holds that at midnight, you should open a door to the house to let out the negativity of the old year and allow in the luck of the new year.

    On New Year’s Day, there are also several traditions: one is not supposed to clean, at all. No washing of clothes, no sweeping, nothing. I think dishes might be okay. The lore here is that to clean on New Year’s Day is to “wash your luck away,” or “sweep your luck away.” In more extreme cases, it allegedly washes someone’s life away.

    In the South, it’s tradition to eat black eyed peas for luck and some kind of greens for money. Crackling bread, which is corn bread with pork cracklings baked into it, is also served. This is a part of New Year’s that I hate, and it’s made me remember each New Year as being a time of awful food.

     

    Honestly, every cultural tradition for New Year’s that I’ve looked up actually involves really good food, except for the South in the USA. (BIG surprise there.)

     

    Moving on, New Year’s in the USA is BIG on having all kinds of excellent sales, so it’s an excellent time to go shopping and spend Christmas money that one received…if one received any money for Christmas, that is. I’ve suggested to the folks here at Hickory Shade that we should just wait until after New Year’s to exchange gifts for Christmas because it would be easier to buy things that are on sale.

     

    New Year’s was, for a long time, my least favorite holiday, based strictly on the fact of how terrible the food is to me. Every other holiday in the year seemingly is associated with some kind of tastiness- chocolate or candy, grilled food, virtual feasts, and then New Year’s rolls around and there’s just not even any point in eating.

     

    So a few years ago, I did my best to begin instituting my own traditions for New Year’s, and we’ll discuss that in the next blog!

    Look forward to it, and have an EGG-cellent day!

    Beaux

     

     

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  5. Craving Bread

    December 27, 2011 by The Yum Yum

    And now, today, I feel worse than I did yesterday. What gives? Maybe it’s the weather?

    I do apologize for turning Holy Poached Eggs into my own personal blog for talking about Christmas illnesses. Oy! This was not my intention.

     

    So, New Year’s is coming up, and with the New Year comes resolutions (which I will likely make none) and also various New Year’s traditions.

     

    However, we’ll deal with those particular traditions later on. I will make an update about New Year’s in Japan, as that’s the biggest holiday over there (at least according to Van Tilden.)

    I’ll also post a blog about our traditions here in the USA!

     

    And then there will be the information about my own personal traditions I’ve tried to start for New Year’s because of how tacky I find some of the USA’s traditions.

     

    Lately, I’ve been craving bread. I want to make bread that’s flavored with honey or make a kind of cinnamon-sugar bread. I’m not sure exactly how to go about doing this, but I think it could actually be easily done with self-rising flour, eggs, and milk. You know, like making a cake, only not as…cake-like.

     

    I made some toasted cheese sandwiches last night like Ms. Alice used to make, except I had shredded cheese at my disposal and ended up not putting enough cheese on the sandwiches. Sad day. But the good news is that I used Caleb’s trick of adding a squirt of lemon juice to the cheese and also added garlic powder (a trick of my own), and the cheese’s flavors absolutely popped!

    Lemon does a great job bringing out flavors. The acidity gives a hint of life and flavor to the food.

    And now, the weather’s turning cold again, ack! Winter’s finally arrived, and it’s going to try to destroy me as it did last year. I am SO not down for that.

    Also, 2012, the Year the World Will End, is rapidly approaching us. The set date for Doomsday is December 21, 2012. So this coming year, I will constantly be writing about the Doomsday and will even supply a wonderful set of “last meal” recipes.

     

    Have an EGG-cellent day, everyone!

     

    Beaux

     

     

     

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  6. St. Stephen’s Day

    December 26, 2011 by The Yum Yum

    I hope everyone had a VERY Merry Christmas and is enjoying their Holiday Season. Now we have to get ready for New Year’s!

    And…Happy Feast of St. Stephen!

    Today commemorates St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and is the second day of Christmas. Alternately, today is known as Boxing Day.

    In many countries, today becomes a day for shopping, much like Black Friday in the USA. The news from last night also said that there would be sales and such today as well, so I hope everyone who went shopping had a great time!

    Beaux here has been sick for the past two weeks. I was sick with one thing first, then I fell ill with something else as soon as I was over that. Ugh. Luckily, I’ve come out of it for the most part; I’m still not there yet, but I now can think more clearly and no longer imagine that I might be dying.

    I survived on Gigi’s dressing and mashed potatoes. Throw a little cranberry sauce in there as well. I woke up on Christmas Eve to discover Christmas food cooked, and I wondered for a second if I had slept through Christmas Eve and that it was already Christmas Day.

    On Christmas Eve Eve, I ate mostly sweets that Ruru brought us. I don’t think that really helped my health so much, but so be it. It was at least SOMETHING to eat.

    Anyway, I don’t think I’ve ever been as hungry as I was when I ate the dressing and potato salad. My body would feel better almost immediately when I ate, so I knew the food was helping. I also didn’t add any seasoning to it and just ate it as was; the moment the food started tasting bland was the moment I knew I was feeling better.

    But Christmas Eve, good grief, I thought I was going to die. My throat was swollen, my sinuses were filled with sinus stuff that made me feel as though I was swimming, and I was dizzy.

    Anyway, besides my ruining Christmas by being sick, the holiday went really well. I’ve mainly stayed in bed and watched TV, which is incredibly annoying since I don’t normally watch TV when alone, and network TV is full of low-quality programming.

    I’ve seen the same 10 commercials probably 1000 times…ugh.

     

     

    Anyway, here’s hoping that by New Year’s, I’ll be completely better and will be able to cook and do something absolutely worth celebrating by then!

    Have an EGG-cellent day!

    Beaux

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  7. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

    December 25, 2011 by The Yum Yum

    This blog post is coming early. You know you’re a real trooper when you refer to Christmas as “the Solemnity of the Incarnation.” 

    And I’m a REAL trooper here.

    So Merry Christmas to all my loyal readers and fans here at Holy Poached Eggs! I hope you have an EGG-cellent day and eat lots of delicious recipes that will become traditions in your families for years to come. :)

    Beaux 

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  8. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

    December 24, 2011 by The Yum Yum

    Sick again. Illness has increased to 10,000 times the strength. My current recipes include Thera-Flu and Zicam.

    Note: Zicam says that it’s now “virtually tasteless” on the bottle and that you can add it to whatever you want so it won’t taste nasty. Do not believe this; it doesn’t matter what you add it to, Zicam is going to taste like the inside of Satan’s flaming bowels.

    It also hurt my stomach. I’ve learned this connection that if something tastes awful, it’s probably going to make me feel awful in my stomach later on, too.

    Appetite was strong on spaghetti night. Appetite left after that. Forcing self to eat food. Food = hotter body (in the literal sense.)

    Annie Lennox’s rendition of my favorite Christmas Song, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” is here.

    Most people sing this song too fast, at least according to my ex. I agree. The first time I heard it was slow, melodic, and dark. The song has a kind of eerie, ethereal element to it that I can’t quite place.

    ENJOY!

     

     

     

    Have an egg-cellent day and a Merry Christmas!

    Beaux 

     

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  9. Christmas in the USA, Edition 2!

    December 23, 2011 by The Yum Yum

    Fruit.

    And no, I don’t mean me.

    I mean fruit is another Christmas charm that comes this time of year!

     

    Lots of fruit.

    In fact, the other day, Bapaw brought home a huge amount of fruit that Mr. Michael Mills provided us. Thanks to Michael and Daisy Mills for their generosity! Ms. Daisy and I have many short conversations on the phone when she’s trying to hunt down Mr. Michael. It’s pretty funny how easily she can motivate him!

    None the less, they’ve been good to the family, and we appreciate their produce.

    The issue is that at Hickory Shade, we all too often have a problem of no one eating the fruit, which sits around rots. This has happened many, many times. I can’t repeat enough times that I do not like apples in their raw form. The last time I ate an apple, part of it got stuck in my teeth and caused a toothache for two days.

    In other words, don’t buy apples.

    I’ve been trying to institute my own Christmas traditions for a few years, so I finally bit the bullet (teehee, I made a funny! See, it’s a blog about food, and I’m talking about BITING things!) and bought six bars of chocolate.

    Knowing that we weren’t going to eat all the fruit, I also grabbed fruit and loaded it into the car.

    Off to Kelly’s house I went, and I split the fruit six different ways, also giving everyone a chocolate bar.

    Fruit and chocolate for Christmas? Very beautiful.

    Plus it was a matter of being generous and practical- we had an abundance of fruit, we had little room for it, so why not give it to someone who would appreciate it?

    I also made the best oyster stew ever for Kelly and company. The stew was pretty salty, like eating the ocean.

    Anyway, as far back as I can remember, we’ve received boxes of fruit every year around Christmas time; fruit is truly beautiful to me, some of the naturally brightest and best-tasting foods.

     

     

    Another American Christmas tradition: mistletoe! The tradition goes that if someone’s standing under mistletoe, they must receive a kiss.

     

    We’re also big on poinsettias, plants that have big, red leaves. They speak of the main Christmas colors, red and green, though I think gold is another Christmas color you see frequently.

     

     

    Cinnamon is probably the stand-out signature scent of Christmas, at least for me. Cloves, too; I smell cinnamon and cloves around Christmastime more than any other holiday.

     

     

    What other Christmas traditions do we have??? Hmm.

    Hanging stockings falls into the same realm of presents under the tree, I think, though stockings tend to be filled with cheaper gifts. The legend is that if you aren’t good, Santa puts switches in your stockings instead.

    I’m sure there are other tradition in the USA that I’ve forgotten; let’s hope I can remember them soon!

    Have an EGG-cellent day, and happy holidays to EVERYONE!(Unless you don’t celebrate anything, then just have a nice day!)

    Beaux

     

     

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  10. COFFEE! COFFEE! COFFEE! COFFEEEEEEE!

    December 22, 2011 by The Yum Yum

     

    My family and I love coffee; this is no secret and will never be a secret.

    Coffee is a kind of nectar of the gods. I used to spend my free time dwelling at a Dothan coffee house.

    Online, I find this jewel:

     

     

     

     

     

    If you aren’t a fan of Pokémon, you probably aren’t going to quite grasp that, but it’s basically a made-up Pokémon evolving.

     

    This, too, brings to mind the reality of coffee love:

    This lady has the right kind of idea.

     

     

     

     

    I hope that gave you a laugh! The pictures are property of their respective creators, and I do not own them.

    Have an egg-cellent day!

    Beaux

     

     

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