Thanksgiving and Headlong into Christmas Time

The recap: Thanksgiving with the Thompsons.

The menu: turkey with herb-butter rub and roasted with wine and apple juice in the roasting pan - which made the gravy extra tasty, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, steamed broccoli, salad, sour dough stuffing with sausage (finally a yummy stuffing!), and pumpkin pie and apple crumble for dessert.

My helper in the kitchen.

It even looked pretty on the plate.

But before Thanksgiving, we had out annual apple tasting fun. I think there were 13 varieties this time. The winners? Mr. Burli and I both picked 'Jazz' with its crisp, floral note. JT's favorite was Empire. I thought it tasted like what I imagine a grapple (grape-flavored apple) might taste like. No one liked Cortland, and Rome, while beautiful to cut into, tasted disappointing. Ambroisa was my second choice, while JT had Gala as his second choice - your basic 'good' apple. Fuji was pretty high up on the list, too, but we forgot to include one from our own tree. Tiny ate some apple slices but refused to try Rome or Cortland and soon ignored the apples all together.

The day after Thanksgiving we went hunting for a tree.

The light was terrible for taking pictures, but it was a beautiful day.

The next day we went for a hike - Iron Mountain. Now we can cross another of San Diego's "mountains" off our list. It was about 3.5 miles up, but it wasn't too steep. Tiny rode up and walked/ran/jumped/almost feel off the mountain most of the way down.

I lost my voice the next week and cancelled one of my classes. (The rest got to watch movies. In my Bio Anth I showed 2 TED talks - one with Louise Leakey, one with Spencer Wells. If you've never watched a TED talk, well, now you now what you should spend the next... month or so doing. So many interesting talks!)
Today was my last day of lecture. Now I have to finish the masses of paper grading (essays on Henrietta Lacks) and grade finals and assign final grades and do all kinds of dull paperwork, half of which I usually manage to forget and get in in the nick of time.
I'll try and be back soon!