Happy Thanksgiving!
 

I hope that you and your family and friends have a great Thanksgiving!

Thanks Greg:
 

And a Happy belated back to you.

Can't forget too Joyous Black Friday ! :D

I spent my Thanksgiving with my son, a grandson and his better half with her family.

We got pelted with 4 inches of snow Wednesday and it is still on the ground. First of the season. My son got 10 inches but he lives 35 minutes away in the Jersey highlands.

We had lots to be thankful for. Everyone is in good health, everyone is employed and everyone seems content

For myself I received the annual statement from one of my investments and it is UP significantly in 2014.

Regards from the East Coast to my friends on the West Cast.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Nice weather here in California.

I have avoided "Black Friday" since the days of Cabbage Patch Dolls. The visual of wall to wall grandmas practically bare knuckle cage fighting in store isles, pulling hair and executing take downs in order to wrest popular kids toys out of each other's white knuckled grasp is indelibly seared into my memory. Besides, I just can't get my head wrapped around people who camp out for weeks to be first in line.

Unless it's really early in the morning, I also avoid the grocery store the day before of Thanksgiving. Otherwise, it's navigating a building packed sardine can full of pissed off people trying to get the same items while ramming each other with their carts.

Happy Holidays, indeed.

Went to a friends house because I don't have an oven right now. It was nice and the Tequila was great.

Hope everyone else had as much fun.

Tequila? You bad little girl ;)

The oven quit, or is this from some kitchen work you're doing?

You Gotta be kidding/
 

Meet the real, hard core boozers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectified_spirit

This is even a piker. Ours was 192 proof Polska.

My sons better half's family are original Polish from the old country.

Thanks giving day Papa poured his concoction, flavored spirits into a very small shot glass - liberally to everyone repeatedly !!!

Upon my second it really knocked my socks off before eating.

So, what are the qualifications to be the holiday drunk uncle under those circumstances?


My ex wife's grandfather was an old school moonshiner who passed down a test for how much "kick" a batch had.

Set a spoonful of the shine on fire. If it has a small, blue flame and stays lighted all the way to the floor when tipped out of the spoon that's some good stuff.

I tried that once with some moonshine a friend brought back from Oklahoma, set my thumb on fire. No one told me I was supposed to do the test BEFORE sampling the stuff, didn't occur to me that I had sloshed some on myself. I bet a guy could set his house on fire doing that kind of thing.

The extended family did Thanksgiving a couple weeks early due to various timing conflicts on the actual day, just the two of us and one of the young grand kids on Thanksgiving. So, I brined a 6 lbs chicken and roasted it on a beer can and made minimal fixings.

Still a big plate full of chicken (could have just done a three pounder), but used up the last of the mashed potatoes this morning. Might make some rice and gravy to go along with the chicken tonight, and freeze or make a stew out of whatever leftovers there are tomorrow.

My stoves are old Okeefe & Merritt. I have four, two from the early 50's and two from the early 60's. I needed to restore one of the 50's because someone had broken one of the burners. So I replaced it with a 60's, but the oven doesn't work. There's something in the gas line going to the oven that is preventing it form working, but to blow it out will require a great deal of work taking it apart. Not something I feel up to these days.

I have been painting my house which is all wood and 100 years old. It is a lot of work, especially the windows and screens. I'm 90% done, but I started in August, so you see, I'm not that fast of a worker.

My grandmother on my mothers side was from Poland. My mother spoke Polish, but I never learned it.

I have a friend from Romania, and he says everyone in Eastern Europe makes their own alcohol. he says they usually use plums. He says they take the plums and squish them in a large container, they might add some water and sugar and let it ferment for a week or so and then they boil it in a closed container. The lid has to have a pipe in it to channel the steam. The steam is mostly alcohol. The alcohol steam rises first and collects in the cooling pipe, turns into a liquid and then falls out of the cooling pipe when it turns into a liquid.
It's kind of like a science experiment with a happy ending.