Holiday catch-up.

Thanksgiving Day--The Dinner
_Harper's Weekly_, November 1858

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!  I hope you had a wonderful day, whether you spent it with family, or had a "Friendsgiving" with good friends instead of relatives!  I'm still adjusting to the new living situation and job, and unfortunately, one of the things that comes with working with children, is getting sick!  Everything my kids get, I get.  I'm currently in the middle of the second bug that I've caught since the beginning of the school year; the earlier sickness started out as a cold and turned into a tonsil infection which kept me away from work for over a week!  This one seems more like a bad cold, and I'm hoping it won't turn into anything worse (fingers crossed!) but it's hung around all week and really put a damper on my holiday baking!  Time for lots of tea and hot/sour soup ...

my nephews at the archery range.
Photo: Elizabeth Urbach.

My brother and I took both our nephews to the Renaissance Faire this year, but unfortunately, the larger costume I was making for my older nephew wasn't quite big enough for him!  He ended up wearing the linen shirt with jeans and sneakers, but he said the doublet was "skin-tight" and the breeches were so small they gave him a wedgie.  The original costume I made for him just barely fit his younger brother, though, so that was good; he wore the whole costume all day for the fair, and I am pleased to say, looked good and got some "aww, how cute!" comments from some of the people there, which he didn't hear (he would have been embarrassed) but I did.  I was planning to make a man-sized costume for the older nephew for next year, and re-size the other larger one for my younger nephew, until I talked to the boys over Thanksgiving, and my older nephew said he wasn't really interested in that anymore!  We'll see what he says when the time comes to go, but I still have hopes for my niece, since she likes to dress up anyway.  I'll see if I can get my sewing machine out of the closet this week and whip together a little dress for her to wear to the Dickens Fair this year; I asked her if she wanted to go, and told her what it was all about, and she seemed interested, especially in the costuming!  I'll probably use the Simplicity Civil War pattern for little girls, since it's simple and goes together quickly.

But on a better note, they've released the Historical Food Fortnightly Challenges for 2016!  Lots of potential for interesting projects, although I'm not sure how many I'll be able to complete, given that I'm not really allowed to cook at the place where I live.  But still, the research will be fun!  Here are the challenges:

1. Meat-and-Potatoes 

2. Culinary Vices 

3. History Detective 

4. Sweets for the Sweet

5. Roasts

6. Juicy Fruits 

7. Pretty As A Picture

8. Literary Foods 

9. Mock Foods

10. Breakfast Foods 

11. Picnic Foods

12. In A Jam...or Jelly, or Pickle 

13. Pies

14. Waste Not, Want Not

15. Smell, Sight, Sound, Touch

16. Foods Named After People 

17. Myths and Legends

18. Let’s Get Saucy!

19. Ethnic Foods

20. Foods Mentioned in Songs

21. Party Foods

22. Soups, Stews and Porridges

23. Sweet Sips and Potent Potables

24. Redo!

25. “Foreign” Foods

26. Descriptively-Named Foods