MiaMas Dinner

Since Ms. Mia's birthday falls on Christmas her family celebrates by letting her pick what they're eating for dinner. This year, Mia went southern. Well, her version of southern that is. 

She also celebrates by sending me photos in the middle of the night and taunting me with things I won't be eating. At least she's nice enough to send the recipe so that we can make this dinner if we so choose. 

I've never heard of cherry ribs but it sounds great. Miamas also included Frank's Red Beans and a chocolate ganache cheesecake, Mia celebrates in style!

I don't really cook ribs, I love them but when I buy pork ribs I cut it up to use for soups. These ribs look so delicious and sounds so good that I might try and make them this week before the new year and the healthy eating really kicks in. I don't think Nancy will mind. 

Justified

Justified is one of my favorite shows on TV. It's so good that when it's on, I usually watch the repeat right after it airs. It's so good that FX just recently ran a marathon of episodes in the middle of the night and I stayed up until 5am watching it, even though I had seen every episode!

Raylan Givens, as played by Timothy Olyphant reminds me of Doc Holliday as played by Val Kilmer on the movie Tombstone. He's a tall drink of cool water and I'm thirsty. Raylan is a US Marshall in Harlan County, KY where he grew up which makes for complicated relationships with his father (a petty criminal) and the main antagonist, Walton Goggin's Boyd Crowder who used to be Raylan's best friend.

Egg Nog Bread

My friend Stephanie recently posted a photo of some egg nog bread that she made and it looked so delicious I asked for the recipe, after all, I have some home made egg nog sitting in my fridge waiting to be imbibed, or in this case, eaten.

I just made a batch and my roommate delivered them to my family, still warm. My sister called me and the first words out of her mouth were, "tell me you have more muffins!" You can't beat that reaction!

My sister was surprised to hear this was made with egg nog. She was like me, she didn't think she liked egg nog. If you have tried egg nog in the past and not liked it, I would recommend making your own. It makes all of the difference.

Egg Nog Recipe

My brother-in-law Jeff loves egg nog, I've never been a big fan but since Jenn shared her family recipe with me I decided to make this for Christmas this year. I have to say, I am now a fan of egg nog! 

The egg nog I've had in the past had flavors in it I didn't really like, the great thing about making it myself is, I controlled what flavors went in and kept it pretty simple. 

When Nancy found out I was making this she suggested I double the batch. Turns out she's a fan of egg nog also. It was a good call on her part, it's going to go quickly. I've had 2 glasses of it already. I had to do quality control on each batch. 

Jenn suggests making the egg nog a few days before Christmas to let the rum really work its way into everything. If it tastes this good already, I can't wait to see how it tastes on Christmas day!

Darlene Love

It's not Christmas until Darlene Love sings "Baby, Please Come Home" on Late Night With David Letterman. It's a holiday tradition for Dave and it's a holiday tradition for me. This is one of my favorite Christmas songs and I love that she sings it every year. She still looks fabulous and sounds amazing. Now, it feels like Christmas to me.

Home-Made Salted Caramels

I found this recipe on Pinterest, my favorite place to find new recipes. Photos definitely help inspire me. Pinterest is a wonderful tool for bloggers so don't forget to pin any photos on here of recipes that you like. :)

I wanted to make this for Thanksgiving but football was on and I still thought I had a shot of winning at that time so I had my nephew make this Thanksgiving morning with Nancy supervising while I supervised them from the couch. This recipe is so simple and easy Jordan had it memorized by the second batch.

Peppermint Meringues

I haven't made these in a couple of years since I was living in FL last year and flew in for Christmas. I love them. A light holiday candy to counter balance all of the cookies and fudge, not that those aren't wonderful, I normally don't eat a lot of either of them. These, I love. Since I changed the original recipe I couldn't remember how much peppermint extract I added, so I added too much last night but I found my original write up from my old blog so you don't have to have such strong meringues as we are eating.

Fun Foto Friday - Bradley Cooper

I was a huge fan of the tv show Alias, and  loved the character of Will played by Bradley Cooper. I was bummed they never  made him a real love interest for Jennifer Garner's character. That would have been a fun triangle, I'd love to be in the middle of a Bradley Cooper/Michael Vartan sandwich! 

The Museum of TV and Radio had a seminar with the cast of Alias and I was in heaven. All of the cast was extremely nice but there was one who went out of his way to be friendly to everyone and that was Bradley Cooper. He introduced me to his girlfriend, he introduced me to his cast mates, we conversed. This is very unusual. I was a fan before I met him and more of a fan after and I'm so happy to see all of the success he's had since Alias. 

Reality Roundup - The finales

Sorry I haven't been blogging as much as usual. I don't normally have insomnia for more then a day but this last bought has been going on for weeks and you all know, even under the best of circumstances I don't have energy, factor in not being able to get to sleep and I'm a walking zombie. Hopefully this passes soon. A girl needs her sleep. My plan is to shut down the computer sooner and read a book, it won't help me shut down my brain, if I'm reading a great book I'll keep reading but at least I'll be spending those wee hours into the morning catching up on my reading.

Now on to the fun stuff! First finale on the list is Survivor. I watched the first couple of episodes this season and then jumped right to the finale. If nothing else is on, I'll watch the finale of Survivor because I usually follow the recaps online even if I don't watch and since nothing else was on, I watched all 3 hours. Wow, they really drag it out. I think the reunion show flies by the actual final 2 hours of the show has a lot of filler in it.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

My, what a big sword you have...

I've never had much interest in J.R.R. Tolkien but when The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings came out I enjoyed it so much I went to the theater to see it again. I also decided I had to read the books because I couldn't wait a year to find out what happened. 

My friend Bernadette was very cute, she's from the Philippines and when I said I had to go read the books she said, maybe they should have waited to release the books. I had a great laugh and let her know the books were written a long time ago.

I devoured the books, I definitely didn't think they were the best thing ever written, way too much description and too many characters with multiple names, my favorite part of the book was the appendix, I loved knowing what happened to everyone afterwards but I did enjoy the story and eagerly anticipated every LOTR movie and watched them all twice in the theater. I remember bouncing in my seat when Legolas did something badass and yet, I was sort of ambivalent about The Hobbit.