Home Cooked Meal - Italian Style

The theme for this week's ESN scavenger's hunt blog is Home Cooked Meals.  Home Cooked Meals - a topic I can sink my teeth into. (no pun intended).  Cooking for me is not just another household chore.  It is a joy, a stress reliever, and just plain fun. My friends and family say it is in my genes. I grew up cooking with my mom. She was the best cook ever and could make a delicious meal just from the items in her pantry.  Of course an Italian stocked pantry usually has just a little more than most people's.  Her list of must haves is way too long to list here.
When my now adult children where school aged and home from school because of a snow day, one of their favorite things to do was to cook.  Back then, I didn't think oh they are learning math skills, or reading skills.  It was a fun thing that kept them busy.  After all, busy hands were happy hands.  The kids definitely had busy hands because part of having a home cooked meal is the clean up. lol
Today, both of my adult sons are better cooks than their wives.  And on many occasions my daughters- in- law have thanked me for it.  Recently, my daughter told me, she has Christmas eve off and will be over early to help with the initial preparation of  the Vigilia (Christmas Eve) dinner. Incidentally, last year was the first time our family prepared the feast ourselves. Sure, we cooked just a little too much macaroni and way too much calamari. The smelts were only ok.  But, on the whole the dinner was a success. 

 La Vigilia



I must admit it is priceless to see my grown sons and daughter helping to prepare the traditional Christmas Eve dinner. 



Preparing the calamari.



We embroidered a couple La Vigilia aprons to remember our first annual Christmas eve dinner. It's almost time to unpack them to use for this year. 



Feast of the Seven Fishes





Christmas with the Family.



Celebrating Thanksgiving

The Christmas hype has already started.  Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals are already being advertised.  Sometimes I wonder if I an in the minority.  I love celebrating Thanksgiving.  It goes back to my days as a preschool teacher.  Thanksgiving was so much fun.  My favorite song to teach my pre K class was Albuquerque he's my turkey.  I remember searching for a t shirt that read Save a Turkey Eat Hamburger instead.  I couldn't find one. Today I ran a search on the song and found a new (to me at least) variation eat spaghetti instead.  Oh! how my preK class would have love that. lol  I think for our class contribution to the center's Thanksgiving feast they probably would have wanted to have some type of spaghetti.  Now that really would of been an interesting twist.
 We don't  have a custom embroidered Save a Turkey- Eat spaghetti t shirt. Hopefully, by next year it will be designed and listed in our ecrater store. But ,we do have a Save a Turkey Eat Hamburger kid's T shirt. And by the way, I may not be teaching  Albuquerque he's my turkey to a pre K class; but tonight I taught it to my 3 year old granddaughter.  She giggled and giggled.  I'll have to bring her home a Save a Turkey eat hamburger t shirt to wear to her preschool Thanksgiving feast.  After all Albuquerque he's my turkey was so happy in his bed  - 'cause for Thanksgiving Dinner we had hamburger instead.  lol



EmbroideryFashionsBoutique

 

Christmas Bibs

My daughter, who is one of the most savvy Christmas  shoppers I know, asked me to go shopping with her on Black Friday.  Can you hear my groans bouncing off my kitchen walls?  After all I just changed my Halloween decor to my Thanksgiving decor.
But, it is that time of the year again.  Holiday shopping time.  In fact, you can scoot right over to our Christmas Shop right now.  We just added a line of custom embroidered Christmas bibs.

Embroidery Fashions Boutique