Sweet Dreams Are Made of Brie: Part 2 of a "What I Ate for Christmas" Series

Life gets busy this time of year. I watched a version of A Christmas Carol yesterday and couldn't help but laugh over the emphasis that Dickens put on not working on Christmas day. I shook my head and thought, "Nope. 8:15 to 5."

We are lucky enough, though, to live in an area where everyone seems to be away from their proper families. Somehow everyone ends up with a place to go at one of the "Heartwarming Orphan" holiday parties. Normally, Josh and I host one. This year, we were both a little too homesick to try distracting ourselves with hosting duties. Our friends Derek and Jess opened their apartment to us, and anyone else who needed to feel a sense of belonging. It was perfect.

I was asked to bring an appetizer, and with a 20 minute drive ahead of me, I wanted to make sure it was a fuss-free food. I made baked brie for the festivities. If the idea of baked brie intimidates you, don't let it. Think of it as oven-baked grilled cheese.

Ingredients:
-1 can of crescent roll dough
-1 or 2 Tbs of your favorite fruit preserves. I use apricot or blackberry (blackberry in this case).
-1 circle (that's a unit of measurement?) of brie cheese

Yep. That's all you need to make this. You may want to grease your baking sheet, but only a little.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Lay half of the crescent roll dough on your baking sheet or pan. Pinch together the rips and tears in the dough. Then place the brie on top of the dough.

Put your spoonful of preserves on top of the brie, and spread it around. Have fun with this step.

Fold the corners of the dough up towards the top of the brie. If you're like me and end up with extra dough, cover up any open spaces where the preserves may leak out. And of course, make crescent rolls out of the extra dough. Waste not, want not, and all that fun stuff. The crescent rolls will also help you gauge when the dough around the brie is ready. The crescents should look golden brown on top when you're finished.

Bake for 12 minutes, then check how the crescents look. If they're golden brown, your brie is ready. If not, wait another 2 minutes or so.

It looks like a super-charged dinner roll or biscuit. Considering it takes about 20 minutes total to make and only has three ingredients, it's a really simple appetizer. It's been a hit every time I've brought it to parties, so have fun with this one!

The finished product. It went really fast once we got to the party, too. It's a simple, vegetarian-friendly recipe that looks and tastes like a lot more effort than it really is. It's become something that my friends look forward to, and maybe it'll become a staple at your own festivities.

Let's Talk Turkey: Part 1 of a "What I Ate for Christmas" series

Christmas is only three short days away. Shopping is complete. Shipping is another story.

Josh and I are both working on Christmas, so hosting any sort of party-- let alone making a festive dinner would be a wash. We're going to a friend's house tomorrow, and we were asked to bring appetizers. On Christmas, there's a casserole contest at work, so that will be an adventure in and of itself. Knowing that there won't be much time for us to pause, reflect, celebrate quietly, or any of that homey stuff for the rest of the week, I decided to make our turkey today instead.

We were lucky and a little shocked that turkey hadn't been too difficult on Thanksgiving. Also around Thanksgiving, Publix supermarket had a sale on young turkey. 59 cents a pound? Unheard of. That was a LOT less than any other meat item-- and any other food item for that matter. So, like any thrifty girl with an extra day of holiday pay in her paycheck, I bought three turkeys! Haven't had to buy meat since.

Looks pretty tasty, right? It still has about an hour and fifteen minutes left to go before it's ready, but it smells DELICIOUS!

Ingredients:
-Turkey
-A stick of butter
-A roughly sliced red delicious apple
-Half of a roughly sliced large onion
-2 Tbs. ground cinnamon
-2 Tbs. herbs de provence OR 3 springs each of sage and thyme
-A cup of water

The turkey itself is about 10 lbs. First thing's first. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees F. Cover the turkey skin with a stick of butter. You can certainly use less butter if you feel like it.

After cutting up the apple and onion, put the pieces in a microwave safe bowl. Then add the spices. Cover all of these lovely things with water. I know I said a cup, but really, just cover the contents so they are all submerged. Microwave for 5 minutes. Pour all of this (water included) into the turkey-- basically, instead of stuffing.

Put the turkey in the oven for 45 minutes (do this no matter the size of the turkey). After 45 minutes, put a thermometer in the turkey leg (make sure you don't touch the bone), and check the temperature. This will give you an idea how much time to leave the turkey in the oven. The end-game temperature is 160.

Lower the temperature to 350 degrees F. Expect to leave the turkey in the oven for about 2 hours. Make sure that the juices run clear and that the finished temperature is 160 degrees F as mentioned earlier. Put a tin foil tent over the turkey for 15 minutes to ensure that everything settles and cures properly. Enjoy!

On that note, we're going to watch A Christmas Story while turkey finishes cooking. Josh just said, "It smells like Christmas!" and you know something, it really does. 

Let's Talk About Rhinos

There are some things on which I consider myself to be something of an expert. In no particular order, those things include, but of course, are not limited to:

- Hot Chocolate
- Coffeehouse Drinks
- Growing basil
- The 1960's
- The film Casablanca
- J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye
- Fishtail Braids
- How to Tell Sassafras Trees Apart from Other Trees
- Semi-colons
- The Difference between Port and Starboard
- Disney's Animal Kingdom's White Rhinoceros Population
- Homemade Black Bean Burgers
- Basic Knitting
- The A, G, C, D, and F Chords on the Ukulele
- Yoga for Stress Relief

so when I was informed that I have an interview and need a three to five minute presentation for an audience of two to four people, I quickly narrowed it down to those topics. My mind raced. Could I really make a three minute presentation on semi-colons that would captivate an audience of four?

No. Semi-colons are too simple for that. You heard me; they are simple. See what I did there? I used a semi-colon-- correctly, I might add. To use a semi-colon correctly, you have to know if your two clauses (statements) can stand on their own as a sentence and if the thoughts are relatively connected. For example,
Semi-colons are shockingly simple to use; I have even seen non-native English speakers use them correctly.
would be a correct use. Just make sure you don't include words like, however, and, but, and or after the semi-colon (no matter what Microsoft Word tries to tell you).

Mildly entertaining? Maybe. Entertaining for three minutes? Not really. I quickly moved on...

Black bean burgers? I'd have to bring in samples. And sadly, my burgers are boyfriend-approved but not mass-approved, so that wouldn't be a good choice.

Catcher in the Rye? As much as I love Holden Caulfield, I know that much of the human population finds him whiny. Well, forget them; they're phonies anyway. (Holden Caulfield AND semi-colons. wha-BAM!)

Rhinos? Not only do I convince every one of my trainees that rhinos are worth saving and loving, but I can also recognize the white rhinos apart from each other. Most people can't do that, but I taught myself how with a few simple tricks.

And just like that, I had a presentation. Granted, I am practically the worst at interviews and presentations. This will be the third time I try for this job, and I tend to shake and tear up during even the "best" interviews. So practice has to happen. The pictures, by the way, were all taken by me while out on safari. For animal safety reasons, their names will not be included.

For practice for you all, let's figure out how to recognize black and white rhinos. There are certainly several similarities between the two species of African rhinos. Male and female African rhinos both have two horns that will grow continually during their lifetimes. Sadly, their horns are the reason why they are poached. There are fewer than 5,000 black rhinos in the world today and somewhere around 20,000 white rhinos. Rhinos have three toes on each foot. They have excellent senses of smell and hearing, but poor eyesight considering they have tiny eyes on either side of their head. Both species can also reach top speeds of about 35 miles per hour and can gallop (they can run with all four feet off the ground at the same time. I don't know about you, but I think that's amazing.). Black and white rhinos also wallow in mud to protect themselves from insects and sunburn. It also helps them keep cool in the hot African sun.

This is a black rhinoceros. Black rhinos are generally loners. They live in forested areas when possible, weigh about 3000 pounds tops, and have pointy upper lips. These upper lips are prehensile (can really move anywhere the muscles will let them. Think about your fingers moving independently or a spider monkey's tail being used as an extra appendage). They use these lips to grab tree branches. Black rhinos have a more slender build than white rhinos, so when they walk, it is almost like they tiptoe or walk with one foot directly behind the other. After looking at the pictures, you may also notice that isn't much a difference in color between white and black rhinos, either.

Below are some of the white rhinos. They can weight up to about 5,000 pounds. Notice their mouth structure. They have broad, wide mouths. In fact, that's how they got their name. The original Dutch Afrikaans settlers noticed that the rhinos living in the savanna together were wider in general-- especially their mouths. They ate grasses from the ground just like cows and horses. So they were wit or wide rhinos. When the English arrived, they mispronounced it. And no one likes to correct the reigning group of settlers, so there you have it.





The rhinos above are a mother and baby pair. You can tell it's the mother because of her WICKED LONG HORN! It's curved back toward her back. The baby is easy to tell apart from the others simply because he's so small. This was taken about a year after he was born, so he's a lot bigger now, but his horns are still small and rounded down. Rhino horn grows about three to six inches a year on average because their horns are made out of the exact same stuff that makes up our hair and finger nails. It's a densely packed protein fiber called keratin. Baby's horn still hasn't had much of a chance to grow in yet.

This rhino to the right is another adult female. She's honestly one of my favorites. Her horn is straight. The other white rhinos' horns are curved back a lot more than hers. Also, look at her ears. Even in the picture, if you look carefully, you can see how ridiculously fluffy her ears are.

Now that you know a little bit about the rhinos, see if you can tell the differences. I have included another picture of one of the white rhinos, so see if you can recognize which one it is.

That's a basic rundown of my presentation. Considering there are seven white rhinos to go through, it will take longer to go through all of them. Hope you learned a little something, and thank you for letting me practice!

Have Yourself a Merry Little Hiraeth

There's something a little ridiculous about the holiday season in Orlando, Florida-- especially if you are from Midwest Indiana. The weather has very little to do with typical Christmases either. It's either 40's and rainy or 80's an humid. The weather can't even decide what it wants to do with itself. At least in other states, for the most part, the weather picks a general set of ten numbers to stick to, but not here. Nope. And snow? Not even a thought. When it rains, Josh and I do joke about it being "snow," but even we don't think the joke is very funny.

Two days ago was my family Christmas party. It's a little early in the month, relatively speaking, but at least four generations of Sachtleben spawn make it out to Valparaiso, Indiana or Minooka, Illinois to sing "Silent Night" in German, eat deviled eggs because they were Cousin Steve's favorite, try to catch up on twelve months' worth of life events, watch Uncle Bob pitch a mini-fit over the blasphemy of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," and ultimately see how many secret glass fill-ups we can pull on Aunt Donna. If you haven't been, it's great.

I called my mom and sister's phones to get passed around from person to person, but no one answered. Cousin Megan texted to say she missed me. Cousin Chris texted to say he had a cold and couldn't go to the party either. I was feeling pretty low. But hey, Josh was either smart or lucky this year. The day of the party, two packages arrived for me. An Ahsoka Tano hoodie from www.heruniverse.com (cuz every fangirl needs one) and In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd. I put on my hoodie, cracked open the book, and took a big whiff of book smell. I started reading, and the first chapter is all about going to Midwest Indiana after being gone so long that you practically decide not to claim it anymore. I teared up. Couldn't help it. I know people come down to Orlando for just about every vacation under the sun. But some days, you need a moment of your childhood back. You need a moment of what used to be normal.

You just need a Redamak's hamburger, and hopefully, a good one at that. Note: a good Redamak's
hamburger is so greasy that you need napkins in your lap, on the table, and in your shirt front. So much grease that you can feel it running down your arms. Toppings of choice: velveeta cheese product, ketchup, mustard, and grilled onions. The only acceptable variation of toppings is Swiss cheese, green olives, mustard, and grilled onions. You will feel this burger the next day, if not later that evening.

You need to drive down 800 North, afraid to go over 30 miles an hour because there's so much ice under the new lake effect snow, and you never know when a group of white-tail deer will bound in front of your car. You need to imagine that you're really in the Millennium Falcon and that the snow zooming past you are really stars that you're flying past in hyper-drive... only to remember you're only going 30 miles an hour.

You need to have a cat on your lap. A fluffy, heavy, cross-eyed cat who still mews like a kitten and sucks on fingers. You need to put in Lilo and Stitch because said cat just loves it so much. You need to almost hide your glass of milk because he's so spoiled that he'll try to drink it right out of your cup.

You need to sit on a squishy brown couch with a cup of coffee in your hand. You need to listen to your grandfather read "The Ballad of the Northern Lights." You need to marvel every year at how 1. you didn't remember how long this friggin' poem was or 2. the fact that it actually rhymed or 3. that you should really have this memorized after hearing it so much, but for some reason, it never sticks.

There are so many things that I miss about family Christmas. Things that you can't purchase. Things you can't put into words. Things you didn't even realize you'd miss. Instead, I'm in Florida. Making sure everyone else has an amazing vacation with their families.

I went to Target today. I got some pain meds, cold meds, a flash drive, organic juices, clementines, acorn squash, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and a maroon tank top. I walked outside into the "snow" donning my yoga pants and Ahsoka Tano hoodie. I took a deep breath in. Cigarette smoke and a nearby Cracker Barrel filled the air. It was almost like I was back in Indiana, grabbing lunch after the 8 am church service and before going to Uncle Fritz and Aunt Sharon's. Almost. I took my cart to the drop off, and an employee gestured for me to just toss the cart at him. I did so with the speed and precision one gets after pushing and parking strollers for two hours straight twice a week. It was an unfortunate reality check that I was in Florida and not able to get any time off for Christmas since everyone else has vacation and comes to visit me.

I know I have a lot to be grateful for. And I am. I'm just homesick for somewhere that isn't home anymore. For places, people, and feelings that may never exist again as I had known them. I found out recently that there's a word for that sensation. Hiraeth. It's Welsh. No direct English translation. But there you have it. So merry early Christmas, everybody. Remember why we celebrate.