Venison mincemeat is an old family tradition. Mom thought her great-great-grandma Baker brought the recipe over from England back in the 1800s. We've had it at Christmas and Thanksgiving as long as I can remember. Last year we'd run out of the last batch my late mom had made (you get ~12 quarts per batch, which make 12 pies). So I tried my hand at it. It came out just like Mom's. The recipe's here, if you'd like to try it. It's an all-day process, though, and then some.

Yay love seat.

Barb, I love that dinnerware- I love all the colours. My parents are buying me some very plain white dinnerware for Xmas. But I have some much odds and sods pottery I wanted something neutral to work with.

Mincemeat with actual meat? Huh.

Wow, Four Brothers is a really bad movie. I'm watching it because Mark Wahlberg and also the Mercer thing, but even half tipsy this is bad.tivo gives it two stars. I am skeptical.

(Though there just was a great line. "You don't pay a ho to like you. You pay her to leave." Not that I get what if anything it has to do with the plot, but hey.)

Okay possibly more than half tipsy.

I wish I had beer or wine, but not enough to go out right now. I will make myself a cheesy cocktail.

Speaking of cocktails, I have a question for cocktail people--what should I buy to mix with a) Three Olives triple espresso Vodka, and b) Seagram's sweet tea vodka (individually not together, obviously) that I could buy at Trader Joes or a regular grocery store?

I'm watching Across the Universe and loving it as much as ever. I'd love to spend a few days/weeks just hanging with Julie Taymor and watching her operate. I adore her visual sensibilities.

And Sue, those colors just utterly sold us. For the past seventeen years, our everyday stoneware has been a pale green southwestern design from Noritake that has been fabulous and held up amazingly well, but we were just ready for a change. But yeah, if I had a lot of bits and bobs of pottery, I'd probably do the same thing in terms of getting something neutral to use as a backdrop.

I have to come in here and squee. I'm flying to Orlando tomorrow for a business meeting on Monday and I'm now having dinner tomorrow night at Victoria and Alberts. Yum!

At the rate I'm going I'll be in the ER tomorrow and can't do groceries then either. So today I needed more than dinner. I needed a week's worth of groceries.

Not that I remembered everything. But at least it's mostly done, and I'm home again.

For the sweet tea vodka, I'd use lemonade -- but that seems to be my default, as that's what I'm currently drinking with passionfruit vodka.

I don't know about espresso. Baileys?

I'm now having dinner tomorrow night at Victoria and Alberts.

So.

Jealous.