Excessive

Another Thanksgiving is done. I'm sitting in my kitchen, smelling the cans of tomatoes warm up on the stove, listening to the rustling of the drying leaves as the wind pushes its way through the tops of my trees, covering my nice lawn with leaves that I'll enevitablly have to mow over with my lawn mower, and I'm attempting to relax.

I accidentally ran into an asshole while playing Final Fantasy XIV, something which doesn't happen as frequently as you might expect, but people can be rude, and he pissed me off, so now I'm attempting to Shake it Off, Shake it Off.

The key to making good tomatoes for pasta (you know, MY tomatoes, the ones with so much fresh tomato flavor but traditionally would be looked down upon as being very plain) is to bring it quickly up to a boil and immediately lower it to a simmer, cooking only until the half an onion you put in with them have turned soft and translucent. Boiling for too long brings an unpleasent flavor to the tomatoes and it loses a lot of it's freshness that makes them so good. Besides my Mom who taught me the wonder that is canned tomatoes on pasta, I've never met anyone that uses them for this purpose. Sure, you use them in a recipe to create a puree that you'd then turn into a sauce, but essentially opening a can of tomatoes and dumping them on a pasta is an odd culinary choice, one that I will most likely take part in until the day I die. I hope that I can pass the love on to my children too.

Yesterday I had the family over for Thanksgiving dinner, My Mom, Lindy her boyfriend John. Bekki and I hosted and we sat around and eventually had dinner. Pretty normal, perfectly fine. I made a ham, which was pre-sliced (which I wasn't aware of when I bought it) which caused it to lose most of it's juices when I cooked it, leaving it much dryer than it could've been if I had just bought a whole ham, but live and learn. I also served potato pave with brie, and the standard fall/winter vegetables. Probably of most note is the fact that I made my first pie, and also ate and enjoyed a pie for the first time I can remember.

I don't want to mislead anyone, it wasn't a full-on pie because it was made with a custom crust, instead of normal pie crust, it was made with crushed ginger snaps, so that's maybe why I enjoyed it so much more. Oh, it was a pumpkin pie, I should probably mention that. I used Alton Brown's recipe, and it turned out really nicely, and I really liked it. So much so, that I made another one today! Cut in to 8 slices, each slice is around 250 calories, which is a lot, but not so much that it's gross.

I've been enjoying the long weekend, playing a lot of Final Fantasy XIV, and cleaning the house. It's been pretty relaxing and I look forward to the slightly shorter week.

I've recently bought an iPhone 6s Plus, a giant 5.5 inch iPhone that I love. My old phone (iPhone 5s) was smaller, and it always hurt my eyes to read anything on it. Getting this larger phone has made reading things on the phone fine, and actually enjoyable, and I like to read it in bed, or while I'm on the treadmill. The other hardware improvements are great, and overall I'm very happy with the phone.

My tomatoes are smelling aweosme, and I believe it may be time to start putting on some pasta. Time to go!

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