I am feeling better, but in the process of being sick have developed an addiction to warm beverages. I didn't realize it was so bad until I went to the grocery store today and came home with 4 packs of hot cocoa and 3 more types of Celestial Seasonings. We got Candy Cane Lane, Gingerbread Spice and Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride. Oh yeah... they are as good as they sound. 
I am still not feeling 100%, so for this week I just picked things from the last few weeks. I also tossed in a few comfort foods. Nothing says "feel better" like my mom's cooking.
(This isn't our basket, but I like the fall prints better so I am posting it instead. Courtesy of polkadotcreations at flickr)
Leftovers for lunch
Patti asked for the recipe for Lisa's Famous Potato Soup. Drop what you are doing right now and go make this. I promise you won't regret it.Lisa's Famous Potato Soup
8 cups coarsely chopped, peeled potatoes (you can leave the skins on well-scrubbed taters)
1 chopped onion
1/2 pound bacon, crisped, drained & crumbled
1 8-oz. package cream cheese, softened
5 & 1/2 Cups water and 2 Tbsp. chicken soup base, or the same amount of stock
1 can cream of whatever soup
Salt & Pepper to taste.
You need at least a 4 quart crock pot for this recipe.
In your crock pot, stir together the potatoes, onion and crumbled bacon.
In a mixing bowl, combine softened cream cheese, broth and cream soup. Add salt & pepper now, and more later if you want. Sometimes, I add a few drops of hot sauce, or a sprinkle of that beloved Chipotle powder.
Pour the wet mixture over the tater mix in the crock pot. Cover and heat on low for 8-10 hours, or high for 4-5 hours. When done cooking, mash some of the potatoes with a hand blender or the back of a wooden spoon for a thicker soup.
I serve in a bowl with shredded cheddar cheese and a few croutons, or a sprinkling of bacon on top if I've fried up the whole pound, which you'll most likely do anyway.
It's even better the next day, but it does form a "skin" that needs to be stirred back in.
We have been making an effort to use less energy, but haven't really been tracking it. I just checked the Consumers Energy website, and it looks like we are getting there, slowly but surely.
I am getting sick. I have some sort of strange ear/nose/throat thing going on and it is making me crazy. 
I hope all of you had a nice Thanksgiving! We are watching the Lions, eating way too much lasagna and sneaking extra pieces of bread pudding.
Tomato and White Bean Soup -
Sweeping the Clouds AwaySunny days! The earliest episodes of "Sesame Street" are available on digital video! Break out some Keebler products, fire up the DVD player and prepare for the exquisite pleasure-pain of top-shelf nostalgia.
Just don’t bring the children. According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, "Sesame Street: Old School" is adults-only: "These early 'Sesame Street' episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child."
What they did to us was hard-core. Man, was that scene rough. The masonry on the dingy brownstone at 123 Sesame Street, where the closeted Ernie and Bert shared a dismal basement apartment, was deteriorating. Cookie Monster was on a fast track to diabetes. Oscar’s depression was untreated. Prozacky Elmo didn’t exist.
Have a favorite recipe you want to convert to a crock pot recipe? A Crock Cook has some tips that can help.
It's midnight. Children lie in their beds and dream about their favorite things -- not moonbeams or kitten whiskers, but Xbox 360s, cell phones and Hannah Montana merchandise.
Their mothers don't want to disappoint them. Christmas is a month away. Making sure their children aren't blue is worth going in the red. They put on their helmets and shoulder pads. The gatherers become the hunters.
Nov. 28, the day after Thanksgiving, is Black Friday. It sounds like a horror movie -- and it could be. Lines of hopeful, desperate mothers wait outside shopping malls and Wal-Marts for the deals of the day. When the doors open, the feeding frenzy begins. It's a modern-day Lord of the Flies.
Kill the pig. Spill its blood. Do you take Discover?
According to a 2006 Consumer Reports survey, 23 percent of Americans will not pay off their holiday debts until March. This amounts to $14.6 billion thrown away on interest alone.
Recent Visa commercials are hilarious and frightening. Buyers move like a machine, spinning in a debt-riddled dance. One blundering idiot pays with cash. This causes a total breakdown and shameful looks.
Visa is making us feel guilty for not going into debt.
No one likes feeling guilty, so we oblige. During the holidays, $63.6 billion will be charged on credit cards. Some might have the money. Most don't. Instead of saving beforehand to wish the family a Merry Christmas, society works in four easy steps: see, want, borrow and buy.
Is this what we've been reduced to? Is love measured in dollar signs? Parents continue to focus on temporary happiness -- a toy that is thrown aside in a month or a video game that is conquered in a week. Girls grow out of their Bratz-doll phase faster than overpriced jewelry and clothing.
Now more than ever, it's time for society to switch its focus. Gas prices will continue to skyrocket and with them the national debt, as old habits die hard.
A recent Gallup poll shows that for the first time in recent history, Americans are more worried about the economy than the war in Iraq.
Politicians aren't doing anything to help the trend. The Republican candidates, in their usual way, are touting the benefit of tax cuts as a solution to all of life's problems. It's the Bush brand of economic policy -- less regulation and trade molded and manipulated by business interests.
The Democrats are no better. With the upcoming election, one of the most important in history, they've stopped talking about war, debt, death and taxes. Debate has amounted to bickering and a front-runner fistfight. Barack Obama and John Edwards have digressed into a Lord of the Flies of their own -- kill Hillary. Spill her blood. Policy and intelligent conversation be damned.
Do your children a favor. After you eat your Thanksgiving turkey, lie back and let the dopamine take effect. Relax. Don't get caught up in Black Fridays. Set a budget, stick to it and put the rest aside in a college fund. The kids might hate you now, but they'll thank you later.
The only power we have left is our checkbook. Put it away and watch corporate America scramble. Sucks to their "asmar" -- and profit margin.
The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time. - Abraham Lincoln
In the foreclosure crisis of 2007, thousands of American families are losing their homes without ever missing a payment. They are renters in houses whose owners default on their mortgages — a large but little noticed class of casualties.
Heidi Hansen, a U.S. Bank customer for nearly 10 years, had never seen anything like it. Her October bank statement contained a long string of unexpected 25 cent charges. Next to each was this confusing explanation:
"Purch Made With PIN - Fee."
Hansen, a 27-year-old Colorado resident, figured out what was going on pretty quickly. She was being charged extra for using her ATM card and PIN code to buy things at retail stores.
A 25-yr old making $30,000 a year, for instance, and putting away the same 8% of his pay into a 401(k) plan annually for the rest of his career is virtually guaranteed a comfortable retirement by time he hits his 60s.
My brother, sister-in-law and nieces are coming to visit Friday-Monday. Here is what I am up against: My sister-in-law is a vegetarian, my brother is about as opposite of vegetarian as you can get, and my nieces are somewhere in the middle. My nieces are 2, 3 and 5 and two of them are picky eaters. My brother worked as a Chef for years, and can cook really, really well.
It always amuses me (in a sick "can't look away from the car accident" way) when people post on message board that they are stressing over gift exchanges. My favorite kind of posts are the "I spend more money on my family than I do my own kids, because I know my brother/sister/mom & dad would never go for not exchanging gifts" and the "I tried to get my family to agree to a gift exchange instead of having to give to the whole family, and so-and-so was so upset that it ruined Christmas" variety.
Wow. I really don't understand your philosophy, but I respect it and would like to learn more. My husband and I rented for the first 1 1/2 years of our marriage and then bought a house as soon as we could. I was 24 and he was 22--that was 11 years ago. With the refinancing we did 4 years ago, we will have our house paid off when I am 47. I anticipate having no more payments as feeling wonderful! Like with cars, we like to own something and not continually be paying for one, so we don't feel the need to upgrade our cars every year. There's a lot to be said for owning something outright. By the way, we are a single-income family and make a lot of sacrifices in order for me to be able to stay home. What are the perks to renting other than not having to worry with home maintenance?
When we sold our house everyone said we were crazy. It has been almost ten years and people still ask us when we will buy another house. I don't see us ever being homeowners again.
I live in an amazing neighborhood that I wouldn't have been able to afford to buy in. We enjoy all of the benefits that you talked about (including living across the street from a huge park) and wouldn't change it for the world!
In April of 1915 a battle-weary Canadian soldier viewed the final resting place of thousands of young men who had fallen in the second Battle of Ypres in Belgium. Despondently he contemplated the rows o hastily dug graves - each marked by a lonely white cross.
In a sudden revelation, he heard the singing of larks in the sky, and amid the graves he saw gay little patches of red - white poppies, struggling through the battle-torn soil and through the clay mounds of the graves to bring their message of life among death.
Inspired, Col. John McCrae sat down and penned the three short verse of his famous poem "In Flanders Fields". Published in PUNCH Magazine a few months later, the poem brought a message of confidence to millions of people in the dark hours of World War I and established the Flanders Poppy as a symbol of faith and hope in a war-torn world.
Although Col. McCrae never lived to see the end of World War I, his poem had survived in print and in the minds and hearts of generations to whom his personal battle was mere history. The poppies, which provided his inspiration, still bloom in Flanders Fields; but their message of hope had become reality through the Veterans of Foreign Wars Buddy Poppy.
