Our kitchen is finally DONE! I love it. The big difference I notice, other than the gas cooktop being much better than electric, is that I walk a lot more. Much more space, much more counter surface, much more storage but much more to keep picked up and clean! Last week, on Monday I made spaghetti sauce, on Tuesday I made cream of broccoli soup, and on Wednesday I baked not one but two batches of bread. Cinnamon raisin bran bread and anadama bread. The latter is a Colonial bread, made with yellow corn meal and molasses. Yummers! It makes terrific grilled cheese sandwiches, which is what I had today for lunch.

What have you all been up to? Did you get together with family for the holidays?

We hosted Christmas for my (small) family and Mistah Midnight's (huge) family. Yes, the very first time we prepared a meal for guests in the new kitchen, we hosted fourteen people! The garbage disposal exploded both Christmas Eve and during dinner prep on Christmas Day, clogging the pipe (a truly stoopid design guaranteed to clog and back up!) and blowing the compression fittings off the drain. Spewed water with bits of ground-up food all over the inside of the cabinet and over the laminate flooring, which is not supposed to get wet. However, due to the superior caulking job of yours truly, there was no harm done. The current pipe configuration is better, but a few onion skins still fetched up at one juncture. The third time should be the charm. (If you're putting in an Insinkerator Badger model in a double sink, IGNORE the instructions that say to put two traps in, one for each drain. Join the two outflows above a single trap. Gee, I've learned a lot about construction stuff since we started working on this house. Fortunately, most of it's pretty useful.)

My holidays were so busy I didn't even have time to promote FINDING THE LIGHT, which came out on the 27th. Now that I'm back, I'll have to do that.

The first review is in! “Liddy Midnight brings companionship to two lonely hearts on the night of Yule as well as all readers of this heartwarming story. When all else seems lost and there is nowhere else to go, FINDING THE LIGHT gives hope to all those who are living alone out there during this time of family and cheer.” — JT for Romance Junkies (Read the rest)

My only concern is that it's a Yule tale, and that's long over. Do you read holiday stories out of season? Or do you read them only while they're relevant to the holiday at hand?

Hugs,
Liddy