Giving Thanks

I love that we have at least this one day to remind us that we have so much to be thankful for. I know I needed a reminder lately.

I like to think that we have started a little tradition, to have my brother and his future wife over for Thanksgiving. They both like to cook, and that gives me an inspiration to whip up some of my favorites, too.

A week before we started throwing some ideas out about the menu. We liked all, so we didn't cut any of them from the list! The two of them came over the night before, and we spent good 4 hours in the kitchen on Wednesday evening. The plan was to have dishes ready for dinner, so we were pretty much cooking for another 6 hours on Thursday. It was so nice to do it with dear company, chatting, helping each other, listening to music... It was such a pleasant day! And the weather was unusually warm, it the 80s, until it dropped down to 50s in a matter of couple of hours in the afternoon.

In the end, we made 14 different things, all from scratch! It was a mix of traditional home cooking, fancy vegetarian dishes, and traditional Thanksgiving food. Our menu included:
- Celery Root and Chestnut Soup With Brussels Sprouts
- Prosciutto wrapped asparagus
- Organic Turkey
- Gravy
- Cranberry-orange sauce
- Harvest-Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms
- Fresh French green beans sauteed with organic carrots
- Fingerling baby potatoes
- Perl onions in bechamel sauce
- Baby spinach, strawberries, and almonds salad
- Red wine vinegar, master seeds and dill dressing
- Cucumber, green onions, yogurt salad
- Ferrero Rocher cake
- Tart cherries pie
- Merlot (Cupcake) wine

Masterworks Singers

I joined the Masterworks Singers choir couple of months ago. It is a choir that started as a diocesan choir, that performed at different church events, like ordination and chrism Masses, but since there were singers who were not members of the Church, they decided to change the name last year. And, Masterworks Singers choir was born.

They would still perform at diocesan events, but they also have two independent concerts each year, spring and fall. They practice at St. Edwards University, and the choir directors are Morris Stevens and Michael McKelvey who are music professors at St. Ed's and choir directors at St. Theresa's and St. Albert's, respectively. They are both good directors, but I personally prefer Morris' style. He has so much passion and energy for choral music!

Well, after only 6 weeks of rehearsals, we had our fall concert this past Saturday: "Between Heaven and Earth." It was great. On the program were:

Mozart Regina Coeli..K. 276
Bruckner motets, Os Justi and Locus Iste
Stroope American Rhapsody
Gjeilo Northern Lights
Tichelli Earth Song
Leavitt Festival Sanctus

Several familiar faces came to enjoy it and support us. It has a been a long day of rehearsals, and after the concert I got to relax and enjoy the company of two very special friends.

The choir is planing an Ireland tour for May of 2011, and I hope to join them. It's going to be a blast! A week of touring all over Ireland, visiting places like Killarney National Park, Iveragh Mountains, and Cliffs of Mohar, and singing at few locations including St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin!

This would be my first time in Ireland, and the travel bug already gets me excited. As if it ever stopped. :)

The Tree Is No More

The second tree in the front yard is gone. It has been struggling ever since I moved in here. I had it trimmed of all (completely) dead branches this spring, which there were many already back then. I also gave it feeding and extra water, all in the hopes of giving it a chance to recover. But, it seems it just needed to be put out of its misery, as one lady at home depot had told me.

Last weekend, while I was trimming the bushes, my next door neighbour came over and just offered to cut the tree down. What a nice man. He has bought himself a chain saw recently, and just enjoys working with it, but seems he has run out of trees in his yard. :) So, he cut it down, and I let him take the wood for their outdoor fire pit.

Now I plan on getting another tree for the front yard sometime this winter. I still have to do some research on when to plant, what is available, is resilient to TX heat and occasional droughts, lack of care, doesn't suffer if I put grass weed&feed around it, has leaves for most of the year, and maybe have a nice bloom. Couple of years ago I had another pine tree cut down from the front yard. It died after moth infestation. I hope there is nothing in the ground that is causing these trees to die.

If you have any suggestions, please send them my way.