A typical Monday night.

I live in a rather crappy, slightly dangerous area of town. When Lou and I hear loud sounds outside in the night we always try and guess if it was fireworks or actually gunshots. The gas station down the street (a 5 minute walk) was held up by men with sawed off shotguns. The apartment complex down the street and across the main street is known for being dangerous with shootings, murders and the like going on. Lou's car was stolen right from our parking lot. And my bike right off our back porch.

Tonight was no different...as I assumed. In the distance I heard someone scream, then I heard sirens and firetrucks and chaos. The cats were flipping out and I'm poking my nose through the vertical blinds. I saw tons of flashing lights down the street coming right towards our apartment building! So I'm thinking someone must have been murdered right outside, and I'm yelling to Lou "oh my god! They're coming this way! ..someone's gotta be dead.. there's flashing lights everywhere, Lou you gotta see this!..there's....Oh....it's Santa."
So apparently...it was just Santa riding in a firetruck with his entourage. Waving merrily, with festive Christmas music echoing from the truck as he rode by. People all around yelling "santa! it's santa!"

Now don't I feel dumb. And also a little sad that I would instantly think something terrible was going on.

Still, it was pretty funny.

Chicken Soup for the crafter

The holiday rush kicked in and I've been missing in action from the blog world for a while now. But things are calming down...somewhat! Now that I've almost caught up on all of my custom orders, I have time to stress over Christmas present buying (which I haven't even begun yet). *sigh*

I did find time to make myself some homemade sunday chicken soup. (there's always time for food in my book...) It simmered on the stove for a good three hours and was done just in time for dinner. Why don't they make a chicken soup air freshener? I must say...the smell of chicken, celery, onions and carrots simmering is a heavenly aroma.



Here's the recipe:
(I got it from my mom..tweaked a little to my liking. Is this recipe a family secret? oops..I hope not!)

4 chicken legs (this time around I used 5 chicken thighs)
1 large onion, sliced
5 celery stalks, sliced (I like to include a pile of celery leaves chopped)
8 chicken bouillion cubes (I ended up using 10)
2 to 3 carrots
egg noodles or rice (egg noodles are my fave)

Cover the chicken w/ water in a large pot and boil. When cooked, remove, cool and pick off the pieces and put back in the pot. Save all the juices in the pot.

Add all but egg noodles and simmer at least 2 hours. I like to add a few more cups of water as it's simmering to replace some of the lost liquid from evaporation (which accounts for the extra bouillion I used).

Add noodles 1 hr. before serving. (I've actually found that a half hour is enough for the egg noodles, as any more and they fall apart too much).


Finally...the skin that I pulled off of the chicken legs earlier, instead of discarding that I put it on a cookie sheet and baked them with garlic salt and pepper until slightly crispy. A delicious (and probably very unhealthy) snack!