Mark My Words: Random tidbits

One of my New Year's goals was to watch a holiday-themed show every day during each holiday season, whether that's a movie, a TV special, an episode of a TV show, or something else. It seemed like a fun idea at the time, especially when COVID was raging.

But, you guys, I've learned something: watching TV is boring! Like, there are so many other things I would rather be doing. For the last couple of months, I've been trying to do strength exercises every day, and I've found that I like to watch my holiday show while I'm doing that, because it's so boring just to sit there. In the moments when I am actually just passively watching TV, I often like to do some planking. (I'm up to four minutes.)

Anyway, lately Food Network has been showing a lot of Thanksgiving-themed episodes of their shows. It totally makes sense that food shows would have Thanksgiving episodes. My favorite Food Network show right now is Holiday Baking Championship (which is better than Spring Baking Championship, but I like it a little less than Halloween Baking Championship), but a lot of the other shows have Thanksgiving episodes too.

In the fridge right now I have several bags of apples that I picked from our neighbors' tree that hangs into our yard. They're too wormy for eating out of hand, but I like baking with them.

I have learned that I really don't want to have heavy desserts hanging around, so I've been making lighter treats with them. Last Sunday I made an apple cobbler. It's very simple, but it's surprisingly delightful. The recipe calls for sugar in the apples, but I like to omit it. It might affect the texture, but the extra calories aren't worth it for me.

Now that trail season and goathead season have ended, I have a lot more free time, so on Thursday I was going to watch Thanksgiving-themed reruns of Holiday Baking Championship from 2019. But, like I said, that's so boring! So I opted to bake while watching the baking show. And I made apple crisp, kind of improvising with the recipe. I like making crisps because the topping allows for a lot of variation, and it's not too sweet or heavy.

And we had lots of leftover tomatoes from the garden, so I made them into a final tomato sauce for the season. It wasn't as good this time around, perhaps because the tomatoes weren't as good (most of them were picked green, then ripened off the vine), but also because the carrot ratio was off, and because I forgot to put the celery in at the right time.

Let's see, what else about this week?

Facebook announced it's removing certain fields from people's profiles. So from mine it's going to remove political and religious views. Good thing I already removed the "interested in women" field!

One day I walked into the restroom at work, and water drops and a water stain were smiling at me.

And I was excited to get my package with some new candy cane pants. I can wear these without people accusing me of wearing pajamas.

Reggie loves to sleep on my bed, and I even found him sleeping on his back. Way back circa 2015, the Church History Library had a lot of young service missionaries on the autism spectrum, and one month there was an activity where people would submit surprising or unusual things about themselves. One of the autistic missionaries submitted, "Once we found my cousin's cat sleeping on its back!" I had to feel bad for him that that was what he felt like sharing.

I taught the youth Sunday School class again today (my coteacher was gone this week). Among other things, I talked about Amos 8 and how there was a famine of hearing the word of the Lord because they didn't care for the poor and needy (verse 4). So I had the youth send messages to people they thought could benefit from a nice message. They seemed to enjoy that. And I also played a game where they wrote down what they were thankful for, then crossed out anything that other people had. I gave prizes this week—I usually teach on fast Sunday, so that's not usually a realistic option.

And Saturday I did my usual eleven-mile temple run, which isn't that special anymore. Then I came home and did a leg workout, which left my calves pretty sore. (I can't wear skinny-fit pants because they get caught on my calf muscles.)

Turkeys and deer on the golf course. Will that snow ever melt?

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Since Thanksgiving is this week, this is the penultimate week of pumpkinundation roundup.

Trader Joe's Fall Zucchette Pasta is made with butternut squash. It's OK as pasta. The shape is cute, but I actually don't really like the shape. It falls apart easily, and hot water catches in the little cup shapes, making it potentially hazardous. 6/10.

I fell in love with Trader Joe's Turkey Sausage Stuffing Fried Rice last year. I love fried rice, but having a Thanksgiving theme is so much better! 9/10.

I used to get the Roxberry Pumpkin Bash Smoothie every fall when I worked downtown before. It's not as sweet as I remember, but I guess that's why it's a smoothie and not a milkshake. 7/10.

Trader Joe's Spicy Pumpkin Samosas are a nice change from everything being sweet. They definitely have an Indian taste to them. 7/10.

I have had the Crumbl Apple Pie Cookie at other times (most recently the Fourth of July), but it seemed a little off this time. It's a buttery sugar cookie with apple pie filling. 7/10.