Festive Food For Thought

By Darlene Mitchell December 23, 2023 December 23, 2023 Cate Rees-Hessel, Christmas, Food, Happiness, Holidays, Holidays, Home, Positive Vibes

Festive Food for Thought

By Cate Rees-Hessel

Food for Thought

I hope everyone is having a joyous holiday season, shopping and preparing your favorite foods. Unlike many people, I enjoy grocery shopping; during a recent trip to the market I discovered some unusual edibles for the festive table. Imagine, if you can; unicorn pudding, Oreo and Warhead candy canes, sweet cinnamon Kit-Kats, white peppermint Twinkies, “Wintermint DingDongs” with ice blue filling, a reindeer-faced slice and bake cookie set complete with antlers and a red nose. There was a whole clearance aisle full of all things pumpkin spice, and a large selection of goods inspired by the movie “Frozen” – to this I say “Let It Go”…

Bake Someone Happy…

I admit it, I’m ready to bring back the Christmas’s of my childhood. Let ‘s bring back Christmas cookies made from scratch, and Jiffy Pop for our Christmas special viewing party snacks. We actually had to wait for our favorite programs like “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”, “Frosty the Snowman”, and “Rodgers and Hammerstein ‘s Cinderella”. These were actual classic TV shows, not a DVD in a player, or streaming any time I wanted to see it. These were a big deal. The networks advertised them for a month before the holiday. We’d invite friends over to watch these timeless holiday shows, because they were only shown once a year. I am a Hallmark movie kind of girl, but I miss the anticipation of those annual events.

Mmmmm, no…

We baked cupcakes, and set out a bowl of M & M ‘s – not jalapeno, thai coconut, coffee, hazelnut, caramel, crispy honeycomb, English toffee, chocolate marshmallow, white chocolate peppermint, white pumpkin pie, milk chocolate glow-in-the-dark, or even mint – we had plain and peanut, still my favorites. Hot chocolate was made with cow’s milk and the flavor was chocolate, with maybe a few marshmallows thrown in, and a dollop of Ready-Whip. There was no pumpkin spice, or peppermint anywhere is sight.

Snow Joke

We didn’t ask the musical question, “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” We just went out and built one, complete with carrot nose, lumps of coal for the eyes, and a tattered plaid scarf. Even the holiday commercials on television were festive; my favorite was always the Norelco shaver gliding over the white hills like a snowmobile, with the catch phrase, “even our name says Merry Christmas”.

“Pop”-ular Games

The toys under our trees both delighted and educated – I was the Julia Child of lightbulb cuisine; our “notebook/tablet” was an Etch-A-Sketch – stairways up, stairways down, and stacked boxes. We had Lite-Brites, Barrels of Monkeys, Spirographs, Bride Barbies, Tiddlywinks, and the game Trouble with the Pop-O-Matic – we thought that was cutting edge technology. Some of my favorites were Suzy Cute in her yellow plastic crib, Chatty Cathy, the Dawn doll’ s beauty pageant and beauty salon, Mrs. Beasley, and of course, I had a Swingy doll (mine was decked out in pink and orange) – (batteries not included).

Don’t Sweat(er) It…

Life was slower-paced, and we made our own fun and beautiful memories; we didn’t feature “ugly” Christmas sweaters, but wore green velvet dresses with red ribbons in our hair and shiny black Mary Janes on our feet. Christmas balls went on the tree, not on our apparel, and the coffee table candy dish was filled with ribbon hard candies. I wish you and all those you love a holiday season to remember; Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanza, and may your New Year arrive in style…

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Festive Food for Thought

Festive Food for Thought

“I will not allow my life’s light to be determined by the darkness that surrounds me.” Sojourner Truth

“No god would want a child killed in his name.” D.S. Mitchell 2023

“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” Booker T. Washington

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Chasing The Spider by D.S. Mitchell

“I want to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.” Arthur Ashe

“If people stopped searching for things that offended them and started looking for things that inspired them; what a wonderful world this would be.” Night Owl

“Worry is a waste of valuable time.” D. S. Mitchell 2015

“My favorite old car had no reverse gear. It taught me I could only go forward.” Flavia

“The rain falls because the cloud can no longer handle the weight. The tears fall because the heart can no longer handle the pain.” The Wise You

“Education is the most powerful weapon which we can use to change the world.” Nelson Mandela

“My art is my heart.” D. S. Mitchell 2015

“Sometimes when challenged we find out we are capable of the unthinkable.” D. S. Mitchell 2022

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret between the shadow and soul.” Pablo Neruda

“If now isn’t a good time for the truth I don’t see when we’ll get to it.” Nikki Giovanni

“Let my old days be my best days,” Cousin Lucille

“Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes the reason is that you are stupid and make bad decisions.” Your mother

“Surround yourself with those on the same mission as you.” Anonymous

“I wonder, if you were blind, lost and confused, would you care what color the offered hand?” D. S. Mitchell 2015

“The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.” Christian Grey

“Love life and life will love you back. Love people and they will love you back.” Arthur Rubenstein

“To be happy and contented, count your blessings, not your cash.” Chinese Proverb

RIP RBG

“Studying American politics has taught me several disgusting lessons, the first being, money buys friends in Congress. That alone should terrify the American public.” D. S. Mitchell 2021

“Those who think they can control the mob are fools and are often the victims of their own incitement.” D.S. Mitchell 2021

“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. So I elect for neither label.” – James Branch Cabell

“I don’t need to attend every argument I’m invited to.” Unknown

“Voting is like a prayer.” Raphael Warnock 2021

Smile

“We are all valuable. The problem is not everyone is smart enough to realize it.” D. S. Mitchell 2021

“Outer beauty attracts but inner beauty captivates.” Kate Angell

“Dimming the lights will not hide the social injustice in America.” D. S. Mitchell 2017

“Silence in front of savagery is savagery itself.” Abhijit Naskar

“We can never be too busy to be kind.” D. S. Mitchell 2017

“We only fail when we fail to try.” Rosa Parks

“Every moment is a fresh beginning.” T. S. Eliot

“Every lie is like stepping in a quicksand pit. Every lie as dangerous, as telling the truth.” D. S. Mitchell 2020

“Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes.” Charles Dickens

“Thoughtful people are slow to anger, not necessarily less efficient in their killing.” D. S. Mitchell 2019

“Endings are not always bad. Most times they’re just beginnings in disguise.” Kim Harrison

“The United States like so many countries around the world has chosen to give to the few and deny the many.” D.S. Mitchell 2020

“It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. This is true, its called life.” Terry Pratchett

“Law without humanity is injustice.” D. S. Mitchell 2020

“When people start acting as though the past is the same as the present and context doesn’t matter, things start to get dangerous.” Trevor K. McNeil 2020

“Pardoning the Bad, is injuring the Good.” – Benjamin Franklin

“In no instance have… the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.” James Madison

“Anger helps straighten out a problem like a fan helps straighten out a pile of papers.” Susan Marcotte

“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” Winston Churchill

“Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” ― Bruce Lee

“A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.” Franklin D. Roosevelt

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.” Franklin D. Roosevelt

“I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” Thomas Jefferson

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.” Albert Einstein

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The 7 Social Sins are: Wealth without Work; Pleasure without Conscience; Knowledge without Character; Commerce without Morality; Science without Humanity; Worship without Sacrifice; Politics without Principle.” Frederick Lewis Donaldson

“Trickle down economics is like having three dogs and giving one of them a hot dog, and thinking he’ll share.” Bill Maher

“All evils are equal when they are extreme.”-Pierre Corneille

“Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.” John F. Kennedy

“People without vaginas shouldn’t be able to regulate them.” Unknown

“Let’s just remember that social security is not the government’s money, it belongs to the people who had it taken out of the checks involuntarily their entire working lives.” Mike Huckabee

“Be sure to put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.” Abraham Lincoln

“I have insecurities of course, but I don’t hang out with anyone who points them out to me.” ADELE

“I have been far oftener discriminated against because I am a woman than because I am black.” Shirley Chisholm 5/21/1969

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” John Kenneth Galbraith

“Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.” ― George Burns

“What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.” Edward Langley, artist

“The turning points of lives are not the great moments. The real crises are often concealed in occurrences so trivial in appearance that they pass unobserved.” ― George Washington

“Our task must be to free ourselves… by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and it’s beauty.” ― Albert Einstein

“So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.” ― Kurt Vonnegut

“A politician thinks of the next election – a statesman of the next generation.” – James Freeman Clarke

“Imagination is the bridge between the things we know for sure, and the things we need to believe, when our world becomes unbearable.” Staceyann Chin

“Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.” Coretta Scott King

“Inspiration descends only in flashes to clothe circumstances; it is not stored up in a barrel, like salt herrings to be doled out.”Patrick White

“Without music, life would be a mistake.” Friedrich Nietzsche

“Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.” Doug Larson

“When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.” ― Nelson Mandela

“Pretty comes in all sizes. My size is cute.” Honey Boo Boo, reality TV star

“If you can’t be a poet, be a poem.” David Carradine