I wish I were roasting something!

Echoing everyone else-- the maraschinos and strawberries are both... wrong, for lack of a better term. With apple pie I'm all for giving it some bite to counter the sweetness, so the cranberries sound like a nice touch, plus would add some color.

I was going to suggest cranberries too.

Fresh or dried!

I'm making my usual apple sauce like thing for thanksgiving dinner. Variety of apples cooked until desired softness w/ sparkling cider and some lemon juice and dried cranberries. Delicious and SUPER easy!

I've done an apple/cranberry combo and it works really well. Also, a pear/ginger pie is good at Thanksgiving, too.

Kristen's RM, that sounds delicious! You still owe me a text, by the way, lady.

A fun thing to do would be to reconstitute dried cranberries in Calvados.

You can freeze the strawberries without any loss in flavor. Or you could macerate them with some liqueur to have them keep and give it a little extra kick.

Chicagoistas question: What kind of neighborhood is Dunbar Park in? And what would that neighborhood have been like in the early 1900s? (I found some family history documents that put some relatives of mine living in that neighborhood then. Specifically, they lived on Prairie Avenue around 30th Street, which seems like the block that was razed to create Dunbar Park.)

It's a south side neighborhood, a few miles south of the Loop but a few miles north of Hyde Park (Near where Obama lives). Back in the early 1900s, a very nice area. As I recall, some of the Worlds Fair was there. But there's been neglect since then. You may want to see if the Chicago Historical Society has information (assuming it's on line). There is a Chicago Park District reference to the park itself.

homework stand-off at the OK livingroom. mac apparently refused to do any homework at afterschool on Friday and since I do not pick him up on Fridays, I did not know. I went to pull out the stuff we normally do on Sunday night and he started wailing.

So far we have established that 1) I am not angry, just disappointed and will now have to check his homework every Friday night. 2) That destroying school books is NOT an option. and 3) That 15 minutes is my limit for sitting in silence with no work being done, I am going about my cleaning and he will let me know when he wants my help or presence.

He attempt to present the following as a fact, but got vetoed 1) Teachers only want to make students angry and they (teachers) are all annoying and dumb.

Now he is somewhat silently doing some of the work. He is not QUITE stubborn enough to be able to pull it off in complete silence, but he is trying he hardest to show me that I AM NOT NEEDED. I hope he doesn't see me whispering, oh please oh please oh please, because independent worker mac is like my dream.

Man, I went out for a late lunch and when I came back in I discovered that the smell of burnt popcorn has not yet dissapated. (Disappated?)

And now that I type that I can smell it again.

Stupid suggestive sense of smell.