Thanks (heh) to Rona’s new wheat / milk / egg-free food plan, we had to get creative with some of our dishes. Several things were doubled up, with traditional and alternate versions. It was all good.

Ala Alton Brown, we brined the turkey for about 5 hours before roasting. This made our 14 pound turkey roast in only 2 and a half hours, and it was incredibly juicy and flavorful. To learn more, check out the recipe, or search YouTube for "romancing the bird" (the name of the Good Eats episode in which this recipe originated). By far, the best turkey we’ve ever made.

We also made a gluten-free dressing (stuffing cooked outside of the bird) that was really good! We based it on this stuffing recipe from Gluten-Free Girl, but we left out the water chestnuts, bacon, and butter, and added in a pound of Fletcher’s Italian sausage. For bread we used most of a loaf of the house gluten-free bread from Flying Apron Bakery in Fremont. All of our chicken stock was frozen, so we just used one bouillon cube in 1/2 cup of water, and the dressing turned out great. (Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to reheat in the microwave as well as does traditional stuffing’s eggy buttery goodness, so get your fill when it’s fresh from the oven.)

Rona made mashed potatoes with almond milk and possibly Earth Balance Soy Garden spread (not sure if she put that in or not). To go with it, Rona and Jen made awesome gluten-free gravy with the turkey drippings and some sweet rice flour.

The food went on and on (haven’t even mentioned the walnut streusel-topped yams with apple rings, the bacon green beans, or our version of Blue Ribbon Cooking School’s roasted beet salad) with some dishes not even getting touched. Good friends, good food, good times. Thanks!

You can see all the Thanksgiving 2007 photos on Flickr.

It is the holiday season again and of course, we get pictures taken of my almost three year-old. As I am sending out the pictures to relatives, I want to put the year or how old she is on the back of the photo. I have not found a good pen to do that with. Either it is too bold (like a thin Sharpie) and bleeds through the photo from the back, or too hard (like a ballpoint) and it makes bumps from the letters I write. I have not been able to find the perfect pen. I know this is not a big deal or anything life threatening… but, it would be great to have something cool to write with on them this year.

It made it through Asha’s inbox, and on to the Parent Hacks site. (Hi Parent Hackers!) As always, the Parent Hacks community came up with great suggestions. Thanks! (Check it out!)

I’ve been doing a little investigation and experimentation off and on, and tonight I had my eureka moment. I noticed a couple days ago that the light in the front of the door, located in the same recessed area as the water and ice dispensers, is similarly affected—if you flip its switch nothing happens, unless you happen to also be pushing in on the freezer door. Then the light goes on and off with the switch. This led me to the conclusion that the switch inside the freezer, which determines whether the door is shut or open, was faulty. The water and ice dispensers aren’t supposed to work if the door is open, after all, so if the switch is bad at noticing whether the door is open or closed, the dispensers will be bad at working.

Tonight I was poking around in the freezer to demonstrate my theory to Rona, when I remembered something. When we were looking at the house to buy it, we noticed that there was a pen duct-taped to the inside top of the freezer door. We assumed that this was so an overzealous organizer of a previous owner could label his or her frozen goods using a convenient, if chilly, pen. We removed the bizarrely-placed pen when we were moving in.

I realized that an object about the thickness of a pen, if secured to the top of the freezer door on the inside, would raise the profile of the freezer door just enough to firmly close the switch, thus enabling the freezer door water features to function as they should.

One red crayon and one piece of packing tape later, and my theory is proved and I’m drinking water from a bottle which was, for once, really easy to fill.

Exhibit A: The Bad Switch

Exhibit B: The Quick Fix

The only problem is that when I tried to open Word today to work on the final chapter of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay book I’m editing, Word kept crashing. Luckily TextEdit can open Word files, so I managed to do a lot of work today without Word, but hey–enough is enough. All my software should work when I tell it to, on this self-professed Greatest of the World’s Operating Systems.

After Googling around some, I narrowed the problem down to four possible preference files. I tried deleting various combinations of them, opening Photoshop, closing it, and trying to open a file in Word. The problem was only solved some of the time, and only temporarily at that. Bummer.

Finally I found an article on mit.edu, and it had my answer, mostly. Since many people seem to have similar trouble with various Office apps on the Mac after installing software or trying to open files with macros, I figured I’d write up the fix, which turned out to be quite simple.

Disclaimer: I’m running OS X version 10.3.9 and Microsoft Office v.X. This is what worked for me, but I can’t say if it will for you, so try it at your own risk.

At least for me, this did the trick, and I can now run Adobe CS and Microsoft Office apps pleasantly side-by-side.

Coming up next… The 1-minute Zoey Update…