Steven Sanchez, Jr.

**I have a disclaimer: I am currently interning for James Collier of Paprika Studios. I published this post at 4:30pm earlier today. This post was actually a blog being written for the website TasteFresno.com (co-owned by James), however I enjoyed it and published it to my own personal blog. **

So I don’t know about you, but now that Halloween has just passed, the winter holidays are on my mind. And what does that mean? Food. Tons and tons of delicious, mouthwatering food.

Growing up, the holidays always meant a house full of sweets and a house stocked with food ready for guests at any moment. My grandmother always made sure to have dozens upon dozens of homemade cookies stocked in the freezer as well as even more dozens of her homemade rolls and Portuguese sweetbread rolls (my favorite).

Also, the holidays were a time of huge family gatherings. I fondly remember grandma’s house packed with people. It was grandma, mom and dad, my brother and sister, my aunts and uncles, their children, and their children’s children. Come dinnertime, my grandma would put several tables together to fit all the adults and older cousins. I’m talking, like, two full sized kitchen tables put end to end, and then on top of that laid a huge piece of plywood board, to make the two tables seamless. Then atop of the plywood board was my grandmother’s appropriately themed tablecloths.

We would all feast on my grandma’s cooking – the adults and my older cousins at the big table, and then my brother and similar-aged cousins at the kids table. Which was in the living room.  I also remember that we would all rush to eat our food so that we could get back to playing. Now that I’m older I can appreciate the deliciousness of my grandma’s food and taking my time to enjoy the meal.

After we all ate, the men would make their way to the living room to return to the newspaper, take a nap, watch football. Us kids would go back to playing. The ladies would clean up the kitchen. Then, a little while after the kitchen was all cleaned and everybody has had time to let their stomachs rest, my grandma would bust out with the dessert array. There were pies and cookies and desserts galore.

*sits back to take a moment to relive in these moments for a bit*

Yeah. The holidays are good times in my family. Great food. Great people. After perusing the [new] TasteFresno website (nothing wrong with a shameless plug), I found a few recipes that were similar ones that show up in my family’s holiday recipe repertoire.

After checking these out, what are some of your cherished family/holiday/food memories?

Bourbon Pecan Pie

• At the holidays, my grandma’s pecan pie is the biggest hit. She will easily make five, six, even more of these because they are so well liked.

Caramel Shortbread Squares

• I found these on my own, and have introduced these to my family’s holiday goodie list in the recent years past. I have made countless batches of these Chocolatey-Caramely-Heaven bars.

Breakfast Sausage Casserole

• This recipe is a good one when you know that you’re going to have guests spending the night. You prepare it ahead of time, let it sit in the fridge, then the night after you and your guests wake up – pop it in the oven and enjoy! It’s got your whole breakfast in the pan. My aunt’s version of this also has cream cheese in it – so good!

Creamy Pecan Pralines

• Pralines and peanut brittle. My grandma always has a tray out of her homemade snacks that we will all snack on before dinner. On her tray is her fudge, peanut brittle, (my mom’s) homemade hard candy, trail mix (my grandma makes batches upon batches of this stuff, too!) and cookies.

Grandma’s Fudge

• This isn’t my grandma’s recipe, but it is fudge. Another holiday staple.

Mom’s Turkey Stuffing

• Since we have grown older, our holiday dinners have become smaller. My mom has now been making our Thanksgiving dinner. Every year my mom continues to perfect her dinner. And yes, she does have her own recipe for the stuffing. Again, this particular recipe isn’t my mom’s, but it is another holiday must-have.

Toffee-topped bars

• Now, this recipe doesn’t really relate to any of my family usuals. However, to me it sounds really tasty. I am a sucker for toffee.

These past few days, Dave and I received a pleasant visit from Corrie. She flew out here to visit us and we showed her around the city. It was good times, indeed! She was originally supposed to arrive on Tuesday, but because of flight complications, she didn’t arrive until noon on Wednesday.

I picked her up from the airport, and brought her downtown. The first thing I showed her: the office. Ha. Dave was at work, and so I showed her around my stomping grounds to kill some time. After I showed her the office, we proceeded to eat lunch. I took her to San Antonio Taco Company. I hadn’t eaten there in a while, and two tacos were the perfect amount of food. Dave joined us at the restaurant after he got off work.

From there we zipped of to the Nashville zoo. It was a lot of fun at the zoo. It had been several years since I had been to a zoo. It was a really nice zoo, too. It was really well kept, and the exhibits were really nice. There was even a bird that said my name! Ok.. maybe it didn’t say my name but its’ squawk sure did sound like it! Corrie’s got a video of the bird. I forgot to get a copy of it before she left. Hopefully she posts the numerous videos and pictures we took online.

After several hours at the zoo, Dave and I treated her to Cracker Barrel. *drools* Can you say delicious? I am in love with that place and firmly believe we need some in California. This time I had chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, baby carrots, fried apples, biscuits, and sweet tea. Corrie got chicken fried chicken, and Dave got some country ham. The food is so stinkin’ good there!

When we were done stuffing our faces with heaven-sent-southern-cooked-goodness, Dave and I took her to Opry Mills. That was the massive mall that I talked about before. The, pretty much, Disneyland of malls. We spent a long while walking around there and popped in a few stores. By this time we were pretty tired – especially Corrie, because she had flown a lot.

We made our way home, but before doing so, we stopped for some Icees (even though they’re not as good as slurpees) and we rented a movie from RedBox. We watched Knowing – the movie with Nicholas Cage. It’s a sci-fi film. It wasn’t bad at all. It was an interesting story – and definitely kept me hooked until the end. It was one of the best selections available at RedBox that evening. We watched the movie, and called it a night!

Yesterday we did a lot; hence the absence of a post from me. We slept in a little, and then woke up and made breakfast burritos. After breakfast, we got ready and headed out to visit The Hermitage. The Hermitage was the home of Andrew Jackson, our nation’s 7th president. It was a really nice tour – I learned a lot, and the place was beautiful. We spent a good part of the day there. By the time we left, our legs were tired and sore from all the walking we did.

By this time, Dave and I still weren’t done showing her around. We then took her back towards downtown to Centennial Park. There we showed her Nashville’s replica of the Parthenon. It really is a feat and beauty to look at. Then from there we were hungry, so we took her to a bar for dinner. This is a have-to for Nashville. There is so much talent in this city, so we sat down, enjoyed dinner and some live-music.

Then, after dinner, we went for ice cream. On the way to get ice cream we showed her the main-area of downtown and some of the shops. After that, we took her to the bridge that goes over the Tennessee River. It’s a beautiful bridge. From it you can see the city skyline and LP Field and the land in the distance. We sat there for a while. While we were there, we even saw a film crew from House Hunters that airs on HGTV. We asked what they were doing and they told us they were getting a night shot of the city for the show. I’m not familiar with the show at all, but Corrie loves the show and was super excited.

By this time, we were super tired and ready to go back to the house. We went back to the house, and showered and enjoyed the rest of the evening at the house watching tv and talking. This morning we woke up early and were out of the house by 7am so that Corrie could catch her flight back to California. Dave and I dropped her off, and went back home, and back to bed. Dave didn’t have to be at work until 11 today – so that was really nice.

We woke up, grabbed a quick bite, and came into town. Dave dropped me off at the office, and I’ve been here for the afternoon shift. Tonight is a CD release party for our friend, Karen Waldrup that I spoke of in an earlier post. Funny story: this morning on our way into town, I saw she had a billboard on one of the major highways over here promoting her event. When I saw it, I yelled! I scared Dave, actually. But it was crazy to see that she had a digital billboard promoting her event. I thought it was really cool.

So, tonight we’ll go to that release party, and then who knows what the weekend has in store. I need to start packing my things together. I say that now, but in reality – I won’t do that until the day before I leave. *shrug* At least I’m being thinking about it already. But, that’s it. Happy Friday!

This morning, I was browsing the web a bit. Did the usual routine: Facebook, Myspace, email. Then I continued to watch a few Youtube videos on photoshop tutorials. After that I went to visit Woot.com. If you’re not familiar with Woot, they sell one item a day for a usually very reasonable price. Today they’re selling a 52″ tv for $1200. The cool thing about Woot, too, is no matter what you buy – the shipping is always $5. So if you buy the tv today – you’re only going to pay $5 for shipping. It’s a pretty sweet deal.

A while back Woot started another related website, Shirt.Woot.com. Here, as you may have guessed, they sell one shirt a day! On this site, the shirt is always $10 and has the option of free standard shipping or $5 overnight shipping (which isn’t bad at all). Now these shirts are designs sent in by users. They are unique shirts, for sure. I’ve been tempted to buy one or two since Iv’e known the site.

However, on today’s visit to Shirt.Woot.com, I saw a banner for another website. After seeing this banner, I was only curious and had to click it. I was scared, though. I wasn’t sure exactly what kind of website it was going to take me to. The picture is the banner that I clicked. Upon my clickage and after the site loaded, I was relieved. The site wasn’t bad at all. It was just a bunch of shirts being sold for $6!

I looked through them all, and although there were several offensive ones, I also found a few that I wouldn’t mind buying at all. They were hilarious. A lot of the ones I considered buying were one liners from Flight of the Conchords, and then a few other random shirts that make me laugh.

But, there we have it. Today I’m sharing a website with you. I’m doing well. Nashville’s great. Now I am off to practice on Dave’s keyboard.