Culinary Christmas - December 2: Chinese Food for Christmas

Featured Foods: Chinese food, latkes

So, let's say to decide to have a Steve's 25 Days of Christmas Music theme around food. Just how would you go about finding such music? At first I did a search of my existing Christmas music library (all 18GB of it) for songs with obvious references to food in their titles. But that only gets you so far. So eventually you start searching the Web with phrases like "Christmas food songs" and the like. Searches like that brought me to today's song, Chinese Food on Christmas.

This song was written in 2004 by a fella named Brandon Walker, who authored it for a songwriting class at James Madison University. In 2006, he recorded himself playing the song on piano and uploaded it to YouTube (Watch here). It turned into a pretty popular video, generated hundreds of thousands of views. The following year, he put together a professionally shot music video and again stuck that on YouTube (Click to view). This is what really put him over the top, as the song now has 1.7 million views. And that's the version that we're featuring today on the 25 Days.

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Culinary Christmas - December 1: Christmas Dinner, Country Style

Featured Foods: Turkey, duck, bread, cider, ham, yams, chestnut stuffing, huckleberry muffin, cranberry sauce, cheese, pumpkin pie, mince pie, black-eyed peas

What better way to kick off Steve's 25 Days of Christmas Music for the 10th season than with a song that symbolizes just how crazy this "Culinary Christmas" theme really is. Thus, I present to you Christmas Dinner, Country Style. Bing Crosby made this a "Christmas hit" in 1963. Usually, I like to avoid Bing overload around this time of year because all we seem to hear over and over and over again is his rendition of "White Christmas". This is something quite different from that!

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10 years? That's right. It's December once again and believe it or not, I'm exited to welcome you to the 10th annual edition of Steve's 25 Days of Christmas Music, a tradition we share via the TannerWorld Junction discussion forums, as well as here at SteveandAmySly.com, Facebook, and Twitter.

Yup, back in 2001, who would have known that I'd still be sharing Christmas songs all tied together with a single theme all these years later. What am I, crazy? Apparently so!

For those who are just joining us, here's what Steve's 25 Days of Christmas Music is all about. Starting December 1 through December 25, I'll be posting new music each day that you can download, no strings attached. It's all FREE, FREE, FREE! Songs will be in MP3 format — so you can listen via any media player or your iPod. It's just like an audio advent calendar, except that you won't have to fight with your dumb sister over who gets to open the next little door!

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Back in October, we hosted our 5th "Clue Night", where we welcomed 13 friends to join us in playing multiple versions of the boardgame Clue, while enjoying some good food, conversation, and laughter watching the 1985 film of the same name.

Anyone for a game of Clue?

This fall tradition is something we started shortly after getting married, hosting a "beta test" followed by events in 2006, 2007, and 2009.  It was a way to tie into the "mystery" element of the Halloween season in a unique way.  And even though our boardgame affections have strayed heavily towards Ticket to Ride, we still have a warm place in our hearts for Clue.

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Back in January 2005, we bought a used 2002 Toyota RAV4 for Amy to replace her ailing Honda Civic. We've been really happy with the RAV4, having put it through a lot of road trips and general daily commuting. Since purchase, we've had it serviced at our local Toyota dealer, which despite a higher labor cost, has always done us right.

Our 2002 Toyota RAV4

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It's Election Day and being our civic duty to uphold the high level of corruption that Chicago is known for, we headed off to the polling place down the street.

Amy holds... a lame piece of paper

Unlike many of the suburbs and other parts of the city, we don't get cool "I Voted" stickers. Nope, our precinct is cheap, handing out these pieces of paper instead.

How Exciting!

I'm trying to hold back the emotion that this piece of paper evokes!

Amy & Steve strike a Pixar pose

Our Halloween costumes (just don't ask about the spandex!)

Continuing a yearly Halloween tradition here on SteveandAmySly.com…

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown debuted on October 27, 1966, as the third Peanuts television special (the first obviously being the Christmas one). It is here that most of the world who wasn't reading the comic strips was introduced to Linus Van Pelt's fascination with "the Great Pumpkin".

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown LP from 1978

Charles Schulz thought it would be funny to see what happens if a child confused Halloween with Christmas… and the rest was history. This year, the show is celebrating its 44th anniversary.

While most are familiar with the TV version of this story, many might not know that an audio-only adaptation of the show was created on record in 1978. This shortened-for-LP version contains all the same voice talent and sound effects, but scripted as an exclusive listening experience. The original record has long been out-of-print and surprisingly has never been released on CD.

(If you listen carefully, you can hear the audio voice talent edits done to make the for-TV audio work as an audio-only experience… and note that these edits aren't done with the same voices.)

As a special Halloween treat, you can download this audio story here in MP3 format… but just during Halloween season only! Once November 1 comes around, it's gone! Enjoy

Download
It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (Part 1) [Link Expired]
(MP3, 9:38, 13.4MB)

It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (Part 2) [Link Expired]
(MP3, 9:15, 12.9MB)

As we have well-documented here on the blog, we're big fans of the Ticket to Ride boardgame series. At the beginning of the summer, Amy & I started keeping track of our matchups by writing the scores on our guest bathroom wall. It features chalkboard paint so we're literally updating a scoreboard when a game is completed.

We recently got to the bottom of the first "column" of scores and I thought it would be fun to share the results with everyone who may be interested in our gaming habits.

Steve vs. Amy: Game Results

For the record, in head-to-head matchups, I've won 6 games and Amy has won 8!

Last weekend we returned to Jonamac Orchards for some fall activity fun in their corn maze.  You may recall that we first checked this place out last September.

Beautiful Fall Sky

Steve & Amy tackle the corn maze

Jonamac is located in Malta, IL, right off the Lincoln Highway near DeKalb.  It just takes a bit of travel from the city.  Hop on I-88 and keep driving for a while!

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