For the first time in years, we celebrated at home. Had Christmas dinner with just the four of us, plus my brother. With both my parents gone now, it's up to my brother and me to carry on the tradition of making our family recipe ravioli to accompany the turkey. I made them this year. Takes hours, first making the filling (that step is pretty easy), then rolling out batches of dough to assemble, and then a couple of hours to make the meat sauce. The recipe makes 200 ravioli, so we froze a bunch. The dough alone required about 14 cups of flour and 16 eggs.
The filling is green from the spinach, but it is mostly hamburger and sausage, crushed oyster crackers, cream cheese, eggs, and allspice.
We also finally got the stone set at the cemetery this past week. We wanted something different:
The spot is under a large oak tree by some woods. It's four plots, so we also added a bench. I was hoping to have undisturbed snow for these photos, but the cemetery had just prepared a nearby plot for a burial this week, so things got a bit chewed up. We're not totally thrilled with the proportions of the bench, we would have liked it a bit larger. It also had to be thick to accommodate the name. I'm sure we'll get used to it. We're allowed to landscape, so we'll probably tie the stone and the bench together with some shrubbery or other perennials, and that will help a lot.
And depending on whether you've got a blended family and have to visit his, hers, theirs, and grandparents, it can be quite the feat around the holidays
Color me green with envy on the homemade ravioli. Very nice on the cemetery plot, are they at Oak Grove?
msalvetti wrote:
For the first time in years, we celebrated at home. Had Christmas dinner with just the four of us, plus my brother. With both my parents gone now, it's up to my brother and me to carry on the tradition of making our family recipe ravioli to accompany the turkey. I made them this year. Takes hours, first making the filling (that step is pretty easy), then rolling out batches of dough to assemble, and then a couple of hours to make the meat sauce. The recipe makes 200 ravioli, so we froze a bunch. The dough alone required about 14 cups of flour and 16 eggs.
The filling is green from the spinach, but it is mostly hamburger and sausage, crushed oyster crackers, cream cheese, eggs, and allspice.
The spot is under a large oak tree by some woods. It's four plots, so we also added a bench. I was hoping to have undisturbed snow for these photos, but the cemetery had just prepared a nearby plot for a burial this week, so things got a bit chewed up. We're not totally thrilled with the proportions of the bench, we would have liked it a bit larger. It also had to be thick to accommodate the name. I'm sure we'll get used to it. We're allowed to landscape, so we'll probably tie the stone and the bench together with some shrubbery or other perennials, and that will help a lot.
NightOwl Cat wrote:
Color me green with envy on the homemade ravioli. Very nice on the cemetery plot, are they at Oak Grove?
Thanks Laura. Hope you had a wonderful Christmas. Did you have to work?
No, they are at St. Bernard's Cemetery in Concord, MA. My Mom's sister and her husband lived in Concord (she is 98 now and still lives there). When her husband died around 1984, my parents decided they wanted to be buried there as well. It's sort of across the street from Sleepy Hollow. Not a big place, and fairly new (I explored it one day, and the oldest graves I found were from the late 1800's).
It's unusual in that they allow you to plant. Most cemeteries around here don't allow it.
They are in the back towards the center of this photo.
Thanks Mark, hope your Christmas was wonderful too. Nice photos from fall! Definitely not like the cemetery in the middle of Medford Square for sure. I've got 2 brothers, my mother, her parents (who raised me), a great-aunt, all but the one brother are buried in a large plot at Oak Grove, over by the school. The other brother is in his wife's family plot on the other side, found it the one time. And yes, plantings are definitely unusual!
msalvetti wrote:
Thanks Laura. Hope you had a wonderful Christmas. Did you have to work?
No, they are at St. Bernard's Cemetery in Concord, MA. My Mom's sister and her husband lived in Concord (she is 98 now and still lives there). When her husband died around 1984, my parents decided they wanted to be buried there as well. It's sort of across the street from Sleepy Hollow. Not a big place, and fairly new (I explored it one day, and the oldest graves I found were from the late 1800's).
It's unusual in that they allow you to plant. Most cemeteries around here don't allow it.
They are in the back towards the center of this photo.
Remembrance for all who went away from this life, family and friends, loved ones, happiness and sadness.
A reminder of how this life does not worth all the wars, killings, discomforts, hatreds, the list goes on...
Live and let others live, help whoever and whatever you can help. Draw a smile on everyone's face, even animals. Let everyone remember you with a smile and a (may God rest him/her in peace)
Good day/night dear family members here, brothers and sisters.
I was planning on going to the gym today, but we had two little angels spend the night and they wanted to go to the park for a coupe of hours of tag, hide and seek, freeze tag (appropriate because it was freezing!), hide and seek tag, and several other kinds of tag
The gym would have been much easier on me, but I wouldn't trade the day for anything.
The trusty John Deere ran like a top.........and Sheila thought that I bought that to mow the lawn..........
All this talk of loved ones who have gone before us reminds me that today would have been dad's 85th birthday. Miss him dearly, we last talked about 9 years ago as he passed in January of 2009, still seems like yesterday.
I hear you Buddy, in fact I'm sure that we all do, it's part of our human condition. I often think that one of the greatest measures of a persons life is how much they are missed by those who knew and loved them. It would be very sad to think that you wouldn't be missed. Christmas brings back those memories in spades for many of us. I remember the smell and the sound of my shoes compressing the snow as my Dad and I walked between the Christmas trees on the lot on Christmas Eve, it's as clear as if it was yesterday. The feeling of my Gram squeezing my arm at Christmas Eve Mass, telling me just how dear I was to her, and knowing how special she was to me. The Good News (literally), is that we will carry those memories back to them one day and all will be set right, something to ponder amidst the hustle and bustle of this life, something to give the consideration it is due.
Ok, here's one for the "Brain Trust", I want to be able to pull up all of my archived video footage on the Sony 85" flat screen in the family room. We were attempting to do that on Christmas day when everyone was here but it was painfully slow, just not an option. So, my Sony has multiple USB and HDMI ports open, do I just connect a USB 16TB hard drive to it, or should I get another NAS and connect the NAS via a CAT whatever cable?
How about a Mac Mini to do the job? Put the video on a USB drive and connect it to the Mac, the Mac via HDMI to the TV, then use the Mac to do the play functions?
JWilsonphoto wrote:
Ok, here's one for the "Brain Trust", I want to be able to pull up all of my archived video footage on the Sony 85" flat screen in the family room. We were attempting to do that on Christmas day when everyone was here but it was painfully slow, just not an option. So, my Sony has multiple USB and HDMI ports open, do I just connect a USB 16TB hard drive to it, or should I get another NAS and connect the NAS via a CAT whatever cable?
If the videos are already on a Mac connected NAS, you could get an AppleTV 4k and either Airplay mirror to your SonyTV or home-share the Mac with the AppleTV.
JWilsonphoto wrote:
Ok, here's one for the "Brain Trust", I want to be able to pull up all of my archived video footage on the Sony 85" flat screen in the family room. We were attempting to do that on Christmas day when everyone was here but it was painfully slow, just not an option. So, my Sony has multiple USB and HDMI ports open, do I just connect a USB 16TB hard drive to it, or should I get another NAS and connect the NAS via a CAT whatever cable?
I have a PC, installed Plex, configured it to where to get all videos, installed Plex client on all my TVs, you can also use DLNA for that. Now I have my own Netflix at home.
Thanks for the great insights everyone! My "Cinema" folder at home resides on an OWC 40TB ThunderBay Four Array, and on my 16 Bay QNAP NAS. Retrieving the videos from th eNAS upstairs via my network is just painfully slow and jerky with quirky audio. I want to just have those files directly connected to my 85" Sony in the family room so they'll play on command. I've researched Prodigy and smaller QNAP devices, but the reviews are mixed, I'm thinking the MAC Mini solution might be the way to go. I have a meeting with my Apple guy next week to discuss getting my iMac Pro below $14,000!!!!, so I'll ask him about the Mini solution. I can hook a 12TB G-Tech to the Mini and that might just do the trick.
