After Thanksgiving, anything and everything green sounds just right. I haven’t even looked at the leftover turtle cheesecake; hopefully my mom ate it all (ha!) or pawned it off on someone else. I’m not doing intentional low-carb this week, I decided to do it casually and unintentionally, if and when I want to. I’m still not feeling so spectacular since this sinus infection/allergy fest that keeps lingering, and the antibiotics may have helped to some degree, but I still get congested and have to resort to my allergy pill. And I still have a little neck-shoulder strain which makes sleeping uncomfortable, so in general I feel a lot of yuckiness. I tried taking Claritin today instead of Zyrtec, but Claritin still nauseates me for whatever reason. My stomach just hates everything, the antibiotics were of no help to that ongoing drama either. I may have to see an allergist, this sucks. I’ve had sinus problems on and off since I was a kid; some years, no problems at all, others, like this year, it never seems to end. Any bets as to what I’m allergic to?
Cats, dogs, air, water, sunshine, and all foods? haha Sadly, I’m probably not too far off.
Probably allergic to this fresh 8-foot Christmas tree that we (Dustin) put up this weekend…
…it’s worth suffering a bit for, though, even if I turn out to be allergic to it. 
My allergies weren’t this severe when I was little though, and we always had fresh trees. The one thing we didn’t have: Cats. 
Oh boy. Yeah, I know they are likely a huge contributing factor, but…
…they’re SO CUTE! 
Worth it too.
Dustin strung the lights up in about 5 minutes flat. He’s very good at it (now… after some lots of practice), but then again what isn’t he good at? He’s a super hero. 
Plus he’s super cute. 
It only has a few ornaments on it so far. A few of the ones I bought at Disney and were delivered to our home.
We’ll put the rest of the ornaments on sometime before Christmas. I hope.
We have some totally adorable ones…
Our Christmas trees from 2009 + 2010
I have been craving the Cobb salad that I had at the Hollywood Brown Derby ever since I had it. I finally recreated it at home, with a few modifications.
- I used my own dressing; skipped their recipe for it
- Omitted the chopped egg; was too lazy to boil it
- All romaine, no iceberg or watercrest
- Made one single-serving instead of sharing-size
I chopped all the ingredients up finely and added them to a large bowl atop a bed of finely-chopped romaine lettuce.
I even deseeded the tomato! I felt so 1950s-sophisticated. It’s a good technique, I’ll borrow it for future recipes.
Sprinkled with black pepper, then drizzled 1 TBSP extra virgin olive oil + 1 TBSP Smart Balance mayo + 1 tsp lemon juice. Yeah, sounds odd but but not really.
Tossed it together…
It tasted really, really good. It’s all in the texture and the fresh chives that set it aside from other Cobb imitations. Not quite as good as the original one I had, but definitely a keeper. It’s an excellent substitute for when I can’t have the original. 
Do you have your Christmas tree up yet? Christmas lights are one of my favorite things in the whole world! I just adore them. They make me so calm and happy, lol. I think I’ll go look at them right now. 
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