Holiday Parade and Parsnips

The garden is now officially closed for 2012.  I decided that enough cold nights had passed and harvested the parsnips.  The crop was pretty small as the seeds didn't start very well in the spring and parsnips need a lot of ground to grow through.  But we had enough for a dinner of tasty roasted parsnips with a little basil and garlic sprinkled on.  Now all that is left is dreams of what we might do in our beds in the summer of 2013 - never to soon to start cruising the seed catalogs.  We are probably going to be a bit more selective next year and try to just plant what did well this year.  But I'm sure I'll forget all that once those seed catalogs are in front of me.

We had an evening downtown on Thursday as we had tickets to the Riverside Theater to see the NPR news quiz show, Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me (if you are interested I inserted a link to the show).  This was our first time to the Riverside which is a interesting old theater in a Art Deco/Rococo style.  The actual show was hilarious and both of us had tears in our eyes we were laughing so hard.  If the show ever comes near to you it is well worth a visit to watch it being done life.  I also recommend connecting to the podcasts.

Friday night we went out to dinner with Jo's first cousin, once removed and her husband (how weird is it that I even know what a first cousin, once removed is), Melissa and Matt.  We tried out a wonderful little Italian restaurant in RiverWest, Centro.  The ambiance was interesting as it only has about 15 tables or so, and the food was exquisite.  My pesto linguine with chicken was very tasty and the dishes were all a nice size so you didn't feel like you were wasting food.  Saturday morning after our morning workout we hopped on our bikes to downtown to take in the Milwaukee Holiday Parade.  In the best parade traditions there were multiple marching bands, costumed characters, helium filled balloons, floats, local celebrities (which in Milwaukee is apparently mostly radio DJs) and ended with Santa on his sleigh.  Naturally, this being Milwaukee, what would a holiday parade be without the Brewer's Racing Sausages - fortunately they were just walking and working the crowd, no actual racing going on.

Saturday afternoon we watched our Badgers lose a close game to Ohio State and then that night we snuggled in for pizza (some of Papa Del's pizza we brought back from U of I) and watching a little TV.  It was a great day made especially nice since we enjoyed unusually warm weather for early November with the highs reaching into the high 50s.  Especially since last year about this time, the first real snow happened.


Sunday we had our morning workout and then took it easy around the house.  Reading papers, catching up with family, and catching a few zzz's.  Wanted to be all refreshed for the big Thanksgiving week and the start of the Christmas cookie season.