“It’s the most wonderful time of the year” la la la la la la laaaaaa! OK so let me get this out of the way right now. I am not going to get into the debate about whether one should say “Merry Christmas” or opt for “Happy Holidays” to avoid insulting or leaving out other cultures. I celebrate Christmas, as does all of my family so I say that. At the end of the day I mean no slight to my friends of other faiths and will gladly raise a glass of whatever is available for their own celebrations.
Santa Says Hello
Celebrating Christmas brings me to the rationale behind this blog posting. Since I did a Halloween themed post and scared up a lot of spooky images over there I decided to try my hand at one of the other most decorated holidays that I knew of. So without any further adieu please enjoy the bevy of photos that I will hope bring a little more of the holiday season in you. I’ll start with the Wall Street “Holiday Tree”. They call it that to be fair to everyone obviously. Can’t have people picketing the Stock Exchange now can we.
I’m sorry, I can never resist the chance to be on the corny side so where was I. Oh yes, I was wandering around in the Big Apple after some very interesting museum visiting with my colleague and I was curious to see what else would pique the interest of my photographic eye for your entertainment. Sometimes just walking around the city is inspirational and this particular day I was seeing a lot of tourists walking around with shopping bags from the new M&M World store.
These photos are a couple of years old as you can see by the date in the title that I gave to the posting, but they have never been presented to the readers of the PiercingKen blog since it did not yet exist. Since its overall goal is to share some of the adventures in life and photography that I have taken I wanted to post these for all of you to enjoy.
One of the coolest things that a corporate entity can do is deliver something that makes people smile and engages the spirit of the holidays for free. Such was the case found with the annual model train display that was set up in the lower level of the Citigroup Center for many years. Taking a couple of sentences from its description the massive display is said to feature thirty-one trains circle through the display, which portrays a journey from Weehawken, New Jersey, just outside New York City, to a fictional town in the Hudson River valley, then up to the Catskills and the Adirondacks.” Let’s begin our walking tour of this massive train setup.
My timing of the visit was not the smartest one as it was only a day after the Christmas holiday and that pretty much meant that EVERY tourist in the city was interested in seeing these same trains in all their glory.
One of the dishes that I have loved for a long, long time is chili. My Mom cooks it a few times a year (especially in the colder seasons) and I always look forward to it when she makes it. With many of my friends being amateur level gourmands that frequently offer up samples of their own wares, it was only a matter of time before I started boasting my own branding of the stuff. Of course only a few select number of friends have been able to try it out and now with the new personal blog, I decided to discuss my most recent cooking adventure with the stuff. I hope that you like our take on this concoction.
Before going any further, I wanted to say that this was not at all a conventional chili recipe that used only the typical meat and kidney beans along with a dose of spicy seasoning. In my view of it, chili can be looked at as a bit of a pot luck recipe where anything goes depending on what you have at hand. With this in mind, I decided to try some very different ingredients this time around to see what came of it. Let’s begin with what you’ll need to mix it up. Continue reading Foodtastic: Cooking Up Some 3 Bean Chili→
