Happy Thanksgiving!

Grand Prize Winning Recipe!

Happy Thanksgiving! What a crazy, wild weekend it's been. The 20th annual Mountain Mandarin Festival happened this weekend and mother nature showed up for the party and brought the crowds with her. Mason cooked on television twice promoting the festival and his demo and at the last minute, channel 3 called and wanted to cover his story, too! Not only did they do two live spots on Sunday morning, they also did a full segment on his school kitchen project that ran at 5 PM yesterday! It was really well done and you can see it here.

The lovely fall weather brought record breaking crowds to the festival and our school had the opportunity to raise money for the new kitchen in two ways, we got to work the entrance gates for a percentage of the ticket sales, and we sold mandarin marmalades. We darn near sold out of all of the preserves before the end of the first day! That is good news, but even better is that rumor has it that Saturday attendance alone broke festival records for any previous years all three days! We worked our tails off but I think we made some good money!

November 23, 2013

Add to all that busy-ness, my dear friend Rod got married on Saturday. We traveled to San Francisco Friday night and had a lovely night out on the town with David and Lisa Anderson and were honored to be at Rod and Cathleens wedding. We were on the 32nd floor of the St. Francis in Union Square taking in awe inspiring views of the bay, the Golden Gate bridge, Union Square and more! Simply spectacular to be there for such a special day. Congratulations Rod and Cathleen and thank you for sharing your day with us!

2np Place - $50

As we always do, all us Partaks entered the recipe contest at the festival and I won 2nd place for my explosive mandarin pound cake but the big winner in the family this year was Dave. Dave won the grand prize of a set of Kitchencraft waterless cookware - a nearly $2000 value! How cool is that?

While we were in the bay area, we picked up Dave's mom and she came to see Mason cook on Sunday. What a treat for all of us! Now it's time to get her home and start preparing for Thanksgiving. I hope you have a lovely holiday as I know we will, we all have so much to be thankful for!

The Calm Before the Storm!

Have you ever had one of those weeks that you know you will have way more to do than days in a week to do it all? Yep, that's where I am today! Next weekend in the 20th Annual Mandarin Festival and just a week ago, I was offered the opportunity to bring in volunteers from our little school to man the ticket booths for a portion of the ticket sales - proceeds to go to our school kitchen project. How could I say no? I couldn't and I didn't, but there are some obstacles for sure. The biggest one being that I have to leave town on Friday afternoon and won't be back until after the festival closes on Saturday night!

I am sure I will pull it all together, but it is stressful in the meantime. I'll let you all know next week if I survived!

Happy Veteran's Day!

Happy Veteran's Day! It's a holiday for most "jobs" but in fact, there are many of us who work no matter what day it is. Moms and dads, emergency medical responders, police, fire fighters, and more all work on holidays. For those of us who have the day off, what's on tap? I'm actually really getting in the holiday spirit, it's earlier than usual, but fall came early this year so I decided to just go with it.

 

Mason has been working on recipes for two upcoming television appearances and his cooking demo at the 20th Anniversary of the Mandarin Festival in two weeks. He is cooking on Sunday and also planning to defend his Snow's Citrus Court award in the recipe contest that same day. It's a busy time of year to be sure and it's really lots of fun that our whole family is feeling the excitement of the holiday season.

 

Kathy's Cookie Factory will be opening soon and I can't wait. I have several new cookie designs in addition to my annual favorites. I'll post pictures as they come off the line. What are your plans for the holidays? Will you be staying home or traveling to see family? We will be staying close to home. Have a wonderful short work week and I'll see you next week!

Time is Speeding By!

Welcome to a new week, is it just me or are the weeks coming and going faster than normal? It seems like I just brought the garbage can up and it's time to take it to the curb again...I've been told that the apparent speeding up of time is a sure sign of old age - yes, the older we get the faster time seems to go by! This week, Mason was featured in our local paper regarding the work he is doing to raise money for his school kitchen project. It was a big story and well written and much to out delight, several offers of help have come from the exposure. One person suggested we apply for an annual grant from our local Lions club, another offered up cash, and several others asked how they could help. There are two opportunities that have the potential to yield more than half of what Mason is trying to raise. All in all, I would say it looks like we could have a new kitchen for the next school year!

 

Other than my life with Mason I am learning tons in the world of real estate. it never seems like I am learning fast enough or remembering the thing I learned in the last transaction, but I have been assured and encouraged by the people I work with to not be so hard on myself, I just really hate the proverbial learning curve - I like to be the person who knows what is going on and typically has the answers, not all the questions. Someday!

 

It's November and that means if you haven't been able to make it to one of Mason's live cooking demos, your last chance is fast approaching. Mason will be cooking at the 20th Annual Mandarin Festival on Sunday, November 24th. If the weather keeps up like it's been, it will be a lovely fall day in the foothills. Mandarins are already being picked and they are sweet as can be! Mason's school is making mandarin marmalade, mandarin cranberry preserves, and mandarin pepper jelly to sell as a fundraiser. It will be $6 a 1/2 pint and I can tell you already, it is delicious! All three, although the mandarin pepper jelly seems to be the favorite. If my Alameda friends want to preorder some, let me know as I will be in San Francisco on the 22nd and 23rd, I would be happy to deliver it to you - it will make a great Christmas gift! If any of my Vacaville friends want some, I can certainly stop and drop off at Julie's on our way down.

 

I hope you are all enjoying this awesome time of year, it's my favorite! Have a productive week and I would love to hear what is new in your neck of the woods!

Just Let it be Over Already!

I'm not welcoming you to Monday because it's not getting off to a very good start...why would you want to be here? I don't!

 

In any case, Mason was suppose to appear on Fox 40 News with his culinary school and of course, everything went wrong. We were running late getting out the door, I couldn't find my car keys, when I finally did, the car was on empty so I had to stop. We've all had them, "one of those days." I try not to let this kind of stuff set the tone for my whole day, but I didn't succeed this time. We got to the culinary school to learn that Fox 40 cancelled due to breaking news. Really?! And nobody could call me? I ended up bringing Mason back to school in Auburn as it would have just been too long a day to leave him until Dave could pick him up at 5 PM. This is nothing but a rant about nonsense, but it is the nonsense that will get our goat if we don't take a deep breath and recognize that it really is nothing, nothing at all. Because I didn't just shake it off, my whole day was off-color and I was ready to just hit the reset button. I was glad that the rest of my family was ready to bid Monday farewell and we all went to bed early.

 

So a Manic Monday on the heels of a really fun weekend make the way this Monday went all the more disappointing. We had Mason's last football game on Saturday and then it was time for Halloween parties. Mason was invited to a sleepover and that worked out really well for Dave and I, as we were able to go out with our friends and not have to worry about someone to stay with Mr. Mason. I went with one of my classics, Ms. Cruella DeVille while Dave dressed as a Roman Gladiator. This was the first year in a long time that we didn't dress as a couple as I made the point, we have 4 large tubs of costumes, let's recycle some of them - so we did. Now we are getting ready to carve pumpkins and trick-or-treat. What about you, do you have plans for Halloween?

 

My week didn't get off to a very good start, but I am not going to let it color my whole week. Let's make something great happen, if not for ourselves, for someone we love! Happy Halloween!

Mason's 10th Disneyland Birthday

Happy Fall Monday!

"World of Color" show at California Adventure

The colors are in full bloom here in the Auburn foothills and as much as I love it, it's happening so early that come November, the trees will all be bare. N matter what Mother Natures schedule is, I am loving it!

 

Last week we were in Southern CA celebrating Mason's 10th birthday at Disneyland. We all had such a good time riding roller coasters, swimming in the hotel pool that also had a waterslide, and taking pictures with classic Disney characters. We were able to dine at Goofy's Kitchen at the Disneyland Hotel compliments of Disney (we could not have afforded to eat there on our own dime!), and the "World of Color" show at California Adventure was well worth the 30 minute wait with about a 1000 other people - "WOW!" is all I can say. When we planned this trip months ago, we planned to stay one more night and visit Universal Studios, but as we got closer to our departure date, we pulled the plug on the last stop, boy am I glad we did that! We were totally pooped out and out of spending money. Not to mention, I don't think my feet could have done another full day of walking and standing in line. We can save that trip for another time.

 

We wrapped up our weekend celebrating Mason's birthday (which was on Sunday) at home and with friends. Mason got to go out with his friend Kyle on their boat, knee boarding and enjoying this lovely fall weather, while Dave and I watched football and geared up for the new week. We ate birthday cake and all went to be early. I think this birthday will go down in the Partak Family History book as, "Epic!"

 

Before I bid you a great week, this is the last week to vote for Mason in the Uncle Ben's Beginners in the Kitchen contest - it is really easy and you do not have to register, agree to any terms, just a one click vote. You can vote once every 24 hours AND you can vote from all of your separate devices (smartphone, iPad, iPod, laptop, desk computers, etc) for additional votes. This link will take you right to Mason's video, not on Facebook - If you have a moment, please vote... https://www.bensbeginnerscontest.com/brand/gallery?region_id=us-en&content_id=273

Surprise! Mason Finally Made it to LEGOLAND!

Dave and I have been wanting to take Mason to LEGOLAND for the past several years, and we almost did two years ago - except, Mason was not behaving in such a way that warranted a trip to a theme park 7 hours away. Yep, we canceled the trip! This time, we planned a day at LEGOLAND and a few days at Disneyland for his 10th birthday and didn't tell him. The idea was to get him up early on Sunday morning and just let our road trip begin. Well, it was all good until a week before we left, a confirmation came from the Disney property we were planning to stay at and the cat was out of the bag - at least the Disney cat was, we still had LEGOLAND!

We managed to keep it a surprise until we could not avoid the signs, arrows, and Lego figures everywhere! Here we are, we finally made it to the land of everything Lego! Happy 10th Birthday Mason, let the fun begin!