Cherry Mistmas ?

Good LORD it has been a rough year. I sincerely hope 2011 decides to be nicer to us - more Merry and less Bah Humbug!
Let me do a quick recap:
1)Sport was diagnosed with Cancer of the anal sac, in October. He went through 4 chemo sessions, and is now resting at home, until his recheck in February 2011.
2)Spice (who I adore but was allergic to, and she was pregnant and popped out a single puppy 2 weeks after she came to live with me), the puppy was adopted in October, and later Ms. Spice was finally adopted to a loving home just before Thanksgiving this year. We are very relieved to be down to only 2 dogs at that point, whew!
3) We also adopted another Basenji Mix, named Molly in August 2010. Molly is almost identical to Sport, but her colors are reversed, she is mostly white. She is doing well, and has recently learned to "shake" and what "belly rubbins" are. Sport adores her, and for some reason, every time we watch DEXTER (the serial killer series), she and Sport start playing like crazy. She is also learning to behave herself outside of her crate, so we are starting to leave her out of the crate from time to time. So far so good.
4) We replaced the ENTIRE roof (it started leaking in multiple places), replaced part of the driveway, cut down the massive tree that was tearing up our driveway (obviously not in this order), and repaired other minor things around the house. Can you say FINANCIAL DRAIN? yeah. exactly!
5) So everyone is getting Japanese Maple saplings from my front yard this year, instead of gifts. I tried selling them to a professional landscaper or nursery, but they said I had to have the trees "certified" somehow? and that was a huge pain in the you-know-what, so I said "screw it" and decided to just give them away.
6) I figured out how to make "Gluten Free Baklava" but you have to literally eat it, just after you remove it from the oven - maybe after letting it cool after 5 mins. It does NOT last well. If you leave it sitting out overnight, the rice paper (which I used instead of filo dough), it gets soft and is no longer crispy. It will also start to MOLD (yeah that's fun) if you cover the top of it, and leave it sitting out for more than 1 week. That is very different than normal Baklava. So just FYI be careful of those things. It does taste good, and in fact one person told me she liked it BETTER than regular Baklava. Interesting. I am proud of figuring this out, but disappointed in the shelf-life. I would not feel comfortable mailing this to my family for the holidays.
7) We upgraded to the new iPhone 4 hardware - works MUCH faster than the old iPhone 3G devices we had.
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Recipe Variations
So I made the Pumpkin Soup again last night, but I added some other ingredients:
Instead of meat stock/broth, I used veggie stock/broth.
I added chopped cabbage
I added minced fresh ginger
I used Green Curry paste instead of the other
I added Cayenne Pepper (just a little) instead of the White Pepper.
It was very good but needed LOTS more salt. Not sure why.
Anyhoo, enjoy!
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Happy Holidays everyone!