We’re having a pretty nice Christmas, despite the completely un-Christmasy weather – it’s 45 and sunny outside now, not a speck of snow to be seen.
On Christmas eve, we did our traditional watch a silly Christmas movie and eat pizza. We replaced Love Actually with Scrooged this year. I wanted to do Nightmare Before Christmas, but was outvoted.
I had two very thin pizza crusts, and a whole asparagus pizza in the freezer. I made a new batch of whole wheat dough (well, really white dough with about 1/3 whole wheat flour), and used that for a broccoli, blue cheese, and red onion pie, and another one with bratwurst, garlic, mustard and olive oil. (To use up at least one & a half of the 8 or 9 pre-cooked brats, frozen since last summer, that I thawed for the cookie party, because I thought I’d wrap them in dough, as an appetizer, along with the little weinies and kosher dogs). I made the thin crusts into pepperoni, and pepperoni & olives – so I still have a big bowl of olives to use up.
We ate the pizza and nibbled on cookies, and on facebook, my cousin posted a pic of the plate of my cookies they were eating in North Carolina, so that was pretty cool. And, here’s Rachael’s tiered cookie display with my cookies and her sister’s.
Cookies at Rachael’s
Cookie plate on Christmas eve
In a Christmas miracle, while we out doing the interminable shopping on Christmas Eve morning – stop by East Wash, Willy East, Hannah’s jewelry store on Regent to get my house key back from Lesleigh – and give them a cookie plate, Pets Mart, Sentry, even put gas in the car – I checked email on my phone, and the box that was going to be returned actually got delivered.
Lite brite tree in Christmas morning
We got out my mom’s Lite brite tree, in lieu of a real tree, and lit the Menorah, since Christmas Eve was the last night of Channukah. You can see Rachael’s white lite brite tree, in the background in her cookies pic, above.
I felt like I did a pretty bad job on Christmas this year – I gave everyone promises: John for a new computer, Al for a custom suit, Mark for a fitbit. But everyone seemed to like what they got. And at least for Mark, the promise was tucked into long underwear that I was totally unexcited about buying for him, but that he asked for. And the fitbit is actually bought; Ethan has it and will give it to him the 29th.
I kind of cleaned up – I got an electric kettle like the one I enjoy using at Mark’s place, a new suitcase, a couple of John’s photographs (to be framed), a Sur La Table gift card (for when they open at Hilldale) and an Impossible Project Polaroid camera.
I’m looking forward to loading the color cartridge.
We had leek & goat cheese tart, fruit salad – with kiwi & pomegranate seeds to be Christmas-y, and leftover cookies for breakfast. Now Mark’s walking, Al’s watching more bad Christmas movies on TV, and John is napping. We have tickets for the Hobbit at 4:05 – I just have to figure put how to pre-prep the planked salmon, mashed celeriac and potatoes, and squash roasted with Gochujang before we head off. The trifle still looks a bit soupy.
Oh, well, happy Christmas!
