We’re doing Christmas by flexible scheduling this year, time-shifting.
John and Megan and Al and Emma all got here on Monday, sequentially. I was at work finishing grading, and John texted to say they were in town and going to the mall for last minute shopping, and did I want to get picked up because it was like -4º outside. The mall is pretty far from my office, so I thought it’d be easier to take the bus, but UW-Madison seems to have turned off its mobile website – with the best bus times. I had to download the app, and it kept crashing. So in the end I waited for them to get me. I had thawed out a pan of beef enchiladas, thinking it’d be plenty for everyone for dinner. After Megan, John, Mark, Toni and I ate, there was only one left for Al who arrived for 2nd shift dinner.
I took Megan & John to a friends and did a little grocery shopping.
On Christmas eve day, I got up to make peanut butter brownies and pizza dough, so we could have our traditional home made pizza and silly movie. Specifically, Love Actually the last few years. I’ve decided that the best way to make pizza is to pre-bake the crust – recipe posted real soon now. We all ate bagels and bacon and egg and bacon bagel sandwiches for breakfast and Megan drove off for Iowa. I was wracking my brain trying to remember why I never got out for a walk yesterday – and it’s because Mark and Toni and I went to see movie 2 of the Hunger Games trilogy – Catching Fire at 1:00. It’s a 2 1/2 hour movie, and I wanted to get a few things at Sentry, after. So we weren’t back until after 4:00.
I made 4 pizza varieties: potato-sausage; pepperoni; goat cheese, roasted red pepper and olive; and pesto and oven-dried tomato. I made six crusts, thinking I’d freeze two, but I had enough cheese and sauce and meat for two pepperoni pies. Al & Emma came back and watched and ate pizza too – no pictures, every slice was eaten. Al told us about this blog that pretty much destroys Love Actually, so we were all looking at it on our phones and watching the movie at the same time.
On Christmas day, we opened presents, again sort of tag team. Mark, me, John, Al, Emma & Toni were all here. Al & Emma were heading over to her parents for round 2 of opening presents there – and they’d done a few on the Eve. Ethan was coming later to open presents with Mark. Those of us left here ate brunch after presents. I made a ton of food, waffles, bacon and sausage, fried apples, and coffee cake (again, no pics). The plan was duck a l’orange and roasted vegetables for dinner, but while I was cooking brunch, I started to have wayward thoughts – do we really want to have another big meal in 4 hours? So we decided to move the duck dinner to tomorrow. Christmas dinner on boxing day. Why not? And we should have more eaters – I think Megan will be back, and Ethan and Abby will come.
Tonight we’ll see if we can use the Amazon prime membership that Mark gave me for Christmas to watch another movie – and eat cookies. I made the last cookie tray of the season for our movie snacks.
Our movie ended up Fargo, and I made flan to go with the cookies. It didn’t unmold very well, kind of slid sideways, but we ate it anyhow.
And I did get out for a Christmas day walk. Short but snowy and pretty. There was a spot where I could see a red stop sign and a green street sign at the opposite ends of the same block – I think that was the Christmas colors for me.
