Oh Yeah

I just realized I never posted any pictures from Barcelona or Paris.
Maybe I'll do that next week when I'm officially over and done with being on vacation for 11 days.

11 glorious days.

Dear Santa

Thanks for the snow! It's beautiful.
While we're on the subject of gifts from you, here is a short list of what I'd like for Christmas:

1. World peace.
2. Healthy and happy family and friends.
3. Healthy and happy pets.
4. An apartment in Paris (even a small one would be very nice)
5. More hours in the day.

Thanks, Santa!

Weekends in Winter

Weekends during the winter always seem warmer, happier, cozier and longer. I don't know why. Maybe because we live in a neighborhood where people are always walking in and out of the house during the summer, the peace and relative quiet of the winter calms everything down a little.

We spend a lot of time cooking in the winter. This year, Dave is recreating his own version of Julie & Julia. In the original version, author Julie Powell aspires to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking cookbook in 365 days.

Dave is going to cook all the recipes in David Rocco's Dolce Vita cookbook. It will  be Dave & David. Get it? I fear that Dave thinks this whole exercise will somehow ingratiate him to Nina Rocco (as noted here), but what the hell, at least I get to eat really well in the meantime.

Lat night, he made Filletto di Manzo Con Soffritto. If your Italian is a little rusty, that means, "Really, Really Good Beef Tenderloin with Onions, Celery and Carrots".

Admittedly, it probably tasted a little better than it looked, but delightful nonetheless. It was the perfect meal for a cold winter night. 



After dinner, we had our annual viewing of Elf. Honestly, at this point I could probably recite the whole movie from memory, but it never gets old.

Then we tricked out the tree.

Creative people can work wonders with a tree. I thought black Christmas trees were ridiculous, until I saw one I lurved. I’ve also found myself impressed by purple trees with bright green ornaments and white trees with ice blue ornaments. But, we're boring, so we go the traditional route.

As our last name is not Griswold, we use only white lights.

Ornaments fall into two categories: Glass, or Santas with Moving Legs. I have a collection of them which I receive as gifts or which I add to sparingly over the years with additions from all over the world.

You may be wondering why you've never known that I collected Santas with Moving Legs.

I have a theory about collections. Part of the fun, most of the fun, is in the hunt. I love combing through ornament displays looking for the elusive Santa. If I tell everyone what I'm looking for, then my well-meaning friends and relatives will inundate me with Santas with Moving Legs because they're all kind and thoughtful and generous and that's just what they do. But then the fun will be gone. So there might be about three people in the world that know about my Santas with Moving Legs. Until now. Now it's five, I guess.

Then we top it with a slightly, ahem, unusual, Christmas angel.
 

We may be boring, but I have no regrets.

It's Christmas Time

It's cold.

So that means we must have decorated the house for Christmas, right? I like to imagine that the Motivation Fairy confirms the forecast for the coldest day of the year before giving me the mojo to bundle up and climb that cold, cold ladder 72 times.

But we beat that Motivation Fairy at her own game this year, because David's aunt and uncle sent us an early Christmas/Hanukkah gift - handmade hats and scarves! We were happy and toasty and warm the whole time we were outside.

Warm and happy.

And we really must have been warm and happy because there were no arguments disagreements discussions about proper placement, light spacing, bow size, swag depth, extension cords or theme.

With our house decorated (and all lit up like a...wait for it: Christmas tree), and the photo for our annual Christmas card nearly completed, my energies are now focused on finishing up decorating inside our home and baking mountains and mountains of cookies (I should have preceded that with a Gift Spoiler Alert).

 The tree is up, but I didn't really have time to do much else. It's nearly perfect, though. I might not ruin it by tricking it out like a $5 hooker...

I did, however, put a big silver bow on my giant, scrap-metal chicken.

I mean seriously: A giant chicken with a silver bow? 

How perfect is that?!

Thanksgiving At Our House

Although I felt like I was playing catch-up for the previous week, we did manage to pull off our traditional Ridiculously Complicated Feast this year, thanks to my brother, Jeff,  taking on more than his share of the advance preparation. It went something like this:

 

Thanksgiving Dinner at Our House

Tomato-Herb Soup
Mixed Salad with Pears, Walnuts and Blue Cheese
Roast Turkey
Grilled Beef Tenderloin
Gravy
Green Beans with Bacon Vinaigrette
Cauliflower with Hazelnut Butter
Corn
Creamy Mashed Potatoes
Dueling Stuffings
Orange-Cranberry Relish
Apple Pie

I don't have a special recipe for roasting my turkey, I try to change it up every year. This year I tried a new one called, "My Sister Roasted the Turkey". Best one yet!

I have to say that my beef tenderloin was perfect. PERFECT. I managed to get medium-rare all the way to medium-well in one, long tenderloin. Sure, it was a complete accident, but a happy accident nonetheless. At the last minute, I realized we didn't have any horseradish, but Jeff whipped up a reduced-wine sauce in about 12 seconds and that made it even better.

No surprise here, but we usually focus on the food. I'm trying to add in a few Thanksgiving traditions that relate to actual, you know, thankfulness, but I haven't settled on anything yet.

I skipped place cards this year in favor of personal wishbones for everyone with a little tag on which each guest wrote thing for which they were thankful this year. I'm going to collect them in a jar and fill them anew each year. Of course, nothing, not even wishbones, can escape the clutches of competition in my family, so we quickly determined the "best" thumb position required to win the wishbone pull every time. It's a sickness.

Next year, I'm going to tape a huge sheet of drawing paper to the refrigerator door around the first of November. All month long, we're going to write or draw things we're thankful for. Guests will be encouraged to participate too. By Thanksgiving, I think we'll have quite a work of art and we'll be reminded to be thankful everyday, rather than just one.

On the day after Thanksgiving, I skipped the crazy Black Friday shopping (gasp!), and slept in. But that night, I went out with some of my old friends from school who were in town for the weekend.
Best. Night. Ever.
Well, maybe not ever, but in a really long time. I hadn't seen some of my friends in more than 20 years and it was like we had just talked yesterday.

It was really a great weekend.

Thanksgiving also marks the beginning of the Holiday Season at our house. It is followed by David's birthday (which almost always falls on the Thanksgiving weekend), Christmas, my birthday, and ends with The Superbowl.
Can't wait.

Things I Learned This Year:

1. I used to think it would be better if guests didn't arrive until after everything is done, when I've transformed back to my human self, but everyone arrived really early this year and that made it a little more fun.
2. Having someone else make the turkey doesn't make Thanksgiving weird, it makes it better.
3. There is almost nothing better than getting together with old friends and realizing that the passing of time doesn't change the important things.