Aftermath

Christmas has come and gone, though for us the season continues until Jan. 6.  This being Boxing Day, we're making a point of staying well away from stores! ;-)

Christmas was a lot of fun this year.  We stretched our Wiglia meal from somewhere before 7pm to past 11:30.  During one of the breaks between courses, Dh had time for a short nap. *L*  The Scallop Shumai turned out all right - Eldest and Dh liked them the most.  I'm not a seafood lover, so to me they were just okay, and Youngest wasn't too keen on them... which suited Dh and Eldest just fine. :-D  I managed to NOT cut my fingers off while chopping the shrimp, but not for lack of trying. *L*  I have a noteable chunk of my index fingernail missing now, and an annoying little slice on the side of my thumb that keeps catching on things.
Ah, the joys of cooking! *L*

The appetizer course also included a cheese plate.  Along with some tried and true favourites (havarti, gouda and brie), we tried a new artisanal goat cheese.  Mon âme est aux Terres de Portneuf ce que mon coeur d'artisan est fromage.  The goat cheese was coated in ash.  I figured the ash might lend a saltiness to it.  I was wrong.  No, this method brought out the painful side of ash.  It was extremely acidic.  Strangely, Eldest developed a taste for it, though it needs to be eating rather carefully! *L*  We also had a variety of olives to nibble on.  Plain black olives, caper stuffed green olives (way too salty!), and cheese stuffed green olives (quite nice).  There were pickled onions (very harsh and vinegary: I'll have to remember to stay away from this type in the future) and tiny pickles (much sweeter than I expected!) with fruit, sourdough bread, a baguette and olive and cheedar bread.  To drink, we had warm apple and cranberry juice (about a 50/50 mix) heated in the slower cooker with whole cloves, a few cinnamon sticks and some nutmeg.  We fished out as much of the spices as we could when it reached a flavour we liked, after a few hours in the slow cooker.

After a break to digest, Eldest made her Greek Salad.  We were still pretty full, so it was after this course that we took an even longer break and Dh got his nap in. *L*  After that we had the ham (falling off the bone tender!), garlic mashed potatoes and tourtierre, and the roasted leek and apple dish.  That was the one thing that could be considered a failure.  It was *really* sweet.  Even though it used only one apple, it dominated the dish, while the leek flavour just sorta disappeared.  I wouldn't mind trying it again without the apple, though.

When we were done with that, we waited long enough for the whipped cream to be made.  It was sweetened only with the crushed candy canes.  It was all right, but not something I'd want to do again.  Probably because we're just not really fans of candy canes in this household. *L*  The apple pie, however, was really good.  Youngest and Dh didn't actually have any.  She doesn't like apple pie or whipped cream, and Dh figured he'd screwed his blood sugars up enough already. *L*  So Eldest and I get the pies all to ourselves.  Mind you, there were also chocolates (boxed mix), cookies (we actually bought those as much for the tin as for the cookies) and brownies for sweets, too.  Those actually didn't see a lot of action.  The chocolates are gone by the end of Christmas Day, but there are still plenty of cookies and brownies.

After we finished eating, we relaxed for a while until midnight, then opened our gifts.  I am so glad I set up the video camera to film this!  The kids were pretty excited about their gifts.  We got Youngest a stereo CD player.  She's needed one to practise her singing in her room, but we have had the worst luck with basic portable players.  The CD players on all of them never seem to last more than a couple of months.  The radio's continue to work fine, but we really don't listen to radio.  With that in mind, we sprung for a higher end system that I really hope will last her a while.  I've been hearing her singing in her room for the past two days now. :-D

As much as she liked that, she was even more excited over the carved rosewood crochet hook and skeins of Peruvian wool yarn we got for her. *L*  Gosh, it's so much fun watching the kids unwrap their gifts.  With the hook, all she could do was squeak in excitement, and she was literally speechless when she unwrapped the yarn.

Those where the highlights of Youngest's gifts.  Eldest was just as fun.  We got her several books, including Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, and The Zombie Survival Guide (I may be remembering the Zombie title wrong).  Then there was the big, hardcover reference book simply called Birds.  The remote control spider robot was a hit, too.

Dh's gifts were much enjoyed.  Some were hobby related, like the photography book on family portraiture.  I think he had the most fun with the Hickory Farms kit Youngest bought for him, with sausages, cheeses, etc., complete with a mini-cleaver.  She got it because of the cleaver.  It's adorable! *L*

The highlight of my own gifts was most definitely an autographed copy of Ree Drummond's The Pioneer Woman Cooks!  I love cookbooks that you can read to start with, but throw in some amazing photography and Pioneer Woman's fantastic sense of humour, and I'm totally hooked!  I keep reaching for it and flipping through the pages.  I'm really looking forward to trying some of those recipes!

After the gift opening, it was off to bed.  In the morning, we had our stockings waiting for us for a few more gifts, then a quiet Christmas day.  We've been drinking a lot of tea lately - one of Eldest's gifts was a tea chest, so we're working through all the flavours.  The days are sunny and relatively warm - after the Arctic deep freeze and snow we've been having, our current -6C is practically t-shirt weather - so I'm hoping we'll get a chance to head out somewhere and do some exploring and picture taking.

There's still New Year's to celebrate, and finally, Three Kings Day.  Dh doesn't even have to go back to work until the 4th, which is kinda nice. :-D