Max turned 12 yesterday. And for his birthday he wanted me to make him a hamburger cake. While I love a good challenge in the cake making department, the idea of making a hamburger cake daunted me slightly, because your average hamburger involves all kinds of colours not generally found in your average cake decorator gel boxes: tan, dark brown, brilliant red, light tan, etc. After much 
While I made Peppermint Creams with the twins (recipe here), Max re-enacted scenes from Dr Who, which has ended for the season. We're all very sad. Here's a Dalek. If you visited us you'd probably hear a lot of "Exterminate!" remarks around every corner.
Here's the little hummingbird again. Can you see him there at the top of the picture, sitting on the Christmas lights? I am finding myself obsessing slightly over these guys. This picture was taken when it was freezing but snowless around here, and now it's so snowy (we had another dump last night) you can barely see the trees for the snow. I wonder what the hummingbirds did before the advent of the liquid feeder - did they fly south with everyone else? Did they find other things to eat? So each night I bring in the feeder, perch it on the heat vent, and leave it to warm overnight. When I get up I take it back outside, where this guy is usually waiting for me, feathers bristling irritably. And no, I don't think I am anthropomorphizing him. He is a very grouchy little bird. I'm glad there aren't any thought bubbles above his head, because they'd probably be bursting with "@#$%" and "$&*%" "that #$%!& slowpoke woman!" and all kinds of charming things. 
The BBQ, which isn't getting a lot of action this week, although if the propane man doesn't show up soon, we might have to hook the BBQ tank up to the stove...
Nice beginning of the Winter Solstice, don't you think?
Biscotti. This one is Cranberry Macadamia (thank goodness for people who go to Hawaii and don't know what else to bring me back, because here on the Wet Coast macadamias don't go cheap). It's a variation of one Dorie Greenspan uses, but it seemed a little, err, goopy after the first baking (sorry Dorie). If you've never made biscotti, this is what you do: mix the ingredients, pat into a long thin log, bake 15-25 minutes, let cool, slice into 1/2" slices and re-bake. It makes a toasty sweet biscuit, perfect for dunking into a latté. Heck, I've even dunked them into brandy, but the brandy doesn't last long this way, and despite what my friends say (I think you know who you are) I'm not one for drinking large glasses of brandy. Really.
I generally like to drizzle biscotti with white and milk chocolate. Turns an otherwise unremarkeable appearing cookie into something luscious.This time, however, I wasn't planning on drizzling, but when I pulled these out of the oven after their second baking, and I'd left them in slightly longer than usual because of the, err, goopy factor, I found the side they'd rested on while re-baking looking decidedly brown. This, Gentle Reader, was not my intention. One side was perfection; the other looked (but didn't taste) overbaked. And I'm picky enough to find this extremely irritating. After dithering anxiously for, say, 3 seconds, I decided to slather melted white chocolate over the brown side and Say Nothing. And what do you know but my Clever Trick worked so well everyone scarfed them down in seconds flat. I now have no more Cranberry Macadamia Biscotti left in my biscuit tin. Drats.
Sorry this close-up is so blurry but the proximity of so much sweet smelling chocolate was more than I could reasonably deal with. I made two kinds this year: one from Dorie Greenspan's Baking, which looked like a complete mess but tasted nice, and another that I've made every year since 1998. And even though I have made it every year for the past ten years I somehow manage to lose the recipe each and every year, and either resort to calling my mother, who keeps it on hand for this very event (she's never once made them as far I can tell), or, too shamed to call her yet again, I scour the internet until I can find something that looks vaguely familiar and use that. After which my mum calls me and reminds me that she was waiting for me to call her and ask for the recipe.
Scotch. I added - be still my beating heart - half a cup of single malt scotch to this batch, turning these into a sort of Icy Square for adults. If you haven't got a clue what I'm on about, imagine a meltingly silky inside, one that disappears as soon as your tongue finds it, flavoured heavily with McClelland's peatiest Speyside. But wait, don't forget the crunch of the outside coating: bittersweet chocolate rolled in pure chocolate sprinkles. Good quality pure chocolate sprinkles.
Coconut. Coconut flavouring inside, dipped in either white chocolate or bittersweet chocolate, then rolled in toasted sweetened coconut.
I know, I know, it's not much for those of you who regularly get minus 20 (or, gulp, worse) temperatures, but here on the Wet Coast this qualifies as Almost Closing Down The Town weather. There are cars sliding everywhere, people falling their way along the sidewalks, and the wind is terrible: icy cold and constant.
One of the more, err, thought-provoking moments to come out of the snowy day was the question of What To Do With Toffee: do we get out his litter box (Richard's idea) or do we chuck him out (my idea), even if he does tend to leave his excrement in the middle of the lawn on top of the snow? Our conclusion, coming as it did last night around 11pm, when Richard couldn't be bothered going outside in the wind to get the litter box out of the carport and fill it up, was "chuck him outside and slam the door really fast." Heartless of us, I know. But you know, Toffee survived just fine. He wasn't even out there more than five minutes, anyhow. Here he is, pretending to ignore me.
He kept buzzing me the entire time I was outside. I think he was trying to tell me that his feeder needed attention. And here he is guarding his feeder from the other hummingbirds. 
See him up there on the Christmas lights? His feeder is that red thing at the left of the picture, beside the hanging basket (my poor ice plant, it was never meant for this weather). I want you to know that I hung outside the bathroom window to get you this shot, even though the snow kept hitting me in the face (one, two, three: awwwwww). He sits there in this new weather and divebombs every other hummer that approaches the feeder. They are distressingly jealous about their territory, considering that there are three seats at it. They are also quite noisy. They remind me of the disparity between little dogs (yappy, aggressive towards other dogs) and big dogs (not so yappy and generally less aggressive towards other dogs). The bigger birds are much better at sharing the seed and bacon fat/peanut butter feeders we have sitting elsewhere on the deck. We even had to move the hummingbird feeder off on its own, because the hummers wouldn't let anyone near any of the feeders - even the ones they don't use.
Of course, the kids were over the moon about the snow. They don't see snow much here, and it never lasts for more than a day or two, so when it comes AND stays it's a thing of wonder and delight. Here's Max, pretending to be a snow statue.
Here's Max, crashing into the trees at the end of the yard.
This picture doesn't really do them justice (oh sure Sheila I bet you say that about everything). Trust me, they glitter. They are about 4.5" across. Tiny and glowing. We like to hang them from the ceiling with thin thread, over the dining table, next to white lights. It's very atmospheric, with us being here on the Wet Coast and all.
Then, since we'd had so much fun filling the room with bits of paper AND since it was supposed to snow today (but so far all we've had is freezing rain) AND since I'd seen this wonderful snowman picture on a really great art blog called Art Projects For Kids (click here to see it), we hauled out the oil pastels and tried it ourselves. Working with pastels is quite different than, say, pencil crayons and watercolour, and the kids had an absorbing time figuring out their pink skies and peach snowflakes.
I really love drawing with pastels on construction paper. It's incredibly satisfying, and the pictures always look so bright and alive. When we put them up on the wall, FDPG suddenly shouted "I forgot my arms!" which completely convulsed the boys. And if you look at the snowman with the pink sky, you can see that she did indeed forget his arms. (and yes, it is a he, nothing FDPG makes is ever feminine, much to her grandmother's chagrin)
This is called the Snowman Card, I think (it's all a blur now, I'm afraid). You layer white and blue card stock and cut away the blue to how you want your snow scene (which is why you have the white paper underneath), then draw in details after you've glued it. We added some snowflakes, a star or two, and an origami paper tree.
As with so many things, our best school days emerge as sidetracks to what was to have been The Main Event.
I have my mother's very old handpainted Made in Japan nativity set ("Made of paper mache composition"), that she bought at Sears in 1960, complete with the Red Rose Tea turtle and the hand-crocheted goat we added later. When I was 10, and beginning to think of such things, I thought this was wittily sacriligeous of us. Now I see it as equal opportunity. And when I was sitting in a darkened movie theatre with Richard (all those years ago in San Diego) watching Love Actually, I had a moment of delighted recognition when I heard Emma Thompson say "There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus?" "Yes, Emma!" I wanted to shout, "there was also a turtle and a goat!"
I also buy Martha's Holiday magazine every year, despite the palpitations the price gives me ($8 for a magazine?), because they contain some of the best recipe collections you'll ever see. Her 2001 Holiday: Cookies issue is still, hands down, the best cookie recipe book I own. And the other one, Holiday Handmade Gifts (2006), encouraged me to loftier heights in my Must Make More Truffles frenzy.
But with all this Christmas celebration comes the itch for new rituals, particularly as the kids get older and look for different ways of believing. We've brought in St Nicolas, on December 6th, for the Dutch side of the family. St Nicolas, or Sinterklaas, travels with his sidekick Zwarte Piet, riding his big white horse. How can you not love a character named Zwarte Piet, who goes around with a big stick, smacking naughty children? When Richard first told me about him (Black Peter) I laughed, incredulous at the bizarreness of it all. But now the kids leave their shoes on the front porch, stuffed with hay and carrots for the horse, hoping that Sinterklaas will leave some giant speckulaas or gold coins in return.
This is not, alas, the best of photographs, but it shows the thing in its entirety: blue felt sky, green felt backdrop, navy felt ground, little trees on either side, tiny nativity set, gold paper stars. The idea is that you have a star for each day in Advent: little ones for weekdays; big ones for the four Sundays. You arrange them on the cloth in a curving pattern, wending their way towards the stable. Mary stands on each star as that day comes up, and when the day is done and she moves on to the next, you stick that day's star on the sky behind (with a little tape, how, err Waldorfy of me). As her journey continues, you can add to the nature table aspect of this tableau, with stones, moss, twigs, shells, or crystals, acknowledging the four kingdoms of nature.
