Christmas Redux

File this one in the Crafts I'll Keep section. A lot of Christmas crafts, heck, a lot of crafts period, are fun in the making but end up either in the compost or in the recycling bin (note that I did not use the words garish, ugly, or full of junk at any point).

This one I can see staying until it fades. We made them in a few different colours: red, pink, blue. Charming things.





All I'll say about this photo is that it is amazing how much food the teen-age boy can consume. I even heard the sentence "If I wait a bit I'll be able to eat more" come out of someone's mouth. Boggles the mind a bit, doesn't it?




Here are the Webkinz waiting for Santa. They were slightly concerned about the fire and the chimney and Santa coming down the chimney, but we assured them that Santa and his magic pants have long since figured out mundane things like getting around fires in fireplaces.

And yes, this IS the fireplace they use for the Burning Log channel.










The Angry Birds also waited for Santa, but they don't look as though they had such a great time, do they? They always look so, well, so angry.

As you can see, they all received lovely handmade hats for Christmas. That FDPG, she's not only crafty and fearless in the face of such terrible tempers, she's also generous and thoughtful.




Food loomed large this Christmas. We made chocolates and cakes and fizzy punches with herbal syrups and Christmas fruit breads and cacao nib espresso cookies. We roasted things, discovered fresh mozzarella, caramelized things and developed exceptional pizza crusts. Luckily we also went on a lot of long walks, so the fruits of our labours aren't straining the waistlines of our pants...
Jamie Oliver is a huge favourite in this house, so when we had the opportunity to see his Christmas With Bells On series we leapt at it. My kids have loved him ever since they watched him hold a potato in the air in front of a group of elementary kids and say "This is where your chips come from!" while the school kids goggled in disbelief. And I can't count the number of times Dominic has told people (sometimes the same ones over and over again) how Jamie actually BURIED a deep fryer in someone's back yard. Yes, the glee his antics inspire in my kids is rather alarming. Anyhow, he also inspired us to make the dessert you see here. It's called a semifreddo. I know, I know, it looks like a large pile of whipped cream and a blob of chocolate and mini marshmallows, but it's actually a large pile of whipped cream and a blob of chocolate and mini marshmallows with SNICKERS bars. The recipe calls for more Snickers bars than I had on hand — I only had 5 fun size Snickers bars (how this size is fun I'll never know) left over from Halloween — so I improvised a bit, using the chocolate sauce from Max's DIY sundae party and some miniature marshmallows.
Here's the semifreddo before it went in the freezer. I didn't have the fellow dressed as a turkey to fling whipping cream around but I managed to get some on the floor nevertheless. And we didn't have the teeny tiny cones Jamie used, but it sure was good.






Finally, every time I ate a Christmas clementine, I was faced with these words: Win A College Education. I don't know about you, but there is something dreadfully disconcerting about seeing this sentence on one's Christmas orange. I felt affronted anew each time, even though they were remarkably good clementines.