Holiday Food

Holiday Food

Yes, I said Holiday, and not Christmas. No, this has nothing to do with being a secular liberal and everything to do with celebrating more than one holiday in between mid-November and January 1st. I was thinking about writing about Christmas music, but that's a post far too long to write before the Daily Show comes on. I also need to do more research on it.

So, a menu of goodness that reminds me of of the holidays:

Appetizers:
My family isn't really big on appetizers. Possibly because my mom always buys Girl Scout nuts to put out, and always forgets. Always.

Soup:
My mom usually makes fish pho (said fuh, and is supposed to have a particular accent mark, but I don't know what it is) for dinner on Christmas Eve. But there is a new family favorite. Squash soup. It made its debut this Thanksgiving, and was delicious.

Entree:
There are all the classics like Thanksgiving turkey and Christmas ham. Screw that, I'm going to talk about lasagna. Specifically, chicken alfredo lasagna. My second-favorite holiday dish, it is my annual request for my birthday dinner. (Dec. 27, for those who might not know.) Mmmm, so good.

Side:
This year at the family "What I'm thankful for" session, I was thankful for the mashed sweet potatoes with marshmallows. Seriously, they are the most delicious stuff ever. Easily makes the list as my most favorite holiday food ever.

Dessert: Christmas cookies. You will get a review of them soon, I promise.

Snack: Candy canes! Most years Dad has brought home a box of these sweets that we spend five minutes adding to the tree, and the rest of the season taking off.

Drink: Eggnog! Okay, it tastes like weird vanilla and has the same consistency as melted ice cream. But that's what makes it so good!


In prep for next week's blog, what is your favorite Christmas song?

CORRECTION

In my Dec. 7 post entitled Tree Time pt. 2, I incorrectly identified an ornament as the Starship Enterprise. It is in fact the Starship Voyager. I regret the error.

Promotion!

I am now officially the Observer's NEWS EDITOR!

Tree Time pt 2!

I love Christmas trees, to an extent that will not be made wholly apparent by the random pictures I took before heading back to college today. Even now, as I look back at what I decided to photograph, I wonder why I skipped some of the family favorites, such as our blue hippo. Or covered bridge. OR MY SPACESHIPS! Clearly, this will need to become a three part series, with an update on more family memories when I'm home to take pictures of them.



Here is one side of our tree. Why did I only do one side? I'm not sure. Also, there is an angel on top of it now, but that didn't go up before I had to give Mom her camera back. Oh, and there is a train set underneath, one large enough for all twenty seven cars and five engines we own. We take Christmas very seriously.


The golden pear! Over a decade ago, we had a tree calamity, where the tree fell, and many of the ornaments broke. My grandparents on my father's side gave us a few of theirs after, to help replenish our collection. This highly-reflective pear is one of them, and one of Dad's favorites.
The yellow ribbon in the upper left is one of our oldest traditions--a reminder that not everyone is as lucky as we are to have our family safe and near for Christmas.
The sequined green and yellow ornaments are part of a set of six and are the oldest ones we have. They are from Mom's side of the family, and pre-date her by at least two generations.
On the far left is a portion of a walrus on a motorcycle.


Though the star of this photo is obviously my ballerina, given to me during my dancing days (and lovingly repaired every time her damn arm breaks off) I want to talk about the lower left. I'm fairly certain that it came from a visit to the Capitol building. Every time we go ANYWHERE, we try to find a Christmas ornament, so we can tell everyone stories about that trip.


To help prove my point, we have this guy here, who I found at Medieval Times. He, and two others like him, are the newest of the whole tree, as I bought them on Friday. Behind him is a rather good example of the not-so-elegant fare that also graces our tree: a wreath I made in Girl Scouts.






















I don't even know where to start with this one. Okay, most obvious first. Dead center is a fish catching Santa. I feel like there should be some more description of it, but that is all it is. Slightly hidden above that is the Capitol dome. To the right is one of three kings. To the left is one of at least six panda ornaments. The upper right has a baby bootie, probably from Em's first Christmas, but it might be Dennis's.


This one is featured mainly for the reappearance of the panda, here held by a mother brown bear. (Anyone want to guess why?) To the left is an apple. We have twenty or so apples as fillers, and I ALWAYS get stuck putting them up. There is also a zebra butt, on the far left.



This picture serves little purpose, except to showcase our slightly demonic-looking angel musicians. Oh, and STARSHIP ENTERPRISE!


And here is Santa on a Jeep. He's another one of mine, given to me by my Aunt Claire, who reads this blog and thinks I curse too much. The boys each got one as well; Joe has Santa on a plane and Dennis's is a helicopter. Just to the right of it is a bauble from the Grand Canyon. But what's that, hiding in the shadows on the left? Let's turn the flash on and find out!




NANANANANANANANA BATMAN!

Tree Time

On something that is most commonly called a "whim," I went home today. Dennis and I set up the tree in about 30 minutes, including the time it took to saw off the bottom so it would drink properly, and sweeping up afterwards.

Now, Dennis and I are Christmas nuts. Seriously. So when Mom said if we put up the lights and garland tonight, we can do the real decorating tomorrow, we jumped on it. It took about two hours, most of that dedicated to the longest question ever asked. I'll post it here eventually. But now... pictures!



Here is Dennis with boxes and boxes of Christmas. This photo is actually pretty misleading, the white bag of lights in the foreground is on top of a very large carton, and the green and red tub in the back is on top of another tub. And there is another box behind them.



Dennis and I took our sweet time choosing garland. Yes, we have four different colored garlands (plus a fake fir one) and yes, we pretty much always pick the same ones.




Gold and colored lights rule the day!

Dad was proud. And look, on the right! ANOTHER CHRISTMAS BOX.

More photos tomorrow, as the decorations really go up.

20 in. hole x 30 min. = ?

A pretty decent column, if I do say so myself.
The morality of Prop 8 was discussed in another column, so I didn't touch that part.

Saved the paper tingle

Perhaps the other journalists know the tingle I referenced in the title of this post. It is the one where the problem article crops up at the very last second, and someone needs to do something about it. In my time on the Roxbury Review, it was often up to me to fix it. Guess what happened last night.

As the Oberver is coming out tomorrow, two days after the break, it is reasonable to have a slightly thinner issue. However, do to an oversight somewhere along the way, we ended up with a column that was unprintable, and a huge hole on the one of the Op Ed pages. So, I wrote a companion column to the other one that was running on the page. In less than two hours.

I'm proud of it, though it is not the best piece I have ever written, and I was writing to space, I am proud of it.

I'll link when it is posted.