Welcome, 2008!

We are here on Earth to fart around.
Don't let anybody tell you any different.
Kurt Vonnegut

My Childhood Fantasy Christmas Dessert

Let's step into the WayBack Machine for a second... do you remember the Swiss Colony catalogs that used to come in the mail around the same time as the Sear's Christmas Wish Book? (For those readers under the age of 30, humor this geezer and play along.)

Well, I spent numerous hours of my childhood pouring over those catalogs and dreaming of toys, games and goodies that I'd like to find under the Christmas tree. Swiss Colony had pictures of a fanciful creation called Buche de Noel that looked like it might be the most delicious and exciting dessert on the planet.

This year I decided to realize one of my childhood fantasies. Here's my version: a Godiva chocolate yule log with white Godiva chocolate creme and meringue mushrooms.Mmmm, mmmm, mmmmm. Sometimes childhood Christmas dreams come true! It might be better than I could have imagined as a kid, because I didn't know about Godiva Chocolate Liquors back then!

I made extra meringue mushrooms because this dessert traveled to Connecticut and I knew some mushrooms would get broken during the trip. I'd never made meringue before -- it's tasty, but complicated and ridiculously delicate & fragile. I assembled the caps and stems with bittersweet Ghirardelli chocolate.

Lovely and Practical

This year, one Christmas gift from Julie was this lovely cable knit blanket. She picked out the yarn (perfect choice!) and her mom did an incredible job with the knitting. It's beautiful, warm, and everybody likes it - including Cynthia...and Leo & Me.A couple Christmases ago, Erica crocheted the blanket on the back of the sofa that Michael and Jason are sitting on. Now we have a nice, cozy wrap for each of us when we're chillin' in the living room. His and hers cat magnets!

Catching Up

It's New Year's Eve and we're enjoying a quiet night at home. I was downloading pictures from my camera and wanted to catch up on a couple posts, so here goes:

Now that Christmas packages have been opened, I can show the "personalized" cookies that Cynthia and Jason created for Erica and John. If you don't know how strange our family is, this will illustrate nicely!

Erica's special cookies included a bone with stress fractures and a Student Doctor Zulueta cookie with injured patient cookies.

John's cookies had a special guest appearance by Blue Sprucesteen and Chia Bear. There was an imposter cookie, decorated (badly) by a certain someone and initialed to look like it was created by a certain someone else. Devious monkeys!

Mmmmm...

This weekend Julie, Cynthia, Jason and I decorated Christmas cookies. Yes, they taste as good as they look... maybe even better :o)

One of My Favorite Christmas Carols

I love this version of Little Drummer Boy with Bing Crosby and David Bowie. This video is a little over four minutes long, and worth it. They performed this for a 1977 Bing Crosby Christmas special... he really had a magical voice - just perfect for Christmas carols... combined with David Bowie, it gives me goose bumps.

No Tree Yet

... this weekend I put the "candle" lights in our windows and a lit wreath on the front door. These Christmas ornament pictures are from a couple years ago. We'll probably go get this year's tree next weekend. There's a family owned tree farm that we've visited the last few Christmases that has good trees at good prices and the coolest tree-wrapping-twine-twirling-machine-a-ma-bob that I've ever seen! Put the tree in top first and ta-da! Trussed up and ready to go in 10 seconds! I briefly thought about bringing a camera and taking a picture of it this year, but I think the tree farmers would think I had a few screws loose. Besides, still pictures wouldn't do it justice -- it needs to be seen in action!