Boxing Day

For those interested, here is the recipe I used for the sausage rolls.  Click the photo to zoom in.  I use pre-made puff pastry, found in the grocery store freezer section.

I like Boxing Day.  Having a pseudo-holiday after such a big real-time-holiday helps a bit with the post-Christmas blahs.  My mom would usually serve turkey divan with leftover Christmas turkey.  Since we didn't have turkey this year, we had my Mom's chicken wings for supper (see September 9).

I also enjoy the connection to my British heritage.  It's believed that Boxing Day began as a day to give to the poor, by going to church and putting money in the alms boxes.  But nowadays it's mainly celebrated as a shopping holiday in Europe.  Kinda like Black Friday is in the U.S.  Which is an ironic warp of meaning over time.

Since I don't go to church and I don't like shopping, I'll celebrate Boxing Day in my own fashion.  Enjoying a day off from work while hanging at home with Hubby and the boys.  And eating sausage rolls.

Highlights

Yeah, it's been awhile.  Oh well.  Sometimes when a bunch of time passes between posts I get stressed out trying to capture everything that happened during the lapse.  Well, I decided I don't want to be stressed with this blog.  If I get stressed, it stops being fun and I won't do it.  So I'm not gonna try.  I'll summarize things, hit some of the highlights and move on.

Summary:  We had a grand Christmas.  O and E spent several days with us, and we did a lot of stuff.

Highlights:  

Blizzard! On December 23 we got hit by a blizzard.  We only got about six inches of snow, but when the snowfall is accompanied by 35 mph winds, it turns into a blizzard.  We were shut in for about 24 hours before things settled down enough for the plows to come out. 

Snowy cobwebs on the porch.  So pretty.

The lights flickered on and off a few times, leading me to spend an hour or so making sure our flashlights had fresh batteries and candles were on hand.  But the power stayed on, thank goodness.  Here's a quick vid my hubby took while shoveling out the driveway.

Cookies!  I made sugar cookies, and the kids (all in their teens) decorated them.  Each got a tray of cookies, and each chose their cookies' shapes from our vast supply of cutters.

Every year the same cutter is the most popular - the axe.  They are boys, remember.

Gift opening!  On Christmas Eve Santa filled and distributed stockings to sleeping children.  Daniel helped in his own unique way.

And on Christmas morning we all gathered around and opened gifts.  I must have been good this year, as I received several gift certificates for garden seeds.  Hooray!

O is wielding his new kitchen knife. 

 

Santa doesn't like his picture being taken.

And of course, food!  So many good things were cooked and eaten.  Some of our traditional Xmas foods such as deviled eggs, scones, Christmas punch, and Mom's egg bake.  

Currant scones with clotted cream and raspberry jam.  Heaven.

This year we introduced several new foods including potato latkes, dulce de leche cake, taco hotdish, and Cajun chicken pasta.  Hubby and Owen did most of the cooking.  But I made sure to cook one of my favorites, Boxing Day sausage rolls.

So greasy, so tasty.

So, all in all, a wonderful holiday.  And we've another holiday coming up - tomorrow is New Years Eve!  We have no plans for the last night of the year, which is just how we like it.  Big parties are rarely worth the effort, much better to have a quiet and reflective night at home with family.  Here's to a better 2021!

Decorating Part II

Besides the tree, we don't go overboard on holiday decorations in the house.  We have several strings of lights and garland scattered around, including one in each of the boys' bedrooms.  Another string hangs over our kitchen window.

 

We also have my Grandmother's Christmas runner on our kitchen table.  The candle carousel is in mid-assembly.  On Christmas Eve and Day we'll break out the holiday table cloths and napkins.

 

A new-old decoration this year is my parent's Christmas village.  My parents had this village for as long as I can remember - they may have brought it with them from Europe, where they lived until 1971.  At some point my mother gave it to me, knowing how much I loved it.  I'm not sure why I've never used it before, but this year I decided I would put it out.  

 

 

My parents would arrange this village on the console TV in the family room, on top of a layer of 'angel hair' or spun fiberglass.  It looked very pretty, but woe betide the unsuspecting child who tried to touch it.  That stuff stung like the dickens.

 

 

And of course, we have my Grandparent's Christmas bells.  This is another decoration I have up all year round, minus the garland.  Too pretty to pack away in a box for 11 months of the year.

Add to these a few wall hangings and Christmas candles, and that's the sum of our decorations.  Not too little, not too much, but juuuust right.  Goldilocks decorations.

 

Just five more days til Christmas, with no snow in the forecast.  Sigh.  Looks like we'll have a brown Christmas after all.  Hubby and I have been meal planning and list making, making sure we're prepared for our home-bound holiday.  We want to make sure nobody misses anything from other year's celebrations.  Well, besides the aunts and uncles and cousins.  But we'll be keeping as many traditions going as we can, and maybe add a few new ones.  

Just five more days!

Light show

This evening Hubby, B, G, and I all piled into the minivan and took a drive.  We grabbed fast food tacos and drove around New Ulm looking at Christmas lights.  We talked about which lights we liked and which we didn't, and oooed and aaahed at the festivity on display.

Then we went to Sleepy Eye to see the light show in their city park.  Normally the Kiwanis puts on a great light show in Mankato, but because of COVID it was cancelled this year.  So we went to Sleepy Eye instead. 

Overall it was a very nice show.  We all wished it hadn't been as epileptic-seizure-inducing with the flashing lights.  We prefer a more static display with all the lights on at the same time.  But for a small town of only 3000, it was quite nice.  We made a small donation in the box on the way out.

The best view of all was from across the lake, with the reflection of lights on the ice.  Just lovely.

We don't do much decorating on the outside of our own house, with only one string of colored bulbs running along the eaves.  Truth be told, we leave our lights out all year long.  We do this because: a) we're lazy, and b) the lights look just as pretty in June as they do in December.  We can get away with this because we live out in the country.  Everyone knows country folk are naturally just a bit odd.

Decorating Part I

Our tree is up!  Better late than never.  On Saturday Hubby went to the lot in town and found the last remaining tree under 10' tall.  For the last one there, it's a pretty nice tree.  Hubby brought it inside, put it in the stand, got it straight and tightened the screws.  We placed an upside-down card table underneath the tree stand to protect the wood floor.

My job is the lights, the garland and the star topper.  The topper is a near-duplicate of my mother's star, which she got from her mother, and now belongs to my sister.  I got mine at a garage sale many years ago.  

Mum's had a blue light, rather than red.

After the lights and garland are up, I unpack all of the ornaments and lay them on the table.  

The boys hang the ornaments, picking their favorites first.  

G likes the colored balls best.  

B likes the glass candies and bells.  

I make sure a few of my favorites get on the tree, including ones with the boy's photos,

and a couple I made when I was a child.

Old Xmas card and Parkay margarine lid.

And we're not the only ones who enjoy the tree.  The cats love it too!  Fortunately they don't try to climb the branches, but rather they love drinking the piney water from the base.  So much better than the water from their own dish.

Busted!

 And voila!  One decorated tree, just waiting for presents.

Just ten more days til the big DAY!  Hopefully we'll get a few flakes before then so we can have a white Christmas.

Dried fruit onslaught

My husband likes dates.  He eats them with his oatmeal in the morning.  Somehow, mysteriously, FB has discovered that I am married to a person who likes dates, and has been bombarding my feed with date company ads.  Seriously, three ads in a few minutes of scrolling.  I am taken aback by this sudden onslaught of dried fruit, and have some serious questions.

• First: how the heck do they know what my husband eats?  He doesn't buy dates online.  He doesn't browse date sites (not those kind either).  We don't have an Alexa to whom we confide our date desires.  How do they know?!
  
• Second: why do so many companies sell dates?  I used to think they were a specialty item sold by maybe one or two producers, but apparently there are just oodles of date growers cashing in on the date gravy train.  
• Third: exactly how many different kinds of dates are there?  The ads offer "Sampler Boxes" with multiple varieties of dates.  Is there a date-of-the-month club? 
  
• Fourth: My husband has heard my date rant and has asked for the names of the date companies.  He is comparison shopping between all of them online.  He says the organic date company has good prices.  I am somewhat freaked out.  Where is Rod Serling?
  
• Fifth: well played, date company marketing teams.  Well played.

Christmas card compulsions

Last night while visiting O and E, I crammed all the kids on the couch and took some photos for this year's Christmas cards.  Not as nice as outdoor pics would have been, but this year we'll take what we can get.

So, now it's time to do the actual cards.  In most aspects of my life I am generally unorganized and untidy.  But I do have anal retentive tendencies in a few specific areas.  In what is perhaps my longest-lived such tendency, I have been keeping track of Xmas cards that I have sent and received since 1998. That's 22 years of fastidious, fairly useless record-keeping.

I use my trusty graph paper to keep track of my cards.  I'm not sure I could live without graph paper.  Christmas card lists?  Graph paper.  Seed germination charts?  Graph paper.  Online meeting minutes?  Graph paper.  (Note the one thing that I don't use graph paper for -- drawing graphs.)  Last night Hubby and I went through the Xmas gifts that we've bought for the boys.  I eagerly reached for my trusty graph paper and began constructing a list.  Hubby looked at me weird and handed me his IPad, with a spreadsheet he had already started.  Reluctantly I took the IPad.  But I didn't like it.

Not only do I keep track of whom I send cards to, but also what cards I send.  I don't want to send the same card to the same person two years in a row.  Sure, I'll wear the same pair of lounge pants all week, and I haven't changed my phone's wallpaper since I got it, but I won't send the same Christmas card twice.  Go figure. 

Since the beginning of my holiday card career, I've kept one copy of each of the cards that I've bought.  The pictures are so pretty, I'm loathe to give them all away.  I'm fairly fussy about my cards, choosing the art and the inside messages with care.  I'm particular to winter folk art scenes.  And trees.  And shiny stuff.  Not too much glitter, maybe just enough to give a sparkle.  One day I'll get a frame and put all the pretty cards inside and hang it on my wall.  Some day.

If someone goes three years without sending me a card, they get nixed on my list.  I'm not a fan of sending cards out to folks who don't bother sending one to me.  Surely I'm worth a few minutes of time and a 55 cent stamp to someone?  And if not, why should I spend the same on them?  Exceptions are made for parents and siblings, and a few others.  Grudgingly.

Yeah, I'm a heartless bastard.  But one with exquisite Christmas card taste.

Worst films

As threatened, here is my list of least favorite movies.  These are movies that have gone beyond just bad, beyond just boring.  These are movies that I hate.  Movies that elicited a truly furious bile reaction in my soul when I watched them.  These are movies that are so terrible, so horrible that I would crawl through a field of steaming horse manure rather than watch again.

In no particular order:

1.    Sophie's Choice (1982)

2.    Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

3.    A Girl Named Sooner (a 1975 made-for-TV movie)

4.    Brazil (1985)

5.    Trainspotters (1996)

6.    Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994)

7.    Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)

8.    The Road to Wellville (1994)

9.    THX 1138 (1971)

10.    Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)

Of course there are themes.  Death of innocents is a big one.  Dystopian hopeless future is another.  Comedies that are irritating instead of funny.  And Fantastic Beasts II is on there because I loved the original Fantastic Beasts so much, and was so looking forward to the sequel.  When I saw the resulting bleak dark nonsensical stupidness of it, I was very angry.  Many of the movies on this list made me feel angry in some way.

So, there you have it!  Whether you wanted it or not!  But enough of bad stuff.  Here's a picture of a cute sleepy Daniel to brighten our mood.

Vacation planning

I've been asking my family where they would like to go on vacation next year.  2020 was obviously a no-go for trips anywhere, so like everyone else we're a little antsy to get outta Dodge.  I've got a serious chunk of vacation time building up at work, and if I don't use it I lose it.

B has voted for Wisconsin Dells.  G seconds the Dells, and adds another vote for Des Moines.  We've been to Des Moines several times and really like the town.  It's a nice sized city - not too big and not too small.   The main reason we like Des Moines is Living History Farms, one of my favorite places on earth.  

Our visit to LHF in 2014.

LHF is a living history museum that shows how the native Ioway and early European farmers lived in that area in the 1800s.  Plus they have a pioneer village showing early town life and industries, such as blacksmithing and broom-making.  Heritage farming and livestock and cooking and living and I'm in heaven. 

Washing dishes at LHF.  Much more fun than dishes at home.

There's a number of restaurants we like in Des Moines, including a fab Ecuadorian place called Mi Patria.  Des Moines is also pretty close to Pella, with Jaarsma Bakery and their oh-so-scrummy Dutch Letters.  In the mid 1970's my family lived in Knoxville, Iowa which is right next to Pella so I have very fond memories of those almond flavored delights.

I made them once.  Much easier to drive to Pella.

We will likely combine the Des Moines and Pella trip with a jaunt to Burlington where Hubby's Pa lives.  Pa and his partner P have a lovely home and are wonderful hosts.  We could even meander further east toward Indianapolis and visit another living history museum called Connor Prairie.  My Dad, Hubby and I visited there a number of years ago and I'd love to go back.

But the ultimate goal of this midwestern road trip would have to be Columbus Ohio.  Why Columbus, you ask?  Because of THIS:

Columbis is the home of the original, and only remaining York Steak House.  York Steak House used to be a chain of restaurants in the 1960s and 70s, and there was one in Maplewood Mall near my childhood home in White Bear Lake, MN.  My parents would take us there for dinner several times a year.  I distinctly remember their sirloin tips and pinwheel buns.  Sooo sooo good.  On a nostalgic whim I googled 'York Steak House' a few days ago and was shocked beyond belief to see their website pop up.  Second only to my joy when I learned that they have the same menu today as they had 40 years ago.

We could probably hit the Dells on our way home from Columbus.  Although by that time we'll have been on the road for five or six days, and might just want to come home.  We may have to split it into two trips.  And invite Hubby's brother and family to join us at the Dells.  It's always fun to have them along.

Thanksgiving leftovers

True to form, we spent a lot of time over Thanksgiving playing games.  I didn't really keep track of who won what, but everyone won something.  Not that winning matters much, but it does feel good every once in awhile.

Trivial Pursuit

We also played a bunch of Jackbox.  That's a fun party game we all enjoy.  Hubby managed to play a few with us, in between a lot of very realistic cooking simulators.

Multiple Solitaire

I think our next game will be Salon Simulator 2020, where we all cut each other's hair and judge the results.  It's been nine months since any of us has seen a barber.  While Hubby has made do with his clippers, the rest of us are looking a bit shaggy.  

Apples to Apples

For supper tonight I ate the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers.  We still have a pint of gravy left, but I'll throw that in the freezer to join the bags of turkey soup I made over the weekend.  So Thanksgiving 2020 is in the books!  Good thing as we're well into December.  The kids have already started their chocolate advent calendars, and plans are to get a tree this weekend.  Let the Christmas season begin!

Farmcraft

Sorry for the lack of posts recently.  I've been playing Minecraft with my family on our new server.  It's got a bunch of mods, including a massive farming mod.  I'm getting my gardening fix digitally!  Not the same as real life, but still very addicting. 

Part of my farm.