What a busy week! The pups went to the groomer on Monday. They came back looking lovely, and I had them pose in front of the Christmas tree for a photo.
They look huge, but it's because we have a small tree this year. While they were out of the house, enjoying their spa day, I finally cooked the vegetarian version of "Coq au Riesling," which we had been assigned for our last Madroña Pop Up meeting the week before but hadn't been able to have because Charlie was doing the prep for his medical procedure two days later. So we had it Monday evening for dinner. With the Riesling we had used in the recipe.
It was a lot of work, but I saved some time by using a pre-made vegetable stock instead of making my own from the leftover ingredients. I still have them and plan to make some stock with them and some other bits and pieces, now that the furor of Christmas week is over.
We had the leftovers for actual Christmas Eve supper. It was nice not to have to put together a big dinner and then go off to church, although I would have had family members to help. We had our 8:00 PM service in Trinity, which is the old church building. (Since the pandemic started, we have been using another building that belongs to the church, St. Helen's, which is set up for worship services and equipped to broadcast to the public, but more modern.) The music went well, although I had some difficulty with my ears.
My birthday is the day after Christmas, although, according to my parents, it was still Christmas in the other time zones. It was always a nuisance as I was growing up, because I didn't get any extra presents; all my Christmas presents said, "Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday" on them. To make matters worse, my father was a minister, and after two Christmas Eve services and three services on Christmas Day (or maybe it was the other way around) all he wanted to do on the 26th was sleep. However, having a Christmastime birthday as an adult is wonderful. I'm much more likely to have family around me on my birthday, and we almost always go out for breakfast, although we didn't during the pandemic. I still complain about it on social media with other people who have birthdays during Christmas week. One fellow put it this way: "Baby Jesus stole my thunder." One clever person recognized that Baby Jesus had the same problem, with this meme, so I'm honored to have good company sharing my plight:
Jim, my brother-in-law was supposed to join us for Christmas, but he tripped in the dark the week before and banged his head on the windowsill. He's OK, but he had to have some stitches out on the 27th and wanted his doctor to check him out as well before he drove over the pass from the coast by himself. We waited to celebrate Christmas until he arrived later on Friday. I opened the presents I had for my birthday on my actual birthday, however, after we got back from a late breakfast. From our younger son and daughter-in-law I received a cute pair of poodle socks and a pattern for a lovely shawl and the yarn to make it.
I also received a lovely woven shawl from Charlie with a Celtic knot pattern worked into the fabric, and after Jim arrived on Friday, another present to open: A beautiful mug he picked up in Norway produced by WildBird Foods Ltd., sporting an image of a Northern Lapwing painted by the Dutch biologist and nature artist Elwin van der Kolk. His purchase of the mug benefited several conservation organizations.
Jim helped our poor little tree look a little more festive with a few more presents, which we opened on Saturday. (My birthday gift from him is the one in the middle, front, with a birthday card attached.)
There were some common themes in the Christmas presents, as we discovered when we opened them. Jim gave us a package of Fazer chocolate candy and chocolate-covered mints from Finland. We gave him a package of candy from Italy in a tall can shaped like a nutcracker.
Our daughter gave me a combination cutting board and cheese board the shape of Wisconsin with all the sights to see painted on one side. (You cut and serve on the other side.) It can hang on the wall as art. What better to remind us of our time in Wisconsin last summer, and what better way to represent Wisconsin than with a cheese board!
In turn, we gave our daughter and son-in-law a cutting board and cheese board in the shape of Oregon, where they have visited us and where cheese is also made. This is the one they got, and it also can be displayed on the wall. We also included some colorful salad utensils made from bamboo (I think).
The pups didn't get left out, either. Charlie helped unwrap their package, and they were delighted with their new toys. We've been letting them play with two of them, and when those get ragged, we'll take out two more. They play all kinds of games with them, alone or together.
Sandy has a birthday coming up on January 11, when he turns two. It's far enough away in dog time, though, so it will probably seem like Christmas all over again.
We had Lohipiirakka (Finnish salmon pie), roasted Brussels spouts and salad for "Christmas Eve" dinner on Friday night, with some fruitcake Jim brought along for dessert. Our "Christmas" dinner was more elaborate, and we had it in the mid-afternoon. We had turkey (faux, for me, and real for the men), stuffing, mushroom gravy, lanttulaatikko (Finnish mashed rutabaga casserole), roasted sweet potatoes, steamed zucchini, homemade honey cranberry relish and an apple-cranberry pie made by someone at our church, which we bought back when we had a bazaar to raise money. (It was frozen, but I still had to bake it.) Everything was wonderful, although the sweet potatoes could have stayed in the oven a little longer. It was a challenge, even now that I have two ovens. I tried to restart the convection oven before it was done cooling down after cooking the Quorn faux turkey, and it wouldn't work. I had forgotten that you have to let it stop cooling itself before you can use it again. Then I forgot to take the rutabaga out of the fridge when I needed to, so it would warm up before heating in the oven, because it was in a glass cake pan. After letting it warm a bit, I took it to the old microwave, which is upstairs in our laundry room now, for making tea, if we're working up there and don't want to come down. I heated it up most of the way in that, and let it finish in the big oven, after the real turkey and stuffing were done. That worked. We had the nicest Madroña Vineyards Riesling with it.
Jim left Sunday morning to drive to Winnemucca, on his way down to Arizona. I went to church, even though the choir doesn't sing. I wanted to get my birthday blessing, which I couldn't do last week, because it was Lessons and Carols, a service without time for birthday and anniversary blessings. There were four birthday people. The gentleman in the brown sweater just turned 90. The scarf around my neck was my birthday present from Charlie.
There have been years when I missed my birthday blessing because of when Christmas fell that year.
Our daughter's family celebrates both Christmas and Hanukkah. They drove to Texas to spend the holiday with the grandmother (our son-in-law's mother) who celebrates Hanukkah, which started Christmas Day at sundown.
They can make it from Wisconsin in two days, stopping overnight in Wichita, KS. They visited family in Temple, TX, and we had FaceTime with them on my birthday. On Saturday they left to drive back to Wisconsin after a Hanukkah party in Dallas, held early enough that they were able to leave by 2:30 PM. They got home last night, after the expected stop in Witchita.
Somehow during the week I was able to get my yarn for the Rose City Yarn Crawl Mystery KAL wound up and ready to go.
I also finished the first sleeve on Pauly's Aran Pullover. Just the other sleeve to go and the finishing up. I'm hoping to be able to finish it up soon enough to be able to finish the Oregon Autumn Cardigan before the Mystery KAL starts.
I hope everyone has a wonderful rest of Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, if you celebrate those, and happy birthday, if you’re having one right now. Merry Birthmaskah! Next up: a very happy New Year!
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What's in The Doll's Storybook: This week's story from #TheDollsStorybook is
Emil Takes the Lead to Celebrate Hanukkah. It is, of course, the story of how Emil ha his first turn at leading the ceremony of the lighting of the candles for Hanukkah, and it includes a little math problem.
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