New Year's Eve

Christmas Redux. It's a tradition in our family to have the same dinner on New Year's Eve that we had on Christmas Eve. Why? Who knows? But we did it again...homemade pizza, cookies and other pastries. And it was just as good tonight as it was last week. Tomorrow, however, we part ways with tradition and go with ham instead of pasta.

I am getting fatter with every holiday. This has to stop.

Mom, Dennis & I celebrated the holiday with a marathon showing of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We got through the first two parts (Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers). Tomorrow we will finish up with The Return of the King.

We woke this morning to a light dusting of snow that was very beautiful but melted quickly. This was the first time for snow for the kittens. Only Sammy didn't come out to play.

It's snowing!

Mom came over for dinner tonight and as she was getting ready to leave we noticed...it's snowing!

I haven't even blogged about Christmas yet. Oh, well, I guess I'll have to make it up tomorrow.

Snow...yea!

Xmas Cooking

On Saturday, Mom, Angie and I spent about 4-1/2 hours making our traditional Christmas desserts: canoli, ribbons, and pignolada. This year I took Mom's place more or less. I wanted to learn how to make the dough for all the desserts, something she usually does. It was kind of fun, although very tiring, especially for Mom. I was feeling pretty good until the next morning when I discovered my back was one big, tight, mass of muscles. Ouch. It was worth it, though.

Sunday, I made pizzelle, a dessert resembling a small, round, flat waffle. I put finely chopped pecans in mine so they have an interesting but not sweet taste. Lots of vanilla because I spilled a little extra in the batter accidentally.

On Monday, Dennis went on his skiing trip and I had to take care of other people's screw-ups, beginning with the post office which all of a sudden started sending any mail that didn't have our post office box address (instead of our street address) back to the sender. That included a passport and car license stickers for two cars. The latter required a trip to the DMV and an hour and a  half wait to straighten it out. Not to mention the trip to the post office where I went a little "postal" in my unhappiness with the service they are providing--or not providing. I dragged my sister along and we made a trip to Best Buy so she could look at TV receivers and a trip to Home Depot so I could look at mail boxes. Then home, finally. Not a happy day.

Movie Tuesday

Last week's movie was Skyfall, the new 007 movie. I was surprised that I actually enjoyed the movie, staying awake for the whole thing. Spoiler alert: There's a surprise ending--can't tell you what it is. Shhh.

Movie Tuesday

Tuesday's movie was Twilight, Breaking Dawn 2. Being fans of the Twilight series, we all enjoyed the movie, even Dennis who has only seen the last two of the series. I, personally, like the big wolves. Wish I had one. This movie, I believe, is the last of the series, although they left it wide open for future stories. I never thought I would be enthralled by a family of vampires and a tribe of werewolves, but it's true--I love the series. Mom does, too. I especially like the name of the heroine, Bella Swan. How romantic! I say go see it.

Happy Birthday, Dennis

In keeping with our family's tradition of multiple-day birthdays, on Wednesday I took Dennis out for lunch at the Old Trieste in San Diego and then we went on our annual shopping trip for new clothes for my frugal and anti-shopping husband. We went to Fashion Valley, headed to Nordstrom's, but the cars and crowds were too intimidating. We went around the other side and found plenty of parking spaces. We did some aimless window shopping to warm up and wandered into what we thought was the Apple Store. But, no, it was a store just exactly like the Apple Store, down to the 20-something greeter, but it was a Windows Store. Huh. I guess they decided to copy Apple once again and show off their new Surface notepad in a store exactly like Apple's. Makes my head hurt.

On Friday, I mentally and physically stretched to make him a cake from scratch. I ran a few cake recipes from the internet by him and we decided on the Orange-Scented Olive Oil Cake from Saveur.com. The recipe was just complicated enough to please Dennis and not too difficult to make me go to Von's for a store-bought cake.

I wish I could say all the time I spend was worth it, but I think there was something terribly wrong with the recipe. I was supposed to mix up the whole thing using a food processor, but half way through the processor stopped processing--just gave up. So I transferred the gooey mess to the cake mixer and finished it there. It was less like a batter and more like sticky dough. I transferred most of it to the cake pan and stuck it in the oven hoping it would somehow all work out.

Well, it cooked, but when I took it out it looked like a giant muffin top. Heavy, hard, immovable muffin top. I glazed it. Still looked like a muffin top, but with sticky orange glaze on top.

Later on, we took it to my Mom's to share (get rid of) it with her and my sister and brother-in-law. They all dutifully ate their pieces and I ate mine. It tasted ok, but not like a birthday cake. I left the remainder at Mom's.

To top it all off, I forgot to take a picture of it. Dang.

When you have to go ...

Jeez--I can't clean the litter box fast enough for the kittens. Here I just finished picking up the last pile of poop and two cats  (Sammy and Bug) are crowding me out.

Movie Tuesday

Last Tuesday we saw Lincoln. Dennis just finished reading the biography of Lincon by Doris Kearns Goodwin and so he was very interested in seeing the movie. I admit it was interesting from an historical perspective and the actors and acting was great, but the movie was way too slow to be called the best movie we've ever seen. I enjoyed it, but struggled to stay awake.