Holiday mix
This past weekend I made ginger ice cream with crushed gingersnap cookie bits mixed into it, and it's pretty fabulous stuff - cool and decadently creamy, suffused with warm ginger, and the cookie bits are a mix of soft and crispy, so the texture is pretty fabulous. I think it may call for homemade caramel sauce, though. I'm especially proud of the ice cream as it was the one bit of holiday cooking I did, unless you count the carrot cake cupcakes I made for N's office party, and I don't.
I'd planned on all kinds of holiday baking and on sending care packages to friends and family (homemade lemon curd! peanut butter kisses! jam thumbprints! chocolate crinkles!) but we were all sick and also tired and in the end I let Amazon.com do most of my holiday wrapping and shipping. I feel guilty about relying on Amazon so much, but hopefully I can make it up to my favorite independent bookstores later in the year. I had plans for a fancy Christmas Eve dinner, but we ended up with spaghetti, and it was good and somehow just right for this year. Better than fancy.
I already have hopes and plans for the holidays next year, things I want to cook and bake and mail and watch and listen to, which is my way of coping with everything I didn't do this year, I guess. Even though this year was mostly fine. Quiet, but fine. Still, one hope for next year is to write a holiday newsletter in the style of Connie Willis's "Newsletter." It probably won't happen, and if it does, most of my family will read it and not get it. At all. But I think it would be fun, anyway.
Everyone keeps asking me about Baby's First Christmas. It was good. It was nice. The fact that she's here is amazing. But the fact that she's here is amazing every day. Bea had no clue what was going on and opening all those presents, while exciting, was also exhausting. And my current crisis in faith, along with the fact that we haven't been regular church-goers, meant that a lot of the holiday traditions I grew up with - the Christmas Eve service, the nativity story, the whole emphasis on babies at Christmas - were quietly but rather thoroughly avoided.
The best parts of the day were just having time for all three of us to hang out together, and Boxing Day was, somehow, even better because we were all more relaxed and less over-stimulated. I feel more connected to N than I have for months, which is probably the best Christmas present anyone could have given me.
Hoping your holidays were/are merry and bright, and that the new year brings many more bright and merry days to you, too.
I'd planned on all kinds of holiday baking and on sending care packages to friends and family (homemade lemon curd! peanut butter kisses! jam thumbprints! chocolate crinkles!) but we were all sick and also tired and in the end I let Amazon.com do most of my holiday wrapping and shipping. I feel guilty about relying on Amazon so much, but hopefully I can make it up to my favorite independent bookstores later in the year. I had plans for a fancy Christmas Eve dinner, but we ended up with spaghetti, and it was good and somehow just right for this year. Better than fancy.
I already have hopes and plans for the holidays next year, things I want to cook and bake and mail and watch and listen to, which is my way of coping with everything I didn't do this year, I guess. Even though this year was mostly fine. Quiet, but fine. Still, one hope for next year is to write a holiday newsletter in the style of Connie Willis's "Newsletter." It probably won't happen, and if it does, most of my family will read it and not get it. At all. But I think it would be fun, anyway.
Everyone keeps asking me about Baby's First Christmas. It was good. It was nice. The fact that she's here is amazing. But the fact that she's here is amazing every day. Bea had no clue what was going on and opening all those presents, while exciting, was also exhausting. And my current crisis in faith, along with the fact that we haven't been regular church-goers, meant that a lot of the holiday traditions I grew up with - the Christmas Eve service, the nativity story, the whole emphasis on babies at Christmas - were quietly but rather thoroughly avoided.
The best parts of the day were just having time for all three of us to hang out together, and Boxing Day was, somehow, even better because we were all more relaxed and less over-stimulated. I feel more connected to N than I have for months, which is probably the best Christmas present anyone could have given me.
Hoping your holidays were/are merry and bright, and that the new year brings many more bright and merry days to you, too.