Merry Christmas (One Day Late)

Yes, I know, I am a day late. I have a reason. The house is full of progeny, that is my reason. We have lived in the current Chez Knit for 3.5 years now but this is the first Christmas that all of the progeny have been here at the same time. Thank goodness for 4 bathrooms! And a finished basement! And enough beds! It has been a busy few days.

I might have spent time baking bread (6 loaves) before everyone got here. Well, actually I baked three loaves thinking that would certainly be enough. But then we went through 1.5 loaves in the first 24 hours and only Cartoon Girl and That NYC Guy were here with us at that point so I began to be concerned about the bread usage, knowing that the other progeny love bread as well. So I baked 3 more loaves the day that TMO, TSiL, Shoe Queen and SlimJim arrived. Since Thursday we have gone through 6 loaves of bread. That is four loaves that I baked and two stellar whole wheat loaves that TMO baked. Yowza.  

 

There were numerous games of Mah Jong. I managed to win one game, which is one more than I usually win. I seem to always pick the combo that means there are only pairs in the Mah Jong that I am building and pairs are a difficulty because you can't put them up on your wall using a Joker. At least this year I remembered that I cannot do that move. But it didn't help me win any more games. Did I just lose all of you? Hello?  

Our Granddog Darcy is here to visit as well. She is the perfect dog. She rarely has to go out. Her shedding is no where near as momentous as Max the Magnificent's was. She doesn't bark and she rarely licks the floor. She did, however, figure out that if I am cooking in the kitchen and I then walk by her, she tries to quickly sneak a lick of my fingers just in case there is anything good there. Maybe I shouldn't have let her lick my fingers that had Tahini all over them. Just a thought.  

There was a great deal of after dinner talk and laughter. NO POLITICS. Lots of wine. We went through the equivalent of a small winery's worth of vino. But really, what is good food without good wine. And we ate well. Shoe Queen and Slim Jim cooked a vegan taco meal one night. I am very intrigued with tempe. Then TMO and TSiL cooked an Indian feast one night. Oh the curry! Then we all participated in the meal yesterday. Oh the food! We have several food traditions for Christmas, one of which is that we have Nutmeg Coffeecake for breakfast. But, we also have vegans in the house and Nutmeg Coffeecake is not vegan. I am going to tell you that I am so proud of myself that I managed to make it vegan. There were just two ingredients, an egg and milk, that I had to substitute. Guys, 1 tablespoon of ground flax seed soaked in 3 tablespoons of water substitutes for an egg! It is magic. And I just swapped unsweetened almond milk for the regular milk. I was so pleased when it came out of the oven. And it tasted fantastic.

We managed to make Cartoon Girl snort on various occasions so life was in balance.

The perfect Christmas gifts arrived. I can see a marathon in my future. #itwasneverpersonal And last but not least. We managed to take a fairly good family picture. I felt like I was channeling my father as I would push the button on the camera and then have 10 seconds to run into the picture and get myself situated so that I didn't look like I had run into the picture.

Merry Christmas from the Quigg/Cudney/Cutherell/Barwegen clan. We hope it was a great day for you. Now I am off to clean out my refrigerator.