Oh Boy It's Christmas Week

I pretty much failed at My 25 but since this is my blog and I make the rules I'm just going to pretend it's a set of lifetime goals, so possibly next year I can finish up. Or in 2013. You never know what will happen. I'll still be cooking and trying new things, rest assured.

 

This time of year is hard, you guys. I really get seasonal-affective-y. And good god, snow. Snow is not so bad when you don't have to go anyplace and can remain stationary, but we got our first snowstorm of the season on Saturday and I almost died three times trying to get to Lakewood. That's an exaggeration but boy was it a nasty drive.

 

Anthropologie had silk half-slips on sale for $14, and I have been wanting some slips. The price was so right that I scooped a couple of those up. Speaking of Anthro, Kerry shared with me this cautionary story from Claire Zulkey of WBEZ about sweater shopping gone awry. It's true, nothing at that store fits and is always totally awkward, although it always looks great on their mannequins. Funny, that.

I'm in a baking mood, so last night I made sugar cookie dough and started the dough for chocolate crinkles. I'll bake both tonight. I also felt like playing with sugar, so I made the cinnamon brittle recipe from this book. It was very simple, just sugar, butter, water, corn syrup, salt, baking soda and cinnamon:

It is really delicious, but needs more cinnamon and possibly more rounded edges.

 

Thursday is the Festivus party on my floor at work. I'm trying to decide what to do for it. I kind of want to make my lazy spinach-artichoke dip but need to find out if I can bring a Crock-Pot to work. If not I'm thinking a cheese ball or some kind of cold dip and crackers, like this shrimp dip.

 

Thursday's also my last day at work before the holiday. I'm planning on wrapping presents and heading to the West Side Market and Penzey's for a couple of last-minute things early in the day on Friday, then baking a Swiss cake roll for after Christmas dinner. I might decide to get fancy and make meringue mushrooms, who knows!

 

Saturday will be a bunch of kicking around, I suspect. Some friends in Oberlin are having a brunch party and I want to introduce them to Hen, so I'm hoping we'll drive out for that. Hen's mom has to sing at church in the evening so we are planning on taking his parents out for an early dinner. 

On Sunday we'll open presents and there will be wine and probably, god willing, another cheese board. Hen's sister isn't going to make it home until after the holiday, so it won't be as much of an extravaganza, but I am taking it to mean that we'll have two Christmases. Right?