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Is there anything better than soup on a cold day?
How about soup with a big hunk of freshly baked soda bread?
I made a batch of ginger carrot soup yesterday, plus a rustic loaf of soda bread. Both were super easy to throw together, both filled the house with delicious aromas, and both made enough for a very comforting and satisfying lunch today.
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Took me a moment to figure out that this guy is on a boat, which is why the gift is so disturbing.
‘Tis the season for Holidailies.
Today was a mostly usual day – work, chores, etc. – but then i got two different phone calls with much anticipated news. More on those in the next few days.
In the meantime, I feel like today’s jigsaw is an accurate representation of us attempting to decorate a Christmas tree, except instead of having a present hurled in from the window, we just have extremely excitable cats.
‘Tis the season for Holidailies.
We had tentative plans to put up the tree today, but instead, after work, we camped out on the sofa and watched holiday baking competitions and the latest episode of Mistletoe Murders. Which, while not as productive as planned, was still a nice way to end a day.
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Much like these mice, I, too, would be very excited to receive a giant box of cheese.
‘Tis the season for Holidailies.
Welcome to December, wherein I try to update this (sadly neglected) blog every day for a whole month! And happy 25th anniversary to Holidailies!
Today has been a very long day. We flew back Washington pretty late last night, after spending several days at my younger sister’s house, with all the family, for Thanksgiving. I don’t sleep well in the best of times, even in my own bed, and traveling makes it even worse, so I was pretty wiped out by the time we headed home, and the cats were very needy after being all alone* for years and years**.
(* We have a fantastic pet sitting service, so they were well taken care of.
** It was only 3 days, despite all the tales of sadness and woe they told me in the wee hours of the morning.)
Today was Richard’s family’s Thanksgiving celebration, so we assembled a veggie casserole for him to take, plus a big pot of potato cheese soup, since it’s definitely soup weather. I, however, could not attend, since today was also recording day for our upcoming concert, so he headed off alone and I instead went and sang for several hours straight.
But at least there was some time this morning to kick off the month with some new advent calendars. This year we each got one of our own, plus one to share. We had such fun with the Escape Room calendar last year that we decided to try another one.
Sadly, we were both completely confused and had to end up looking at the clues for today’s. I am telling myself that that is because we were both still so tired this morning. Hopefully by tomorrow we’ll have better luck with our guesses. Ha.
My individual advent calendar is another jigsaw puzzle one, although this time instead of all the days combining into one big picture, each day is its own little surprise scene, which is definitely more my style.
Here is Day One. I’m definitely going to enjoy these.
‘Tis the season for Holidailies.
Be of good cheer, my faithful readers, because today I did not make soup! Instead I made focaccia. Chocolate focaccia, that is.
When King Arthur posted this recipe as their bake-of-the-week, I knew I had to give it a try. The yeasted dough is similar to a traditional focaccia recipe, with the addition of black cocoa to the batter (plus a tiny bit of sugar to counteract the bitterness of the cocoa), but then you knead it for 15 (!) minutes before stirring in some chocolate chips. After the first rise, it then goes into a pan prepped first with a puddle of olive oil – focaccia dough actually rises in an olive oil bath, which helps give it that characteristic slighty chewy outer texture. At the end of the rising time, another healthy glug of olive oil is drizzled over the top, then you use your fingers to poke it full of holes (I have no idea why focaccia has holes; I just know they’re required), and sprinkle some pearl sugar over the top.
I wasn’t entirely sure how this would work, since chocolate plus yeast dough isn’t always a winning combination, but oh my goodness, this turned out delicious!
It’s got the focaccia texture and open crumb interior, but with little pockets of chocolatey goodness, plus the occasional pop of sweetness from the pear sugar on the top.
Definitely worth the effort.
Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.
Day 2 of Thingadailies, and it’s time for more soup, mainly because we fell behind and needed to catch up if we were going to stay on track with the one new recipe a week plan.
Tonight’s soup was Chicken Bacon Chowder. While yesterday’s soup was light and chock full of veggies, this soup swings in complete the opposite direction, combining chicken, onion, leeks, mushrooms, and of course bacon, in a crockpot and cooking it all day so that the entire house smells amazing by dinner time.
Unlike yesterday’s soup, we were definitely not hungry after eating a bowl of this chowder. I think next time we make it I’ll cut back on the salt, and maybe do a couple healthier tweaks (subbing in coconut milk instead of the cream, for example, or using only half the bacon), but it was exactly the thing for a cold night when it’s been a long day at work and all you want is food that doesn’t require any effort (because all the effort happened 8 hours before).
We did, by the way, eat more of the cauliflower soup for lunch, although this time we paired it with grilled cheese sandwiches made on the Sourdough Sandwich Bread I baked this morning. Yum.
Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.
Ever since I had COVID, shortly before Thanksgiving, I occasionally try to take a breath and instead end up coughing. I’m not too concerned because while it’s definitely annoying, it’s a lingering symptom that apparently a lot of other people have also had, so I could see the direct connection and know that eventually that will go away. However, I’ve been struggling these past few weeks with just an overall inability to think – I have felt like I am losing words when I try to speak them and my brain has felt sluggish. And it wasn’t until my sister said ‘Oh, you have the brain fog’ that it dawned on me that this, too, is also a lingering effect of the disease, and I was so very relieved. Like with the occasional shortness of breath, the brain fog is also a common side effect of the disease, that will also eventually clear up (at least in the majority of cases it seems to), but at least now I have a reason, and that makes all the difference.
The thing that has scared me the most about getting COVID, well, after the first couple months, once they were able to find ways to successfully treat it, is not dying from the disease. Even in the height of the pandemic, the vast majority of people who came down with it didn’t die. What scares me the most is what happens after. A huge percentage of people end up Long COVID – damage to major organs, the sort that is going to cause them huge problems later on in life; ongoing breathing issues that never fully resolve, damage to the heart or kidneys; immune system deficiencies. And every time you get reinfected, your chances of long term problems rises.
I know we will both likely end up fine; the symptoms we have usually clear up after a couple months, and meanwhile we’re back to being extra careful about exposure. We both got Paxlovid, which is supposed to help prevent things from getting worse after the initial infection. But still. So many people out there are still getting sick and so many people are still dying, despite how much the media wants to pretend that it’s gone.
Every year Richard and I like to watch the cheesy holiday themed rom-coms. It’s the same reason we enjoy watching cheesy horror – we get a kick out of the cheap special effects, or the formulaic plot (and how else would we have ever been able to enjoy the delights that are ‘Llamageddon’, and ‘Zombeaver’?). Holiday cheese doesn’t have so much of the cheap special effects, but they do usually take place on the same movie lot setting, with a lot of the same tropes.
However, this year we’ve inadvertently stumbled across a couple movies that, while marketed as the usual Holiday cheese, turned out to be anything but. So if you’re in the mood for some holiday warmth, try one of these movies.
Last Christmas
This movie was marketed as the usual trope of girl meets guy, who helps her learn the true meaning of Christmas. Except that’s not actually the plot at all; it’s more that she has been through an extremely traumatic event that impacted both her individually, and her friends and family (who are all dealing with their own unrelated traumas), and that she has to learn to let go of the expectations that they had for her, and more importantly, that she had for herself. Yes, there’s a romantic subplot….except there’s a twist, which I won’t spoil (although I figured it out about halfway through the movie and was totally fine with). Don’t watch if you’re playing Whamageddon, but otherwise, don’t pass this up. If you’re looking for the usual romantic happily ever after, you might be disappointed, but I thought the ending was significantly better for not requiring that.
Rescuing Christmas
The tagline is that a woman wishes Christmas would disappear and then the meet-cute guy helps her find it. But again, this is not the usual cookie-cutter romance – in fact, the romance is only a minor subplot to the rest of the story. There are elves (but not the cutesy kind), a rather delightful North Pole Board President, a Santa, and yes, the meet-cute guy, but the main point of the story is more about the main character getting out of her own way. I admit the room got a tiny bit dusty at the very end, but sometimes the best movies are the ones where there are some (happy) tears.
Round and Round
This is a extremely enjoyable take on the time-loop idea, but the main holiday is Hanukkah, not Christmas. It’s a Hallmark movie, yes, so of course there is a romance, but it’s more nuanced, with lots of moments of humor, and a big loose-knit collection of family (both related and not) who all are there to support the main character with whatever she’s going through. The movie has a different sort of twist than the usual time-loop, and while the romance is definitely a central subplot, the primary focus is, once again, for the main character to get out of her own way. Track this one down if you can – it’s delightful.
‘Tis the season for Holidailes.
Have you ever had a day so mentally exhausting that you can do nothing but come home and stare blankly at the TV? Well, that would be the past two days.
Since the pandemic the group in which I sing has done a professional recording of our concert the weekend prior to the actual live performances. This not only counts as our main dress rehearsal; it also makes it accessible to folks who don’t live in the Sacramento area.
This year, we’re performing at three different venues (all churches), and one of them was willing to give us a discount if we also came and sang music for their service. So yesterday’s very long day kicked off at 10am. We sang, then went and grabbed lunch, and then came back to do the recording…which we finished at shortly before 8 pm. By that point we were all completely exhausted, but at least it was finished.
Today I felt like I was moving through a fog most of the day, and at rehearsal this evening it was clear I wasn’t the only one. Thankfully tonight’s rehearsal was more about blocking (although we still did a full run through of all the pieces). Usually I come home from rehearsal exhausted, but mentally wired, but not tonight. I love the music we’re doing, but oof, all I can think about right now is getting some sleep.
‘Tis the season for Holidailies.
Every year for a while now, Richard and I spend a bit of time in October looking for some fun new advent calendar (one for him and one for me). In years past we’ve had one that was all caramel, one that was all coffee, one memorable one that was all cheese, and even one that was all jigsaw puzzles. This year, however, we decided to go for a theme – escape rooms.
The one on the right has been a huge disappointment – it’s all pencil type drawings with minimal instructions that only serve to confuse instead of assist, so after the first couple days we have given up on that, but the one on the left has been absolutely fantastic.
The premise: you’re an elf in Santa’s workshop. A huge storm and earthquake has caused a lockdown of the entire premises, and you have to move from room to room, opening a new door each day. Each day you have a puzzle you have to solve, that will tell you where the next door is in the calendar (they are labeled with codes, not numbers). The fun bit is that the ‘rooms’ themselves, despite being only about 2 inches square, are extremely detailed (see below as an example – there’s details on all sides, plus ceiling and floor, behind each little door you open), and sometimes the puzzles are interactive (for the room displayed below, we had to ‘sew’ a button – don’t worry, this isn’t a spoiler as that’s part of the initial instructions for the room).
Admittedly, we had to use a hint for the first two days, as we figured out just how the whole system works (also I am blaming this just a little on COVID brain, because after avoiding it for the past three years, guess what we both came down with at the end of November, sigh) but this morning we got it with no hints at all, phew, so I think we’ve finally gotten the hang of it.
It makes each morning that much more fun, opening a new door and checking out what’s hiding behind. I think this advent calendar might actually be my favorite one yet.
‘Tis the season for Holidailies.