Ho, ho, ho!

I've managed to spend the holidays doing not much of anything thanks to a nagging cough. The kids went down to Jay's in Victoria on the 23rd so Niko and I had a nice quiet, sleeping in style Christmas morning, then went to our aunt's for the family dinner. I made a gluten free chocolate cream pie that turned out mostly OK. Boxing Day we took lunch to Victoria for our other grandparents, Dad & Cat, and our uncle Tim & his girlfriend. Niko made the yummy chicken in maple, orange & curry sauce (even Selena liked it!), and I made some potato & yam mashed with cream & roasted garlic, then we did beans and carrots.

Tonight we did a goose. Just because we really wanted to have goose. It was very tasty, Niko roasted it and I made Pommes Gratin Dauphinoise (similar to scalloped potatoes - basically sliced taters baked with cheese in a cream & egg custard). Everything sounds more fancy in French, doesn't it?

In between all the eating we managed to get to the Sally Ann here and I picked up some stuffies for the dogs. Skyla immediately stole all of them, as well as my new Cookie Monster slippers. //laugh// That little dog sure loves toys! Cuinn got a new collar (see post below, the autumn leaves) and they also got lots of yummy treats. The cats got a shared stocking full of different little toys - Allegra loved it, Iolaus played a bit, and Sorsha turned her nose up (I guess when you are almost 15 and queen cat you don't do toys anymore).

As Niko mentioned in her blog, we did have a bit of book & DVD bonanza this Christmas. For Christmas I got:

• King Arthur from Jay and the kids


• The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King extended edition from Mum


• The Adventures of Indiana Jones boxed set from Mum


• The Star Wars Trilogy boxed set from (you guessed it) Mum


• The Hobbit by Tolkien, from Niko. A lovely Folio Society slipcovered hard cover //drool//, it even has a fold out map attached inside the back cover.


• The Silmarillion by Tolkien, hard cover, also from Niko. I am currently trying unsuccessfully to read it and The Hobbit at the same time


• American Gods by Neil Gaiman, again from Niko. This is "The Reader's Copy", A Limited Companion to the Author's Preferred Edition. I'm not entirely sure what all that means, but Niko assures me it's a good thing.

I also got lots of chocolate, the previously mentioned Cookie Monster slippers, candles & a candle holder, some pot holders, assorted Christmas decorations (from Jennifer & my gramma), the ever popular cash, and some stainless steel measuring cups & spoons (yeah!).

If that wasn't enough we did a spur of the moment trip to Nanaimo with Mum and Gramma to check out the post Christmas sales at Value Village, etc. First we hit the Dollar Store and we shocked to discover actual decent books! I picked up a couple for each of the kids at $2 a piece and several for me ($4 each!!).

• The Multiple Identities of the Middle East by Bernard Lewis. I really like his work and am looking forward to this one.


• Veiled Threat: The Hidden Power of the Women of Afghanistan by Sally Armstrong. I've heard good things about this one, although her resume sounds a little lightweight. We'll see.


• A Fury For God: The Islamist Attack on America by Malise Ruthven. I tend to avoid books with provocative titles like this one but for $4 I can at least take a look. He wrote another book on Islam that got a good cover blurb from Albert Hourani , a writer I think knows what he's talking about. Again, we'll see.


• Chicken Recipes of James Beard - this one was only $2 and Beard is a legend in the cooking world.

Over at Value Village I found slightly lighter material:

• The Death of a Joyce Scholar by Bartholomew Gill


• L is for Lawless by Sue Grafton


• The Venture of Islam Volume 1: The Classical Age of Islam by Marshall G. S. Hodgson, of course they did not have Volume 2 or 3 //sigh//

Then we went to Bolen to spend our gift certificates! Ryan got himself a hard cover of The Hobbit, Selena got a small journal and 3 manga (Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle volume 1 by CLAMP, a Gundam Seed, and an Inu Yasha) that she read right away (she got so much because she had 3 certificates to spend, lucky chick). After much deliberation and carrying around and putting back of books, I came home with

• Ireland's Eye by Mark Anthony Jarman


• Duende: A Journey into the Heart of Flamenco by Jason Webster

Both are travel tales & life experiences of the authors and sounded interesting. I also have a love/hate fascination with both countries (the second takes place in Spain) and some day plan to take up flamenco.

So that's Christmas not in a nutshell. In closing, here is a pic of Niko's Darwin in his new collar (from Cuinn & Skyla). Niko now calls him "the Dread Pirate Darwin".

Movies, movies and more movies

Finally, after months of saying we should, we went out and rented a bunch of movies. It took us about 10 seconds to choose 8 dvds to watch, so I think it will take a while before we catch up on everything we've missed in the last few years (or possibly longer than that).

So far we have seen

• Hero - it was quite good, the usual not so happy ending with stunning visuals
  


• Blood: the Last Vampire - an anime that Niko chose, it was very good, not too scary but still suspenseful. Maybe I am becoming a convert after all . . .
  


• Bulletproof Monk - for a more fun martial arts action rather than a serious one, besides I like Yun-Fat Chow (or Chow Yun-Fat for us bass ackwards Anglos).
  


• Once Upon a Time in Mexico - very bloody, full of plot twists and little hard to keep track of who is who and on what side, but fun overall.
  

We also picked up the first disk of a series called Blue Seed, that Selena really liked. I haven't seen it yet. Selena also chose Dragonball GT and Shamanic Princess. She liked the former but not the latter and I haven't seen either one yet. The only other one we have left from our selection is Snatch , that's the Guy Ritchie (Madonna's husband) directed, Brad Pitt (Jennifer Aniston's husband) starring movie, not something rude. Although it may turn out to be both . . .

Grades Are In

Yesterday was the last day of school until January. We had to go in for our evaluations and that was it. I very happy to say I got an A! \\happy dance\\

It was a skin-of-my-teeth A, so I still have work to do next term. Now I'm off to practice cooking things - scones for breakfast to start, then we'll see. I need to get hold of some duck breast for duck with blackberry port sauce. Mmmm. Also, we had our seafood chowder last night and it turned out pretty good, I think.

RIP - Harold E.Mouse

The inevitible finally happened a few days ago, Harold the mouse has passed on. We found the little guy curled up in his nest quite dead.

I will miss the little guy. He surpassed my expectations of mouse-hood in every way, except for the stinky cage. Selena would carry him around everywhere in a pocket or on her shoulder and he seemed to love going along for the ride. He never bit anyone and loved to poop on me. If there is an afterlife I hope the H-man is there enjoying all the banana chips and sesame seeds he wants.

Didn't realize it had been so long

since I blogged anything. So, what's been going on?

• Had my turn in the dishpit at school. Add another occupation to my list of "Things I Don't Want To Do For the Rest of My Life." It was the longest week since I've been at school. Blech! 'Nuf said.
  


• Got to spend a second week as Garde Manger, doing up the appetizers. That was fun! We even had some red and yellow pepper coulis kicking around so I got to really jazz up the plates.
  


• I'm spending this week doing Garde Manger as well. I'm doing little corn pancakes for the smoked salmon canapés, parmesan tuiles (little baskets) to fill with goat cheese and the paté I mentioned in the last post. I also get to serve up a lobster bisque that took Angelina 3 days to make when she was on soups, so it better be good.
  


• I had a really horrible cold. It is pretty much gone now.
  


• Made some great soup! Since the kids liked the broccoli & cheddar so much I have been ordered to make soup every Friday. So we've had chicken gumbo (gluten free so Niko could have it too), chicken with rice & veg, and I used my last litre of chicken stock to make sweet potato soup for Mum's birthday. Next I will be making butternut squash for my grandparents at Christmas and Niko wants gluten free seafood chowder.


• Learned how to make gluten free crab cakes. I've been raving about the crab cakes we make at school for the dining room and every time Niko said she wished she could eat them. So I played with the recipe and made some that she could eat for Mum's birthday dinner. I think I like the gluten free ones better than the ones with wheat flour.


• Made lemon meringue tarts with real lemons. Holy cow was it good!

Hungry yet?

Other than food related news, not much has been happening except we've decided that little Skyla the lurcher can stay. Cuinn actually plays with her and will let her on the bed with him, instead of growling.

Here they are modelling a few collars:

Holiday Safety Tip #1

Never walk into a house full of dogs covered in chicken liver paté.

Unless you want to be licked to death! Today I was working on a paté for the special christmas lunch service at school this week. I guess I got a lot more of it on myself than I thought and now I really don't have to launder my uniform. I haven't seen the dogs this excited since the day I came home with a trunk full of deer bones.