12 December 2004

Okay, so we're not doing too badly. I have baked or otherwise made:
Apple hazelnut bread
Banana bread
Pepparkakor
Spritz
Krumkake
Pretzel rings with chocolate
Frangelico truffles
Peanut butter apricot fudge and oh my land did this come out tasting good
Apricot shortbread
Walnut crunch
Rum balls
Dipped apricots
Truffles

And still need to make:
Stout gingerbread
Caramels
Taffy
Pistachio fudge meringues
Raspberry fudge meringues
Kolackys (blackberry and cherry, likely)
Portable turtles
Lemon sandwiches

I know, I know: I don't actually need to make any of those things. But I intend to make these things. Some of them are pretty easy: the gingerbread, the turtles. The meringues are kind of in the middle. The kolackys I don't know; I haven't made them before. Taffy and caramels and lemon sandwiches are a pain, but I really, really want homemade taffy and caramels this year, and they're a pain, so I can't expect other people to make them for me.

What I learned this Christmas is that even if you have vegan friends near and far and would love to give them a chocolatey nutty lovely walnut crunch experience, nut crunch is not to be made with vegetable fats. It just doesn't work. It tastes just fine (or I wouldn't plan to give it to my poor friends), but it much more closely approximates caramel than penuche or toffee or anything of that family. And caramels are already on the list. Granted, these are vegan caramels. Still. Butter is the key in a buttercrunch. Important to remember.

I now have a battle spork on my monitor. Yoon drew me a battle spork. With a long staff and all that. Hee.

DDB came and took our pictures tonight. I feel pretty safe in saying that, because no grands and no aunties/uncles read this journal, and my folks already know we're doing it. It was neat. Some had me with a book and Mark with a computer of one variety or another, "environmental context," DDB said.

I'm reading Katya Reimann's Wind from a Foreign Sky. The prose doesn't really grab me; we'll see how the story goes when I have time to get a little further into it. We got to keep Stella, Mike, Roo, Matt, and Dena for nearly two hours than I expected this morning, which was good but did mean I didn't get chores done or laze about reading. And tomorrow I get to work on fiction again (I'm still taking Sundays off), and I'm trying to figure out how to prioritize the week ahead. What absolutely has to be done first, what will make other things easier, what isn't important right away.