Hazy Shade of Winter

Sorry if you started to read this and realized something was weird--I accidentally hit "send" from my phone before I was ready!

Christmas Day was a partly sunny day, which began lazily, had little AC opening gifts around noon, and ended with our dinner at Buca diBeppo in nearby Dedham. There was a decent crowd--not too full but not empty--and the staff was really friendly.  We sat right outside the Pope room, and the funniest thing I heard all night was when the party who had reserved that room arrived:  "What better place for a Jewish family to spend Christmas than in the Pope room!"

I ordered little AC's dinner with the appetizers, but it wasn't served till after our main course! Luckily she nibbled from our appetizers--though my heart broke when she took big AC's calamari and ate a fair amount. The waiter explained they burnt her first pizza so another one was coming. Finally he and the manager apologized and comped our dessert (chocolate chip cannoli, which little AC also enjoyed). Big AC thought the meal was good overall, but I think my taste buds were tainted by the cold I've been fighting since Christmas Eve.

  Le sigh. Wait till she's old enough to know what she's eating...

The chocolate chip cannoli is the creamiest we've tasted thus far here.

As we were getting our coats on to leave the restaurant, the older women at the table next to ours told us that they didn't even realize there was a kid at our table, since little AC was so well behaved!  And once they learned she was 2 and a half, two of them said "Oh! She's big for that age!"  We had averted a couple of potential fussy moments by using food as a distraction (ha ha), especially given the delay in her pizza arriving, so that was nice to hear.

Later Christmas night, big AC told me he had just read the news about a storm heading our way--it was coming at us with at least 12-18" of snow on Sunday!  I was devastated.  It was the last day that parking would be free at Fanueil Hall!  (Normally it's almost $40!!) Not only that, I had been avoiding the Christmas crowds and thus had mentally reserved Sunday not only so we could visit Faneuil Hall but so that I could find a birthday gift for my dad and ship it out Monday.  I hopped online myself and found out not only were we bracing for a big storm, it would turn into a BLIZZARD.  The only glimmers of hope were that 1) it would happen on a Sunday, when big AC is home and 2) though people were being cautioned to get off the streets by 3PM, the blizzard would be at its worst between 11PM and 4AM.

Here's a picture taken before noon of the street in front of our house.

I wish I had a camera when big AC left for work this morning.  He was all bundled up, but since the sidewalk hadn't been shoveled yet, and the snowplows were barely making a dent in the snow, he looked like a big bear, lifting his legs high to get through the snow!  And then a big gust of wind swirled snow around him and another person on the sidewalk.  As much as I hate being stuck inside due to the snow, it's kind of cool to watch. The streets are much quieter than normal, and the blizzard warning is in effect till 6PM tonight.  There's hella flurries falling and swirling in the wind.  We were supposed to return some movies to the library today, but according to the website it's closed because of the storm.  We'll see how much we've been dug out by tomorrow.

Hope you all had a nice Christmas!

Pour Some Sugar On Me

Since I've been a temporary stay-at-home mom, I've had more time to experiment in the kitchen by cooking up healthy meals for the ACs.  I've also had time to indulge my sweet tooth by baking.  (And oh, what a sweet tooth it is.  One day my father-in-law saw how much sugar I added to my coffee and warned me I'd give myself diabetes someday.)  When we used to have organic fruits and veggies delivered back home, I'd make French-style apple tarts almost weekly because of all the apples we received.  The tarts were yummy but could get boring after a while.

Now that little AC is eating almost everything that we do, I've had to monitor the sweets that we have in the house.  Therefore, when baking, I try to keep it simple.  I stumbled upon this recipe for Sweet Beet Cookies, which are delicious. They are ridiculously easy to make, and for me, the most time-consuming part was grating the beets and stopping to measure how much I'd grated so far, which isn't really a big deal. The recipe states that you'll end up with 50 cookies, but for some reason, each of the 3 times I've made them, I haven't made more than 18!  Since I didn't get a lot of dough out of the recipe, I thought it would be fun to use my new gingerbread people cookie cutters.  The color of the cookies against the black skull platter keeps the Halloween spirit alive for me.  :)

Big AC loves these, and can eat most of them in one sitting (and I probably could, too).  Little AC will nibble an arm, and then decide they make nice toys and take them over to her play area to be forgotten.

For Thanksgiving, I had some leftover canned pumpkin, so I made Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies, using dark chocolate chips by accident.  (I thought I grabbed the semi-sweet bag from the pantry.)  I thought they were pretty good, but big AC thought the flavors competed against rather than complemented each other.  However, it should be noted he doesn't really care for dark chocolate.  And little AC preferred to pick the chocolate chips out and leave the pumpkin part of the cookie for Mama or Papa to finish.

Got any easy dessert/baking recipes to share?