Bacon

The fabulousness of bacon can not be overstated.

Bacon plays a big role in my family. There was quite an upset on Christmas morning when it was discovered that there was nary a piece of bacon in the house. Major oversight on Santa's part. Our eggs and stollen just weren't the same with the sausages that had been intended for the stuffing (nor was the stuffing sans sausage).

The lack of bacon led the tasty treat to become the topic of conversation for the festive season. Meals of bacon past were lovingly revisited. Recipes featuring bacon were drooled over.

In the middle of this bacon revelry, my brother revealed this piece of decadence. Bacon Blondies, or "Miss Piggies". I cannot wait to try this recipe. It was developed by a friend of my brother's and he won a prize for it at a cooking competition. My brother got to try the prototypes. He almost started drooling just telling us about them. The final recipe was made with bacon that the guy cured himself in sugar and cinnamon, but the ones my brother tried were made with storebought bacon, and he thought they were wonderful. I am thinking maple bacon. mmmmm.

But the bacon madness did not stop there!

What could possibly top the craziness of brownsugar cake with chocolate and bacon you ask?



This afternoon I discovered my mother watching bacon porn.

Christmas lunch

A few of my friends from university happened to be in the same general geographical area on Monday and decided to have our annual Christmas lunch and news catch-up session.

We had a great lunch, and were able to cover all the high points of news (highest being an upcoming wedding for M and a thesis defense for J, congrats girls! well, and I guess my starting my MLIS).

But, when we first pulled into the parking lot, we looked up and discovered someone else having his own special Christmas feast:

mmmm, pidgeon.

He was still there when we left the restaurant, but there was decidedly less pidgeon:

This guy was less than 10 feet away from the front of our car, and the same distance away from a rather busy street, and nothing was going to make him move. Happy Holidays Mr. Redtailed Hawk!

Sad Day

This is my last day as a nanny. It is kinda sad. Especially since I am very soon going to be living all by myself in a new city.

It has been really nice living with my cousin and her little family for awhile. I got to hang out with the coolest little guy all day long, and then I had a beautiful large space to go to be all by myself.

Plus, I got to cook for other people and have them appreciate my food. I know my mom appreciates it when I cook too, but we spend the meal analyzing the dish and what could have made it better. Here, they took what I gave them and ate it with gusto (or added habanero salsa or hot sauce if it wasn't spicy enough for them). The one time I expressed that I thought a meal hadn't quite turned out, they said, "Oh, this wasn't how it was supposed to taste?", so I stopped analyzing the food out loud.

Last night I had already gone down to my room when my mom called, so I had to go back upstairs to replace the phone after we hung up. I don't usually go back upstairs because I don't want to disrupt the bedtime routine. But the little monkey was still up, playing and watching a Christmas special. He came into the kitchen to see what I was doing when I replaced the phone, so I picked him up and carried him back to the living room when I was done, and sat with them for a minute. When I left to go back downstairs, I got halfway down the steps, when I heard him running and crying, and I turned around and saw the shadow of his little feet under the basement door. So I quickly went back upstairs, "Oh, I am sorry, was I not allowed to leave yet?". I ended up watching the end of the Christmas special with them while he showed me his new bath toys. It is nice to know I am loved.

I am so going to miss having a little guy to squeeze and cuddle and tickle all day. Those giggles are priceless. Can you tell I am sooooo ready to be a mom? I guess I better get started on looking for a husband. Maybe Santa will bring me one for Christmas and I can just skip the whole awkward dating thing.

The morning show

This was my train or thought this morning:

My brother's apartment building is really old, it has big landings.

The building I lived in in London (England) was the same age, it had big landings too, they turned them into bathrooms.

I really liked the room I took my showers in every morning there. It had a nice big frosted window that let the morning sunshine in.

Plus, some of my friends used that room too, so I got to say hello and have a chat when I got out of the shower.

Hmm, wait a minute .... it was only the guys hanging out in that stairwell waiting for the shower. Most of the girls used the showers in the main stairwell. But that was just because they lived at that end of the hall.

I wore my bathrobe to and from the shower. Why don't I wear that bathrobe anymore?

Oh, right, its kinda short.

...

Oh, now I know why there were guys lining up to wait for me to finish in the shower.

Oh dear.

Probably best that I realized this 7 years after the fact.

Not what I wanted for Christmas

We are all sick here. Kinda hard not to get sick when there is a teething toddler running around with his hands in his mouth bearing sickness and and then sticking those icky snotty slobber hands in your mouth. Yeah, its been pretty gross here, what with wiping his nose every few minutes and being thrown up on.

The thing is, I get sick every Christmas, and while this head cold is a welcome change from the usual stomach flu, it isn't any better. And despite to promises of my Neti pot, which I have used twice a day, my cold still progressed to the constantly running nose stage. Blech.

No, I do not have H1N1, or "the hinny" as my brother calls it.

And instead of sleeping, I am having these weird dreams about a plastic dump truck and the saving of Christmas (too much Treehouse).

I just wanna go to sleep and wake up all better. Can I get that for Christmas?

Advent Day 16

The best part about the holidays is the food.

We have traditional food exchanges with various friends and family. People plan their holidays around the food my mom makes, and we delight in the yummy things that come our way.

My mom likes to make baked goods, so almost all of her friends plan their Christmas morning breakfast around her goodies. She makes cinnamon rolls for a couple families, a coffee cake for another, and stollen for us an a few other families. Mom puts almond icing on the stollen, and occasionally bakes a ribbon of marzipan inside, Christmas morning is not the same without it.

The food that comes in is just as good. Last weekend I got to partake of our friend's Melton Mowbray Pie. Delicious, thy name is Melton Mowbray Pork Pie! mmmmm. We are looking forward to receiving cheese balls, homemade bits and bites, fruit cakes, the best shortbread in the world, and various other cookies and candies.

And of course there are all the Christmas dinners! We have family Christmas dinner on Christmas day, numerous dinners with friends, and a second family Christmas dinner when my cousins from the States can make it up to see us, and then occasionally we have a dinner on New Years Eve.

mmmmm, I am salivating just thinking about all the yummy yummy food. mmmmm.

Advent Day 15

I heard this song on CBC this weekend, on the show Tapestry, the song itself is awesome, the video is a bit cheesy in bits, but a good concept. (the radio program is on again on Thursday night apparently and it was a good listen if you wanted to catch it)

Advent Day 13

Tree of 2005, we were teased for getting a small one.

Note the Noma church from the 1940's underneath

Ok, so if you hadn't guessed, I quickly ran out of quotes for Advent. I suspect more organization needs to go into such an endeavour.

So, instead of quotes, I will now move onto my family's Christmas traditions.

Today my dad and I went out and wandered around a snowy field in freezing rain with a saw looking for a Christmas tree.

We have always gone out and cut our own tree, no pre-cut trees for our family. When we were little, I remember going out to the tree farm with my dad and brother, picking the perfect tree for mom, cutting it down, and figuring out how to tie it to the car and bringing it home, and then holding it up for inspection in the driveway when we got home.

As we got older, it became the thing that my brother and I did together when he came home from school for Christmas. We wandered around fields for hours, my brother eventually whining, "Carry me!", which generally led me to sing a chorus of "Carry me, Carrie" (in case you were confused, my brother is almost 3 years older than me and a foot taller).

The last few years, it has been my mom and I going out to get the tree, we made use of our feminine wiles and got the "young lad" at the tree lot to cut the tree for us.

This year, my dad and I went out together for the first time in more than 10 years. We went to new place, and what a mistake, the guy was really just selling off brush from his bush. We eventually discovered that he was selling the spruce trees in his field, they were few and far between, but they were at least Christmas tree shaped and sturdy enough to hold ornaments. So we went out into the field, and I saw a good tree about half-way across, so I set off walking directly there across the field, and told my dad to take the well-trod path to avoid stumps and pitfalls.

So I found the perfect tree, and walked right up to it, and suddenly found myself lying down in the snow with my leg knee deep in a groundhog hole. I was in the middle of a farmer's field with a very painful twisted ankle.

Luckily by the time my dad got there, it had stopped hurting enough that I knew I would be able to walk back to the car. Then, while we were cutting down the tree, my dad cut his ear on a lower branch.

When we finally got home and listed our injuries and the difficulties we had encountered, mom said, "See, there is no way that your father and I can do that on our own. That's it, we are buying an artificial tree in the sales after Christmas."

As I sat down to ice my ankle and discovered a goose-egg on the back of my calf, I conceded that it might be the best plan, as long as they got one with the lights built in.

It is the end of an era.

Snow

We are having snow here. Alot of it. My cousin lives in a rather windy location, so not only do I get to look at the snow falling, but for the brief moments when it isn't falling, I get to see it being blown around by the wind. There is another 4 inches of snow on the bbq this morning, and we used the bbq last night!

I love snow, when I am warm inside, or it is a calm sunny day perfect for tobogganing and snowfort building.

The thing is, I haven't really had to deal with snow for a long time. I lived in Victoria for three years, where we maybe got a week of snow the entire winter, and the Christmasses I came home to were remarkably green. One year the only snow I saw was a few wisps on the way back to the airport.

Last year I didn't have to go out in bad weather because I was working on my thesis, I could wait for good days to go outside. It didn't really snow all that much last winter anyway, the most snow I saw was when we went up to my cousin's in the north for a few days and walked on the bay. I didn't even get boots until January.

So this year I am a bit nervous. I am moving to an extremely snowy city, and I have to walk to school and to groceries. I will have to actually make sure I have emergency supplies in case it is too scary to go outside for a few days. I have class every day and attendance is mandatory.

I have been having nightmares of falling on my way to school and breaking my wrist. I lie awake planning how I would get help. I know I pass right by the university's hospital to get to my building, but I can't remember if they have an emergency room. This is actually keeping me up at night.

It is crazy. I am not worried about classes, just the weather.

Also, I am not really outfitted for cold weather. I need a proper winter coat, ice grips for my boots, and more wool socks.

Maybe Santa will provide.

Yes, I am nervous about starting over in a new city and new school. Argh!

Not the part where the quote is from, but where Stephanie finally loosens up, hilarious!

Toni - "A man who lies cannot love."

Stephanie - "That sounds like something out of a fortune cookie"

- Toni (Goldie Hawn), Stephanie (Ingrid Bergman), in Cactus Flower

Sorry, too tired to think of anything else, besides Cactus Flower is an awesome movie!

Advent Day 9

"No road is long with good company"

- Turkish Proverb

Speaking the same language

Today the little monster and I were being lazing about after his nap, watching some Treehouse, when one of the shows had an alien on it.

The alien spoke gibberish.

The little monster thought this was hilarious!

He was laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes.

He never laughs out loud at the TV, he might smile sometimes, but never the full on giggle.

It was really hard to tell if he was laughing because the alien was talking funny, or if he was laughing because he finally found someone who spoke his language and it was the first joke he understood.

Whatever it was, baby giggles are an awesome way to start the day!

Advent Day 8

"There is a crack in everything,

that's how the light gets in."

- Anthem, Leonard Cohen

Advent Day 7

"The children were nestled all snug in their beds

While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads."

-A Visit from St. Nicholas, Clement Clarke Moore

ok, so this was just an excuse to post pics of my gingerbread house from two years ago. I have gingerbread on the brain, I am planning a gingerbread lighthouse for this year!

Advent Day 6

Since today is the first Sunday of Advent, the day we light the Hope candle, here is a story about hope.

Advent Day 5

"What if you said yes?"

-Graffitti downtown Guelph, (I am too tired to figure out who said it first)

Advent Day 4

"A life lived in fear is a life half lived"

-Fran, Strictly Ballroom

Advent Day 3

"Mom smells like woodsmoke. All the time I kept on smelling her =sniiiiiff= and thinking, 'Mmmmm. Bacon.' "

-my brother, at a memorial service.

Advent Day 2

Obviously not a hyacinth

"If of thy worldly goods thou art bereft,

and to thee alone two loaves are left,

Sell one, and with the dole,

Buy hyacinths to feed the soul."

-Author unknown, my grandmother's favourite saying

Look after Aunt M up there Gran!

Advent Day 1

Thought for the day:

"Never let a little thing like complete and total humiliation stand between you and a good time."

- T.D., Martha Speaks

Yay! First day of Advent! Now, to try and find a "thought for the day" for every day until Christmas!