Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas!
Without you all, we're rather listless.
Maybe you even miss us?
It's hard to find the Christmas cheer,
when you are not so very near.
Karli sheds the occasional tear.
We miss the winter and all the snow;
even if temperatures are way below,
at least Karli can feel her toes.
All day long we'd cross-country ski,
breaking for some very hot tea,
and eating all the cookies we could see.
Baking Mexican mocha balls,
we'd over-decorate the halls,
with wreaths and banners on the walls.
Then we'd sit by the fire,
listening to hymns sung by a choir,
late in the night, until we tired.
Yet of all the things Andy will miss,
lefse and lutefisk top the list,
guess he'll settle for Karli's kiss.
So without bells or sleighs,
in this semi-poetic way,
we're wishing you Happy Holidays!
How is Christmas celebrated here? Well, from what we've gathered, there is a big feast of turkey on Christmas Eve. On Christmas morning, we awoke to what sounded like a parade, but was in fact a truck with Santa and parents in the back pulling what looked like three caterpillar, carnival roller-coaster cars packed with ten kids each. Ask my brothers or father for a better description. We were chatting at the time, and they too heard it before they saw it, and then could hardly believe it, particularly when the little boy somehow fell out of the car and onto the street. There were no church services on Christmas Eve or Christmas day that we were aware of. We instead lived vicariously through Papa's yearly practice, an 11pm candle-light service, with an organ! We could not find any of the Catholic church's services times online or in any guide book, so we settled for the previous Sunday's service at Guillermo's church. It included a children choir, an adult choir, in pretty navy blue and white robes, which we've never seen or heard before, and dancing clowns. Clowns. I asked Guillermo at dinner last Monday, "Do you always celebrate Christmas with clowns?" He proclaimed that people celebrate just about everything with clowns. Also, these weren't just any clowns. They were impressive. Male and female couples in corresponding outfits, the French couple comes to mind, who danced in front of the adult choir as they sang one of their several Caribbean sounding songs. We realized that South America simply does not do traditional, Christmas hymns. At all.
Christmas Eve we planned to make yeast pancakes for breakfast. Why yeast? There is also no baking-soda or baking-powder in this country. Except I used all the milk on hot cocoa so that was postponed to Christmas day—when we also made homemade syrup. Except we used all the vanilla extract on cookie dough and of course there is no maple extract in this country, so it tasted of slightly-hardened corn syrup.
Thus, Christmas Eve breakfast saw more oatmeal, but dinner was delicious. It resembled Thanksgiving with lots of butter, fish and a green bean, mushroom, carrot mix. In an attempt to somewhat pay homage to Andy's typical white Christmas Eve meal of lefse, lutefisk, twice baked potatoes, and Swedish meatballs, we made mashed potatoes--the homemade kind, Mom, the ones where actual potatoes are used, not the flakes and malodextrin boxed stuff.
The next morning, after a Christmas Eve trip to the grocery store, our masterpiece. Not actually a masterpiece but when all you've had for breakfast for a few months is oatmeal and bread pudding, it tastes good, or at least different.
Christmas dinner wasn't too planned out. One year I remember having Italian with my traditional holiday crew: my family, my cousin's family, and Ommie and Papa. I think that was the year we went for something "easy." I think perhaps the only thing we cooked was pasta. And maybe not. Stew Leonards might have cooked ziti for us to accompany the chicken parmesan. This was when it seemed my Mom hosted endless numbers of hockey pasta-parties for my brother's high school team, and used the services of Stews quite frequently. Actually, the Italian Christmas might have been, in fact, the Christmas I was in Italy with the Erickson's. I'd like to say my family resorted to Italian in homage of me, but really, Mom, I know you and your boxed potatoes too well to make that claim. All of this, is a round about way of saying, there was a predecent for an Italian Christmas meal.
Without further ado, I bring you Christmas dinner 2010, sphagetti and meatballs.
Now, seeing as our fancy breakfast plans were pushed back a day. The Sunday after Christmas we made homemade English muffins. English muffins, are one of the few breads that do not require an oven. They turned out quite well for our first time around. Sorry the first photo is disorienting, I must have held the camera crooked. Also, you can see the blackberry jelly we bought special for the occasion.
We even achieved the browned, crusty bottom. Even without a toaster.
In all fairness, our second round of English muffins failed. We surmised the water was too hot when we combined it with the yeast. Those were yucky, yet we ate them. We even tried to turn the remaining dough, once we realized it made bad English muffins, into stove-top pizza. Unfortunately, unleavened dough is unappetizing no matter what you put on top of it. If flour weren't so expensive, we might have tossed it. As it were, however, we were inspired by our new understanding of the yeast's needs. Andy decided to try stove-top rolls. Now, there is no recipe anywhere that suggests or describes stovetop baking, but they were pretty darn good.
Here are the rosemary-olive oil rolls made via the steam method.
The truth is, the reason I didn't post for the majority of December, was not because I avoided intimidating you with our movie-watching and food-eating abilities, but rather, because we were sad to be missing out on winter, the holiday season as we knew it, and of course, all of you. The thought of having to sound cheerful was something I simply did not have the motivation for. However, we hope you all had a wonderful holiday and have a fun, safe, New Year's Eve.
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