Christmas Eve

I work for a couple of days getting everything prepared for Christmas Eve.  This year I really mixed things up...just so everyone wouldn't be able to say, "Christmas Eve is always the same old, same old!".

Ever since we've been married it's always been our tradition to have a meatless meal on Christmas Eve and Good Friday, although in the past couple of years I've cooked a small ham to satisfy certain family members.  Neither my husband nor I will eat any meat until after midnight.  Usually I'll make fish, or a seafood dish of some sort, but this year I thought I'd go with a Chinese theme, so I made a huge pot of chow mien and added some shrimp to it, steamed some rice, did coconut shrimp and egg rolls along with a bunch of cheeses, pickles, dips etc.

Before dinner I usually read the passage from Luke about Jesus' birth but this year I read the passage from Matthew...just wanted to see who all were paying attention!  I'd hate for our life to get too predictable!

We had a great time and it was really nice to have the family all together.  Merry Christmas Everyone!!!!

Cookie Baking

Today my older daughter and her niece (my second granddaughter) came to bake cookies with me.  I've got double wall ovens so we were prepared to make LOTS of cookies.  Preheated the ovens and started by slicing up the refrigerator cookies my daughter had brought out.

While they were baking granddaughter and I mixed up a double batch of shortbread dough.  I put it through the cookie press, daughter placed them on the cookie sheets and granddaughter decorated them.

We finished baking the shortbread cookies and made up the Coconut Crisp recipe.  Only problem I'd forgotten how much they spread out so they baked together but we cut them apart as they came off the cookie sheets.



 Three cookies got left stuck together so granddaughter decided to decorate it like a snowman!

My older granddaughter had to work today so when she got off work she came.  By that time we'd almost finished baking all the cookies so she got the job of making pizzelles, a thin Italian wafer or if you're Swedish they're called Kromkker.

It was a long fun-filled day with lots and lots of laughter.  We divided up the goodies to take home. 

Four different kinds of cookies will be nice to serve to our guests over the holidays, and the best thing is we're planning to do it again next year, God willing!

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR 

Kiwi

At church this morning we were talking to some friends.  She was very excited because there was quite a frost last night and they have a kiwi vine, and after a good frost it's a good time to pick the kiwi.  They invited us over.  We'd never seen a kiwi vine or had any idea of how they grew.
The vine was humungous and looked more like a tree, and it was loaded with kiwi.  It was quite the experience and we got a bunch of kiwi but also got to spend some time with our friends.  Guess we'll be eating kiwi for the next little while!  Yum!  Yum!