Monday, December 13, 2004

I had a busy weekend. I went to a Hanukah party on Sunday night and it was quite delightful. There were a lot of kids -- the throwers of the party are part of a "Mommy's group" and invited friends from it to celebrate. I went mostly for the potato latkes, which I had never had as a part of a Jewish tradition, but I remember my father making them every once and a while as potato pancakes. We ate them with applesauce (as I did at the party) or stewed tomatoes (a topping that I did not find at the party). I also enjoyed them with sour cream. Yum. So it was quite a fun time, and I got to (kind of, there were lots of little children and as a Christian, I thought I shouldn't hog the view) watch them light the candles on the menorah. There was some singing, but I only recognized the dreidel song. Sadly, they did not play Adam Sandler's Hanukah Song.

I went to another party -- although it was a lot smaller -- on Saturday night where we played Trivial Pursuit. My team won, mostly because of our entertainment trivia knowledge. Watch out -- if we can choose between "Roll Again" and "Pink" (Arts & Entertainment), we'll go with pink! Piiiiink!!!

I made chocolate-chip cookies for the Saturday night party (and then brought the end of them to the Hanukah party, yay for me!) and they ended up being a little crunchy. Why, you may ask? Oh, because I totally forgot to put in two sticks of margerine. Yes, I read one cup of butter/margerine to mean one stick. So the cookies still turn out, although they don't flatten out as much, stay pretty white instead of golden, and are crunchy. But they still tasted pretty good. Plus I used Mrs. Field's Premium Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips.

Continuing in the cooking vein, I made this awesome chicken curry this morning. Well, actually, I put it together and it is cooking in my crockpot at home as I type. I love the smell of curry powder -- it's just so yummy smelling. But while I was buying ingredients for the curry, I forgot to pick up some ginger. So this morning I had to run out and buy ginger -- which they didn't have at Trader Joe's, much to my surprise. So I got some dried cherries so I can make (what sound like) delicious Black Forrest cookies. Yes, they are chocolate cookies with chocolate chunks and dried cherries. Yum, yum, yum! Let's hope they turn out okay. But back to the ginger -- so I got it at the regular grocery store and it was cheaper than I thought. So I think I'm going to make some candied ginger for the holidays. I think my boss would like some -- he's a big fan of Chinese food, and I recall that he said that he really likes ginger. Especially ginger altoids.

Well, I did manage to finish all of my Christmas shopping on Saturday. I have several Trixie Belden books to send to my little Alaskan cousins, including one I picked up at Target for $1.58! (The new versions are very pretty, but I like my old oval covers.) I also managed to get all the stuff for my mom's homemade present. It is coming along okay so far -- I just hope that I can get it together without too much hassle. One advantage of make a homemade gift is that I am learning a lot more about the features of my sewing machine. It is quite fun, although frustrating at the same time.

Yeah, so I think that's about it. I am sooo looking forward to being home over Christmas -- you'd think that I wouldn't necessarily need another vacation so soon after being back in Wisconsin in November -- but seriously, I do. And hopefully I'll be able to see some of my college friends and perhaps the lone high school friend that I still actually talk to. Plus I will get Christmas presents. Prezzies!!!

No comments: