From Thanksgiving to Now

Stuart came down with a cold the day before Thanksgiving that knocked him out for two or three days.  This is how he he spent all of Thanksgiving Day.  He's a handsome devil.

The rest of us were undaunted.  With Stuart's blessing, we pressed forward with our Thanksgiving preparations.  The girls made sweet potato casserole and green bean casserole and fruit cup (with the bitters).  And all that I needed to do was assemble the stuffing and cook the birds. 

We were alone for Thanksgiving.  I really hate that we are so far from family and friends because I would love for my house to be full of company. I suppose it was for the best on this particular holiday. Our guests would have gone home incubating plague germs!  Anyway, it was just the seven of us so I decided to serve Cornish game hens instead of the traditional (enormous) turkey.  The kids were delighted with the size of these tiny birds and christened them ptarmigan.  Perhaps we were the only family in America that celebrated this Thanksgiving with ptarmigan.

It wasn't enough to celebrate just one holiday on Thanksgiving.  We hauled out the Christmas tree and had it set up before our feast came out of the oven.  (More to come on that later.)

A few days after Thanksgiving, Stuart was on the road to recovery but the children were dropping like flies.  They've been drinking plaudamentum by the pint.  (John stole the name from The Lamplighter and applied it to the gallons of lemon water they've been making for themselves.)  They seem to be on the mend so, today we started our next Christmas project.  Cookies. This one was much easier than last weeks candy canes.  (The candy canes, by the way, went wrong.  Something happened and after we got them on the tree, they began dripping and warping.  They look like a Salvadore Dali creation! They're still tasty so it was not a complete disaster.) 

We made rich butter cookies from The Joy of Cooking.  Here the kids are spreading them with the first layer of confectioner's frosting.

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, how frosty are your branches. Charlie put about a pound of frosting on this cookie.  He can't wait to eat it! This was definitely a good project for him.  He had a great time helping to mix up the cookies and the frosting.  He frosted about five or six cookies before he got distracted and began to taste the frosting and nibble on the broken cookies.

Lauren used a little more finesse and a lot less frosting and created some beautiful cookies.  The girls really got into this project.  I was impressed with their creativity and focus. 

Here are a few of the finished results ready for a Christmas party in the near future.