Christmas Wrap Up

Well another year into the pandemic and trying to stay optimistic is getting hard. Just when things looked like they were improving along came Omicron and we're very nearly back in lockdown. Many businesses have capacity limits again and we're being told to upgrade our masks to N95 or KN95's.  I was able to get my booster before the province opened it up to everyone 18 and over but getting tested is hard, we're told just to assume we have COVID and isolate until symptoms improve or to go to hospital if you have chest pain or difficulty breathing. 

But overall it was still a pretty good year and it ended with a nice family Christmas. Well, more family than could get together last year. My youngest sister came up from Kingston and stayed with me; her husband decided not to join us. My niece and her family had moved back to her parent's place as they had their townhouse up for sale in preparation for a new job and a move to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

I invited friends to join me in decorating my tree. My sister and one of my friends did join me. I was a little late getting the tree this year. The  tree lot that I go to had very few trees left but the ones they had were still nice. For the first time that I recall, the tree lot actually closed before Christmas Eve as they had sold out.

I hosted Christmas Eve. The menu was seafood chowder with cornbread, followed by meat pie and Greek salad, finished up with mince tarts and ice cream. The boys had McDonalds Happy Meals. It was nice hosting on Christmas Eve since it meant I didn't have to pack up the dogs and drive home. We just had to put on our PJs and sip another glass of wine before heading to bed.

Christmas morning the dogs got to open their stockings before we headed out to my sister's place for Christmas brunch, opening gifts and Christmas dinner.

We had an enjoyable day, hopefully next year it will be more normal with less worry about getting together with family and friends but then some of us will be further apart so who knows who will be able to get together next Christmas. 

Boxing Day was kind of spent relaxing. In the evening, my brother in law, my two sisters and I drove down to Parliament Hill to see the Christmas light show. After seeing the show, we all just went home and had left overs. My youngest sister and I had meat pie and shrimp with a few more glasses of wine and watched some movies. My sister left the next day and I took the dogs to an agility practice in the afternoon.

In years past I have invited a number of my girlfriends over for New Years Eve, last year I decided not to host the event but this year I thought we would be able to get together for a couple hours for a drink and a chat. But Omicron squashed that, I had hoped the surge in cases wouldn't be here until after the holidays but no such luck. I could have gone to my sister's place but I decided to stay home and have a SALY New Year's Eve. SALY is an expression I learned on one of my military postings when describing the organization of an event. It means Same As Last Year. I made myself a nice charcuterie board and opened a bottle of Prosecco. I didn't think I would make it until midnight but I did.  

I did go to my sister's place for New Year's Day dinner. I've started taking down decorations. I don't like to do it all at once; the house feels so drab when you do that. I leave the tree up until Epiphany or Little Christmas as my mother used to call it.  

So while COVID still dominated our lives, life wasn't all bad. For me, there still was no international travel again this year but we did get out and do some camping last summer right into the early fall. Next summer, the plan is to go west to Alberta with my youngest sister and her husband. No one in the family has yet to be sick with COVID. We welcomed to new family members, two little great nieces with another one on the way. I was able to continue with agility classes with Teddy and Liam. Teddy was able to get three Jumpers Qualifying scores in the two trials that we entered. Liam will be old enough soon to compete but we're going to hold off entering any indoor trials until the positivity rate comes down. Hopefully we'll be able to enter some outdoor trials before we start our summer trip. 

So I'm grateful for all I have and am looking forward to 2022 being a much better year.

 

COVID Christmas

Well, I'm sure Christmas 2020 will be one most of us will remember from all the rest.  We were asked once again to reduce our close contacts but single people were permitted to have close contact with one other household so I'm still bubbling with my sister and brother-in-law.

On Christmas Eve, we made two porch visits to drop off gifts to my nephew and neice and their families. We dropped off gifts at my nephew's place just before lunch. After this visit, I went back to my place to get the shrimp chowder started as I was hosting Christmas Eve dinner for the three of us. My sister and brother-in-law came over later in the afternoon to pick me up to go to my niece's place. There we played a ring toss on the antlers game.  

After playing ring toss, we headed back to my place for shrimp chowder, meat pie with salad and lemon tarts for dessert.  Usually my nephew hosts a big family dinner on Christmas Eve with both sides of the family joining in, so this was a quiet dinner but still nice. This was the first time I've made an Acadian meat pie. It didn't taste like my mum's but it was still good.

Christmas morning at my place was pretty much the same as in other years with the dogs opening their gifts. Only Keltic really gets it; I think Liam might figure it our but all he wanted to do was rip paper. Keltic even managed to get into one of the bags of treats. I noticed before he got too many out. 

Christmas Morning - opening gifts

Then it was off to my sister's place for brunch, presents, virtual gift opening and dinner. Quiet without my sister's children and grandchildren but three dogs helped keep things a little lively. We had a lovely brunch with appetizers, eggs, bacon, cranberry orange bread, coffee and Mimosas. Then we opened our socks. We had decided only to do gifts for the boys this year and just stocking stuffers for the adults but some of the stocking stuffer gifts were pretty extravagant. Then we did a virtual gift opening with my neice and her boys. They had put our gifts aside so we got to watch the boys open them. You can see my great nephew opening one of his gifts at the Baby Yoda link below; I had signed it from the dogs.

Our view

The view on the other side.

Opening Baby Yoda

Dinner was great, even though we had just the three of us, there was enough food for an army; even the dogs got to have some Christmas Dinner.

Since it was a crazy COVID Christmas, my sister had decided we should do Ugly Christmas sweaters so we had to take some pictures with our Ugly Christmas sweaters, masks and silly hats.

The last picture is with the napkins my brother in law had picked out. He hadn't realized, when they were folded, that they were a picture of Santa's underwear; my sister noticed right away.  

The evening ended with taking pictures of Liam by the snowmen where we usually try to get a picture of the grandkids.  

It was a quiet Christmas but we still were very blessed with family and good health.  Let's hope that 2021 will be much better and that we can have our family close once again.

Tasty Travel

Inspired by friends who over Thanksgiving weekend planned menus from restaurants in Paris, I decided to travel to London for a nice dinner. Since we can't physically travel, I selected a restaurant in London called The Ivy and used their menu for the inspiration for the dinner.  I invited my sister and brother-in-law to join me for this Taste of London travel dinner.  

Except for the Parmesan Zucchini, I hadn't ever made any of these recipes so it was quite an experiment, but it all turned out quite well. Timing the courses of meal is the hardest thing to do. I did most of the preparation throughout the day so I wasn't all doing it in the last couple hours.  I made the filling for the bacon and leek tarts on Saturday as the recipe I used says it could be made up to three days before. I made the English toffee cakes the day before the dinner, then all that had to be made on the day of the dinner was the toffee sauce. 

Since the Ivy is quite a formal restaurant, I decided that we should dress for dinner. The dress code was "outrageous" as you can see we were quite outrageous but still classy.

The boys even dressed up too. They were our "wait staff"; but all they did was wait. They didn't even get any leftovers.

"Wait" staff

So onto the dinner, the appetizer was a Bacon Leek tart made with goat cheese. These were really good, definitely worth making again. 

Bacon Leek Tart

We had a little bit of a pause before the main course as the cod fillets were still a little frozen so they took longer to cook.  The main course was Crab crusted cod fillets plated on a white bean, lemon and clam stew. The Ivy menu uses cockles but those are hard to find here. It was served with Citrus steamed Broccoli and the Parmesan Courgettes. (Brit speak for Zucchini.)  Everything turned out quite well.  The white bean stew actually surprised me, it was quite flavourful. 

Crab-crusted Cod

Lastly there was dessert, English Sticky Toffee Pudding with French Vanilla ice cream. We only needed a short pause here as all that needed to be done was to bring the sauce to a boil for a couple minutes and warm up the cakes.  

English Toffee Pudding

I had three white wines ready and chilled for our dinner. My sister selected the Pinot Grigio, I hadn't noticed the name when I purchased it but it was rather appropriate.

Corona wine?

We had a good time with this Outrageous Taste of London dinner.  I have made a promise to myself that I will go back to London someday so that I can eat at The Ivy wearing the same dinner jacket I had on for this pandemic dinner.