Symmetry is very important to my children.
Biggest/best news this week: There is A SECOND MALLORY ORTBERG BOOK on the way!!!! GET. EXCITED.
Kayla Whaley on losing the ability to eat, and what that means for her holiday celebrations with her family:
If I invited in the not-hunger in small doses, then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad later. Maybe I could build up an immunity, or at least a tolerance. If I couldn’t control the hurt, maybe I could work with it, let it nestle in me rather than surprise me. Of course, as I’m writing this I realize this might have been what my therapist meant when she said I needed to grieve, when she encouraged me to let myself feel however I felt. But staring at those turkeys—in the grocery store and later at the one bathing in our sink as it thawed—didn’t feel like grieving. It felt how I imagine training for an athletic competition must feel: painful but productive. Intentional repetition to build strength and stamina.
A Christmas Album in Which More Than a Few Aims of Feminism Have Been Achieved
I enjoyed this immensely, and spending at least one Christmas in Australia is now on my list of life goals:
Miss Christmas in some rented or borrowed beach house, and the troop down to the sea first thing in the morning, dragging along presents if you’re still attached, hoping the sand doesn’t get too engritted in the pages of a new book or the wheels of a new remote-control car. Miss waking up on Christmas Day and launching yourself into the sea, shrieking with your sisters and brother, the sun hot on your shoulders, the water a cool slap in your face. Miss taking your body board down with you and skimming along the foamy surface of the waves, delivered tumbling and laughing to where your parents sit on the sand, their legs outstretched and their faces grinning. Miss someone’s tinsel-strewn beach towel.
December Dad Mag: THE HOBBIES ISSUE!
Have a wonderful holiday if you’re observing one this week, and no matter what I hope you get some time off and/or with loved ones to do whatever it is you want to do. If you are celebrating, tell me what you are most looking forward to! I seem to have come down with a cold just in time for Christmas, but am still eagerly anticipating the festivities — we’re going to visit my husband’s family and also see one of my dearest friends in the world (thank you, in-laws, for so courteously retiring to the very same town where said friend happens to reside), and I plan to eat my weight in Ina Garten’s Company Pot Roast and assorted Christmas cookies and finally see Star Wars. (My friend, today: “I don’t want to spoil the movie for you, but there’s an Asian lady.”)
Love to all, especially those for whom the holidays can be tough. We’ll have an open thread up for you tomorrow, so come say hello.
I have a job with paid vacation (????? I still don’t get it), and I’ve been home since Saturday, just, like, soaking in the Christmas. And we have a Christmas Eve party every year, wherein we all get far too drunk and listen to Dwight Yokam’s Christmas album. Also all of the Glee Christmas albums, because we are monsters.
But mostly I am looking forward to getting the pair of LL Bean slippers I asked for, because I am an old man and am ridiculously excited about owning nice slippers.
Those Bean slippers are the absolute best, and they will replace them for free when you wear holes in them! They’re a life-saver.
This is literally going to be one of the best gifts I’ve ever received.
I have a pair of those in a fetching lavender.
On the subject of the leading photo: a friend of mine who went home two days ago texted me today in a panic like “We didn’t make gingerbread houses!!”
I texted her back to say “We can get the kits on clearance and set them up as love shacks in February,” and just after my text had sent I got one from her saying, essentially, the same thing. It is nice to have a friend who finally gets me.
Gingerbread love shacks is a BRILLIANT idea.
The kids usually make gingerbread houses with their aunt every year, which is wonderful because she is SO GREAT at making gingerbread/frosting with just the right consistency and is a perfectionist whose houses always look perfect, and she does all the work so I can just sit back and watch and eat candy and enjoy.
I am making a very fancy vanilla cake with vanilla custard and a white chocolate ganache and I am hoping it turns out as beautiful as I’m imagining! (I have watched a lot of GBBO, so my hopes are perhaps slightly too high, but there you are.) Also, every year I made about a hundred butter rolls for my family and they are my favorite food in the world, so I’m pretty excited for that as well.
Recipes for both, you are honor-bound to provide them!
😀 Cake recipe is here: http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/vanilla-bean-c…
The origin of the bread recipe is long lost, unfortunately, but here it is and hopefully it won’t make scrolling too difficult:
Ingredients:
2 tsp instant yeast (or 2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast, but in this case, it has to rise twice)
1 stick butter (soft)
1/4 cup warm water
1 cup milk
2 tbsp sugar
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp salt
3 cups flour
1 rosemary sprig
2 garlic cloves
Coarse sea salt
Instructions
Mix 2/3 of the butter with the milk by cutting it up into small pieces and putting it in the milk. Mash up the remaining 1/3 of the butter with the rosemary and sliced or pressed garlic cloves and set it aside.
Put the yeast and warm water in a bowl, stir it, and let it sit for five minutes or so.
Put the milk and 2/3 of the butter in the microwave for a minute (or until it is warm, and, I assume, the butter is melted).
Add the sugar, salt, egg, and one cup of flour to the yeast/water mixture. Then add the milk/butter mixture, and mix it until the flour is incorporated. Do the same with the other two cups of flour. Let the dough rest for five minutes before starting to knead if you’re doing it in a mixer; if you’re doing it by hand, start kneading. ONLY use extra flour if the dough is sticking to your hands – it should be sticky. Let the dough rest for 10 minutes.
Lightly butter a baking tray. Transfer the dough to a floured surface, flatten it with your hand, and cut it into nine or twelve pieces of about the same size. Put them into the baking tray and let them rise for between an hour and an hour and a half.
Mash the rosemary, garlic, and remaining stick of butter together as much as you can. Leave it sit while the dough rises. Put it in the microwave after the rising is done, and brush it all over the rolls. Then sprinkle sea salt over them.
Bake at 350 for 20 minutes until puffy and golden brown.
BLESS U
these rolls sound amaaaaazing.
I would mail some to every Toastie if I could!
This afternoon I am looking forward to some Christmas Eve weight lifting in my hopefully empty gym, followed by dinner at my in-laws’ where we will open presents and watch Christmas Vacation and I will drink a lot of wine and Bailey’s.
Hope you have a lovely day! Bailey’s was always part of my family’s celebration, too. Pretty sure the first time I ever got tipsy was as a teen, with my parents, on Christmas, which is so uncool and thus very fitting.
Me too!
A second Mallory Ortberg book?! WHO IS THIS SECOND MALLORY ORTBERG?
Doppelganger? Secret clone? Antimatter version from the Mirror Universe, with an evil goatee… well, maybe not that… or, like, all radiating predatory evil lesbianism… wait… hmm. Eye patch? Let’s go with an eye patch.
What will happen when they meet? (They are destined to meet.) The end of our universe? Spontaneous fusion into an all-knowing alchemical rebis? Epic duel to the death, a whirlwind of flying blades and spitting curses?
THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE.
I got almost no work the first half of this month, so agreed to review any books that vacationers didn’t have time for, and…ten books this week! Huzzah! I treated myself to a pint of carrot juice and some coffee and am glad to have work (and an Open Thread) as pleasant and purposeful distractions to look forward to. Wishing all Toastfolk very happy holidays! ETA: Fox News is showing up in the sponsored content here, WTF?
Today is the birthday of my childhood best friend, and even though we have been on opposite sides of the country for some thirty years, I still think of Diane’s Birthday as the appropriate lead-in to Christmas. I may make some glogg tonight in her honour.
Not sure if I’ll be online for tomorrow’s OT, but wanted to share this Chocolate Bread recipe with my fellow Paleo-esque Toasties looking for a decadent but not too sweet pastry-like treat for the holiday. Next time I make it, I’m going to try about one tablespoon less coconut flour, but it’s pretty fantastic as is.
Saw this, thought of you. Merry Hiddlesmas!
Nicole, you need to replace Sansa’s dog tag immediately.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/84977221/wag-more-ba…
Where is that dang open thread? We got out of work early today and I want to hang out!
Right?!?
I am still at work but I am, of course, not working, and I, too, want the dang open thread!
I would bet cash money that Mallory was supposed to do it. Fine, we can make our own fun! I nominate myself Temporary Bartender. Toasties, what is your favorite childhood stupidity story? I will put mine below.
When I was four years old, my Dad took me and my sisters to the circus. My mom, who was staying home, thought we wouldn’t be able to see, and she gave us each a pillow “to help us see.” At the circus, I spent a good 15 minutes peeeeeeering over the edge of the pillow, thinking that would help me see better. (Eventually my dad noticed and had me sit on the pillow.)
oops gonna have one tomorrow!
I got to leave work early today! Now my plans for the rest of the evening include taking a nap with my dogs and then making a few dozen cookies for Christmas. I make my mother’s sugar cookies and one of my grandmother’s cookie recipes every year, and then my dad gets a little teary-eyed and brags that if he closed his eyes while eating one he’d swear his own mother made them. I’m not going to lie, that might be my favorite Christmas tradition.
Since this is the interim open thread, I have a serious question:
Would sitting around alone on Xmas Eve playing Fallout be considered a bit “on the nose”?
No, that sounds like a good evening. I am sitting around in the early hours of Christmas day playing Undertale though.
Nope. Buy yourself a fancy beer and do it up!
Just be aware that if you have to go outside for anything it will feel very weird. I’ve been replaying Fallout 3 and re-reading Zone One this week, and when I was walking home from dinner tonight the streets were fairly deserted and quiet, and I kept eyeballing street trash.
I’m so excited for the open thread y’all. I spent today doing the waypoints and rough sketch of my 2016 cross-canada bike tour and I am SO. STOKED. I’m so excited about it, I just need to nerd out with other bike people. I get to sleep in a ghost town! And ride through some of the most beautiful parks in the world! I’m so excited!
Open thread up ~*~TOMORROW~*~ instead SORRY GUYS
Open thread up ~*~TOMORROW~*~ instead SORRY GUYS
oops gonna have one tomorrow!
Yippee Kayak Other Buckets!
I made a cake, frosting, and pizza from scratch today. Also washed and folded two loads of laundry. Best of all, I took two naps.
Christmas came early, I think.
I made a cake, frosting, and pizza from scratch today. Also washed and folded two loads of laundry. Best of all, I took two naps.
Christmas came early, I think.
Just be aware that if you have to go outside for anything it will feel very weird. I've been replaying Fallout 3 and re-reading Zone One this week, and when I was walking home from dinner tonight the streets were fairly deserted and quiet, and I kept eyeballing street trash.