Our Christmas decorations weren’t all that complete, as we’re not entirely sure where some of them are stored … well, in the garage, yes, but we didn’t want to open every box to find them. Nevertheless, we did have a bit of fun cutting out stars and snowflakes – from paper recycled from our Christmas Cracker flyers, pulling out the whirling pyramid Christmas thing (Weihnachtspyramide) that we got from a Christmas Market in Germany in 1999, and making a clove orange to hang in the entryway. Now T’s reading the last of her Cybils nominations and working on book reviews in preparation for tonight’s midnight (well, between 5-7 p.m. for everyone else) meeting with her judging panel, and D’s catching up on fiction reading, and generally enjoying some time off. D. has a telephone interview-ish thing today with a professor from Puerto Rico – and we’re dreaming of warm places for our next location!
It was nice not to feel the need to do much of anything – while J. was here, we mostly sat around and chatted. J. crocheted up a flower for T.’s felted hat, D. nearly finished up another knitted-felt project (yet another hat – but an actual hat, rather than merely a cap), and T. has taken up a striped cabled scarf on her knitting loom.
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Of course, no one should visit without us using the occasion as an excuse to do some baking. We had a lovely basket of raspberries and a pair of old, wizened apples, so we made Raspberry-Apple Pasties. We also made some savory ones, with a curried lentil-carrot filling, but the filling just wasn’t as picturesque as the fruit ones. No sugar, only 4 ingredients, and they were fabulous: apples, raspberries, cranberry wensleydale cheese, and a crust. Pinch them up, bake them until golden, and you have a pie!
And if we might say so: Scottish raspberries are a blessing from God. Amen. Amazingly sweet, even for so early/late in the year. We get them from the farm folks, so someone still has them growing – and we’re really, really glad.
Today we’re being thankful that the incessant wind has stopped (which sounded rather like the ocean, it was so loud) and working our way through those things on the to-do list which have been delayed for too long. T’s been muttering about finally trying out a faux Goldfish cracker recipe to give away paired with her painted glass jars of layered soup ingredients, and we’ll try to bake up another batch of gingerbread cookies later on, or perhaps watch a movie – although hopefully our second one is nothing like that dumb one with monsters and aliens…
Our families all have this week off as well, so we suspect there’s a great deal of lounging going on all around. Hope you’re able to kick back a little bit, too.
-D & T
The apple raspberry pasties sound divine! And so great that you could get the raspberries this time of year. Belated Merry Christmas–sounds like a good holiday all around (and fingers crossed for warmer climes!)