I am home, kitties are happy to see me, and man...Christmas with my family was great, but I am so glad to be home and done with the holidays so life can go back to normal for a while.

Ooh, I almost forgot I had chocolate covered-cherries for Xmas! Eating them now.

My honorary aunt and uncle - they were not related to us but, I guess friends of my grandparents? I'm honestly not sure how they were connected to us. But they sent each of us kids a $5 bill and a box of chocolate-covered cherries every Christmas. It's the only time I ever had that particular candy, so it's totally a Christmas flavor for me. When I saw a box of them made with dark chocolate when I was looking for something else at Target, I went ahead and picked them up and saved them for today.

Pretty much as I remember them. Yum.

Happy Merry, everybody. I love us all.

This sloppy sentimentality brought to you by post-dinner, pre-coma giddiness of excellent ham, sweet potatoes and perfect broccoli with horseradish and sour cream sauce, followed by marionberry coffeecake and dessert coffee.

I refrained from instigating a full-on, extended version watch of all three LotR movies today, and feel that was the better part of valor. And may I just say at this juncture, "Tree pretty."

Aww, Theresa, that's nice to say.

Dinner is over except pie, mmm, pie! It went splendidly. Roast pork w/ apricot glaze. Asparagus w/ lemon butter. Brussels sprouts w/ bacon. There were also supposed to be my grandmother's Portuguese sweet rolls, but my yeast is apparently dead. So it ended up being a pretty clean meal. Other than the two pieces of pie, of course. Did I mention, mmm, pie?

Waiting on the folks' call: my sister & fam are at my mom & dad's place. And then we're going to change clothes and take a holiday photo as if we haven't been slounging around in inside pants all day. But hey, when can you slounge around all day in inside pants if not Christmas Day?

And then pie!

It's been a pretty good day.

I hosted mom and dad today. cooked the full meal (as it was, not so much actually), make snacky stuff, and never changed out of my pjs.

For anyone that has Aldis, I highly recommend the pre marinated turkey breast thingies for an easy no-fuss meal. It was not sage turkey, which to me is the holiday flavor, but it was good and mac wanted seconds, so WIN.

The rest of lunch was: 2 kinds of mashed potatoes, package crescent rolls, mixed green salad, cranberry salad.

Homemade cinnamon rolls (2 batches), then eggs and sausage for breakfast.

snacks were sausage dip - store bought cheeses and hummus. spiced fruit drink, hot chocolate, coffee.

it wasn't so much a lot to cook, but there were dishes to wash after each new thing was finished.

I just want to eat caramels ALL DAY LONG. And pretty much did, today. Maybe will again tomorrow. Then it has to stop.

My parents' final Christmas gift to me was watching two episodes of Top Chef on demand just now. Tomorrow for my birthday, they may actually get me a cable box, and then all will be right with the world.

God bless us, every one!

Stock is made, as usual I ended up with more than I expected. Putting in 6 cups of water and getting back a half-gallon of stock just doesn't seem right.

Lori unexpectedly joined us for dinner. We had a standing prime rib roast that was delicious (and we bought for less than $20 so well worth it), mashed potatoes, green beans the way I like em (blanched mostly), and sauteed mushrooms. For dessert we ate ice cream with homemade butterscotch syrup. Nothing beats homemade butterscotch.

It's been an excellent food day -- dutch baby, mac and cheese with rotissserie chicken, and then dinner.

We had rib bones. Would it have been worth making stock?

I am out of TV until Friday. Not to worry, there is plenty on the DVR, but it's weird to go so long without recording anything new.