cjs

absolutely must have garlic!

o.k. how about some food christmas eve was all about the food and then the gifts. we had roast duck, which my mother stuffed with prunes, raisins and apples red cabbage caramel potatos and the one thing I would actually like to forget, the gravey you could stand a spoon up in. dessert was heaven, riz alamande. anyone else have this?

our advent calendars came from my aunt in Denmark when we were kids. There were no chocolates, but very intricate and sparkly like pictures. I also remember the gifts she sent for us were tied with real ribbon. no tape in sight.

As a kid, when it got to be close to christmas, my sisters and I couldn't wait for the decorations to go up. They were always done in the night when we were asleep.Every morning we would wake up and run for the living room to see if the "elves" had been busy in the night. It really felt so special when we were small. We also had these paper elves(actually they are called nisser in Danish)that we would find for days on end, stuck on different things throughout the house.

LOL, this is a science project, not food. =R= I didn't intend to imply, by posting those lists, that I think there's anything so terrible about putting 55 ingredients in something. Those long ingredients lists tend to look worse than they are. A lot of the ingredients come down to being useful ways to maintain consistency of product: if there's not enough fat, you add some, or whatever. A lot of those things are often just fancy words for salt and sugar and shortening. Don't let the technical terms freak you out too much. Unless you're one of those people who belongs to groups like Chefs Collaborative, where the mission specifically opposes the ingredients that are commonplace in mass-market foods. Hey, wait a second . . . you are quick mr. Fat Guy!

sounds like a trip I had to take to T.O. last June.

but not that tough!