Better Than Ezra By Far

[kelly_chambliss]

In our household, holiday success is judged mostly in food terms.  Unlike Thanksgiving, I did not eat myself into a stupor on Christmas, but we had a tasty day all the same.  Brunch was brioche French toast with sweet-potato/maple puree and toasted almonds (excellent) and bacon (which we love but don't allow ourselves too often) and mimosas with fresh-squeezed orange juice.  The child was allowed his touch of champagne, too.  Dinner started with spicy pumpkin-sherry soup (many thanks to therealsnape  for the wonderful recipe) and moved on to beef wellington, sauted sprouts with chestnuts, and roasted potatoes with rosemary.  Dessert was brown sugar ice-cream with homemade dark hot fudge.  (We stupidly forgot to bring the pate for the beef wellington, so my partner had to improvise with a paste of pine nuts and coriander.  Delicious, although the absence of the pate probably means that "wellington" is a misnomer.  But we're calling it that anyway.)

On the gift front, I received a graphic novel version of Pride and Prejudice, my favorite perfume, and .... a KINDLE!  My excitement knows no bounds.  It's all charged up, and my first book has been purchased (a Charles Todd detective novel), and I will probably soon bankrupt myself.  Can't wait.  Nothing will replace the pleasure of actual printed books for me, of course, but I love the idea of having a steady supply of light reading literally at my fingertips.  Binge reading is one of the ways I deal with stress, and it will be great not to have to haul innumerable paperbacks with me on my travels.  You should have seen me trying to carry a month's supply of reading material to Poland when we spent part of the summer there in 2006.  (Books in English could be had in Poland, but the selection was small and the import prices were high.  It's my own fault for not being multi-lingual, I know, but there it is.)

And just in case all this isn't a sufficient embarrassment of riches, the child's gift to me was -- hand-drawn pictures of McGonagall and Snape!  As soon I'm near my printer, I'll scan these masterpieces and post them so that you can share the joy, too.

Comments

[kellychambliss.livejournal.com]

I'm not even too sorry about the loss of the pate; I always feel bad for the geese.

even if you can get English books where you go, there's still the small matter of carrying them back

I actually had to leave my English paperbacks in Poland. I flew home only two days after that big scare about people planning to blow up British Airways jets by taking on board some sort of explosive liquid compound (August, 2006), so no carry-ons were allowed at all (except for medicine and baby formula and tampons, as I recall. In a clear plastic bag.) I had only one check-able bag with me, and by the time I crammed my carry-on stuff inside, there was no room for books. I left them with the desk clerks at the hotel and hope they went to good homes.

[tetleythesecond]

Unh! My heartfelt condolences! I hope they had good in-flight movies. A transatlantic flight with nothing to peruse except baby food ingredients and the TSS warning sounds like terror in itself. (Tampons in a clear plastic bag sounds like a lot of fun, though. "Excuse me, I see you have super pluses left...would you trade me one for two minis and a jar of apple/banana?")

Well, at least you can pride yourself in having done something to promote foreign language skills abroad...