Christmas, Christmas, Christmas

Christmas in most cultures almost always involves a lot of cooking, baking and of course, eating. Here are some of the highlights of the Christmas season feasting in our household:

On Christmas Eve, we had a not-so-traditional Christmas dinner of basil, tomato and shrimp linguini, and a tomato mozzarella salad, accompanied by delicious french red

wine.

After dinner, we indulged in a double-layer chocolate cake, separated by raspberry jam and covered with a dark chocolate ganache.

And my very favourite, Christmas morning breakfast, in which I made oatmeal-blueberry pancakes and belgian waffles for the family.

My Feeble Attempt at a Gingerbread House

This year I came up with the crazy idea to make a gingerbread house from scratch. I prepared the gingerbread, cut out the shapes, baked it and let it cool. Everything seemed to be good, great, a piece of cake.. but then I attempted to assemble it. Every year it's the same thing, I get so excited about decorating the house, that I skip right past the "letting the walls set" stage and go straight to the "setting up the roof" stage, and lo and behold each time the roof collapses. This problem was solved by hoisting the entire house up with mugs, cds, dvds (whatever me and my sister could find really!). The real dilemma, however, happened during the night, when my dog decided to seek revenge on her faithful walker by ripping off half of the roof. I was not impressed; I had to go through the whole entire cycle again. Who knew that making a gingerbread house could be so distressing?!