…and a Partridge in a Fig Tree…

Ways to Enjoy a Christmas Weekend:

• Be awoken by a wet-nosed dog jumping on your bed and sticking its’ nose down your covers and then your shirt.
• Rub Frank’s Red Hot in your eye after marinating tofu in it and not washing your hands well enough after handling it.
• Frantically wrap all of the presents you’ve collected but had no time to wrap.
• Frantically clean and do laundry that you’ve had no time to do.
• Make Super-Charge Me cookies for Santa. I am Santa in that sentence.
• Lots of nature walks in the woods.
• Wake up before anyone else and decide to kill time until everyone is up by making cinnamon rolls and surfing the web.
• While surfing the web, get the blue screen of death from your computer. Start freaking out about it, but don’t really have time to be worried because then everyone else is up.
• Enjoy a wonderfully relaxed holiday with family. And feel incredibly lucky for the wonderful company and the opportunity to finally slow down.

Ah, yes. Aside from the couple mis-haps…I’ve had a wonderful weekend “detoxing” from all the insanity leading up to Christmas. I really hope everyone else has had time to rewind and enjoy themselves and the company of loved ones, too!

As mentioned, Christmas this year was really laid back. We didn’t even do anything special for dinner last night or Christmas Eve. We had a more formal breakfast/brunch as usual, but that was it. And I am certainly not complaining.

…even if I did have to break in to one of my stocking stuffers to tide me over to breakfast. Hey, eating breakfast at 9:30 is a new concept to me. And I love cookie buttons.

Anyways. I mentioned baking cinnamon rolls, didn’t I?

My mom always makes a sausage strata fro Christmas, and not much else. Strata is pretty filling and with just the four of us, there’s not need for more food. Since I wasn’t going to have any, I was almost just going to make my usual breakfast since there wasn’t the need for another big dish to be on the table.

I suggested I could make baked oatmeal, but my mom said she didn’t like oatmeal…only for me to remember how much she enjoys oatmeal on her breaktime.

“If you don’t like oatmeal…why do you eat it at work?”

“Oh, that’s microwaved oatmeal.”

“…and…?”

“It’s got…apples…and stuff…”

“Oh, I guess you’re right…because I’d just make something bland and tasteless.”

I didn’t press the issue, though…and even though I really wanted to make cinnamon rolls, figured I’d just take things as they came. I wasn’t too worried about the food situation this Christmas, I guess.

And then of course, the next morning, I just had to make Veganomicon’s cinnamon buns. You can only put off a recipe for so long, and the Maple and Brown Sugar Pinwheels have been calling my name for a while now. Okay, only since last weekend when I did all the baking, but a week is long enough.

I ended up switching the flavor notes around a little, by really playing on the orange zest in the original recipe. I added dried cranberries to the brown sugar filling, and for the 2 cups of flour, used 1 c. white whole wheat, 1/2 c. graham, and 1/2 c. unbleached all purpose. For the spices in the dough, I added cinnamon, nutmeg, ground clove and ginger…and put a big ix-nay on thie icing-ay.

…and some walnuts in the filling, too.

These were delicious and loved by all, and you know what? They’re really not even all that bad for you! Gotta love it. I could easily have them with less sugar, too – even though for 8 buns only 1/3 c. sugar was used, I think I could easily halve it and the filling would be sweet enough to make up for it.

I spooned some coconut milk yogurt over mine because I was afraid it would be too dry otherwise, but that really just caused it to be a bit too sweet.

I’ve had worse problems.

Like the fact that, as mentioned, my computer has pooed in its bed. Everyone cross your fingers that I can at least do a harddrive recovery and get back the senior portraits and pictures on there! I wouldn’t mind a new Mac, though…even if I do mind shelling out that cashmoney.

This dilemma is currently making blogging rather difficult, as I’m just now realizing how streamlined Windows Live Writer is, after all. I didn’t like it at first, but I think I just hate change until I get used to things. Using my mom’s computer and blogging from the wordpress dashboard? Yeah, it’s sort of like making a meringue without a mixer. You can do it, it just ain’t pretty or efficient.

Oh yeah, look at my new Fig trees. Yes, trees is plural. Lets do a fig-tree dance for a full harvest next summer!!

This was a hoot to open. I think we were all in tears from laughing.

Anyways. Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrated this weekend – and enjoy the last of your holiday weekend! If you’re getting a crazy blizzard right now, please stay safe!

Most random present you’ve ever recieved?

Mac or PC? If Mac – iMac or Macbook? I love and far prefer macs – I’ve just never owned one myself since they’re so daarn expensive. I figure this time, though, if I need a new one, it’s go big or go home, right?

ALSO – edited to add – that the pictures of me making the cinnamon rolls, my sister so graciously took for me. I am not magic, nor am I so into my food photography that I set up a tripod and put my camera on timer 😉 (not saying there’s anything wrong with that, I just don’t see myself ever getting any baking done if I were to do that 😛 )