Our only tradition is FOOD

Whenever we visit my husband's mom I have this strong desire to fill up seventy-five bags of trash to throw out. Although she lives alone, her two fridges and three (yes three) freezers are packed to the brim, not to mention the craft room chock full of candy she's just made. So of course since we are visiting, she runs out a buys a lot more - stuffed salmon and these fried apple yummy things for a Hannukah dinner, lots of fruit and juice for the kids, lots more milk, whipping cream and vanilla ice cream just in case those are needed for the two giant pumpkin pies. Putting leftovers away, not to mention finding something in one of those places, can take up to 15 minutes and two frozen hands. But we just love the food so who can complain.

She taught my kids how to make apple smiles (apple slices, peanut butter and marshmellow), which my son insisted on making the next day, only so he could eat marshmallows for breakfast.

They also dipped cheesecake squares in rick dark chocolate, and decorated those with swirls of white.

And just for fun we all made butter molds.

Christmas dinner brought more salmon (hard to see, by my nephew put a peace sign with the extra dough on top of the baked salmon, over ruling his wife's suggestion of the middle finger),

pork roast, two types of cranberry sauce and my first ever green bean casserole. It didn't come out so good, but was so easy to make I might try again in a smaller dish (the only ingredients were bread crumbs, butter and pepper, heavy cream and blue cheese -

and of course green beans). I swear I've never seen so much homemade candy: rocky road, peppermint/pistachio/cranberry/white chocolate bark, two types of chocolaty toffee truffle goodies, beautiful patterned chocolate peanut butter bark, maraschino cherry chocolate, and several types of cookies, including the "million dollar peanut butter cookies." These won the Pillsbury baking contest million dollar prize, and are certainly good, but a million dollars? And of course since my MIL made them she had to drizzle melted peanut butter chips and chocolate on them.

Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas. We're of to enjoy the new snow and give the kids their first taste of skiing.

Snow Vacation Day One Recap

We landed in Salt Lake City yesterday, and before we even went into the house to see grandma the kids had jumped in the snow. The did allow me to put their coats and mittens on at least after giving grandma a hug before we were off again, rolling around, face diving, and making pitiful snowballs with the very dry but fluffy stuff.

Here are a few more stats from day one:

1. Fights over the single pair of boots: 1
   
2. Times they've asked to go skiing, snowboarding or skating: 15
   
3. Fevers, no doubt from playing in the snow wearing pj bottoms, boots, t-shirt and scarf only: 1
   
4. Mugs of Kona coffee I've drunk: 2, yum! (courtesy of world's best employee)
   
5. Smashed fingers from playing pool: 2
   
6. Cups of gourmet extra special hot cocoa the kids have rejected for "being too rich" (but I've drunk with peppermint schnapps): 2
   

My MIL, who was one of the top caterers in Utah for the longest time, has this bowl of cocoa mix consisting of rich good cocoa powder, chopped up dark chocolate and peppermint, and sugar. You fill a mug halfway with this chocolately goodness and fill the cup with boiling water or milk, yum!