Monday, December 24, 2007

Solstice

Hello! This is not your usual hostess of the Trapped Realm - she is "away from her desk", at this time; on her way home to her family for Christmas. I, the Tapdancer, have shimmied my way over here to get these pictures up for you viewing pleasure. The first part of these pictures can be seen over at Tapdancing on the Edge of Reason.
This first picture is of the fun we have with Christmas crackers- its awfully hard to be grumpy with a silly paper crown on your head (although none of these dopes are wearing crowns - hmmmm).

Bea, aka Chanda made an incredible Baked Ziti for dinner, accompanied by a lovely green salad, dressed with gorgonzola, olive oil and balsalmic vinegar. The equally astounding homemade bread was made by Dave-man, who is renowned for not only his kick-ass BBQ, but his KA bread as well. Are you hungry yet?

We open the Christmas crackers at the table before dinner, to keep the "kids" busy. Look how well its working! Here Grandma translates one of the jokes that are written in French - I thought she might have been deigning to read fortunes, but alas, she was not that drunk at this point.

Here I am, the Tapdancer, with my sister-in-love, mugging for the Trapped One. I am a bit glassy-eyed here, but happy! That has to count for something in times like these.

This is my beloved niece, Nickel (I'm not telling you her real name - she's a celebrity in actuality, so we try to keep it low-key, so the fans will give her a break) - isn't she lovely? And she is as sweet on the inside as she looks on the outside, which a rarer and more wonderful gift than a pretty exterior. Sniff - i just love that girl!

Once we had demolished the appetizers, and the dinner feast, we brought out the big guns - dessert! Here you see the cookie tier and a beautiful old dish full of Bea's incredible biscotti. she made her grandmother's traditional anise-flavored ones, but then she created her own recipe for Cranberry Orange Biscotti, which we dredged in Scharffenberger's Semi-sweet chocolate. OMFG, they are orgasmic - I think they should be her signature recipe, they are just perfection!

The Piece de Resistance of the evening was my mother's Buche de Noel - a chocolate roll cake filled with coffee ganache and frosted with her famous chocolate chip frosting. Its an awesome cake; one that I am always trying to get her to make (I had a version of it for a wedding cake), and what makes it truly an artform, is the little meringue/chocolate mushrooms that decorate it. They look real enough to fool your more "groovy" friends, but they melt in your mouth, and you can't get arrested for possesion of them...I don't think. She made extra mushrooms to garnish with, which was greatly appreciated by everyone - it can turn ugly with a limited supply of 'shrooms.

so there you have it - the Solstice Party, in two parts. (Don't forget, the other half is over here, at Tapdancing on the Edge of Reason). Bon appetit, and Happy Christmas!

3 comments:

flutter said...

oh how much fun!!

we_be_toys said...

So what IS it about the word Solstice, that like, Liv said, sounds so good?
I don't know - for me it evokes several images...
The image of druids cutting down with a silver sickle the sacred mistletoe on the Solstice.
Putting up our Christmas tree on the Solstice when I was a child, and feeling like Christmas was finally underway.
The short-lived, but wonderful Venison Sunday that fell often on the Solstice; again kicking off the holidays for my family.
Celebrating the Solstice with my friends at college before heading home - it was our thing for many years.
It also plays a part, for me, in the ritual lighting that occurs at Samhain, and is echoed on the Solstice by all the candles and light we use then, again as a ritual lighting of the darkness.
"And that's what Christmas means, Charlie Brown"
Or something like that!

anne said...

Thanks for visitng my blog and OH MY GOD, MERINGUE MUSHROOMS!!!

My sister-in-law from WV brings a Yule Log cake every Christmas with those mushrooms. She finally started making extra mushrooms because they are a Christmas miracle as far as I'm concerned.