Luna del'Corvo

On the one hand, this is the first year I've felt holiday-ish in quite a while (and if you've known me for a while, y'all know I love Christmas, godless heathen notwithstanding). Last year I was just too beaten down by the School year from Hell to where we didn't even get a tree (more on that later, too; I have a lot of backstory to fill in, don't I?), and the year before Dad had just passed. But this year, I was into it!

I've been baking up a storm (as usual, if a week or so behind schedule), and was all set to host the family Christmas morning brunch. It's a lovely event if I do say so - roughly 8-12 people, a big breakfast including eggnog pancakes, and of course, all the bakery in the world: cookies, stollen, fruitcake, and this year a few new entries, like a snowberry crostada.* I had invited everyone on Thanksgiving, and gotten enthusiastic acceptance. So, I called around the 23rd to confirm the time, and got a shock. Apparently, since I had not been calling and flogging this thing every week since Thanksgiving people didn't feel like they'd actually been invited ('didn't feel invited enough,' that's a direct quote). So none of them showed.

Now, just between you, me, and the lamppost, my son and I both ended up being sick as dogs Christmas day, so it was, cosmically speaking, for the best, but they didn't know that, so I'm not letting anyone off the hook!

SO we've been baking at our leisure (still at it, actually), and enjoying a quiet, lazy sort of holiday. Which is nice. But...

I still feel like I'm caught in the week before Christmas, and here I am three days from returning to school (blech; not as bad as last year, but...blech.)

*About the baked goods: don't @ me about fruitcake, this is great-great-grandma Ada Sue Winchester Dunn's famous Southern fruitcake, and it is nothing at all like the doorsteps hawked by the 'cheese and sausage pushers.' It's spicy, moist, and boozy as heck. It's delightful, I swear. And if the snowberry crostada sounds vaguely familiar, you might have played Skyrim. It--and a number of other new regulars on the house menu--come from the Elder Scrolls Cookbook. I cannot recommend it enough; even if you're not a fan of the game, there are some real gems in there.