Biscotti

Some how I've kind of forgotten that this is supposed to be a food blog. So here's a fun recipe for biscotti. I tried it a few years ago, and now we love to make it every once in a while. The fun thing about this recipe is that you can change it to whatever flavors and "add-ins" that you want--dried cranberries, raisins, chocolate chips, orange zest, cinnamon, whatever. We made some a week ago for a party and they were devoured so I had to make some more for us last night. Jesse especially loves biscotti--I think that's because it's almost a combination of his favorite food groups: dessert, bread, crackers. Here's a link for a great recipe:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Low-Fat-Almond-Cinnamon-Biscotti-2255

Christmas Eve Traditions

We hope you all had a very Merry Christmas! Our family did. It was fun this year to just be our family in our house for a change. It was very calm and peaceful. Yay!! We have several family traditions that we love at Christmastime. One of them is our Christmas Eve dinner. When I was growing up, we used to always have Cheese Soup and homemade bagels for Christmas Eve. I loved it, but apparently I was the only one. Dale doesn't really love cheese soup that much and none of the kids did either. So we went through a few years trying to figure out a fun and special meal for Christmas Eve. The year we made our own Tempura was fun and delicious but so much work. By the time we got everything cleaned up, I was exhausted. I decided we needed something simple, but still fun.

About three years ago, we tried something new. We did "make it yourself" sushi. It was fun and special and SO EASY!!!! All I have to do is chop up a few things and then lay everything out. Everybody then makes their own "sushi" however they want it. And the best part is that everyone loves it, including myself since preparation and clean-up are a snap. Now, of course, I wouldn't recommend this to too many people because not everyone loves sushi, but for our family, it's one of our favorite traditions.



That's us ready to eat our sushi. We had crab, shrimp, and a little salmon. Oh, and we also had our favorite new soda pop--7-Up Pomegranate--yummy!!!

After dinner, we had to put out cookies and milk for Santa and carrots for the reindeer. Then Dale snapped a shot a shot of the kids in front of the tree. Kind of cute, aren't they?!?!?!

Calista and the Tree

Dale and Calista have a tradition each year (for the past four years) of going and finding our Christmas tree and then cutting it down themselves. It's actually quite inexpensive to do it this way (unless you're counting gas) and so much fun for them. They were a little later than they usually are, but they still had lots of fun together and got a beautiful tree.

This is how supermodels pose when cutting down a tree.

This is how supermodels drag a tree out of the forest. Don't mess with her!!!

Thanks, Dale and Calista, for a great tree this year!