From our house to yours

From our house to yours - wishing you a very Merry Christmas to all who celebrate and a joyous, healthy, happy and prosperous New Year!

June and Jim Perry

Twas the Night before Christmas

This is for the children in your house and for those of us who still love to tap into our childhood memories every Christmas.

Today will be an all day baking and pre Christmas dinner prep day. Yesterday I went through all the flashing slip test tiles that were in the Energy Exchange firing and most still seemed too dry; but I suspect the wood ash also contributed to some of the dryness.

John and I put off our firing of the 175 plus slip and glaze tiles till Monday. Hopefully by then, we'll have heard back from Ronan on how hot they fired the kiln and what kind of soda they used in the firing. Till then, I'll be cooking and baking and indulging in some wonderful holiday meals.

Tomorrow we'll be having our family's traditional Lithuanian/German/Polish breakfast of home made babka, ham, kielbasa, hard boiled eggs and horseradish. Dinner will be pretty much a repeat of the Thanksgiving turkey dinner since the store was out of the rock cornish hens which I had planned.

Wishing all who celebrate it, a very Merry Christmas.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Wishing all who celebrate a most Merry Christmas, filled with love, companionship, good food and lots of merriment. And in the words of Tiny Tim "God bless us everyone!"

We made merry last night with dear friends at the Knife in Fork in Spruce Pine. The place was packed which is well deserved! Chef Nate smokes his own trout and his delicious smoked trout appetizer is a meal in itself. That was followed by pork belly, mashed potatoes and squash with a cinnamon bread pudding and vanilla ice cream dessert which I shared with everyone at the table. Great meal.

Today I'll watch some Christmas movies, maybe tidy some bits on my out of date web page until I can get around to working on the new one, and continue with this Nikon D100 re-education. I'm still not getting the focus right, even on manual. Yesterday I intended to spend more time with it, but I made a couple more Etsy sales, so I had to get those pots packed up and ready to ship. A bit of a cold is slowing me down as well; but I did manage to take a few more photos but still can't seem to stabilize the head on the tripod. Next time I'm going down there with a little level so that some of my photos won't look like the pot is sitting on a tilting, sinking ship!

Tonight I'm making a simple ham steak dinner with scalloped potatoes.. My big cooking day will be tomorrow, starting with a big Polish breakfast, and a dinner of white wine basted roasted duck, asparagus, wild and white rice with sauteed mushrooms, currants and slivered almonds, and friend Betty's cookies for dessert. 

Merry Christmas Everyone

 Here's a pictures of one of the fireplaces at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, taken when were there celebrating a good friends birthday a couple of weeks ago. I should take a photo of our fireplace, which looks a lot like this one, and post it some time this week.

Yesterday I baked Babka, which is a Polish, sweet bread. We'll have that for our Polish breakfast along with with kielbasa and hard boiled eggs with horse radish. In the past we also had ham, but our appetites aren't as big as they used to be, so we had ham for dinner last night instead.

Right now I'm listening to a Josh Grobin Christmas album while sipping my morning tea. The tree and staircase are lit and I'm thoroughly immersed in the feeling of Christmas. Bonnie and Bodhi have fresh food and water and Jim is walking Bodhi in the rain, which is slowly melting our beautiful mantle of snow. The temperatures is above freezing, so we avoided the freezing rain and this will be good for anyone traveling locally today. .Life is very, very good.

On this special day, and every day, we are so grateful for the love we share, our beautiful family including the furry members, good friends and enough abundance that makes sharing and giving an easy choice. Merry Christmas everyone!