colonial williamsburg

  

This one's for Megan, who likes Colonial Williamsburg almost as much as she likes Mt. Everest. Duke of Gloucester Street is a lovely place to walk, especially on a marvelous sunny day just before Christmas when all the houses were decked out with wreaths and garlands.

a tale of two bakeries

  

For Gran's 87th birthday, we drove over to Plaza Bakery (pictures 1-3) and bought half of the baked goods in the world, and then drove over to Sugar Plum Bakery (pictures 4-7) and bought the other half. We made Gran endure a particularly off-key rendition of "Happy Birthday" (not a single good singer in this bunch), and then we feasted.

conor and the dog

  

Just Sunny and Conor goofing off, plus Sunny doing what she does best at her advanced age: looking sad and/or possibly dead. (My mom says she plays "dead or asleep?" with the dog every morning. Aww, old Sunses.)

welcome to virginia beach

I spent two weeks in Virginia Beach leading up to Christmas, and have thoroughly remembered why you might want to live someplace with a mild winter. I wore my wool peacoat all of once while I was home. I wore shorts outside, repeatedly.

And on top of that I got to see my whole immediate family all at once, plus my brother's girlfriend, both grandmothers, all of the cousins from one side of the family and my uncle from the other side of the family, some dear friends I hadn't seen in years, and -- last but certainly not least -- Sunny the upwards-of-fifteen(!)-year-old Labrador. Plus I cooked up a storm, hosted a dinner party, biked into the state park twice, biked on the boardwalk twice, went out to breakfast at The Beach Pub and Doc Taylor's (the latter of which is in an old beach house down at 23rd Street -- there can be crazy wait times, but the place is super atmospheric and if you're into brunchtime drinking, there are $2 Bloody Marys to make the wait go faster), went out to lunch at Doumar's and Bite (twice), and bought out the inventory of two excellent local bakeries (more on that to come).

Two weeks is such a great amount of time to be home, I think -- long enough not to feel harried -- though I could happily stay much longer. Are you sure you don't want to take me up on the offer to become the family's personal chef, Dad? I assure you my rates are quite reasonable.

merry christmas from the dog

Sunny doesn't much like being an elf.

weihnachtsmarkt

I'm in Virginia Beach for the holidays, but first a couple of pictures from the Frankfurt Christmas market.

1. The star lights you see all over the place in Germany during the holidays.

2. What happens when you rubberband two full packages of 40 sparklers each and light them on fire. (I stood waaay back.)

Happy holidays!

thanksgiving

My very favorite of holidays, without a doubt. This was my third Thanksgiving in Frankfurt, and . . . fifth? away from home overall, so I'm pretty used to missing my family on Thanksgiving. Still, Thanksgiving with good friends in Frankfurt (plus Mandie joining from Cologne!) was excellent. Everyone brought or made something to share (even my friends who had just gotten back from Australia), and I made:

+ mashed potatoes (with Greek yogurt, like Rachel says to do it)

+ cornbread stuffing (adapted from here -- no sausage, and subbing vegetable broth for chicken broth)

+ mushroom gravy (this one, which is a bit hard to follow as far as amounts go, but I used 500g of white button mushrooms and 800g of vegetable broth, added over time as needed, and it was amazingly good)

+ caramelized corn with fresh mint from the NY Times, which I made for the third year running! Its first appearance was at Thanksgiving 2009, where I was turned into a pumpkin.

+ pumpkin pie (from here, plus homemade whipped cream that I accidentally almost whipped all the way into butter)

+ raspberry pie (Katherine-style: Betty Crocker-esque double crust made with all butter, filling of frozen raspberries, some sugar, and some flour all tossed together, a few pats of butter here and there. Delicious.)

+ cranberry sauce (okay, I didn't so much make it as pop open the lid on the can, but the can of jellied cranberry sauce is one place where I don't mess with tradition. I was completely happy to leave turkey off the list (there would not have been turkey at all were it not for Kylie's last-minute decision to purchase and roast turkey legs!), but I don't mess around when it comes to my Ocean Spray.)

The stars of the show, though, were Mandie's green bean casserole (totally homemade, if only because you can't just go out and buy a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup here) and Rebecca's honey spice cheesecake with some kind of graham cracker-esque crust. Deadly.

I'll make it home for Thanksgiving again one of these years, but this was a mighty fine expat Thanksgiving.