Gearing up...

Mary has been doing a bit better these past two days. She did end up back in the ER on Monday night after two horrid nights at our place where her acid reflux was so bad, she was ill every 15 minutes. The doctors prescribed some stronger meds to control it and she’s been back at our place since last night. She kept her dinner down and wasn’t sick all night. This morning, she actually had a smile on her face from having slept for the first time in over a week. I just hope we can make it to the 20th without any more trips to the ER.

We’re gearing up for our Christmas celebration on Saturday. Final menu is: spinach cheese squares, hot asparagus dip, smoked salmon and cold shrimp (for my Portuguese nephew who has been eating all sea creatures since birth!) to start. Cod stew, which sounds horrid but it is really a lovely soup even for people who don’t like fish. It has fennel and bacon in it to kill the flavour and the cod is mulched up so small, you hardly know it’s there. Herb and garlic roasted chickens, perogies (store bought but we need to have something Polish on the table), tortellini with my world famous creamy pesto, roasted potatoes and salad from Roman, stuffing casserole from Basia, green and yellow beans and asparagus. Dessert = Polish goodies cause I have no damn time to bake. Mother nature is not being friendly this year and has kept her temperatures up to balmy heights this week so I haven’t been able to freeze my pre-made food outside. I can’t believe I’m complaining about warm weather in December. Christmas has muddled my brain.

I’m going on record right now with all of you as witnesses to say that I am never ever going to try to emulate one of my mother’s recipes again. I always end up just screwing it up. The spinach cheese squares that she makes that everyone loves came out way too spinachy and flat. Granted her recipe had everything in ounces and pounds. What the hell is a pound of grated cheese? I was converting my heart out and obviously messed up along the way. I’ll serve them anyhow to satisfy everyone’s vitamin and iron requirement because they literally look like I just spread out spinach across a pan.

Cards in the mail soon I promise! Simon's class photos only just came in two days ago.