Bob, Sara and Taylor included stockings in my package for me, Chewy, Danny and Fox! (I didn't have Ama yet when they sent the package). There were many, many ornaments (THANK YOU PEG!!!) - I didn't have a tree so I cut a branch off an avocado tree an decorated that!
There were also wheat thins and other great snacks that are unavailable here. I spent part of the afternoon organizing my food into boxes of sweet, salty and meals - I am now an official food hoarder...
I was instructed NOT to open the stocking until Christmas morning so this morning I ran to the green couch where the stockings had been "hung" with care - and low and behold Santa brought me a thermos, a pine Yankee Candle, a flashlight and a Santa pez dispenser! Each of the dogs got a great chew toy too! Although Fox didn't really know what to do with his, so Ama took it...
Kris, my favorite middle cousin, sent these great ornaments with pictures of everyone in the centers - a GREAT reminder of our Christmas's together! I especially liked the picture of Jay asleep!
Lisa Tucker sent me a package with a WONDERFUL bound book of photos from last summer's MWL mini-reunion in Three Lakes. Feels like you guys are here with me now!By the way, when are you coming to deepest darkest Africa for a visit???!!!
There were all manner of goodies in Lisa's package - I stocked my larder! She also sent the first 2 seasons of "Weeds" (watched the first 2 episodes with my friend Jeff from Imbabazi). Hilarious!
Gail Hall sent puppy treats and clickers for Ama (Gail, she learned "sit" in 2 tries!!!). Ama was a little frightened of the squeak toy at first, but now it is one of her favorites. If there were sound on this blog you could hear the squeaks just now!
Gail also sent packages of nice SOFT Kleenex (Yay!), many wonderful snacks including tuna, some fun reading material, and a picture of Vignir that is now on my bulletin board!
The rest of the morning I spent preparing my contribution to the Christmas dinner I was attending at Katie and Glen's house (Katie is the director of Karisoke Research Center). I had a cake mix I brought from when I was home in October, so I mixed that up and put it in the oven along with the oven thermometer I brought back. It was hard to keep the oven at 350, but I did my best.
While the cake was baking, I began to prepare artichoke dip with fresh artichokes I got last week. Finding the heart in a fresh artichoke is hard work (I googled food network for advice)! I had 5 artichokes and after 30 minutes of cutting and pulling off the outer leaves and another 30 minutes of boiling.... I had 4 bites of artichoke.... which I enjoyed.... but no dip for the party!
Back to the cake. I had 2 round cakepans, and one of the cakes got a bit burned on the bottom, but I didn't let this lessen my determination. I scraped off the burned part, and started in on the icing. Last week in Kigali I found "icing sugar" and thought I was home free (I bought 2 different kinds just to be safe)! Sugar, milk, vanilla and butter - what could go wrong? Well.... let me tell you. First batch was very granular - it wasn't really powdered sugar.... I set that aside and made another batch with the other package. This batch ended up too thin, but not too granular... Hmm. I decided to mix the two batches, thinking that the thick, granular batch would thicken the thin batch. I was out of sugar now so this HAD to work. Alas, it was still too runny and now the whole thing was a little gritty with sugar granules. At this point I decided to just try to ice the cake with a "drizzle. A good thought, but when I put the top layer on the bottom layer, with "drizzle" in between, it slid off and crashed on the plate. Yikes. Thinking quickly I grabbed a toothpick and tried to tooth-pick the top layer to the bottom layer. That seemed to be working, so I drizzled some more icing over the top. It was looking okay! I thought I might actually end up with a nice cake, when the top layer started sliding again, ripping a hole in the top layer where the toothpick was... Ugh. Now what to do???? I have repaired cakes with icing at home, but this batch was too thin... hmmmm. I thought, maybe if I cook it the icing will thicken. Bad idea. It turned into crystalized candyish goop. I tried to repair the cake with the goop anyway, but alas, it only made matters worse.
Here's the aftermath of my culinary attempts:
Here's the "finished" product...
Not horrible, and will likely taste good, but not attractive enough for a dinner party! I think I'll cut it up and we'll eat it here at the office next week...
Here's what I brought instead:
Dinner at Katie and Glen's was great - we had good conversation, watched 18 month old Anabel enjoy her new toys, drank mulled wine, ate turkey, stuffing, potatoes, sausage, beans, Christmas pudding with cream, cheese and chocolate! I'm still not hungry this morning!
When I got home last night I skyped with Bob and the kids, Peg and Jim and Mary Ann while they were opening presents at Jim's. I talked to Anna Lynn and Linda, and left messages for Leigh Ellen and the Jores (I'll try again tonight!).
Hope you all had a wonderful holiday, and that your cakes turned out well, and you enjoyed time with family and friends.
Amakuru!
YAY! the package arrived! I am so happy because the thought of putting a trace on it thru the US postal service accross continents was a little scary to me....I mean MWL girls are good at many things but I'm not sure about that one :) Anyway, despite my misguided belief that perhaps you'd get the package closer to Thanksgiving, maybe it was more fitting for it to show up on Christmas eve.
ReplyDeleteLoved the cake story as I just watched the movie Julie & Julia again. I'm envisioning your best Julia Child accent - 'oh dear' as you battled the cake :)
Merry Christmas Jan! I can't believe you've been there almost 6 months!