myohmyohmy

My oh my oh my, what a nice day it’s been.

Mom and Dad came over around 10:30 for breakfast. Ted made waffles which were very good, and we used some of my peach and strawberry syrups (jams which’d failed) as well as regular syrup, and mmm yummy. After that, an orgy of gifts. There was a great deal of cleaning up done, including a long bread-loaf pan which I’d been coveting, X2, The Lion King, a jillion or so books, *four* CDs, new small cereal-sized bowls, a sports-sized MP3 player, and to my huge amusement, a limited edition copy of Alex Ross’ Mythology, which is his DC Comics artwork from literally since his childhood. This was funny because I’d gotten Ted the non-limited-edition version of the same book. *laugh*

Ted got piles of gaming stuff, two baking-oriented cookbooks (which both look *magnificent*), The Two Towers Extended Edition, a much more complicated MP3 player than what I got, a really gorgeous dark red sweater that Mom knitted for him, and wow, gosh, other stuff too. I’d have to look to know what for sure. :)

Shaun got new shirts (which he ALWAYS asks for), a dremmel tool, a new mouse, Ted’s copy of the Mythology book (o.o), some gaming stuff, and a bunch of very silly stuff from his brother and sister. :)

Mom got a Picasso print which, if we do say so ourselves, was *beautifully* framed, and a t-shirt and a couple of calendars, my traditional gift to her. :)

Dad got a yoga mat and a t-shirt and a puzzle and a very silly pendulum man who should provide many hours of entertainment. :)

Lucy, as far as she’s concerned, got a papasan. She keeps getting very annoyed when a *human* sits in *her* papasan. *laugh*

Then I made the pie.

Now, okay, look. I’m a good baker. I’ve been baking for a long time, and the way I choose recipes is by reading through them, if I’m looking for something I haven’t made, until I find one that looks good to me. I’m not exactly sure how this works, but it does. It’s how I found the very good german chocolate cake recipe I make for Ted (Laura, you should send me yours, because I want to try it), and it’s how I’ve found several other recipes.

There was no pie recipe that looked right to me. I wanted to make a sour-cream based blueberry pie, and I spent a long darned time looking for recipes. They were all Wrong. Even the ones that had glowing accolades on Epicurious were Wrong. So eventually I took one and used it as a base, and more or less made up my recipe from scratch.

It turned out really. *Really* well. *Very* smug!

Then when I got out of the kitchen, Ted took over and made a standing rib roast, which was mind-blowingly delicious. Wow, it was *so* *good*. And there are LOTS of leftovers. I see vegetable beef soup and beef pot pie in our near future. Oh my *goodness*, it was good. And the gravy turned out very well indeed; Mom noticed she’d eaten all the gravy off the top of her mashed potatoes and hadn’t really eaten much of the potatoes. *laugh* I ate *way* too much, but man, it was *so* good.

There was more socializing, and then after a while Mom and Dad headed home again, and now I’m ripping some of my CDs so that I can put the music I want from them on my itty bitty MP3 player and bring it to the gym. Yay! Yaaaay! Yay!

Oh, and I forgot to mention: Ted made pizza last night, and *that* turned out really well *too*. I have the very best husband. *beam*

Merry Christmas!