Weekly Round Up: Christmas Recap 2023

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  In this week's edition I'll tell you about our Christmas eats, a new-to-me workout that I've started doing, the Christmas classic that I finally watched, and some book stuff.

Eats

Christmas was up in the air for a bit.  There was a COVID case in the extended family, so up until the day before we debated whether we were having the big family gathering or not.  Fortunately COVID took a hike so we partied it up.  We got a couple of lasagnas from the really nice Italian restaurant, garlic bread, and salad.

I was on dessert duty, and that involved some decisions as well.  One of my Facebook friends posted about an epic Black Forest cake that she'd gotten from Costco and that was my #1 pick for Christmas.  That left the question about whether I was going to bake anything at all since we had a smaller crowd.  The decision was made for me since Costco didn't have the cake after all but the next time I see it in the store I'm taking it home with me.  

Two days before Christmas I started baking:

• Oreo balls.  Our standard recipe is one box of oreos plus one box of cream cheese processed in the food processor, set aside in the fridge for a bit to solidify, then roll into balls and tuck into the freezer for a bit, dip in chocolate and enjoy.
• Shortbread cookies via Home Goods - seriously I can't make anything better than Walker's and when I saw their sampler box I snapped it up. 
• Cranberry Crumble Bars via Life of a Doctor's Wife via Sally's Baking Addiction.  This was a gamble since I knew that I would like them but possibly no one else in the family would.  This ended up not being a problem since they won the endorsement of the harder-to-please of the two stepsons.
  
• Kiss Cookies via Sally's Baking Addiction.  If I had to pick a least favorite, this would be it.  There was nothing "wrong" with them but also nothing spectacular.
  
• M&M cookie bars via Averie Cooks, a double batch which is pretty standard for every recipe on her site.

It's also worth mentioning that for the first time ever, we decided that we have a "go to" Christmas family brunch menu for the four of us.  We love the French toast casserole and the quiches that we always have for Easter, and we realized that we need to have them more often than once a year.

I'd never made French toast casserole before and it was shockingly easy.  The only reason that I'm not sharing the recipe is that the one that I used called for putting a mixture of brown sugar and butter on the bottom...where it congealed and very nearly scorched.  I'm sure that the fault was somehow mine, but I'll use another recipe next time.

You're supposed to use stale bread for French toast, and I had my bases covered.  I used the leftover rolls from Thanksgiving that we'd had in the freezer ever since.

I usually double the quiche recipe that we use for Easter and I got caught off guard by my notes in past Easter recaps.  I'd said that I used 6 slices of bacon in place of the broccoli and 1 and 1/2 cups milk in place of condensed milk, but I wasn't clear if that was for the single or the double version.  I made the lucky guess that I'd meant for the single version;-)

Workouts

On the strength front I finished the full body workouts in the Caroline Girvan Epic Endgame series.  She has a new series on the CGX app starting in January which I might try, and in the meantime I'm doing some of the shorter workouts from her app's Advent program.

For my pushups this week, I randomly remembered the 10-to-6 workout from one million years ago that I loved so much and stole that format.  You start with a set of 10, then a set of 9, then 8, then 7, and a final set of 6 pushups.  Doing one less rep each time is quite a motivator.

For cardio,  Elisabeth just started doing the 12-3-30 workout which is or was all the rage with the cool kids a while ago: 12% incline, 3 MPH, and 30 minutes.  I'd heard of it of course, but never got further than trying to imagine what that much incline with that slow a pace must feel like.  Well, after Elisabeth's reminder I decided to find out.  Elisabeth does it at 10% because that's as high as her treadmill goes, and in the same spirit I only did it for 20 minutes the first few times to get my bearings.  Well, it turns out that the cool kids know what they're talking about.  The slow speed really lets you ease in to the 12% and it's quite achievable and before long I was willing to do the full 30 minutes which is longer than I've been on the treadmill in quite a while.  I think I'll make this my winter cardio go-to for the next few weeks and see what happens.  The only negative thing that I can say is that I feel like my body is adapting to it very quickly so the worst case there is that I'll need to speed it up to keep the intensity.

Watching

It's been forever since I've watched a regular TV show.  I scoured the internet to find something and came up with an Australian show on Amazon Prime.  Class of 07 is about a 10 year high school reunion at an all female boarding school that goes terribly wrong.  An apocalyptic tidal wave strikes, which turns the school campus into an island and it's not clear what the status of the rest of the world is. 

 

Now look it's not The Greatest Show Ever Made, but it's very watchable and conveniently has 30 minute episodes that pair very nicely with my new 30 minute treadmill workout, so we've got a match.  Between you and me I have never been and will never go to a school reunion, and a trope that really bugs me in fiction is the "Something Happened in school that continues to weigh down the rest of our lives into our 30's and we just can't move on from it".  I've DNF'd book after book where the fact that school sucked is the most interesting thing that's happened to the characters but now that someone finally put it into a one season TV show with some Lord of the Flies mixed in I am all about it.

On a more seasonal note, Hubs and I finally watched Elf, which neither of us had seen before.  It was...fine.  Not good, not bad, and an enjoyable enough way to spend an evening.

On Christmas Eve day the Hubs and I also got in a showing of It's a Wonderful Life, which he'd never seen before.  If we can we might squeeze in a showing of Christmas Vacation before we call it for the season.

Reading

Three things to tell you:

• I finished The Rainbow and the Rose by Nevil Shute, which is a reread of one of my favorite authors.  It had been so long that I'd forgotten just about everything so it was practically a new book.  I'd rate this as "Nevil Shute: Advanced Level".  The author was an engineer IRL and this book definitely has a more technical edge to it.  I'd steer you in the direction of A Town Like Alice of No Highway for your first Shute instead of this, but I did enjoy it.
• Currently: continuing the alphabet!  B is for Burglar by Sue Grafton.
• My podcast playlist was getting lean so I started an audiobook.  The Longest Race: Inside the Secret World of Abuse, Doping, and Deception on Nike's Elite Running Team by Kara Goucher is definitely not an easy listen, but it's a powerful book. 
  

Future Dog Update

It has now been a month since Stepdog passed away, and Hubs and I have come to the conclusion that not having a dog sucks.  We know that we're not ready yet, but we're thinking that Future Dog will come into our lives sooner rather than later.  Stepdog was a great advocate for dog ownership and we've realized that we're in exactly the same boat as all of our family and friends who got dogs as a result of Stepdog.  Just like them we can't have Stepdog but we still want a dog!!!  We're flexible but in theory Future Dog is some kind of a Shepherd mix, youngish but not a puppy, and most likely female.

We talked it over with the kids, and Stepson #1 had a great idea.  Since Stepdog's birthday was on Easter, he suggested that would probably be the right time to get another dog.  Decently in the future but not unbearably far into the future.

BTW, I feel like I've borrowed the term "Future Dog" from somewhere but I can't find the source.  Has anyone else heard this term?

Advent Puzzle Update

 10/10 highly recommend.