O'Connor Christmas Vacation, Part 2

Well, Joe and I are back in Kansas City. While I loved being in Minnesota, it is nice to be home. The snow seems to have followed us down here, however, since we are apparently in the middle of a "snow storm". At least a "snow storm" in Missouri terms. Up north, it doesn't matter how much snow is coming down, if it hits the ground and melts immediately, it is not a snow storm. Also, if it is above freezing in the winter, it is not cold. I got alot of crazy looks at the grocery store today when I walked in in basketball shorts. Sigh.

Now to the subject of this post, Christmas. There were many things about this Christmas that made it more special than any other year. For one, it is Joe and my first Christmas as a married couple. Not only that but it was my sister's babies' first Christmas.

My friend Kelsey also came up from Kansas City to spend Christmas with my family. Her parents were in Korea with her sister, so we adopted her for a couple of days. She seemed to handle my big family quite well.

Unfortunately, my sister and brother in law both got the flu on Christmas Eve day. Meaning they, and more importantly (sorry Hillary) the babies, couldn't come to our celebration. It's lucky they weren't sick for our small family Christmas, so that we at least got to celebrate with them beforehand. This year Hillary gave me an amazing Christmas present; a Minnesota themed quilt that she made herself!

All the fabric has something to do with Minnesota, and the fabric on the big patches has names of different Minnesota lakes on it.

This quilt must have taken forever, and I absolutely love it!

Our family has always celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve, and our celebration is full of traditions. Mostly Norweigan traditions. For one, we eat a Norweigan Christmas meal. Well, kinda. Our main course is Oyster Stew, which is traditional, and "lutefisk substitute".

What is lutefisk you ask? It is a Norweigan "delicacy" that dates back to the time of the Vikings. It is Cod soaked in lye, and is traditionally eaten around Christmas time. It's gross. Sorry. I'm pretty loyal to my Norwegian roots and I won't even eat it. Even Andrew Zimmern (a native Minnesotan) had a hard time eating it on the Minneapolis episode of Man vs. Food, and that guy host a show called "Bizarre Foods"!

As a result, we switched out the lutefisk for crab legs, which we call our "lutefisk substitute". Much better.



Crab legs and Oyster Stew

 Joe and dad cooked all the crab.

After dinner our family does a Christmas pagent. This has been going on in my family every year since before my dad was born, about 70 years! Everyone sings, the younger family members play the parts, and the newest baby usually plays baby Jesus. I played baby Jesus when I was a baby. No big deal :)

On Christmas day our family makes lefse, eats crab soup made out of the remaining crab from the night before, and then goes to a movie. This year we went to Les Miserables (a play our family is slightly obsessed with). Anne Hatheway was amazing in that movie.

The next night I was able to meet up with my law school friends for happy hour at our usual bar, Rock Bottom Brewery. It is rare for us all to get together considering we all currently live in different states, and we had so much fun catching up! My friend, Mandy, is also pregnant (no beer for her) and we enjoyed accosting her tummy to try and feel the little one kick. I'm not sure if she enjoyed it quite as much.

Afterwards, I met up with Joe at my cousins Anna and Craig's house for their Christmas party. On the way home, Joe, being the good husband that he is, took a detour into St. Paul so I could grab some pizza from one of my favorite Twin Cities pizza places, Pizza Luce. Sooooo good.

Thursday we headed back to Kansas City. Since then I have spent my time rehabing my waisteline, and relaxing before having to go back to work on Wednesday.

Tonight for New Years we are having dinner with some good friends. I plan on making my friend Emmy's famous dip. One day I'll share it with all of you (with Emmy's permission, of course).

Happy New Years!

O'Connor Christmas Vacation, Part 1

Greetings from the North Woods! Joe and I are up in Minnesota for Christmas and currently at my parents lake house in Northern Minnesota. In my opinion it is the most relaxing place on earth.



The backyard

 Our vacation started out with a nice dinner at Gram and Dun on the plaza in Kansas City with some good friends, followed by a frantic phone call from my mother letting us know that we were sure to get caught in a blizzard on our drive up to Minnesota the next day. I looked up the weather and sure enough there was supposed to be a blizzard in Iowa and Minnesota, but it seemed like we would miss it by a few hours. Just to be sure though, I texted my meteorologist friend, Kristin, to see when the blizzard would hit. She reassured me that we would miss the storm in Iowa, and that there really wasn't going to be much snow up in Minnesota. While I was relieved, I was also slightly disappointed that I wouldn't be able to take "Joe's first Minnesota Blizzard" pictures once we reached our destination.

We spent our first night at my friend, Marissa, and her fiance, Jason's, house. Jason made us all a yummy lasagna. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, there were no pictures taken that night for me to share, but I can assure you it was a fun night.

We headed up north with my sister, my brother in law, Mike, and their little twins the next day. The snow isn't too bad up north yet, just enough to cover all the trees.

As I've  mentioned previously my sister likes to buy her pork by the pig. She once mentioned to my dad that her pig is the best bacon, and my dad disagreed, saying this bacon he got in Rochester, Minnesota was the best. Since my family loves a competition, they (or really, my dad) decided to have a "bacon off". Seriously. My sister cooked the bacon Friday morning, and we all had a blind taste test to determine the winner.

In the end it was determined that my sister's pig made the best bacon. I guess buying your pork by the pig is actually a good idea.

As I've also previously mentioned every year for our "small family Christmas" we order Chinese from our favorite Chinese restaurant, the Great Wall, for our Christmas dinner. When we have small family Christmas up north, we get it as takeout before we head up, and reheat it for Christmas dinner. This year, since the girls go to bed around 7, we decided to make Chinese Christmas dinner Chinese Christmas lunch so that the girls can participate in the rest of the night.

While we were eating the girls hung out in their new bouncers.



After dinner is when we always open presents.

Can you guess who got the most?

We spent the rest of the night watching Christmas movies and relaxing. Today we are going bowling, going to a movie, and having Chicken Wildrice Soup for Dinner. This is my favorite time of year!

Tomorrow we are heading back down to the cities and getting ready for our big family Christmas at my parents house down there. I'll leave you with some more pictures from this weekend.



A very Minnesotan gift



Merry Christmas!

Skinny Eggnog

Christmas is my absolute favorite holiday. That's why, once Thanksgiving is over, I decorate immediately. It's an attempt to get as much Christmas out of this holiday season as possible. For the last two years we have spent the day after Thanksgiving decorating our condo. I'm trying to make it a tradition.

I have to admit though, it doesn't take too long to decorate our condo. Being that we are newly married, we haven't had too much time to collect very many decorations. Most of the decorations we have are from my parents. We also don't have matching stockings. Well, they match meaning they look similar to each other, but Joe's is much bigger than mine.

When I ordered them online, I swear Pottery Barn did not mention that the red stocking was bigger than the white stocking. Joe made me feel better about the whole thing, saying his is bigger because he is the boy. I can live with that.

Most of our ornaments on our tree are also ones we were given by my parents. Last year, Joe's nieces came over to see our tree, and one asked me why there weren't very many ornaments on it, so my mom let me take quite a few of her ornaments last Christmas to fill the tree out alittle bit more. My family has a tradition where whenever we go on a trip we always buy a Christmas ornament to commemorate it. Those are always my favorite ornaments, because they always bring me back to the good times my family has spent together. When my mom asks me which ornaments I want off the tree, those are usually the ones I take. This is a tradition I plan to keep doing with Joe, and the two ornaments that are my favorite are the oraments Joe and I received on the trips we have taken together. My favorite is from the Caymen Islands, where we went on our honeymoon.

 

  My second favorite is the one we received when we went to Hawaii for my sister, Hillary's wedding.

Another part of the day that I'm trying to make a tradition is to make a special Christmas drink every year that we can have while we decorate. Last year, I made spiked apple cider. This year I was determined to make egg nog. Joe asked why we don't just buy the egg nog, but I heard it is so much better if you just make it.

My brother in law, Mike, makes the best egg nog. I thought about asking him for his recipe, but when I found this recipe for skinny eggnog online, I thought I would try it. Considering all the eating we have been doing and will be doing this Holiday season, I figured it couldn't hurt to make something alittle less fattening.

I made two slight alterations to the recipe. First, the recipe calls for using an actual vanilla bean. To me that sounded like alittle too much work for the day after Thanksgiving, so I used vanilla extract. Second, the original recipe also calls for 1 % milk, but I ended up using skim (because that is what I buy). Both of these alterations the original author of the recipe said was ok.

Skinny Eggnog
adapted from skinny taste

3 cups skim milk
1 Tbs vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp cornstarch
nutmeg for garnish
rum or bourbon

Heat 2 1/2 cups of the milk on medium heat. Add the vanilla extract and let simmer. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar and cornstarch.

Temper the eggs by pouring the hot milk mixture into the egg mixture about a cup at a time and whisking constantly. This is to avoid cooking the eggs. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan, heat over medium heat, and stir constantly for about 6-7 minutes. Remove from heat, and pour in the remaining 1/2 cup of milk to stop the cooking.

Let cool and then pour into a pitcher. Chill. Spike with bourbon or rum. We used rum because we had plenty left over from when I attempted to make tiramisu a few weeks ago. Attempted is the key word. If you can't find marscapone, don't let someone convince you you can make your own by mixing cream cheese and cream. Doesn't turn out well.

 Can you guess who drank out of which mug?

Merry Christmas season everyone!