Christmas In Boston...A Roaring Success!

Adam's parents flew out from California to spend Christmas this year in Boston. We enjoyed lots of good food thanks to mom and dad and received lots of nice presents, thanks again to mom and dad. Here are some holiday highlights from the past week.

Thursday 12/21: We checked out Galleria Umberto in the North End where we feasted on pizza, calzones and unbelievably delicious arancine, these massive baseball sized deep fried balls of rice/meat. It was super cheap to boot. We walked over to Maria's pastry shop where Adam bought a mini cannoli. The rest of us had turned him down on cannolis, but proceeded to devour his mini cannoli so he went back in to buy a regular sized one whiche we then devoured as well.

Friday 12/22: After discovering that rack of lamb cost $32 a pound at Savenors, we bravely ventured to Whole Foods to shop for our Christmas meal. We managed to find and buy everthing relatively unscathed, but it sure was crowded. I baked up a loaf of the super easy/crusty no-knead bread which we enjoyed with grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for dinner. Then, we went bundled up and went to a Holiday Pops concert where a lady handed me a light up pin and said, "Enjoy this light up pin from Fidelity Investments who is excited to have young people here at the concert." Please note, Adam did not receive a pin. I spent part of the evening wondering just how old the lady thought I was.

Saturday 12/23: Adam's dad's birthday. We spent a lot of our day saying, "Well, Dad should decide what we should do, it's his birthday," "Dad shouldn't have to browse in shops if he doesn't want to on his birthday," "Dad should pick the game we play, it's his birthday." I think there were times when Adam projected his own desires on Dad by framing his own preferences in terms of "it's Dad's birthday." On the culinary front, we went to Formaggio's Kitchen in the morning and we treated Dad to dinner at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse downtown in the Old City Hall on School Street. The steaks were cooked in their proprietary 1800 degree oven, served on a 500 degree plate coated in melted butter...they were really tender and delicious. The sides were pretty good, but lukewarm do the steaks were the real stars of our dinner. I ate at least 12 ounces of steak.

Sunday 12/24: We went to church where the sermon included a clip of a scene from the movie Elf...it was relevant to the sermon and highly entertaining. We went to Legal Seafood for dinner where our waiter was super earnest and helpful, almost too helpful. Adam's parents were staying at the Charles Hotel so we checked out their newfangled bathroom TV. The TV is part of the bathroom mirror, turn the TV on using the remote and the TV appears from behind the one way mirror...very cool.

Monday 12/25: CHRISTMAS! PRESENT DAY! JESUS's BIRTHDAY! I was overly excited about the presents under the tree and had a mini [private] meltdown because I didn't want to wait to open them. We made yummy pancakes and bacon for breakfast. We ate cheese for "lunch." I learned how to bake an apple pie and we cooked a delicious Christmas dinner of rack of lamb, scallopped potatoes and orange/fennel salad. I insisted we watch ELF. We also called Zess who is not into talking on the phone these days. She said, "Merry Christmas, I'm all done talking on the phone, good bye."

Tuesday 12/26: Adam's parents were heading home that afternoon so we ate brunch at S&S, checked out Christina's spice store in Inman, played Bohnanza and headed to the airport. All in all, an excellent visit.

It's Christmas Time

...at the Zakun's. Adam's parents are in town for Christmas and we even got our very first Christmas tree. I'm proud to say we decorated our tree with a lot of homemade or found objects. I made a ribbon garland and origami crane ornaments. We fashioned a tree skirt out of a Pottery Barn Kids Christmas tablecloth plasticmom and I bought a few years ago on clearance. We hung up some Christmasey small cake pans MGDub got me one year. We did buy a tree topper and some glass ball ornaments, but all and all we did pretty well. Our tree looks very festive and we spent a lot less than I thought we'd have to. Score one for the Zakuns.

"Hot Cocoa For Sale...for sale for sale"

There are these three really cute girls selling hot cocoa outside the Porter Square Shaws. I thought they were girl scouts or something, but their signs seem too homemade to have any official affiliation. I couln't resist so I bought a cup of hot cocoa for $1.50, I even got whipped cream (from a can) and a lid for my hot cup. The hot cocoa was very hot, but not that great. I think it's Swiss Miss or some kind of powdered hot chocolate. I'm not sure how much money they're going to make, but it looked like they only had a couple of bucks in their tin "cash register."

Cooky

Adam and I celebrated Christmas with Wheezy tonight at Chez Henri. We all got vegetarian Cuban sandwiches and festive looking cocktails. Wheezy got us this awesome old school Betty Crocker cookbook, the "Cooky" cookbook to be exact. It has all these great photos of cookys from back when food styling was less advanced. I can't wait to try the Snickerdoodle recipe Wheezymom makes from this book, I hear it's a Wheezyfamily tradition.

Ever since Wheezy started her new job which involves programming in Stata, I've been wanting to ask her all about the programs she's writing, the macros she's creating, the data she's merging and the variables she's generating. Imagine how excited I was when I opened my gift, it was an official Stata coffee mug. The only think that would make it more perfect would be if it read, "I [heart] Stata," but I suppose it wouldn't be very professional. I'm totally taking it to work next year along with my Hello Kitty mug.

In The Neighborhood

It's 1pm and my pink phone rings.

plasticann: Hey Steve!
Steve: Hi [plastic] Ann!
plasticann: What's up?
Steve: I'm in your neighbornood. I'm on my way to the doctor.
plasticann: Great!
Steve: I'm half and hour early.
plasticann: OK
Steve: [pause] Are you wavering because your apartment is messy?
plasticann: It is messy, but I don't really care.
Steve: You should see my apartment.
plasticann: Would you like to come over?
Steve: Yes!

The Great Cookie Contest

I'm one of the co-presidents of the Tasting Club here at school, it's basically a club devoted to all things food. Our Great Cookie Contest was today and the turnout was awesome. 18 entries, who know so many business school students baked cookies. We even got these awesome official looking medals from this place online. They were so cheap, I wanted to buy them for everyone for Christmas. I offered to get Adam a "world's greatest husband" medal, but he declined and said he wanted a real present. We sold the cookies at 4 for $1 plus the right to vote for the fan favorite. I won the Tasters Choice award for my Chocolate Ginger, woohoo. Adam, Laurel and Adam's mom all really like the Chocolate Ginger Cookie so this win is for you guys.

Holiday Brunch

By going out for Thanksgiving dinner, Adam and I saved up all our energy for our brunch on Saturday. We cleaned our apartment, rearranged our furniture, shopped for food and baked up a storm for our 23 brunch guests. We thought we made just enough food, but we had way too much. We also thought we'd been really good about planning ahead, but we were still scurrying around a lot so we took notes on how to improve for next time. Here's our menu:

Beverage:
Coffee and OJ

Buffet:
Chedder Scallion Biscuits
Yogurt & Homemade Granola
Pumpkin Coconut Bread
Sour Cream Coffeecake
Oranges in Lime Sugar Syrup
Cheesy Potatoes
Scrambled Eggs with Avocado

Grill (manned by Chef Adam):
Pancakes
Bacon
Sausage

Cookie Bar:
Adam's Favorite
Chocolate Ginger
Oatmeal Raisin
Mexican Wedding
Chocolate Peanut Butter

The Cheesy Potatoes were a huge hit and ironically the easiest to make. Tator tots, sour cream and cheese all baked up in a casserole...what's not to love.