montage monday: christmas goodies

Today's Monday Montage is all about yesterday's goodie making...

Okay... clockwise from the top left corner... Mince Tarts, Rocky Road, Rum Balls, Sherry Truffles, Peanut Cups, Hazelnut Delights, Chocolate Puddings and last but not least, Chocolate Balls.

The whole bottom row is actually new this year (actually to be totally honest, the "Peanut Cups" are what happens when you have melted chocolate left over and just decide to put in the leftover hazelnuts and chopped cherries... then random amounts of partially leftover coconut and a load of chopped peanuts until it's the right consistency to drop into these itty bitty little foil cups that Ma had... no idea what the hell they're going to taste like... and I probably couldn't make them the same again in a million years), but the rest (with the exception of the Rocky Road) are tried and true Christmas favourites.

And like with a lot of other things just of late, I figured that it was probably time that I either learned all the secret recipes (none of which are particularly secret to be honest, since most of them seem to come off the labels from Condensed Milk tins) or else just helped Ma out so that she wasn't trying to do it all on her ownsome... which of course, in turn meant that we made about double the number of things she would have made if she'd been doing it alone (if she made anything at all).

It also means that, as I mentioned briefly last night, I consumed more chocolate yesterday than is really good for any one person... and I was very much suffering from a chocolate and sugar and coffee hangover this morning (the coffee from the not insignificant amount of my preferred coffee beverage that I consumed over the last four days).

I brought a bunch of Ma's cookbooks home with me last night too... including the one that, when I found it, I just about ended up rolling around on the floor laughing... yes, that's right... my mother owns a book of Jewish Cooking... not that she's ever used it (and, given the stuff that's actually in it, I don't think she ever will)... it just struck me as really, really funny...

There was also one that was obviously made by my primary school as some sort of fundraising thing, which pretty much proves a couple of things... firstly that the Australian pallet has matured SO much in the last twenty or so years (and that when this cookbook was made, nobody seemed to be able to spell "satay"... there's one reference to "satey" and another to "sartees")... and secondly that the late seventies and early eighties were ALL about putting pineapple in things... both sweet and savoury. However there are a couple of things in there that I wouldn't mind trying.

Oh, and in the random frivolity of the day I coined a new phrase/word... "I'm all CSI"... which means that I have random stuff caught under my fingernails (from mixing the innards of certain goodies) and the nice folks from CSI would have a field day when they went to analyse it... okay, so I don't know if it's going to be a recurring one... but it was funny at the time.

Shopping Adventures was a little dull this week... well... kinda... Ma had her Christmas haircut on Saturday (we really must try and co-ordinate them on the same day next year) so we got started a little later and ended up going down to Harbour Town... mostly to find the Christmas Cave store that just opened down there...

One word for ya... TACKAFREAKINRAMA! OH! MY! GOD! I was both speechless and very nearly falling over myself laughing the whole time we were in there... it was SO bad and SO wrong... a lime green tree with a very dragqueeneske theme (which, I gotta say, I hated probably the least of anything else in the store)... a black tree with a gambling/dice theme... a blue tree with a "Santa on Vacation" theme... brown trees... trees with an "Australiana" theme... candy pink trees... pet themed trees... you name it, if it was bad and wrong and Christmas orientated, it was in there... but what I found really interesting is that if you were looking for just plain coloured glass baubles for your tree, that was so not the place to be... I don't think they had a single one in the massive, massive store.

However if you wanted a Christmas stocking with Batman on it... or a giant inflatable Santa Homer, well, that's just the place to go... *rolls eyes*

And while we were down there the nice lady from the Market called... my tee shirt is in... *does the Happy Dance*... granted I'm probably not going to be able to get in to get it before Christmas... but it's there waiting for me... yaaay!

We didn't do much more after Harbour Town... we did kind of wander around Arndale for five minutes in the grand scheme of the universe... however, while we were in EzyDVD I did squeal like a big girl enough to make the woman who worked there and who was one rack over putting things away comment something to the effect of "You sound excited"... and of course I was excited, I'd just found Kindred: The Embraced on DVD... prime time vampires from Aaron Spelling... what's not to love... especially when it's all eight episodes (which is all they could make since their lead vampire actor was killed in a motorcycle accident between seasons one and two)...

Holy Mary... I just got the bejezzus scared out of me by the nice mailman who was delivering one of the two calendars I've ordered from Amazon... this one was The Boys of Bel Ami... and with any luck, the Joe Phillips one will rock up sometime this week too... *crosses fingers*

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