On this second day of winter....

...... there wasn't a drop of sunshine, and the temperature didn't get much higher than 68 degrees. Oh well...... the mid-80s of yesterday is now history.

However, I saw the news tonight and the rain-storms out west are causing major floods, cars and homes are being swallowed up by mudslides, and there seems to be no end in sight. So our weather today is just a drop in the proverbial bucket compared to what's happening on the west coast.


I had an eMail from my cousin R's son J up near Chicago.... he wanted to remind me that there are just two days till Christmas. J and his sister K have already opened their Christmas packages from me, so they have had a pre-Christmas gift day and I've received the cutest hand-written thank you cards from those kids. "The Chicago Kids," as my husband calls them.


Tomorrow, we'll be getting dinner ready for our Christmas Eve on Friday. My husband will make his famous Greek stuffing (gyro meat, feta cheese, pistachio nuts, along with the usual stuffing ingredients).... he will also do the mashed potatoes (Rofumo cheese goes into the potatoes)...... I am making salmon cakes, coated with crushed pecans and Panko crumbs. As I read that sentence, the word stuffing is just screaming out at me. In the south, no one knows the word "stuffing" unless you're talking about foam rubber that gets stuffed into a pillow-slip. The correct word here is dressing. "Dressing" goes into the turkey, or gets baked in a pan.... or in our case, my husband will make his famous Greek dressing. I will have to remember to play the CD of F's Favorite Greek music as the cooking begins.

Every December, I think about making Christmas cookies. I've been going through my cookbooks and magazines, bookmarking pages with pretty pictures of cute little cookies. Somehow, cookie-baking gets lost in the last-minute shuffle. My husband has made his (really honestly famous) English Plum Pudding, and that always takes center-stage for the holiday. I'd have to come up with a sincerely delicious cookie that could compete with the traditional Plum Pudding.

Two more days. As "The Chicago Kid" J has announced.... just two more days. When you're ten years old, two more days must seem like a month away. When you're my age, two days is a minute longer than a heart-beat. Jingle Bells.