A very indie Christmas

This post brought to you by Passion Pit and my stain-concealing black skinny jeans.

As I've mentioned, despite being an atheist with relatively tenuous ties to Christianity, I will wholeheartedly embrace any festivities for which I can cook obscene amounts. Christmas day started with brioche cinnamon rolls. The recipe used a pound of butter and made twelve rolls. Globs of caramel adhered tantalizingly to the underside when I flipped them over.



I made a spinach, pea, and mint soup that is not pictured because it looks like an algae-filled lake on camera. The main course was champignons bourguignons, because let's face it, the beef is just the side dish to the amazing sauce in a bourguignon (at least in my opinion). Andy nearly purred watching the raw vegetables turn into a thick, saucy mix as we cooked it. Green beans provencals were the side dish. Dessert was simple: phyllo purses full of brie and raspberry jam, drizzled with homemade ganache.

And all through it, my classy, classy brother drank Busch Light out of a wineglass.

Post-dinner activities included a throwback to my childhood: plate-making. You draw on circular pieces of paper and send them off to a company that, for a fee, will make them into plastic plates. I made one that was okay. My brother, the artistic one, made one that was great. My sister and her boyfriend co-made one that isn't pictured because it looks like a terrifying acid dream.

When Andy said I should contribute to his plate because it was only fitting that I should have "a heavy influence on it," I wrote this:

So he drew on my arm.

Luckily, the markers were, according to the box, extremely washable.

Andy and I finished off the afternoon with a long beach walk. We saw parrots (which flabbergasted my pet Yankee) and porpoises (which, for some reason, didn't as much), but I think this was the highlight:

Other highlights: being forced to guess what my Christmas present was (the autobiography of Edward Dahlberg!), my mother saying "no" when my father asked if she'd like to say some words before we all ate, and my underage sister exploding her beer all over the tablecloth.