Merry Christmas from the Great White North

Hello! Gosh, only a few more days left in the year, can you believe it? It feels like the year just flew by, doesn't it? Anyway, I'm still here in Vancouver and thought I'd do a quick update on our Christmas, starting with a trip to the Christmas market (I arrived on Christmas eve which was the last day this market was open, and I was determined to make it there, rain be damned!) And of course, it was raining! But not too badly, and I think it helped keep the crowds down (or maybe people were at home, cooking Christmas dinner!)


There were lots of stands selling things like ornaments, clothes, lebkuchen, toys, and so on (most of which I believe was actually imported from Germany) but I was there for the food, and more specifically, the raclette. I haven't had raclette since Py was in Switzerland, so there was no way I was going to pass up the chance to eat it again. If you haven't had it, it's basically cheese, toasted under a grill, and then scraped off and served with potatoes, pickled onions, and cornichons. This version came with bread instead of potatoes and added some ham and was pretty good!


Py had the roast chicken, which was also pretty good. It's hard to go wrong with roast chicken, if you ask me.


And then, because I am greedy, we got a waffle-on-a-stick. (I say we, but I really mean me.) This was yummy, and I ended up totally covered in powdered sugar, which is not necessarily a bad thing! Oh, and we also had mugs of mulled wine, which was significantly more delicious than that horrible jaegertee we had at the Basel Christmas market years ago.


We were invited to Christmas eve dinner at our friends' place; check out their lovely tree! So pretty. We brought them a box of cookies and a couple of little gifts, and received a copy of Bakerella's cake pops book (thanks!) Dinner was turkey, brussels sprouts, mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, stuffing...in short, pretty close to what I would have eaten if I were celebrating Christmas in the states! Followed by an insanely delicious cranberry cake that was drowned in a butter-brown sugar sauce. Mmm, butter.


I neglected to take any photos of dinner, so instead, here's a picture of a handpainted ornament from their tree. I like the beady eyes of the snowmen.


Christmas Day itself was nice and quiet; we opened gifts and then went for a nice long walk. Actually we were hoping to find an open pub somewhere for a drink, but everything was shut down, so we went to T&T (that supermarket wonderland), bought some vegetables and then went home and made Christmas dinner--sauteed steaks, salad, and potato-leek soup. As Monokuro Boo would say, Simple is best! For those celebrating, I hope you had a merry Christmas!