Are you ready for Christmas?

10 days ago I was decrying how few season's greetings had been sent. My Christmas card display looked like this:

As of yesterday's deluge of 8 cards, I can't even see my back door through all the beautiful photos and sentiments. Sending and receiving holiday cards might be one of my favorite traditions - I love to be thrifty but I will shell out obscene amounts of money in stamps to say: Merry Christmas, I'm thinking of you!

Last evening I went to a Christmas program for my niece and nephew and then raced home to commence making puppy chow. Although I have baked some for the holidays, I limited myself this year to gifts of gingerbread and puppy chow for snacking. I decided there won't be an absence of sweets anywhere, and they don't need to live at my house!

I still have some gifts to wrap, but they will get done (I HATE WRAPPING!). More importantly, I have watched Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, The Family Stone, and Love Actually. In fact, I have watched some corny Hallmark movies as well.

This evening I have 3 different holiday festivities and 2 different gatherings this weekend. Despite feeling overwhelmed I am reminding myself that soon if will be over, the decorations will come down and soon it will be bleak January and February. It's less about being ready (cooking, cleaning, wrapping) for Christmas and more about being ready to enjoy (even the wrapping) the experience of Christmas.

And with that corny realization, I wish you a Merry Christmas. Also, my post from around this time last year still holds true. It helps me enjoy every moment of this crazy, wonderful, snowy, joyful and stressful season.

This Carbonara Hit the Spot!

I know I owe my faithful reader (if there is more than one reader, let me know) a recap of vacation. I am still sorting through photos so a new favorite recipe will have to do.

Over Thanksgiving weekend we were gifted a flat of farm fresh eggs (my cousin has a chicken farm) and a slab of leftover to-die-for ham. After a nice scramble Sunday morning, I started thinking of what could be done to eat our 30+ eggs and not flirt with the cholesterol of someone twice 3x my age. Inspired by my ham, I found a healthy carbonara recipe online. How did people cook before Google?

I don't know about you, but I love carbonara but never get it in restuarants because of its gut-killing richness. Similarly, at home I often talk myself out of making recipes with both heavy cream and bacon. I'll include the link to the recipe, but I can almost re-type it by heart because it is SO SIMPLE.

Disclaimer: I do not really like peas outside of the pod but I decided to go with the recipe and give it a try. In my opinion, the other flavors drown out the peas and you get a bonus serving of vegetables.

Ingredients:

• Frozen peas
• Bacon (I used ham)
• Pasta
• Parmesan
• Eggs
• Salt
• Pepper
• Garlic cloves

How simple?! I'll give credit to the recipe here. I would also like to add that I was short on grease because I was frying up ham but the amount of reserved pasta water was way too much and made the sauce soupy. In the end, the recipe satisfied my craving for carbonara and I didn't feel to unhealthy afterward.

Enjoy!