Comfy, Cozy on Christmas Eve

Ahhh, Christmas Eve. Koo came down the night before to spend the holidays with us.

We did a lot of cooking and cleaning . . .

we played a lot of games . . .

and we got a couple of "boo-boos". Calvin is showing you the one on his finger (a paper cut) and Max is showing you just how hard 7-year-old boys are on their clothes!

Here are some of the things we were cooking. The pumpkin roll was a recipe from my friend Stacey P. She brought a small one over as a Christmas gift and I ate the whole thing myself! The whole thing. Note my double chin in subsequent posts.
I doubled the batter recipe it and made it in a full sized cookie sheet.
The meringues are a recipe I have made many times. Instead of the walnuts, we added crushed peppermint cookies and bittersweet chocolate.

THIS, however, was the crowning culinary achievement of the day. The crepe cake! It's gorgeous, really impressive when you cut into it and oh sooooooo delicious! And not so simple to make I might add. The crepe batter is a brown butter crepe batter and it will not work with your crepe maker if you have one - which I do, and could not use. Luckily, I doubled the crepe batter recipe as we had to make them one at a time on the stove top and many of them were eaten by the family as we went along. Because my crepes were a bit smaller than the recipe, I made 25 layers.
That evening we joined the Quicks for dinner at our friends Thomas and Lori's house. Thomas is full Italian on both sides of his family, so he prepared a full traditional Italian feast for us - and boy was it good!
Here is Calvin demonstrating what he ate: the cheese off of his linguine with clam sauce and a lot of bread. Those are steamed clams in the bowl next to him. They were delicious, but none of my kids were adventurous enough to eat them! Sophie and Max loved the linguine and both asked for seconds! I did not mention the clams in it.

As appetizers, we had shrimp with cocktail sauce (Sophie's personal favorite. I think she ate about 30!), crackers and three kids of cheese including a wonderful goat cheese with honey in it. My kids kept eating it and saying "we are eating what Mary and Joseph ate" because of the primary song When Joseph Went to Bethlehem. I loved the fresh mozzarella with fresh basil and tomato - yum!
Here we are at dinner. The bowl in the center is a squid salad which was surprisingly delicious! It was very garlicky and the squid very tender. I stuck to the ring shaped squid as I have an aversion to eating anything with visible tentacles! I offered some to Max and he about had a heart attack.The platter on the table is a selection of marinated salamis, prosciutto, red peppers, artichoke hearts and garlic. It was so amazingly tasty on the crusty bread. This may be the yummiest Christmas Eve dinner we have ever had! Thank you Lori and Thomas!

Don't they have a lovely home? Just beautiful. After dinner and dessert we headed home to open our Christmas pajamas and read the Christmas story together. A wonderful day.