The holidays went by quickly as they usually do. They were the right mix of busyness and rest and relaxation. We enjoyed lots of sleeping in as well as enough mornings of getting up and out the door on time. There was plenty happening the first week with Christmas and Boxing Day and the annual croquette making day, then a trip off to Chatham for a night, some quick visiting and partying before returning home to end the week with some New Years Eve get-togethers on Saturday. Our second week we aimed to keep it mellow and stay home, resting, relaxing, playing games, doing crafts and just enjoying the lack of schedule and freedom to be lazy for a week. It ended up not being quite to lazy like when the girls planned a last minute get-together with Hamilton friends, and then a trip off to Hamilton and London for a day, and a birthday party/sleep-over for Rebecca, with the end of the week being topped off by another visit from Santa. But it was still relaxing and we did get some sewing done during the week … pictures of that will have to follow as the girls are just finishing up those projects (waiting for them to put the buttons on the outfits).
This year we made over 1000 croquettes, 300 of which were gluten free. It was a busy day but it went well and we were impressed with how fast we had them rolled and ready for deep frying. It was still late by time we were done, but we all left with our packages to fill our freezers. The gluten free croquettes turned out scrumptious straight out of the deep fryer. A few days later we tried them reheated in the oven as we do with the wheat ones. This was a bit disappointing as they were quite dry. We’ll have to decide next year whether we deep-fry them all ahead of time or do it when we eat them. Having them deep-fried in advanced is so nice as it’s so handy to just pop them in the oven and not stink up the house with oil smells – since our deep-fryer is broken I would have to do it in the house. At the same time doing all that work and then being disappointed after isn’t very nice. They still taste good but they are dry instead instead of a nice soft “goop”. The issue could also be that I did not have xanthan gum handy when we made them so when they were quite goopy and mushy (so much that we couldn’t shape it into balls) we ended up adding a lot more flour. Good thing we ate some and enjoyed them that night .. we know it’s possible to get them yummy, we’ll just have to keep trying on the reheating idea … but realizing that reheating is often a problem with gluten-free I guess we may have to accept that that option is no longer available.
Whenever we get together and Noah is around there’s a fight between the girls about who gets to watch him, care for him, entertain him. Noah definitely doesn’t lack for attention seeing as the girls have to compete with Grandma also :) Rebecca ended up going to bed when things got a bit late with the croquettes as she wasn’t feeling the greatest. So Marietta got full dibs on watching Noah while the ladies finished up deep frying the croquettes.
And now here we are half-way through January already … wow, it just keeps flying by.
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