My wife and I pick a country each year and plan our Christmas Eve dinner to make of food from that country. This year we picked The Gambia so it is going to be domoda (peanut stew) and thiakry (millet couscous pudding).

We always cut down a tree in the forest - the forest manager makes a map of which parts of the public forest they want the firs and spruce thinned out, so it’s like free forest management. After Christmas we put the tree out by our chickens, who enjoy sitting on and under it.

Man that brings back some memories. While my family grew up with an artificial tree but my Aunt and Uncle always went out and chopped down a spruce for Christmas and it being Alaska there was no shortage to be found. They were the host for the Christmas Eve get together.

I often prepare newer-ish dishes but always filling that template that I mentioned above.

We (wife and I) love trying new dishes and that is part of why we do a new country every year. Often the result is “Huh…” and we enjoy the experience even if the dish isn’t a new favorite but every once in a while we stumble across something that ends up joining our repertoire.

This year I’m going to tweak Ur’s palace cake to serve it as dessert alongside the tiramisù, my sister loves those cheese-based sweets.

That sounds interesting. If you are a fan of historical recipes (and this isn’t just a one off) I can’t recommend Tasting History enough.

Everyone gets together to make lussekatter the first day off from school.

Those look neat. As a baker at heart I often look for some cake, bread, cookie, or other baked treat I can make for the contribution for our Christmas Eve meal (I always work Christmas Eve so being able to either bake something the day before or get a dough ready and let it stall in the fridge helps ease things). I may have to try a country’s version if they end up on the list in the future.

The reasons are different (people moving away and spreading out) but I kinda feel this. My childhood was a Christmas Eve bake potato bar and pies over at someone’s house filled to the brim with relatives with a gift exchange. It is part of why my my wife and I created the Christmas Eve dinner when we got married. I moved across the country and away from my side of the family her family didn’t really have much in the way of traditions so we decided to start one. I look forward to what we call out ‘International’ Christmas Eve every year but it definitely isn’t the same at this point (13 years) it feels like Christmas but it definitely doesn’t feel like the Christmases of my childhood.

Even if it means sleeping with multiple blankets, it’s much more cozy.

There is something to be said for having a giant pile of blankets on top of you. Growing up I would round up spare blankets and crack the window open in the winter until a balance was achieved between however many blankets I scrounged and the room temperature.

I have a big old robe, flannel pajama pants, and slippers I wear around the house in the winter.

65 F or 18.5 C. A little colder at night. It varies as my wife sleeps hot so it depends how warms she is feeling that evening.

I love winter. Cold, dark, and snowy are my jam. To be fair this may be an ingrained coping mechanism from growing up in Alaska.

One of my stranger experiences as a cashier was watching someone waiting to be checked out change their mind and start trying to abandon some ground beef among the candy bars at the checkout. Apparently handing it over to me didn’t occur to them. At least when I pointedly offered, “If you don’t want that I’ll take it.” they handed it over.

Answer:

It was a simplistic grescale scenario devoid of unnecessary features. Think a simple and fast 3D render from the 90s or something. So everything was grescale, the person had no gender (or even features), and pushed a baseball sized sphere on a simple rectangular table made of indeterminate materials. Now I can picture something more detailed if required or desired but my mind focused on the mechanics of it all and kept details to a minimum. Asking for these details afterwards doesn’t generate them retroactively.

Thankfully no kids in the mix. I can imagine how that complicates things.

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I like the taste of Malta fine but I find it super sweet. I imagine adding sweetened condensed milk doesn’t help that at all.

Honestly, I don’t. Because I make them better.

That is the situation in my household. My wife is one of those people who goes overboard on the primary filling and throws the proportions off. It isn’t Katz’s deli levels but it is noticeable.

I keep going back to Star Trek Online for some star ship pew pew. I usually get a month or two in going back over the story arcs and participating in events until the constant event schedule makes me realize I’m trapped in the grind and not playing any other games. So I drop it to break free and play the rest of my game library. The community isn’t something I really interact with as pretty much all of the game content is playable solo or antisocial (the team content is easy enough you can just random queue and don’t really have to talk or strategize with them). It is overwhelmingly PvE (though PvP is technically in the game) and it has some fun lore if you are a Star Trek fan.

I was so sad when I once stumbled on a limited run stout on tap and they served it ice cold in a heavy frosted mug.