100 Days Redux - Korean Style

For his 100th Day Celebration -- or Baek-Il -- Milo's Korean grandmother brought him a traditional outfit.

I don't think the "My Mom Rocks" pacifier is traditional.

He is supposed to wear this outfit again on his first birthday.

She also brought Korean rice cakes and black bean cakes.

Yum!

Too cute!

Christmas recap

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas day. Christmas on a Saturday is great, isn't it? Now we get Sunday for more relaxing. I'm not one to run out to the after-Christmas sales, so today will probably be a lot like yesterday. Naps and snacks and watching movies.

Our Christmas dinner was not exactly what most people would consider traditional, but we are making it a tradition in our house. Because we had a big turkey dinner just about a month ago, we're not ready for more turkey at Christmas. And ham isn't really my thing. So we had a Korean Christmas. I made bulgogi, cabbage kimchi, spicy cucumbers and sticky rice -- all from scratch.

I did a lot of prep work earlier in the week, so all we had to do yesterday was cook the rice and meat. For those of you who might not know, bulgogi is Korean barbecue, and kimchi is a spicy fermented vegetable dish. The cabbage kimchi I made is not the traditional fermented variety. It was a quick -- or fresh -- kimchi. It's much simpler because it doesn't take weeks to complete, but it's still tasty.

We spent much of the day watching videos, including "A Christmas Carol," "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" (the original cartoon, not that Jim Carrey thing) and "A Charlie Brown Christmas." We finished the evening watching "Green Fingers." Which isn't a Christmas movie but is a really good, really funny, heartwarming movie I highly recommend if you 1) like Clive Owen (and who doesn't?) and 2) enjoy British films.

All in all, it was a nice Christmas -- quiet and uneventful. I'm guessing it's the last of its kind for the S.O. and me for a long time. And I'm perfectly OK with that.

Christmas traditions

When I was a kid, the one thing that signaled Christmas more than any other -- more than the tree, more than the onslaught of Christmas specials on TV, even more than the pile of presents -- was Mom breaking out the ingredients to make peanut brittle. She used a recipe given to her by my paternal grandmother.

It was quite a production: bags of raw peanuts, boxes of baking soda, piles of sugar, bottles of corn syrup, sticks of butter, the candy thermometer and her trusty heavy-bottom pan. My brothers and I would stand near the stove as Mom stirred what seemed like a magic potion, waiting impatiently for the moment when she added the baking soda, and the syrupy concoction would turn into fluffy, gooey peanut brittle.

She would pour the molten mixture out on a metal slab in the middle of our huge kitchen table. We four kids would gather round with our buttered fingers and start pulling the edges of the peanut brittle to stretch it thin -- to Mom's cries of "Wait! It's still too hot! Wait!"

But we couldn't wait. The sooner we pulled the peanut brittle out into thin segments, the sooner we could start eating it -- and the sooner Christmas could really get started.

I don't remember a year without this tradition while Mom was alive. She carried on even after all of her children had moved out. She would spend days making batch after batch because I wasn't the only person who thought it wasn't Christmas without Mom's peanut brittle.

Since Mom died, no one has carried on the tradition. But this year, my lovely culinary friend mentioned wanting to make something homemade for family. I shared Mom's peanut brittle recipe with her, and joined her this weekend to oversee and help with its creation. Honestly, I was afraid to try this recipe myself. I worried about having the right equipment. I worried that my inherent lack of patience would cause me to a scalding sugar mess across my kitchen. I worried that no matter what I did, it would never in a million years live up to my memories.

Yet, standing in my friend's kitchen, sipping hot spiced cider, watching her add the baking soda at just the right time, then stretching the candy with her, her husband and the S.O. really did feel right. And the first batch of peanut brittle -- when pulled thin and cooled -- was perfect. It was exactly the way Mom made it.

And it was exactly what I needed to make it really feel like Christmas.

Pain and pine needles

I could be in real trouble here, people. I spent most of the weekend hobbling around. My hips and groin were in so much pain. Is that normal? Is it because of my age? Is it supposed to start this early? Because these next four months are going to be rough if that's the case.

I don't know if I overdid something working out or if I sat around being lazy for too long, but I was definitely sore. It's a little better today -- and I did work out this morning -- but there's still some pain in my hip. I didn't expect to be sore like this for at least another couple of months. It's a little discouraging.

Still, I'm not going to let a little thing like excruciating pain keep me down, and the S.O. and I headed out to the mountains yesterday to find a Christmas tree. We purchased a permit and headed out to Pike National Forest to find a good one.

It was a nice day for Christmas tree hunting. The trees in the forest aren't perfect like ones you'll find on lots. But we're not perfect, so it suits us just fine.

The S.O. sizes up his quarry.

The great hunter with his "kill."

There was just one slight problem. I think we had a case of our eyes being bigger than our stomachs -- or in this case, the living room.

We are so the Griswolds.

We managed to cut the tree down to size without making it look silly, and with lights and ornaments, it looks lovely. I will try to get a picture of it in all its glory this evening, so you can see.

We want to start a tradition of cutting our own tree, but it might not start next year. I can't imagine trudging through the forest carrying a baby and a tree.