Bluebird's Nest

I know, it’s spring now. But I haven’t had a chance to record what our incredible, memorable Christmas season was all about. There was food, new traditions, food, family, food, crafts, presents and more food.

First up: Chirstmas crafts.

Since we didn’t have a lot of money near the end of our trip (isn’t Christmas always the most expensive time of the year?) I decided that I wanted to make crafts for presents. You read how well the cookie episode went, thankfully the wreaths that me and the tweenager made went a lot better then the cookies.

Here are some photos of our “couronnes”.

Christmas

Then there was Christmas. I gotta give my mother-in-law a big shout out for all the wonderful food she prepared for Christmas eve, Christmas day and boxing day. Honorable mentions go out to my father-in-law, sister-in-law and Luc’s aunt and boyfriend. The following are photos that we took through out those 3 days.

Traditions

There are many traditions that the Swiss have that I had never heard of. I don’t think I mentioned yet the day of Saint Nickolaus. This falls on the 6th of December. You put your shoes outside so that St. Nick can come by with candies, oranges, peanuts and little treats.

There is also the Couronne de l’advent. This is a wreath that is placed like a plate and four candles are placed on it. The 4 Sundays before Christmas, one candle is lit each week until on the last Sunday all four candles are lit. It’s really quite quaint.

Most people open their gifts on the night of the 24th. And when I say the night, I mean like 11pm! I had to put my Canadian hoof down with the girls… The tweenager would never be able to stay up until then and the wee babe would just cry. I was told that the girls could come down in the morning and open the gifts without us (as we would have opened them all the night before) but for me, Christmas morning is about sitting around the tree with family and watching everyone open presents.

Candles on the Christmas tree. You heard me right. I think I might have mentioned that I was pretty excited to see real candles on the tree. As well, maybe my apprehension that our whole house might come burning down with this tradition. I made sure that the tweenager and I knew where our closest fire exits were in all situations. I would like to tell you that it all went off without a hitch – except when my mother-in-law was bending over to pick up a present, she caught her blouse on fire. She was pretty lucky as her hair wasn’t that far away… We laughed but come on people! Can you say fire hazard? Below is a photo of my mother-in-law with a little corner of her blouse missing.

Oysters… I never would have thought that oysters (in a land locked country) were such a delicacy at Christmas time.

Disclaimer

As I mentioned in my last post, holiday baking in Switzerland is far from easy peasy. Evidently, after talking with my father-in-law, he said that I need to buy quite a few of the things that I’m missing from a specialty shop. A specialty shop? These things are found normally in a grocery store back home. Ok, I understand how it works. Not everything is exactly the same as back home.

Everything looks ok, pre-baking

After baking in oven. Cookies on steroides.

So not only am I challenged in the area of lacking key ingredients, but I also botched up my baking as well. The sugar cookies I tried to make decided to double in size for the first batch and gradually decrease in size each time I put more in the oven. Go figure.

The icing we made, well it was glaze (exactly what I WASN’T looking for) so it was runny for decorating with. AND the stupid food colouring here is so diluted that when you try to put in the red to make red, it turns out pink. Then you add more to try and make it more brighter, but before you know it you’ve added the entire little squeezer bottle of it, the icing is still pink, and to boot, it’s now turned into liquid instead of thickish frosting.

That was the sugar cookies.

"Dontcha wish your cookies look just like these?" Trust me, they taste better than they look.

A close up of the green frosting we made. That's right. Green.

Then I tried Gingerbread men from Martha Stewart. Wowsers, without  the true molasses and brown sugar, they didn’t taste half bad, but I got the tweenager and the hubby to try a sample of one, and it didn’t pass the gift giving inspection so there’s not going to be any Gingerbread men in people gifts this year. BUT, good old Martha came through for me and had crafted up this wonderful wreath idea. So I had enough gingerbread peeps to make 2 wreaths. Of course the first one broke immediately (sure, kick me while I’m down) but the second one was an absolute work of art and will become a wonderful gift for one of the hubby’s friend’s or family members this Christmas.

After coming out of the oven. Looks pretty good right?

Annnnnddd... 5 seconds later a gingerbread man mess...

The one gift worthy thing I have to show for hours of baking today.

Tomorrow I tackle Cheese Sticks. God help me. My mother makes these every year, and after checking the ingredients, we have absolutely everything and no substitutions (except for Cheddar Cheese) so I should be all good unless, I absolutely suck at baking. Which is exactly what it’s looking like to me.

Keep in mind, my wonderful idea was to make cute little sugar cookies and cute little gingerbread people with cute little cheese sticks, put them in a cellophane bag, tie them up with a ribbon, put them in fancy Christmas canisters, and give them as gifts – is looking like a thing of the past. My homemade gift giving intentions have come crashing down on me. Time to get real with myself and maybe just buy the cookies from the grocery store, cut, bake, and package.

Stay tuned…