Happy New Year...

...and a belated Merry Christmas! As always, I had intended a pre-Christmas post to wish you all the best but failed miserably.




Christmas was exhausting. Not Christmas itself necessarily, but all the prep the week before hand. I had a couple projects to complete that took most of the week.

Nicholas decided that he wanted to build a patio seat for his Mother, a gift to replace the current bench that is rapidly deteriorating out on our deck. I helped with the design, assembly and, of course, the purchase of the materials. He did a serviceable job as shown...

The bench is still unfinished a week after Christmas. Nick presented it to his mother with a classic ploy; "I didn't paint it because I didn't know what color you would want." I don't know how many times I've used that one, but it never gets old.

Christmas day was good, if a little over the top. Leo received two squeaky toys both of which were pretty much dead within 15 minutes of their receipt.

The big boy has for some reason decided that he will not suffer a squeaky in his presence. Once he's got the squeaker and the stuffing extracted he leaves the gutted carcass on the floor and moves on to better things.

We had a few get togethers over the holidays, my family at my sister Jean's in Newport Beach and Denise's family at the Universal Citywalk. At the Citywalk we ate at Samba, a Brazilian churrascaria, which, in case you have never experienced one, is a sort of carnivores dream. They serve all manner of skewered meats, all-you-can eat. They give you a little green-light, red-light sort of thing. As long as you have the green side up the meat keeps coming. The meat is tasty, but the concept is really a little bit disgusting. On the plus side there were a few scantily clad Samba dancers for entertainment, one of whom pulled a couple of my nephews and sister-in-law onto the dance floor. That's entertainment.

On the other plus side, I had a Hot Brazilian. No, I wasn't waxed. Samba served some interesting cocktails based on Leblon Cachaça, http://www.lebloncachaca.com/, one of which was a Hot Brazilian. Recipes are at the web link.

This week was mostly uneventful. Jake had yet another followup at Loma Linda, a point of discontent, as we had hoped to get his oral surgery completed over the holiday break. Instead they scheduled the followup and now can not get him onto their surgery schedule until sometime in February, which will create another logistical problem, getting him home from Humboldt for the surgery and causing additional lost class time. Oh well, slowly but surely we are putting this stuff behind us.

Nick invited a friend, Teresa, to spend a couple days in Temecula. Teresa is a recently converted vegan and was coming into dangerous territory at my house. I actually cook a lot of vegetarian recipes, but usually cheat in various little ways. For instance, a vegetarian recipe calling for vegetable stock usually gets chicken stock instead, because I stock chicken stock and not the vegie stuff.

Anyway, always up to a challenge I made a vegan dinner of Curried Red Lentil Soup and a Chickpea Shepherd's Pie (with mashed potato/cauliflower topping). I thought they were both pretty tasty. This was also good practice, since Nick informs us that he is planning to become a vegetarian, or at least a pescatarian, starting this year. I may join him as a vegetarian, but the kind of vegetarian who still eats meat.

Last night we had dinner with the next door neighbors to celebrate the New Year. I made a variation on the jalapeno/cucumber Samba cocktails for the ladies. Did not manage to make it to midnight however as I was completely spent and in bed by 11:15.

Anyway enough for now. Here's wishing you all a Hot Brazilian in the New Year!