Man am I full.

Here is a picture of the Mock Porchetta:

It was great, although the vegetables came out undercooked because I tried to jam too many in there. I didn’t get a picture of the Xmas Pasta, but it was also a hit. Here is a tip, though: baking the pasta in individual serving dishes looks smashing, but the individual serving dishes emerge from the oven at 500°F and people have to spoon the pasta onto their plates.

Iris was a wee bit overwhelmed by Christmas. After she opened a couple of presents, she seemed to say, “Okay, what’s the catch here?” She did like the book I got her, The Great Chile Book. She picked it up and said, “Find some cascabels!”

For dessert, in addition to the pear-cranberry tart, we had a modification of Martha Stewart’s chocolate malt sandwich cookies, using the chocolate malt filling but with vanilla cookies, for a reverse Oreo effect.

Laurie noted that when you make Christmas dinner, you can’t sit around all day and play with toys. That’s true, but now that we have a family member whose job it is to sit around all day and play with toys, we had it covered.