Reimagining Christmas

I love Christmas. I don't wear a Santa hat around town or dress my kids in red & green underwear every day, but I generally walk around in a happy fog, smelling pine wherever I go. I think it's the winding down, the socializing, the baking and the eating, and it's the last two that I'm trying to toy with a bit this year.

Before the c-dawg came along, I was fully committed to moving toward a whole food diet - which included baking with butter and sugar and eating the whole fucking cake myself if no one else liked it. Since June, I've been playing with alternative flours, oils and sugars to see how it all turns out. It's mostly shite, let me tell you, and the resources on the intertubes are shite as well. I still visit the sites and bakers that use butter and sugar and white flour, but I hold out hope I can make a great cookie or cake without the homage to saturated fat, refined sweetness and gluten.

Today I'm finally getting around to making macarons (I know, all talk, no action on my part), which at least uses almond flour. We'll see how that goes. But Pete has a standing request for shortbread this year, so let's face it... I'm still married to Roger's and Island Farms for at least a few more weeks.

In other cancer news, I finally debuted my peach fuzz to the outside world on Friday at my work party. It was lovely to see everyone and it all made me miss work and the normalcy of getting an email on a Friday night for something needed by Sunday. It was also interesting to see the reactions of my Victoria peeps. Most everyone was warm and open and even fucking amazing about it all, but there were a couple of male colleagues who were kind of uncomfortable even speaking with me for longer than a moment, like I was going to make them feel my tumours. I tried to be all copacetic about it, but I'm thinking now there was nothing I could do to make them feel better. Ah well. I had a blast dancing in my hooker shoes and drinking more red wine than I have in ages.