New Year's Day Foods

I had a long philosophical new year's post planned. I started it late last night but Blogger hiccupped and ate it and today was just more busy live-in-the-moment-ness of a houseful of small children. I'm beginning to think that deep thought is not compatible with children under the age of ..... well, it's probably a complicated equation involving ratios of ages with number of children, factoring in gender and energy levels.

So. I'll save the Thinking Required Post for another day and stick to a simple topic today. For instance, food. To ensure a prosperous new year it's traditional to eat

black eyed peas and

greens. These would be collard greens dressed up with a little pepper, onion, olive oil, and cajun spices. Yum.

And of course there's the traditional gingerboard cookie and house making. Uhm. Didn't I mean gingerbread? No,actually. I meant gingerboard. We usually use cardboard as a base for building gingerbread houses during the holiday season. Another shortcut, we use graham crackers instead of gingerbread. It's a fast way to get to the important part - decorating it with lots and lots of candy. And icing. And even sweetened cereal. Things with SUGAR in them.

I bought the materials for gingerbread house making but after thinking it over I realized the kids were really too young to tackle a 3-d project. I thought it would be easier to make gingerbread cookies and let them decorate those. I didn't get around to making cookies but that didn't stop us from improvising. I simply cut gingerbread cookie shapes out of cardboard, gave them a good layer of icing, and we were ready for the important part - the decorating.

The grown-ups gave actual house building sans cardboard a try but.... uhm.... let's just say the results weren't particularly memorable this year. We'll be kind and say they were all too focused on helping the little folk to concentrate on their own architectural masterpieces. Heh.

Some people needed more help than others. This little man was a mouthless cyclops before Grammy and Mommy helped out.

Garrett doesn't look very happy in this photo but in fact he had a really good time. He thought it was very funny when Uncle William stole and ate his jelly beans although he didn't want to eat any of them himself.

Joshua was very proud of his flat house. It was very colorful until he added a second layer of icing because he wanted it to "snow" on his house. He was most specific that we help him add snow on grandpa's (the tiny Teddy Graham in the left bottom corner) "boots".

Some of us were more into tasting than designing. Nonny carefully removed all the decorations from her gingerboard tree so she could lick off the icing.

Do we count William as a kid? This was his third attempt. Let's call this one "Gingerbread Ode to Rubble".

I was too busy keeping everyone stocked in building supplies to make my own house this year. But it was fun watching everyone else and snapping photos. And clean up duty too, which, it goes without saying, was particularly sweet.