Thursday, December 29, 2005

Christmas Dinner

Okay, so these are a little bit late.....but I still have to post them, because it was an awesome Christmas dinner!Above we have the famous Allen Family Cheeseball....with imported cheese from the USA. Of course, we couldn't get our hands on parsley (the stuff I'm growing is too small) and I can't eat the nuts, so it was a naked cheeseball....but still delicious! And it was our appetizer.
And below we have the table.....it turned out pretty well considering the limited resources I had to work with. I really wanted a cool tablecloth..but maybe next year. Do you like my cool modern Asian dishes? I loved shopping for all of the dishes and stuff, way fun!!First course.....Pumpkin Soup. Fabulous! And though we tried with all our might, we couldn't eat it with the pretty chopsticks....so we resorted to spoons. Second course...delicious salad. I must give credit to Costco for providing this salad blend...I'm sure I would never find the individual salad ingredients (except tomatoes) anywhere here.
Brian says that this is what I look like when I am bossing everyone around. Can you blame me? I'm trying to pull off a Martha meal here!!!
Third course.....lasagne!!! This lasagne features homemade noodles and a special cheese mixture for the inside....special meaning what I could find to throw together here in Taiwan. All baked in an asthetically pleasing individual ramekin, and baked in my fabulous toaster oven straight from the 1950's. Wow....sometimes I even impress myself.

Mmmmmm...that was good....lets see another picture......mmmmmmmm!!!
A little break for digestion and dress up. Don't let the picture fool you....I'm sure Brian put that stuff on himself!
Ahhh...fourth course.......homemade cheese ravioli with bolognase sauce..(okay, so it was Prego with hamburger in it) along with homemade fettuccine noodles with alfredo sauce. I ruined the first batch of sauce....so I ended up making up my own recipe. All pulled together with perfectly steamed frozen veggies......yummy!!And here is Erika and I preparing the finale.....chocolate muffins (leftover from Christmas Eve brunch....and generously provided by Costco) with the centers hollowed out and filled with chocolate sauce......And what am I doing to this poor innocent muffin????
Ah yes, injecting it with more chocolate.......you can never really have enough, you know. Then the top is replaced and the whole thing gets thrown in the toaster oven to heat up....
And here we are with the finished product.......served alongside vanilla ice cream and topped with whipped cream and garnished with more chocolate sauce.........mmmmmmmm!!!We had a great day of presents and eating and talking to family!!!! I hope you all had a great Christmas....and Happy New Year!

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Christmas Morning

Well, here are finally some pictures from Christmas morning. There are tons more, but this blog won't let me upload them!!! But you can get the general idea of the craziness........


Here is Madison ripping open her presents....and I do mean ripping!!

Thank you Angie and Cory for the awesome face mask stuff!!! Now maybe I can look beautiful as well as be incredibly talented. ;)

And here is Brian sitting in the fallout zone.....what a haul!!

Madison refused to let us take her picture....so this is the best we could get of her in her Christmas dress.

Merry Christmas!!!

Christmas Eve Night.....

Cheesy picture of us.....not all that flattering, but we must blog!!!
Madi's new ducky slippers.

Pre-Prep for Christmas Dinner


Okay, so I apologize for what you are witnessing......blatant picture overload!!! Unfortunately we don't have web space, so anything that we want you to see has to go on here. Sorry!!

Disclaimer aside, here are the preparation for Christmas dinner done on Christmas Eve. The top one is cheeseball...famous Allen Cheeseball! With imported American processed cheese!!! The next ones are are all pasta. I didn't get a really good picture of the lasagne noodles I made or the fettuccine. The lasagne noodles were round to fit in the little round baking dishes..and the fettuccine is squiggly noodle.....way fun! The ravioli was surprisingly not too bad to make, and it tasted delicious!! Definately something we will do again...although not for a while now.

Ravioli!!!!

Lasagne!!!!!

Christmas Eve Dinner

Well....since I spent all day slaving to get ready for Christmas dinner....we decided to go out for Christmas Eve dinner. Sooo...we decided to go for really different, and we found this awesome Thai restaurant...named....Thai.......yummy!!
Here's Madison enjoying the only thing she would eat at this restaurant.......plain white rice!

Here is the food we got.....Coconut Milk Chicken and Hot Beef. And this other one is a picture of Erika and I at the restaurant.


And this is Brian and Madison...she was soooo well behaved.....

Saturday, December 24, 2005





Here we are eating Christmas Eve brunch!! We had all sorts of yummy stuff.....like muffins and pears and french toast with three kinds of homemade syrup!! It was so good! And Madi helped by stirring the juice. I really don't know what we would do without her!!

Sunday, December 18, 2005

More Christmas Preparations.......

Some Christmas pj's for Papa Claus, Mama Claus...and little Baby Claus!

Christmas Candy Making

Madison helping with the Christmas candy.


Fudge


Chocolate covered pretzels

Monday, December 12, 2005

Kaohsiung Mass Rapid Transportation

The Moment You've All Been Waiting For......Okay, The Moment I've Been Waiting For.....

Here is Madi's Christmas dress...I finally got it finished! It is actually cuter than it appears in these pictures, but it is hard to get the little courderoy and how cute the silvery snowflakes are. Oh well...I'm happy with the result...it is kind of Chinese and kind of American Christmas. I hope everyone is getting ready for the big celebration!!! Only 12 more days!!!!

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Christmas Music

Click on the picture for a Christmas surprise!!!

Thursday, December 08, 2005

I Just Thought This Was Funny....


Okay, so mostly I was getting sick of seeing my own face on my blog....so here you go! Enjoy until I can get pictures up of the latest Martha adventure: homemade cinnamon syrup!

Saturday, December 03, 2005

The "Martha Stewart Moment" Blog Challenge


Taiwan is finally starting to cool down....and consequently, we are all sick! Fortunately for us, I have decided to start doing things like making homemade chicken noodle soup with homemade noodes. Perhaps it was all that whipping up of cheesecakes without modern technology to help me....or perhaps I've finally lost my mind...but I've been having some seriously "Martha" moments lately. I even bought a citrus juicer thing (incredibly reasonably priced....US $7.oo) and made freshly squeezed orange juice to go with this "we refuse to succumb to the sickness!" feast. And wouldn't you know it....this is the very first time I've made noodles. I always thought it would be too much work, and I didn't think I had the time. Well...now that I'm Taiwan with no television to distract me...and not really a whole lot to do on weekends...I seem to have more time on my hands. And I found that it wasn't actually too bad after all....it was even kind of fun, and of course the soup was awesome....hopefully it will cure us all!

Now....since I have all of this time on my hands....and it is December, the month of merry-making and holiday baking,(oh, brother!!) I thought that it might be fun to have a Martha Moment blog challenge. Okay, so I know that you all are doing all kinds of cool things to get ready for Christmas...so I think it would be fun to pick a "Martha Moment of the Week," and post it on your blog. You just have to have one great one per week until Christmas. Then I can live vicariously in the US, and you get to see what happens when you try to do US holiday prep in Taiwan! What do you think??

Five Months In Taiwan!!

Happy Anniversary to the Hobbs family and Erika here in Taiwan!

Okay, so the cake says "Happy Birthday." But somewhere it is someone's birthday....so I guess that works out for us!

Friday, December 02, 2005

Christmas in Taiwan

Here is Madison and I collecting seashells at the beach.


These are the shells we collected on the beach.

Here we are making our Christmas tree ornaments.

Me with our wonderful Christmas tree.



The stockings are hung.

The Christmas Tree