Meat Puppies. Sort of a cross between meatloaf and hush puppies. Not sure why we had to do this but as I drove with Da Chimpz to the mall yesterday we decided we needed to cook something different for dinner. Corndogs were too hackneyed a concept, but the idea of them made me want to deep fry something. We considered batter-frying a whole meatloaf but that seemed, er, impractical. And we weren't going to make a meat-block gingerbread house like that guy on Youtube ("Is this heaven? It's snowing bacon.")

So, a compromise: many miniature meatloaf sticks dipped into a cornmeal batter and browned in a peanut-oil jacuzzi.

Yeah, looked very alarming in the batter bowl; but once plucked from the hot oil we knew it was going to be tasty. Rammed each one with a wood skewer (everything tastes better when you put it on a stick) and even had some veggies on sticks roasting down below.

Dinner on sticks. Yum.

After that we did some Monster Truck racing on the Wii -- the new version is very difficult. So we put that aside pretty quickly and got back to the work of viewing every video available in the Netflix database.

The stockings are indeed hung. What a busy week, and today no different. After a last-minute trawl through the Kmarts I headed around the corner so we could properly deck the halls of our neighborhood. Take paper bags, sand, votive candles, and a whole lot of Christmas cheer, then mix it all together; the result is a West Bridge neighborhood standing tall as the star rises in the east.

Sweet.

But that's not all! We just dined on the almost-traditional fish feast of Christmas eve. "Almost" because we only did three varieties (not the seven that proper compliance with protocol would require). Would have been four but the salmon stayed in the fridge. And Da Chimpz liked the octopus -- bonus. And lemme tell ya: you put garlic, fresh parsley, and some sweet onion in a food mill then dump it out into a pan that is searing scallops in hot butter and you will come close to performing a feat of magic. I totally have to make that more often.

The third fish was tilapia -- just a couple of filets I got as a fall-back in case Mojo decided he didn't like anything else. But that little maniac is full of surprises. To say the least.

As is Cookie. He was singing along to a carol yesterday, inserting his own words (I hate when people do that):

"Happy Holiday in Cambodia..."

Santa better get here soon. I'm just sayin'.

We're getting into vacation mode here at Berea Rose. Christmas vacation. Got the tree lit, the boys home, and the inflatables down from the attic. Right now the Grinch is standing tall out front and the creche is dominating the living room. Alane can't stand the thing.

What a busy week. New job for Alane, holiday prep, lots of life maintenance projects to tend to (some vacation -- I'm busier than ever). But all is good. Well, unless you count the food at Golden Corral which the boys seem to love but which I found to be... wow.

Anyway, more later on our Christmas marathoning.