Merry Christmas*Mele Kalikimaka*Joyeux Noel

Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope you all are staying cozy and warm inside, wherever you are. Spent the day with family enjoying lots of good food. It was my goal this year to make a Buche de Noel, or a yule log cake. It's traditional to have this cake on Christmas in France. Mine is made of a rolled hot milk sponge cake, layered with classic buttercream and ground toasted walnuts, and covered in whipped chocolate ganache frosting. Finished it off with sugared rosemary and meringue "mushrooms." It was yummy! Lots of work to pull off, but worth it, I think. Christmas only comes once a year after all!

Keys

The big day has finally come (and, now that it's past midnight the following morning, gone). It was an up and down, nerve wracking, hair-pulling, fist-pounding, feet stomping adventure that brought me to this place . . . there were some tears and some melodrama, which I can't say for sure now is totally over yet.* But there are keys and an empty apartment. Oh dears. For just a while now before I slip off to sleep, I will try to read a little of A Little Princess and feel like a child again and be blissfully unaware of what this all means.

*Much thanks is due to the people who were around me during this time.