The Vanillekipferln (or vanilla kipferls) are Christmas cookies that stem from the Austrian, German, Hungarian and Polish origins. These cookies are typically baked in the shape of horns using ground almond and then dusted with both vanilla and icing sugar. The horn shape is supposed to represent the Hungarian victory over the Turkish army, with the crescent shape being a symbol of the Turkish crescent.
The big guy at home loves his plate of garlic chives and he can have it any time (I think). I used to wonder why, but after eating this vegetable very frequently after I got married to him – almost every other week because his mum would cook it for him every other week. I gradually got used to eating this dish after a while; by and by, I actually grew to like it too. The crunchiness and freshness and its naturally sweet stems – I’ve never noticed they tasted so good when I was young. The best thing of all is that it is very easy and fast to cook.
A trifle is an English dessert made of layers of fruits, custard, whipped cream or sponge cakes and sometimes intoxicated with a little alcohol such as wine or sherry. A Christmas trifle, it being uniquely festive, must therefore come in shades of red and white (green would be difficult except with garnishes). And that’s exactly what I had whipped up to celebrate the first day of Christmas.
The word ‘sangria’ originated from the Spanish word ‘sangre‘, which means ‘blood‘. This word was used to name the alcoholic beverage ‘Christmas Sangria’ which commonly uses red wine and chopped fruits among other ingredients. ‘Sangria’ therefore makes specific reference to the deep red colour of the drink which is similar to that of blood.
The little boy just graduated from Playgroup and went on to Nursery 1 this month. He didn’t take it too well though. I think he misses his Playground teachers very badly as well as the fact that he was able to play around and horse around a lot in Playgroup without having to do any proper tracing and craft work at all. He cried and cried a lot in school, so much so that I could sometimes see how swollen his eyes were when I went to pick him up from school at the end of the day.
