Well, I've been in TX with my Significant Other for 20 years. All of the family is in NY or other east coast states.  A friend was here last night and another stopped by today for a while.  S.O. is ill (chronic illness) so it's pretty quiet around here.

Anyone else out there alone or nearly alone for the holidays?  Or are you just ducking away from the family because you are addicted to the forum? lol.

Jo-Ann,

Sorry for the illness!  Hope you had a nice quiet day!  We went to a nice church service today, and got "mugged."  Actually, they gave church mugs to all new visitors, and told us we've been mugged!  So cute!  I made egg nog to enjoy by the fire tonight in those mugs, but first we are off to a nice restaurant for a fine dine.  We did the family thing on Saturday, and talked to every kid today! 

Take care, and enjoy your snow!

Suzi

Had planned on having Christmas dinner with a work colleage and his wife this afternoon, but apparently the weather that brought you snow gave us hail, tornado watches and loss of power for my colleague.  Going to try dinner again tomorrow, that is if the power is back on.  So until then, the figgy forum fills my time of lost holiday cheer.

Suzi - that's the best mugging I ever hear of!!  So glad you got to speak with everyone and hope you had a nice dinner!

Steve - I'll take snow over tornadoes any day of the week!  Sorry to hear of your botched plans. 

What did we do before the internet and were home alone??  It's nice to have some friends in the same boat to keep in touch with like this.

I'm at work :)

I received the first bunch of spring seed/plant catalogs in the mail yesterday, so I've been wishing and planning for spring today.
Glad you have you alls company today. 
Merry Day!

JoAnn,
Had our traditional breakfast with my wife and two sons 20 and almost 18).  My wife made sauage gravy and homemade biscuits.  She had a few fig preserves on her biscuit....about one more breakfast and that will be the end of figs.  Opened our gifts and got ready to head to my wife's son's house for dinner.

We had a goose, honey baked ham, green bean caserol, mashed potatoes, gravy, homemade rolls, pecan pie, fresh strawberry cake and assorted cookies, etc.

Watch their son (almost 4) open the rest of his presents.  A nice afternoon.  On the way home, stopped at my mom's house.  She is 91 and just had colon cancer surgery 3 weeks ago.  She is doing well and even drove to her nephew's house for Christmas dinner (about 4 miles out here in the country).

Sorry to hear about your SO.  This is not a good time of year to be ill.  Keep the faith.  I have been there with both illnesses and heartache.  Keep your faith in God and He won't let you down.  I know it is hard to see it now, but believe me, He hears our cries and understands our pain.  This too shall pass.

Alan

I started working when I was 12. Not a real job, but helping out here and there for changes. First thing I bought with that money was a chess set. I had that chess set until I got married. Second thing I bought was a pewter mug. I still have that mug. Nice during summer for a cold beer.

My lil sis came down from NYC. We had dinner with my parents tonight. After the dinner, our sons gave piano recital and magic show for my parents. It was very cute. One of the better Christmas I had in long time.

Bob - sorry to hear your at work for the holidays, I sure have had my share of working the holidays over the years.

Diane - Seed catalogs!!  Some of my favorite reading material!!

Alan - what a nice picture you described for us!  Bless your Mom!  As for the SO - that's life - just keep plugging along.

Pete - That sounds like a nice Christmas, family, kids, beer, oops that's in the summer lol, and a recital by the kids with magic!

Didn't get bored but while I was poaching some Bosc pears in port, I went out in the garage and made a batch of my potting mix and repotted 10 little trees.

Came in washed up, took some family photos, pulled the ham out, turned off the pears and had a Christmas feast!

Then drove around visting family till 9. Not bored but wanted to see what everyone else is writing about.

Lasagna,salad,bread,then roasted chestnuts, later some Italian hard nougat , even later some sugar cookies.

After attending an early Christmas-Eve mass at church,
we had a nice family get-together Christmas-day dinner (including my soon-to-be-born grandson!).
The main dish was cooked ham (I love it).
We also enjoyed some soft-red wine to go with it (it was a gift from a F4F member - you know who you are - thank you much!).
And then we exchanged some of those usual Christmas-gifts ...

Martin-Were you at my table?, LOL, I thought our traditional Lasagna was too wierd for anyone else.  LOL

lasagna sounds good. i'm getting tired of turkey.

Pasta sounds good be I don't eat pasta.....I'm Paleo until the figs ripen. So I just had baked ham, collards, and poached pears in port. The poached pears are not paleo but hey.....it's Christmas!

never had capon before. will have to look for them. not sure if anyone sells around here. and good squid and octopus are hard to find.. i mean, kind that you can eat raw good/fresh.

Martin - sounds like my family growing up - they still do it!  I have to admit with just two people I have gotten lazy over the years.  I just don't want to spend the whole 2 days in the kitchen!  For Christmas Eve dinner it was seafood all the way!  Baked clams, seafood salad, crab legs or lobster tails, spaghetti with clam sauce, fried bakala (sp) and eels, and of course some vegetables, salad and desserts (mostly cookies we made) coming our of our you know whats!  Christmas day was a bit low key with lasagna, vegetables, salad and cookies.  I almost forgot the chestnuts!!!  and a big bowl of other nuts and big bowl of assorted fruit!  We would stay in the kitchen/dining room for hours at the table talking, arguing - you know the typical stuff.lol 

Maybe someday I'll be able to get back there for an old fashioned family Christmas.

You must get the together with family JoAnn i miss mine but that was from many years back dad never finished HS as he helped his family as a teen on a fishing boat in Bari boy he could cook any type of fish back in the day and loved the figs as well .
Price of Chestnuts keeps going up there 5.99 a pound nowadays and capon hmm is very expensive compared to turkey.

Spaghetti with white clam sauce. There was this pizzeria in Flushing called Al Dente. Right at Main and Franklin. I used to go there for their linguine with white clam sauce. Used to be my favorite. It took me over 10 yrs to figure out exactly how to recreate it. Now it's very close. It's all in the wine and olive oil, and just a touch of butter.