Christmas Food

Christmas Eve

 Bagels with some homemade lox cream-cheese and onion bagels from America. 

 This year I decided to make two varieties of Christmas Cod: 

the usual (Elona Vaišnienės recipe), and a spicy version. 

 Shrimp--good, but I think we got the wrong kinda shrimp. 

 Special Lady's crab salad. 

Herring, sour cream, and boiled potatoes. 

Another kind of herring. 

 Two more kinds of herring, for a total of four herring dishes. 

Šližikai

Christmas

The production of the BBQ Bacon Explosion. I was only have to get such a nice weave because of some excellent bacon I was very lucky to get at Druskos Namai, my favorite new restaurant in Vilnius. 

The BBQ Bacon Explosion was excellent.

Home fries on the side. 

BBQ sauce on the side. 

Christmas II

Beef Stir Fry, with some excellent beef. 

I also made some onion rolls to make sandwiches with leftover Explosion, which were great, but not photo worthy. 

As you can see most dishes are made on the first day. On the second day you only need a few more because of all the leftovers, only a couple more on the third. I planned to make a chicken today two, but I barely got to the beef. Chicken is put off until tomorrow. 

Bilingual Barrier Blasted to Bits

Until last week I had only instructed my youngun to speak English: when she spoke to me in Lithuanian, I would say, "speak English." I didn't see any functional difference between this and another method often used by parents rearing bilingual children, which replaces the instruction with mock misunderstanding/deafness: "I can't understand/hear you."

Boy was I wrong. Apparently, with a daughter as stubborn as mine, instruction will only take you so far (not very far).  She is happy indeed to disregard my instructions. But she is not happy to be ignored, oh hells no. I don't believe that she doesn't realize I do understand her completely all the time, but she's willing to play along with "I can't hear you." And after a week of this routine she's finally chiming in in English without being reminded.

So after three years of little progress, I've finally broken through. It was really frustrating after such lingual success with #1.

Christmas miracle? Thanks Jesus!

"Stop hitting yourself!"

Played "Stop hitting yourself!" with the little one this week, she thought it was pretty hilarious.

Radio Ga Ga

One of #2's favorite songs is Radio Ga Ga--she asks for it by name. I suspect that because it's the closest thing my YouTube playlist comes to Lady Gaga, who she has heard of. Lucky opportunity to learn her some classic rock.

Cribbage

Taught #1 to play cribbage last night (she's in 2nd grade now). She was winning for a while, after ridiculous beginners luck--she pegged a run on her first hand during the play ending with 31, when she didn't even know how to play. She had a run of four, A-2-3-4, and a ten was cut yielding an 8 point show for her.

I did throw away a pair into her crib once to allow me to keep a flush, so I could show her what a flush looks like. But there weren't many point I gave her like that, she was really winning. Until I got my double double run, 4-4-5-6-6, for 24.

I ended up one point short of skunking her, 120 to 91.

She kept saying "this game is like math," and I think Tetukas' advice was very good, that it will teach her to add faster, at least up to 31.

Seasonal Threats

Here's a good one for this time of year:

"Have fun Christmas shopping, cause I ain't even gonna tell you what I want this year!"
-The Missus

Assignment: Presentation about Indians. Primary resource: Disney's Pocahontas

Watched this movie with both the kids for #1's assignment because the only story I know about native Americans is gruesome (the one from American Gods). After Cocoa died #2 started crying pretty seriously, but after the movie she wanted to watch more.

So what did #1 learn from the movie?

"The Indians wanted to kill the humans."