More photos of Xmas preparation and Xmas puppies

Well we got our menu planned out for Christmas Eve, which will be dinner at home
starting with some Smoke Salmon and fixing and then Lamb filet with vegetables and
I will order the mini Bûche de Noël from Michael Holland. On Christmas Day we are going
to Le Café at the National Arts Centre, they have a very nice menu.

Drove by Parliament and the Christmas lights are amazing the National Capital Commission did a
very good job this year. It is spectacular to see.

This evening we watch on BBC Player on the Internet Chef Delia Smith who lives in Suffolk. She is 73 yrs old now and the programs are about 20 years old but nonetheless very well made and very interesting. She basically shows you how to make Christmas Pudding and Cakes and all manners of
other things for the Festive Season. She had one recipe for a fruit cake which can be made in minutes and takes 90 minutes to cook, very simple and perfect for anyone who has never made one. The one I really liked was the sticky toffee pudding cake and of course all those candied fruits and candied chestnuts, so very good. Now come to think of it we should have suggested to our friend Spo who wanted a recipe for Plum Pudding to watch Delia make one, very simple.

While she was mentioning the ingredients you need and even wine pairing, I felt nostalgic for those days when I would at the Holiday time fly through London on my way home to Ottawa and stop off and buy all manner of food stuffs. London prior to Christmas is a great shopping place and has so much to offer. Even Heathrow still has the real Duty Free shops not the make believe nonsense you find in most airports these days.

Such shows on the BBC really put you in the Christmas frame of mind.

Xmas puppies they sleep about 20 hours a day to prepare for the Holidays.

Holiday Table Centre

Silver snow flakes

this is such a nice Panettone, so good with a coffee.

Will's home made Ginger cookies

We also discovered on the internet radio RMF Classic 98.3 FM Warsaw, Poland. They have a 

very good selection of Christmas music. Music in Polish and English.

Christmas Tree at the National Gallery of Canada

I was at the National Gallery of Canada this morning and in the Great Hall, the staff was decorating the Christmas Tree, it stands 45 feet high, a natural tree. It is to be inaugurated on Thursday evening at 7pm when the lights will be turned on. It will remain in the Great Hall until 5 January 2015.


Here is a preview

It was very sunny this morning around 11am and the great hall is all glass so it was difficult to get the light out. I would like a picture of the tree at night because it is spectacular from the street as it is from inside.

7 January 2014 Christmas Season is Officially over!!!

So it is over, we had some fierce weather from 23 December onwards. We took down the decorations today house is back to normal.  It also means we now enter the dark period of winter, no festive lights, it's winter and the reality of icy sidewalks and difficult driving conditions, cold unpleasant weather and dark days with little sunlight is our lot.

            The tree waiting to be put away, puppies taking the morning sun. 

In Ottawa we will have a kind of, sort of bureaucratically nice Festival called Winterlude Jan. 31 to Feb. 17.
Last year the weather cooperated and the ice sculptures at Confederation Park where interesting. Skating on the Rideau Canal was good. Hopefully this year the weather will stay sufficiently cold for all the outdoor activities, if not it can be a watery mess. Winterlude is really a weekend carnival of sorts, all activities are concentrated on the weekends of the festival with nothing much happening during the week. The activities are mostly about skating on the canal with activities for children.
Though it is 30 years old it seems that the organizers have not much thought about what else they could do to make this festival more interesting to visiting tourists from abroad and for the population in general.

Until the May Tulip Festival that is pretty much all there is in Ottawa, meaning this is the worst of time in the Capital. Lucky those who can escape to Florida or warmer climes wherever they may be.

For me it will be a return to my volunteer activities, reading and being a pillow to my dogs.
I am reading the new biography of Johnny Cash by Robert Hilbrun, a fascinating book, I can see why it got such good reviews.  I am not a Cash fan but he was a popular music figure while I grew up and remember him from the 1970's.

As for being a pillow for my dogs, well the hounds have decided that they can just sleep on us whenever they feel like it. Just climb on top and make themselves comfortable. They go into a deep sleep and weigh more than elephants. After a while you have to move them, to which they do not take kindly, giving you sleepy eyes dirty looks, uncomprehending.

Of course Nicky can be bought off for the price of a cookie, just say the word ''Biscuit'' and he stares at you the way wolves do before the kill. Biscuit is an important word not to be fooled with. Nora is the same though not so obvious. She also will make herself comfortable on you but you won't be, it is very one sided. Hounds will be hounds I suppose.

Le Sapin

Tino Rossi (1907-1983) sings this old Christmas favourite, my aunt Fernande use to sign it every Christmas at the urging of the family. Tino Rossi was certainly a singer whose voice appealed to many in the 1930's to 1970's in Europe and French Canada. He is the only French artist to have sold more than 500 million records.

We have so many ever green forest in Canada, the Sapin is almost a national symbol of our forests. Too many stories also of the days when people use to have a live tree in the house and how Dad would buy a tree too big for the living room and then cut the wrong part in an effort to make it fit, not to mention the mess it made. Today the artificial tree dominates all pre-lighted, etc... not really the same since the natural tree had this smell that said Christmas. In our home we did not have a live tree, but an artificial one due to strong allergies. However we did have a live tree on our porch and I was responsible for buying it, bringing it home, then putting it in a metal container, usually an old washing basin full of water, the water would freeze in an hour or so and then I would put multicoloured lights on it. I really loved that job and was proud of being able to do that every year.

In Europe we went to the Christmas markets in the weeks prior to 25 December in Munich and in Bologna, so much fun and so beautiful. Wish we had similar traditions in Canada with European style Christmas markets.

Mon beau Sapin, Roi des Fôrets, Christmas Eve

This Christmas song, O Tannenbaum, O Christmas Tree, was a traditional song at my grandfather's home and it was sung each year by my Aunt Fernande. It was her song and she had the voice, despite her age to give us children a beautiful rendition of it. She sang it in French which translates to Mon beau Sapin Roi des Fôrets. A Sapin in French is the green pine tree used as the Christmas tree, king of all Forests.  The introduction of the Christmas tree in Canada will come only as of 1765, when the Military Governor of Sorel, a small city near Montreal will make one for his home, he was from Switzerland and working for the English King. This tradition was unknown during the French Regime (1534-1763) in Canada this being a Germanic tradition.

Here is the Robert Shaw Chorale with a nice rendition of this song in German and English.

Official Christmas photos of our Household

We put up the tree last night and we have so many decorations we collected for the last 35 years from everywhere around the world that we can choose and rotate them from year to year. This year we added decorations from St-Petersburg, Russia and from Helsinki, Finland. I also had the task of polishing the Sterling Silver Christmas tree balls all 30 of them.

Our 2.1 meter Christmas tree 2012 edition. (click for larger view)

Our star which has adorned our tree for the last 35 years. With the figure of Humpty Dumpty below.

The Christmas frog in her sleigh.

Lady Bear from St-Petersburg, Russia.

English Page boy from London with some of the sterling silver balls on either side.

Mother Mouse and miniature book

Carabinieri Italy.

Finally a little bit of music for this Christmas Season.
Dagen är Kommen- Adeste Fideles- Psalm 122 sung by a Swedish Choir.
It is quite beautiful to hear this famous piece in Swedish.




To all a very Happy Christmas! 

To put you in the mood

If this does not put you in the mood I do not know what will, this beautiful photo of the Christmas Tree by the Amphitheater of the Flavians on Via dei Fori Imperiali in Rome. Though it has to be pointed out that the tradition of the Christmas tree is relatively new in Central and Southern Italy. It made its first appearance about 20 years ago at the most, many Italians still do not have one at home. The Crèche or Presepio is the Italian Tradition at Christmas. How often I have walked this avenue.

Only 27 days before Christmas. Click on photo for larger view.

Panetone, Xmas tree, decorations and the Weather

I find that the variety of Panetone in Italy is almost endless compared to back home with its standard dry and commercial Panetone. I look in Enotecas (wine merchant stores) for good chocolate 70% cocoa + and for other delicacies including original panetoni, I found one made with figs and beautifully wrapped. It is basically a big soft bread but it is so good with coffee.

The Christmas tree is up, it takes up to 8 days to make our Xmas tree, this is faster than in the past when it took 2 weeks to set it up. The tree is only 7 feet tall or 2.14 meters and all the lights are already in place, this is why it is faster now to set-up. What still takes time is the polishing of the 30 (1978 to 2008) Nieman Marcus sterling silver balls and the Towle flower ornaments.
We were concerned that the puppies might want to jump on the tree, but so far they have totally ignored it.

The weather is changing and so is the climate, now in Rome we often have in winter -3 C at night and around 5C in the day time with a lot of cold humidity. It use to rain in winter in years past and the temperature was never under 6 C at night and 11C in the day time. The buildings are not properly heated and there is no insulation, floors of marble and walls of concrete make for a cold house. So we dress up and use one room. The kitchen is really cold if the oven is not turned on, there is no heat in that room of the house. Also by law we can only heat from 6am to 10am and from 6pm to 11pm. The rest of the time there is no heat, the building concierge turns the furnace off. We can also only have heat in buildings as of 15 November until 15 April. It is usually cold as of 30 Oct and at least until 1 May. Many people do not have clothes dryers so they use the radiators to dry their clothes or hang them on the balcony and it usually takes about 5 days to dry. You got to be resourceful but with the changing climate it makes things harder.

So we are having 10 people for Xmas Eve dinner, Will is responsible for the main course, he wants to do a Cipaille, which is a layered meat pie, of chicken, beef and pork, very old Canada. While I will do the starters or Antipasto, I am serving a carpaccio of smoked fish, tuna, salmon and sword fish, very thinly sliced with a bit of green and some nice cucumbers and those little sour pickles. Our friend Lionel is doing two desserts a bûche de Noël with a cream of chestnuts filling and a Vacharin. Got all the white and red wine stocked up and also the Proseco and Champagne.

What is left to do now is a bit of gift shopping but since I am on vacation now I can do that in the coming days.

I do hope that you will all have a wonderful holiday Season with friends and family.