Today is the day for the annual making of a large vat of marinara sauce, shredding of several blocks of cheese, kneading of a whack of dough, chopping of all the vegetables, & assembly, baking, and eating of our own delicious pizzas for dinner. Yes! Christmas eve pizza party at our house!

We have:
- mozzarella, asiago, parmesan, and romano cheese
- peppers hot and mild and green and red
- a big bag of delicious tiny cremini mushrooms
- red onion, yellow onion, garlic, shallot
- a stick of salami for me, because pepperoni is too much but salami is just right
- oregano, basil, red pepper flake, & other appropriate spices
- tomato puree and olive oil
- flour, yeast, water, honey

This will clearly work out splendidly. I do need to figure out a different crust recipe, but that is a manageable task for the day.

Since there is also a half pound of ground lamb in the fridge, I may end up mixing and spicing and cooking it sausage-style, then putting sausage crumbles on at least one pizza. Lamb sausage would be pretty great on pizza, wouldn't it? I even have fennel seed to add! Oh man, what a great idea! THIS MAY NOW HAPPEN.

So we will make and eat a delightful variety of pizza.

We will also deliver lots of the aforementioned almond cookies to our next-door neighbor and the coffeeshop that is functionally my office.

Later we will go out with a thermos (or most likely my stainless steel water bottle, since we have not acquired an actual traveling drinking device not made of gross-tasting plastic since last year at this time) filled with black russians, and walk all over town and look at the lights and pretend it's colder than 40F, which it won't be.


Tomorrow after presents we're going to go have massive holiday breakfast at Veronica's. I am further going with tradition and bringing cranberry orange nut bread, although minus the nuts. This is actually also tradition, since both John and I find walnuts disgusting in baked goods. Besides that, there will be eggs and coffee and mimosas and coffeecake and homemade bagels and cream cheese.

In short, yay holidays!