And The Table Groaned

Now I know what the saying means--the table groaned under the weight of the holiday feast. Fortunately, our table is quite sturdy. George made it himself, the legs out of thick slabs of pine and the top of the fir beams of a torn-down old Lutheran church in Wisconsin. He made it over a long weekend in a class at the North House Folk School in Grand Marais, Minnesota.

Here are a couple of photos of the desserts and drinks on the table last night. Along with George's grandmother's handmade tablecloth and my Advent wreath (with three blue candles, one red and another in the center white for Christmas Eve--the proper Lutheran colors), they made a table pretty enough for a picture.

The party was great. We were about 20-plus neighbors in all, going to five houses for our annual (10th for the neighborhood and we've been here for five of them now) Progressive Dinner Christmas Party. I didn't cough too much. Didn't drink or eat too much either, which is a feat--especially the eating part--in itself, but since we were the last house I wanted to be awake for the whole night.

George did all the baking and I did all the cleaning and arranging. We served persimmon pudding with hard sauce, a recipe from my father-in-law from whom we got the persimmons in October when we visited. Let me know if you'd like the recipe. It's amazing and I've missed it since we don't often visit Virginia at Christmas anymore.

We also had russian tea cakes, coconut/white chocolate thingies from the Dec. 2008 Martha Stewart Living magazine, gingerbread cookies and, at the last minute, George made a chocolate Bundt cake when we realized we had nothing chocolate. Oh, and we had vanilla ice cream with the Rumtopf I made (and wrote about in this blog post) last July when I was given a case of cherries at work at the co-op. It was all delicious, if I do say so myself.

And oh, so rich. We are so blessed.