[Oh, Christmas tree.]

Watching lots of re-runs of shows I love. Boardwalk Empire ended a few weeks ago (holy hell, that season!), and so I've been watching old episodes of How I Met Your Mother and Modern Family. I love both of those shows--they make me feel so warm and fuzzy inside, as dumb as that might sound. But I love the friends/family dynamic and each episode is just so good.

Thinking about everyone who lost a child or loved one last Friday. I can't get it out of my head. My eyes fill up with tears just thinking about it, and even though I haven't been directly affected by the tragedy, it really just feels too big to deal with right now. Last night I sat down to address some Christmas cards and couldn't figure out who to send some of them to, and it just seemed ridiculous that we're in the middle of this holiday season, thinking about traffic and two-day shipping.

Listening to What We Saw from the Cheap Seats by Regina Spektor. It came out a while ago, but I've just been feeling it lately. I love everything Regina does. My favorite songs on the album are How? and Patron Saint. But they're all good.

Excited about going to Arizona for Christmas! I've always spent Christmas at home with my family, and I think maybe two years ago Rob was here with us, and then last year we went separate ways and hung out with our own families in Roanoke and Charlotte, and this year we'll be in Scottsdale with his family to visit Rob's oldest brother and baby nephew!

Reading lots of things! I'm almost done with Les Miserables and I have every intention of finishing it before Christmas so we can go see the new movie which, by the way, gives me major passion eyes with just a view of the trailer.

Loving going to bed really early. It doesn't happen that much, but when it does it is so magical. I get whatever I wanted to do finished, or I just say forget it because it was probably something trivial, like painting my nails, and at 8:30 or 9:00 PM I take off my makeup and brush my teeth and set my alarm and then literally read until I fall asleep. I always wake up feeling awesome after an early night like that.

Looking forward to my office holiday party on Thursday night, as well as the next four weeks or so. Unfortunately Rob won't be able to make it because he has to work both Thursday and Friday in northern Virginia, but my brother is home for winter break now and he's going to go with me! It's so nice to have Sean home--he's one of my best friends! I actually get a little sad when he leaves to go hang out with his friends and I stay behind--I want to hang out! I want to be on winter break!

What are you up to currently?

Thanks, as always, to my friend Dani for inspiring these posts!

I'm not going to say anything to you about this recipe except for you're welcome, because it is beautiful and it came to me in a vision the way I picture saints appearing to people in burlap cassocks, standing on old rocky hills somewhere in Italy. 

There's a restaurant in the DC area that I love that has a whipped feta dip with hunks of jalapeno in it, and it is so good but it's a bit too much dairy for me. They also serve it with pita bread, and I had to have cucumbers which is fine, I guess, but I thought I'd make my own version that wouldn't make me feel sick or deprived in any way.

I made my dish more Paleo by using goat cheese instead of feta and then adding bacon, obviously.

Ingredients:

For the sweet potato wedges:

Two sweet potatoes 

(Make more if you want, but you'll run out of dip.)

A liberal drizzle of olive oil

Salt and pepper, to taste

For the goat cheese bacon dip:

A four-ounce package of plain goat cheese.

Two green onions

Two teaspoons of coconut milk

(More coconut milk if you want your dip to be thinner.)

Four strips of crunchy bacon.

1/4 teaspoon dried rosemary

1/4 teaspoon dried thyme

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Two or three shakes of crushed red pepper flakes

Salt and pepper, to taste

1. Take the goat cheese out of the fridge, out of the wrapper, and into a bowl to get to room temperature.

2. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

3. Wash your sweet potatoes really well. Leave the skins on if you want (I think you should) and scrub them!

4. Cut each sweet potato into eight wedges, lay on a baking sheet, and drizzle olive oil over them. 

5. Spread the oil around with your hands and get each wedge really covered. Add salt and pepper.

6. Pop 'em in the oven for about 25 minutes, turning them every ten minutes or so.

7. With a hand mixer, whip the goat cheese up until it's a little fluffy, and add the coconut milk. Whip some more.

8. Add salt, pepper, rosemary, thyme, and garlic powder. Whip it!

9. Add crumbled bacon and sliced green onion. Whip it good!

10. Put the dip in a bowl and serve with sweet potato wedges. 

Now dip the sweet potato in or smear some of it over the wedge with a knife.

You could also totally use this as a topping on a baked sweet potato.

But I wanted fries.

Seriously, bring this to a holiday party.

It's bizarre, to simultaneously feel completely hopeless about one thing and so incredibly blessed about everything else. But I think that's just how life is sometimes.

To say that we stayed in this weekend would be an understatement. On Saturday afternoon Rob, Sean, and I ventured out to the mall to do some Christmas shopping and literally bought one thing before looking at puppies and then going home. Not productive. At home, we watched movies and ate a huge seafood dinner of scallops, lobster, and shrimp with my parents. We sat on the couch by the fire on Sunday morning and drank tea. Sunday afternoon brought a cooking marathon between my mother and I, and then Rob and I took a walk down to the dock and sat on the boat for a while.

I spent so many moments this weekend looking around me and feeling overwhelmed with gratitude. This family, this man, this food and these things that I sometimes take for granted without a thought. I feel so, so lucky for this life I've been given.