The Smalls have just left for the Christmas vacation, and I am feeling surprisingly teary. I thought I’d be thrilled - I’m exhausted and in desperate need of a break, but in fact I feel more than a little lost. We spent the afternoon reading on the sofa in front of the fire, and the house feels strangely quiet, although Beloved will be home soon with his two, so the noise will continue shortly. I really ought to just enjoy it while I can.

I was reading one of the many magazines The Chestnut brought me the other day. This one was Tatler, which is a ridiculous publication, unless you’re English, Upper Class, and sixteen. I don’t buy it, and always feel as if I’m reading about a rather exclusive club of which I’m not a member.

But there was something in there that I found fascinating, namely the new teen lingo. I have noticed that The Eldest Daughter uses all sorts of peculiar acronyms and slang on her facebook profile that I don’t understand, although given a while I can usually figure it out.

Of course there’s the ubiquitous OMG (oh my God), and now IDK, which is I don’t know, but Tatler has a couple I hadn’t seen before that I quite like:

BFFN: Best friends for now, NFP, new favorite person, and the rather good Fomo: Fear of missing out, as in, it’s fomo that drags me to a party on Christmas Eve when I’d rather be home wrapping presents.

Particularly brilliant were a few of Tatler’s new social concepts.

Texpectation: The agony of waiting for a text from someone you like.
Chairdrobe: Accumulating discarded outfits on a chair in the bedroom. (Or in my case, bathroom. This might be my favorite).
Fakebook: Asking someone you hate to be a friend on Facebook.
Nillionaire: Someone with no money.

I will also give you the recipe for this year’s holiday cookies, which have gone out as gifts together with the candied orange peel. Not for the Smalls - the taste is rather too sophisticated for them - but Grown-ups have loved them.

Christmas Cookies

Ingredients:
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup flour
1/2 cup candied fruit peel (I find mine in the grocery store in the produce section at this time of year)
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup walnut pieces
zest of 1 orange
1 tablespoon orange juice
1 egg.

Method.
Combine first three ingredients in a mixer and blend well. Add rest and pulse until blended, but not pureed. You want the fruit and walnuts to stay in chunks, so they’re vaguely recognisable. The Chestnut’s daughter made these for me the other day and pulverised them, and whilst they were delicious, they didn’t look nearly as pretty.

Put soft dough in saran wrap, roll into sausage shape and chill for an hour. Preheat oven to 350.

Slice into 12 thick rounds. Place well apart on a baking sheet, and bake for 10 minutes.

Enjoy.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 at 7:01 pm and is filed under Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.