Have you seen these tiny oranges? (Regular mandarin orange included for scale - then I ate it.) They were at our grocery store this year. So cute. They came in a proper mandarin orange box too - but a quarter size one. They're so yummy and sweet. The sections are like jelly beans of orangy goodness.

This is the turkey noodle soup we ate the other night and for some reason I'm having a lot of trouble writing about it. Maybe it's because it feels a bit like a cheater soup (in terms of something as traditional as turkey noodle after Christmas). It certainly was very easy but it was also so good.

I have a confession to make: I don't really like traditional turkey (or chicken) noodle soup. It can be good if you eat it right away but in my experience everything tends to go soggy fairly quickly. The flavours are still good and all that, but I can never quite get past the soggy noodles and veg. This version is about as unsoggy as you can get and still be soup.

I have a book of Japanese home cooking for North Americans and I love the soups in it. They are all the kind where you cook up some stock, season it, and then pour it over a bowl of cooked noodles, meat or tofu and veggies. We often make beef noodle soup this way* and it is always good. Fresh but still warming. I thought I'd try it out with turkey.

The stock was from our freezer, a delicious consequence of hosting Thanksgiving dinner in October. The vermicelli noodles were in the cupboard. The carrots are the last of the ones we grew this summer (still very crunchy); I steamed them first to make sure they would be cooked completely but still crisp. The turkey was two slices of breast meat with a little delicious, salty skin still attached; I tore it into largish pieces.

I cooked the noodles in the broth then scooped them into two bowls. I topped the noodles with the turkey and carrots and poured the broth over everything. I added some chives, clipped from our kitchen "garden", and a sprinkle of dried cilantro for good measure.

We ate our soup with chopsticks** and some crusty bread.

*Cover the outside of a nice steak with ground pepper. Sear it quickly then cut into thin slices. When you pour the hot broth over everything the slices will cook to perfection.

**I don't know why but I love to eat soup with chopsticks.

***I also really like footnotes.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We opted for one massive multi-family dinner at my sister's house this year, instead of the usual merry-go-round. Everyone was responsible for bringing part of the meal and there was so much good food. We were all so stuffed by the time we finished dinner that we actually had to wait a bit before we could think of getting out dessert. That's the pudding flaming above. I heated too much brandy and it burned for a while so I got Rob to pass me my camera and took a few pictures before we blew it out.


Claire made up a batch of Jane's bacon, prune and almond hors d'oeuvres (this recipe I think). They are an incredible combination of flavours and textures. Don't be put off by the prunes. Jane sometimes describes them as "bacon, almond and dried plums" to get people to try them - then she has to go make a second batch.


Rob and I spent the whole of yesterday being lazy around the house and eating leftovers (including leftover pudding for breakfast - a personal Boxing Day tradition). I probably would not have gone outside at all but I needed to walk Abby.

I wish I could have taken pictures of that walk for you. It was lovely. I usually just walk Abby on the sidewalks when it's dark out but she seemed to need a longer walk (and it wasn't going to do me any harm either) so I turned onto the trail around the lake hoping we'd be able to see enough not to walk into any trees. It turned out I could see almost as well on the trial as I could on the street; the clouds that had been hanging around all day had cleared and the moon was very bright. We were treated to a quiet, silvery walk with the added joy of discovering that a few of our neighbours had put lights in their backyard trees.

I'll be back in the next few days to share a bit of Christmas and everyday crafting (provided I can get some pictures in our few hours of sunlight) and the turkey noodle soup we had for dinner tonight.