Our New Year's Eve

A friend of ours came over on New Year's Eve to celebrate the end of the year with us. She's American and she had promised us she'd bring some homemade treats, but when she arrived she hadn't had the time to make them yet. She did bring all the ingredients though and let the kids help out with the 'cooking'.

Can you tell what they're making?

Of course you just HAVE to play with your food when you get the chance!

The above pretzel sticks were not used in the recipe for those who might worry ... :p

Can you guess it now?

It's called "white trash" and though I must admit that neither the name nor the look of it made me feel hungry, I did try some of it the other day and was pleasantly surprised!

It's easy too: just mix two cups of pretzels (broken into pieces) with two cups of Loops cornflakes and add a small bag of unsalted peanuts (I'm guessing the bag was about 500 grams) in an oven dish. Then cover the top with pieces of white chocolate and put it into the oven for about 10 minutes until the chocolate has melted. Once it's melted, stir the chocolate into the mixture of pretzels, nuts and cornflakes and use a spoon (preferably ;) to make little heaps of 'trash'. All you have to do now is wait until the chocolate sets again and then you can crunch away!

Of course there were also presents that had to be put to immediate use:

And then it was time for the New Year 'letters' (nieuwjaarsbrieven)

The children had prepared these in school.

This part always melts my heart and brings tears to my eyes. Even when I was a kid (and I had to read them myself), my voice broke while reading.

You may have noticed that my son is still wearing his hat. He practically never takes it off, not even in the house. Well, at least it's winter now. He would wear it in the summer too. But he would conveniently 'forget' to put on his coat to go outside, even when it's freezing...

Hat and pj's

Unfortunately our friend didn't feel very well that evening (not due to the white trash or the food we served!) and she ended up leaving early, around 9.30 pm.

K. also seemed to be a bit under the weather again and, if it were not for me, he would have gone to bed at 10.30 pm. He made it till 00.05 so we could wish each other a happy new year and then went to bed.

I stayed up a little longer... till about 02.30 am. But I wasn't all by myself. I was with Edward and Bella ;)

I finished all 4 books now and even Kenneth is picking up the pace: he just started the 4th one!