Holiday Baking Kama Sutra

My post-a-day is coming to a close, as is the Menu for Hope – can we push the donations past $50,000 in these last two days? Bidding closes at 6PM-PST tomorrow (Cali time, baby).

Here’s a post listing all the internationally-shippable prizes. Notice mine’s on the list (EU15) but make sure you check with your country’s restrictions before bidding. A recap of the European offerings is here
Sam from BecksPoshNosh calculated the odds of winning a West Coast prize here

The positions I get myself into….

The holidays to me are all about over-extending yourself, dreaming too much, doing too much, fitting too much in and that’s part of the fun! It’s also a familiar sensation to me – when I don’t have enough commitments, I get exceedingly lazy in the other direction and become a hermit in my house. So it’s good to give myself a push.

This week I took all the goodies I baked this weekend (except for the banana nut bread which didn’t make it past my front door).

At work, I have been bombarding them with holiday-inspired things because TIS the Season to be Jolly, darnit! I feel a bit withdrawn after not doing a single thing for Thanksgiving. I’ve been playing my Pandora Holiday radio station at a low volume and switching to my Lounge station when it gets too much.

Tomorrow, I will bring back the Babbo Furfante Gift Swap that I love so much, a game I grew up playing many years in Michigan with my stepfather’s huge family. With so many people, the only way to exchange gifts was to do a creative exchange that didn’t empty your pockets and kept the children entertained. Of course, it wasn’t called the same name, but the stealing method has remained true across the ocean. Last year we played and it was a big hit in the office. Everyone was talking about the gift they bought in anticipation for tomorrow.

In addition to participating in the Menu for Hope, I also organized a last-minute raffle for some products sent to us by a client, and we will then donate the money to one of our non-profit clients. It’s not much, but it was better than trying to figure out how to share things in the office without a full-size meat slicer. Aren’t we sweet?

Speaking of sweet, here’s the classic fudge I like to make. This holiday favorite comes second only to the chocolate-covered peanut butter balls that I used to make and I’ll have to see if I can bring the recipe out of retirement here in Italy. I had to get the Marshmallow Creme smuggled in special.

Between getting a new computer tomorrow morning at work (good timing, don’t you think?), going-away lunches, our gift swap and then the informal “Pane e Salame” (and Spumante) get-together, tomorrow looks like a low productivity day.

But it will be the last day of the Menu for Hope and therefore I will be blogging! Won’t you help me give a last push for the fundraiser? Put a link in your post, pretty please!

These cookies were a new try this year but they were the first to go – coconut and cranberries and shortbread, oh my!