After a rough 2025 for many of us, I hope that the new year will bring an increase in peace, security, freedom, and safety for each person.
We began our new year’s celebration yesterday with a midday dinner with son-in-law L’s parents. So much delicious food!
We opted to return to our hotel early in the evening before things got rowdy. We figured we could watch the festivities in Central London on the television if we managed to stay awake. I’m sure at E and L’s new home in East London there will be a lot of banging on pots and pans at midnight, along with personal fireworks. Granddaughters ABC and JG napped in the afternoon so they could be awake for the arrival of 2026.
They followed the Filipino tradition of having a bowl of 12 different, round fruits to welcome the new year.
This marks the first post for Just Jot It January 2026, an initiative organized by Linda Hill of the “Life in progress” blog. You are welcome to join in the fun at any point and can find details on her blog. I’ll write a bit more about it as the month goes on.
While we are visiting in London, we are staying at a Hampton Inn. As in the US, breakfast buffet is included with the room, but the breakfast cuisine here is much more diverse. There are elements of the traditional English breakfast – eggs, sausages, bacon, potatoes, mushrooms, baked beans – but lots of other options, too. Porridge and cold cereals. Sliced cheese and cold ham. Tomatoes and cucumbers. Assorted fruits and yogurts. Waffles that you make yourself. Mini croissants and other pastries and bread to toast or not. Coffees drinks and teas and juices and milks.
It’s particularly nice to have so many options when one is here for a longer stay. You don’t get bored with the breakfast buffet. Today I had fruit and fiber cold cereal with milk and a waffles with banana and honey with peppermint tea.
Spouse B, daughter T, and I are spending the holidays in London with daughter E, her spouse L, and granddaughters, 8-year-old ABC and 5-year-old JG. The photo above is of ABC and JG’s bedroom window decoration at dusk on Christmas Eve. Dusk comes early in London this time of year!
This is an exciting Christmas for our London contingent because they just moved into their first house of their own a couple of months ago.
Christmas Eve day was largely dedicated to finishing up gift preparation and baking cookies. B and E made lasagna for dinner, a nod to the Italian side of our family and the many years we made lasagna for Christmas dinner to accommodate E and T singing in the choir on Christmas morning because the lasagna could be assembled the day before and baked after church. For dessert, we had cookies and pandoro, an Italian sweet bread which is covered in powdered sugar and baked in a mold so that it can be cut in slices and arranged to look like a Christmas tree. This was not part of the Italian Christmas tradition that made it across the ocean to the US but it was so delicious that we will try to order it next year.
When E and T were young, every Christmas, my parents would give them Fonatanini creche figures. E’s figures were being stored in our basement but, now that she and L have their own home, we took the opportunity to bring them out to them. Here they are on the mantel, with a zebra addition courtesy of ABC and JG!
My parents, known here as Nana and Paco, have both passed away. They both got to know ABC, their first great-grandchild when she lived in the US for her first couple of years before moving permanently to London. Paco got to meet JG just once, when they were able to make the trip over from London a few weeks before he died. I love, though, that the creche figures they gave to E are part of their first Christmas in their new home. It feels as though they are blessing the house and their dear family.
I’m writing this early Christmas morning. Our plans include 8:30 Christmas mass, followed by gift exchange and an afternoon dinner at L’s parents with 20-some family gathering.
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate and wishes for peace and joy to all!
This photo from almost eight years ago is three generations of mothers in my family, Nana and me with daughter E holding baby ABC, my first grandchild and Nana’s first great-gandchild.
This Mother’s Day is without Nana, who passed away in May 2019, and with E and ABC living in London, where Mother’s Day was celebrated a couple of months ago.
Here, B baked squash maple muffins for breakfast and is planning a special dinner, chicken and artichokes over artichoke ravioli with a yet-to-be-revealed-to me dessert. Daughter T is here with us, which is a blessing.
Still, if feels strange to not be with any of the other mothers in my family, except in spirit.
Mother’s Day began as a call for peace. (That post contains Julia Ward Howe’s original proclamation, still well worth reading in our current war-torn world.) Today, I wish peace to all, especially to all who have mothered others, whether still living or deceased.
Wishing everyone celebrating Thanksgiving today a meaningful experience. We are lucky to have my older sister and her husband here visiting for the holiday. For various reasons, we are forgoing the traditional turkey in favor of roast beef and popovers. B, however, did make the traditional apple and pumpkin pies.
B’s nod to turkey was to craft one with his knife while venting the apple pie.
Daughter E is making a more traditional Thanksgiving meal “across the pond” in London where she lives with her family. It’s nice that our dual-citizen granddaughters are growing up with the tradition of Thanksgiving from the United States, even though it’s just another autumn Thursday at school there.
Here, we are having some wet snow for the holiday. It’s been a strange fall with an unusual level of drought, relieved some lately by wet snow and rain. Not sure what will come next.
Wishing everyone some special moments today, whether you are celebrating a holiday or not.
Inspired by Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz’s video of a campaign stop in Nebraska where he grew up, spouse B made runza for the first time.
He chose a classic beef and cabbage filling and made his own bread dough because that’s how he rolls!
They were delicious!
Thanks, Tim Walz, for introducing us to a Nebraska specialty and for your support of local businesses as you tour the country on the campaign trail!
I just finished eating some yummy apple cinnamon scones that B made.
It’s a recipe that he developed starting from a Bisquick base, so it is quick to put together. Less measuring than working totally from scratch, which he also does.
One of my favorite scratch recipes is his pumpkin scones, for which we often use frozen honey nut squash. Well, you do have to thaw the squash first. In the fall when the farm stands are about to close and are selling winter squash by the box, we often buy a bunch of honey nut squash to bake, mash, and portion out to freeze so that we can use it for recipes for months to come.
But today, the apple cinnamon scones hit the spot.
Starting from the Bisquick base, it’s easy to make lots of variations. Besides fresh fruits, like apples, peaches, or plums, we use dried fruits, such as cranberries, currants, or raisins. There are lots of variations for the recipe, depending on what you have on hand.
We also add a bit of sugar, white or brown, and spice, often cinnamon but possibly nutmeg or cardamon, depending on what we use for fruit.
Because spouse B had contracted COVID and needed to isolate at home and daughter T and I were masking around each other in case one of us was infected, we didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving last Thursday – or, I should say, we celebrated with a nice, but not fancy, dinner of roast pork with roasted vegetables with T and I eating in the dining room and B at the kitchen table where we could talk to each other at a safe distance. Instead of the traditional pie, we had (the also-traditional) Aunt Gert’s Indian pudding for dessert.
That Thursday was Day 12 of B’s COVID experience and the first day he had tested negative. On average, Omicron infections last for eight days, so B was on the long side of the spectrum but someone has to be to balance out those who have a short infectious phase. Because he needed to have two negative tests 48 hours apart for us to be unmasked around each other, he decided that our fancier Thanksgiving dinner should be on Sunday.
While, for many years, I did the bulk of the cooking at our house, I don’t especially enjoy it. B, on the other hand, likes cooking and baking, so he chose the menu and made the meal. We enjoyed a delicious dinner of individual beef Wellington with roasted Brussels sprouts with bacon and a Braeburn and Cortland apple pie for dessert.
One of the things for which we are most thankful is that B’s bout with COVID was relatively mild, even if his infectious period did hang on longer than expected. We are also thankful that T and I remained uninfected. The pool of people I know who have never had COVID has dwindled to just a few, so I know it’s likely we will contract it someday, but, for now, we are all happy to be able to spend time together at home unmasked in the same room, whether or not there is a fancy late-Thanksgiving meal on the table.
This will be super short because I’m going to meet up with a lot of people today. (Well, a lot for me, at least!)
This morning, I have a Creation Care Team meeting at church.
From early afternoon through early evening, I’ll be going to a gathering of women, organized by a friend and being held at the retreat space of another. There will be expressive arts, chair yoga, an opportunity to walk a labyrinth, companionship, and, of course, some food. I made a big bowl of applesauce to bring and share. Very indicative of fall in the Northeast.
I don’t usually see that many people in a day – or, perhaps, it’s more accurate to say I don’t usually interact with that many people in a day.
Joanne Corey 