Niece Chrissie was here only one full day, and it was certainly full. Four of us walked to the creek. John and I let the young beauties pose with Jonathan Creek.
Daughter Lise saw the bag of horse cookies on the counter. We went out for a photo shoot with DW and Vixen, our horse neighbors. Having the horses back, after being gone for several months, was a delight for neighbor Joyce and us. In fact, we saw Joyce earlier, petting them when we set out for the creek.
Lise requested Christmas dinner for her last night here, only we would have the standard Danish dessert instead of English Christmas Pudding. For the foodies: we had Chicken and Stuffing casserole, carrots, frozen cranberry salad, cranberry sauce, and lime Jell-O salad.
Grandson Nathaniel pretended to be in a food coma before he headed for bed. Son John $’s ghostly presence can be imagined behind the candles. David had his share of the meal when he came home from work.
Lise posed with the dessert she had me prepare. I forgot to get her to write the name in Danish. It was basically a rice pudding of cold rice, whipped cream (substituted frozen whipped topping), sugar and almond flavoring. I left out the slivered almonds for the one who doesn’t like them. Cherry sauce was passed around to go on top for flavor and a pop of color.
Lise explained that this dessert is always served on Christmas Eve, the day Danes celebrate the holiday. One whole almond is stirred in, and the one who gets it is given a prize. It seems there is always a huge amount of pudding for people who are much too full to eat it. Everyone is required to take a serving, and if no one finds the almond, the dish is passed around until the almond is found. Lise had stories about people who found the almond early on and hid it until all the dessert was eaten. They were shameless!! Thankfully, Lise took pity on us and admitted that she got our almond on the second round.
The prize was a marzipan pig Lise brought from Denmark. We cut it up and ate it so quickly that we didn’t hear it squeal.
Mehrling Muse 
So many happy memories from that amazing time with you. ❤
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You made it very special!
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I have had to import marzipan pigs from Germany for our Christmas celebrations. It’s a tradition from the Norwegian side of our family too.
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I think our Norwegian relatives were too Americanized to know about marzipan pigs.
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Ah! Feeding the horses … one of the fun things I got to do at your house.
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What a lovely story all around, Anne. The food, the Danish custom, the pig. :).
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Lovely! The girls are beautiful. The Christmas meal you made sounds lovely, Anne. And the Danish dessert brought fun. Prize was super cute, too! Really glad you spent a beautiful time with your family.
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We enjoyed everyone.
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Yum! Rice pudding with Cherry topping sounds delicious! Looks like you had a wonderful FULL day. I have never heard of horse cookies!
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The name should probably have been horse treats.
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I make dog cookies…probably close to the same. You are blessed with such a fun family.
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Great family bonding!
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What a great final day!
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I love it! I would suggest hiding a treat in the tuna and see who gets it, but I don’t want to share the tuna. Or the treats! Love the pig too!
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LOL! What kind of treat would be better than tuna??
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Oh, we have these Friskies treats. They’re not better, but crunchy, so they give you a different feel
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Bet you’d like a crisp taco filled with tuna.
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And you would win that bet!
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More fun and a wonderful meal to end it. The dessert sounds delicious.
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We had a similar tradition, without the almond and marzipan pig. John’s mother, of Norwegian descent, always served a rice pudding on Christmas Eve. I’m afraid I found it tasteless. I think she stirred low-fat whipped topping in the rice and added no flavoring or sugar. As we ate Lise’s Danish dessert, Chrissie commented that she never liked Grandma’s version. Vindication! I wasn’t the only one!
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It was interesting to learn about the traditional Danish dessert (and your comment about the pig not having time to squeal made me laugh out loud😄)! Such a blessed time with your daughter and niece♥️.
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Years ago we lived next door to Chrissie and her family (John’s sister). We each had two daughters born in the same year. It took me a long time to see that our older (Lise) and their younger (Chrissie) did things the same way and were very much alike. The older they got, the more they drew closer together.
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That type of life-long relationship is so special and rare these days. How nice for them (and you and Chrissie as you watched them grow up).
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I had no first cousins, so I was thrilled that our children had eight that we saw regularly. Do you have first cousins, and do you know them well?
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Like you, I do not. That made any close friendships while my children were growing up extra special.
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Reminds me of hiding the baby in the King’s Cake at Easter time. I wonder how many cultures have the tradition of hiding something in food so the lucky person can find the hidden treasure.
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Maybe hiding something in food is more common than we know.
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It’s always a treat to spend time with your family Anne. Find the almond sounds like a fun game. I have never heard of anything like that but my family always gets a laugh when someone finds the bay leaf that I left in the spaghetti sauce. (No prizes though) 🙂
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It is amusing to find extraneous things in food. This was the first time for us to hide an almond in dessert.
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That sounds like a FUN and FULL day Anne. That is a unique custom and the dessert sounds good. My mom used to make rice pudding in the Winter months, that and tapioca. How fun with the Marzipan pig! We used to get a lot of catalogs at the house and they used to have a good luck peppermint pig you could buy and it was just for the Christmas holidays. The visit with the horses would be right up my alley. A little bigger than squirrels to feed, but I’d enjoy stopping by for a visit.
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The horses would love to take treats from you. They might become as personable as Parker.
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I would like adding them to my morning trek. An apple here, a carrot there. I tried bringing baby carrots for the bunnies at the Park and laid them in a pile – they looked at me like “what do I do with this strange orange thing?” They prefer clover and grass I guess.
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Your bunnies might not have liked the carrots, but David would have eaten them. He adores carrots — always has.
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I like those baby carrots too, but after I got my first crown, I took them out of the fridge 1/2 hour before eating them, so I didn’t bite down and somehow wipe out a crown. The vet said to give my canary Buddy carrots, so I would shave/whittle the baby carrots down to fit inside the “jaws” of a treat holder. He’d eat it or play with it ’til it shriveled up.
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I didn’t know canaries ate carrots. Live and learn!
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Yes, in fact the vet I went to was an avian specialist and her/husband (also a vet) had a parrot and she said they fed him everything but chocolate. She encouraged fresh fruits and vegetables plus a small diet of seeds. My mom used to cook plain frozen mixed vegetables for Sugar – let them cool and put them in his treat dish. He went crazy for that and grapes too. She drew the line at strawberries since Sugar was white and it stained his feathers. We gave them egg yolk mashed up and toast and bagels – I split a toasted bagel every day with Buddy and I had to shield it with my fingers, while blowing on the bagel to quickly cool it, as once I removed the old piece, Buddy would be mad I took it and wanted the other one piece right away. The vet used to feed her parrot spaghetti and meatballs on a paper plate on the floor of his cage – no way would I do that.
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That was interesting and amusing.
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I’d have never in a million years thought you could feed a bird spaghetti – I guess they would know though. And she said the bird made a horrible mess with it, so that’s why he got a large paper plate. I said what about its face? She said “it took a bath!”
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My Danish grandparents did the “almond” dessert a bit differently. Grandma served up a nice dollop of ice cream in a small dish, and one person’s dish had the whole almond under the ice cream. The trick was, whoever got the almond, had to keep it in their mouth and hopefully keep it secret. Everyone watched everyone eating their ice cream to see if they could determine who had the almond. In the end, the person with the almond in their ice cream got a gift but the person who guessed who had the almond hidden in their mouth also won. Grandma always made it fair that everyone at the table got a little gift. We looked forward to that game every Christmas! Thanks for taking me back to a wonderful memory!!!
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I love your version of the dessert game. It’s good for all ages.
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