The Tió in a sequence

The children recite a Christmas verse in their room (usually they have learnt one in school)...

Next they go to the living room and start hitting the Tió with some stick while singing...

And then they check for presents that have magically appeared underneath... they know it's over when they only find chocolate coins or candy. (btw that's my blurred arm on the left)
We did the Tió yesterday evening, with my nephew Pau and my daughters. It's great to see them so excited running to their room and back... usually the Tió brings small gifts and the Three Wise Men will bring the big ones on the 6th of January.
Today we're going to my in laws for lunch and then home sweet home... Both me and hubby are quite "homey" people.

Sorry for not updating much, have a Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Escudella i carn d'olla

Our lunch today was the most typical dish in Catalan cuisine: escudella. It's a winter stew with lots of vegetables, meat and soup that is usually served in two parts, first the soup with pasta (tiny type of pasta) or rice, and then the meat with vegetables seasoned with just olive oil and a bit of salt. I use my mom's recipe, and I prepared two big meatballs with minced meat, egg, garlic, parsley and minced bread, made a soup with carrots, leek, celery, turnip, cabbage and pieces of lamb, veal, chicken and pork. When the meat was soft enough I took it out of the pot and prepared the two separate dishes. It's laborious... and I actually began making it the day before... here are some pics...

This is the minced meat, bread and egg I used...


I used frozen garlic and parsley cubes (that's not in my mom's recipe, she'd say this is not healthy, but this way your hands don't stink of garlic)


This is what we call "pilota" which is made of minced meat. It's actually like big meatballs...


We always cook and season with olive oil


On another note... it's been more than three months since H had his last seizure... I almost don't dare say it...

Exhausted

I'm exhausted. I feel I've been on a marathon for the last two days. Yesterday we went to see the three kings (the wise men) arrive, and this morning the children opened up their presents. I've been either assembling things, putting batteries in toys or picking wrapping paper and carton boxes... I'll post some pictures tomorrow.

My MIL told me today that Alicia said to her "I like the other grandma better than you, she is nicer to me, gives us kisses and buys things". I don't like her saying any of that, but should I let this be a warning to MIL that she should be softer? Maybe hug the kids spontaneously??

I finally could upload two videos of the tió, so if you want to see them, you can click on these two links:
video 1
video 2
For some strange reason, I can't post them directly on the blog!
By the way, the song and voices are Catalan...

Our tió...

We have set the tió again, "he" needs to be stuffed with food so that on the 24th, he'll... release lots of presents for the children!