Now are the days of being Santa Claus. I've been shopping for presents, getting ordered ones in the mail, and wrapping them all up. Plus I've bought some of the stuff for Christmas dinner, and tomorrow I begin the search for a veal shank (which is a baby cow leg -- I hear all my vegetarian friends retching). I'm more concerned myself about the turkey, which my grandparents are going to fry and bring over for dinner. Yum, fried turkey! Many people (including meateaters) may think this is a very weird idea, but it's actually a great way to prepare turkey. You just stick the whole thing in hot oil for about 45 minutes, and it comes out completely cooked and very moist. Fried turkeys don't get the breast meat all dried out and overdone like roast turkeys do. Plus you can inject them with marinade, giving them even more flavor. And it's not even unhealthy -- the skin's the only part that is affected by the oil, and you can just take it off (though some people really seem to like fried skin -- umm, yuck).

Tonight I'll make my first batch of cookies since coming home. Likely they will be snickerdoodles, and this weekend I'll make the frosted sugar cookies. I'm still debating making gingerbread men. After all, they're dangerous -- they do like to run ...

By the way -- we went to the Apple Store in Buffalo today, and somebody came home with quite a nice Christmas present!