There are no decorations at our place this year because we're moving out at the end of the month and we just cannot muster the enthusiam to unpack the Christmas boxes, then repack them in the midst of packing everything else. So we're watching holiday-themed Netflixed movies and soaking up festive sights elsewhere.

Driving home this weekend I caught a little bit of Weekend America - they had a segment on Readymade's book ReadyMade : How to Make [Almost] Everything: A Do-It-Yourself Primer, and they balanced it out with a little rant against handmade gifts.

yikes, cheetos flavored lip balm

thing to remember - DOT-it stick-on LED lights, removable, reusable. via Popgadget.

Bon Appetizer at Slate, Sara Dickerman explores hors d'oeuvres, there are lots of links to recipes in the slideshow.

More on Turkish Delight at the Candy Blog, which also points us to this recipe for Cardamom Rose Turkish Delight at Becks & Posh. I'm actually pretty sure I'd like it if I can find some fresh stuff to try. I have enjoyed desserts that Scott has described as tasting like lemon pledge, and some of the best cookies I ever had were lavender. Mm.

Orangette shares her family recipe for eggnog over at Seattlest.

You know how sometimes an RSS feed goes bad and you don't really notice? And then the site merrily goes along while you vaguely wonder where it went? That happened to me with Chow magazine's between-issues column. Yay for rediscovery. They have a recipe for super nog. And the December issue has a bunch of recipes for champagne cocktails, just at the time when I was finding how much I like them.

I read the Narnia books* when I was a tiny child living in suburban Ohio and had never heard of Turkish Delight before. It's described as a candy so good it's worth lying to your siblings and travelling through a magic door and a cold snowy land to visit a mean and boring lady to get to. The only thing I'd ever had that was both so good and so exotic that it would fit into this category for me was the Bordeaux confection made by the local chocolate place, Malleys. This is how I came to believe Turkish Delight was crumbly, buttery toffee and almonds covered in sweet milk chocolate and rolled in soft crushed almonds. (Again, suburban Ohio.) I gave it no consideration until last year when we visited a candy exhibit at the Pacific Science Center, they were doing a Candies Of The World thing and has some badly dried, unnattractive stuff behind glass labelled Turkish Delight. But now I don't have to wonder any more: at Slate, The Lion, the Witch, and the Really Foul Candy.

* I was raised Catholic and didn't see the Christ/Aslan thing at all, I was pretty dim. I do remember wishing Aslan would quit with all the stone altar and water stuff so we could get on with the story.

Vicarious holiday cheer - Jeff Barr's pictures of incredible gingerbread houses here in Seattle, and Fred Flare's pictures of NYC holiday window displays, bliss.