Three Beautiful Things 12-26-2025: Morning at Home, I Failed Once and Then Succeeded, Icelandic Christmas Dinner

1. Even though our Christmas Day activities were low key, I needed to take a break from Christmas related activities and so I stayed home this morning rather than join the rest of the family at Paul and Carol's to welcome Cosette, Taylor, Bucky, and Saphire when they arrived and I missed the breakfast and gift exchange that followed. 

It turned out that the rest was good for me and the time alone gave me the opportunity I needed to get caught up on my writing, complete my usual morning routine, and, by early afternoon, head down to the veterinarian's office to pick up pills for Copper. 

2. Our family focuses on the food and traditions of a different country every year at Christmas time.

This year, we focused on Iceland and Carol created a menu of a cocktail, appetizers, starters, a dinner, and dessert with after dinner drinks. 

Carol assigned me to make caramelized potatoes which looked simple on paper, but I had a rough time making this dish for a while, but recovered and delivered. 

I had never caramelized sugar before and my first go around failed because I had the heat in the electric frying pan on too high. I ended up with chunks of hard candy. 

I simultaneously created a double boiler and tried to melt down the hard caramel rocks and I also started the process over again. 

This time I melted the sugar at a lower temperature, added the butter and kept the temperature low, and, as a result, I came much closer to making what the recipe called for. 

I boiled the red potato pieces about an hour or so earlier, so they were dry and ready to be caramelized. 

I put the potato pieces in the pan with the melted sugar and butter mixture and pretty much succeeded in covering all the pieces with sweetness. 

I checked my rock hard candy melting project and some liquid caramel was available and I poured it over the potatoes, too, and tossed the rest of the rock hard candy nuggets into the trash. 

I was done with it! 

3. I'm not going to list every Icelandic offering that family members set out tonight, but I'll give you a pretty good sense of what we enjoyed. 

We started with appetizers that included rye bread that Cosette baked, lox, a variety of cheeses, skyr, Iceland crackers with a long name, and other tasty foods. 

The center of our dinner was a lamb shoulder roast with rosemary and garlic paste and a red wine sauce. The dinner also featured Carol's Icelandic soup with a long name and Zoe's Icelandic bread with a long name, Christy's almond rice pudding, the potatoes I brought. 

We retired to the living room for a dessert tray of sweets Sue Dahlberg purchased in Iceland on one of her visits and liquid refreshments.