Sleeping in the New Year

We are currently in Holiday Limbo. It's that weird time between Christmas an New Year's where you have no idea what day of the week it is, there's still festivities, and everyone is trying to eat up leftover Christmas treats before they go bad. Work schedules are weird, sleeping and eating schedules are weird, and then you throw in traveling and give up and just let life happen.

I'm back in Texas after another long trek in the car. Someone had the nerve to wreck their car all over my highway, making the trek even longer. I made it back to my apartment, swapped my normal human stuff for my crazy anime fan stuff and left for my friend's house because we drove to Austin the next morning for Ikkicon. It's both a blessing and a curse that this convention is on New Year's weekend. I love having a con around the holiday season  to tide me over until the spring convention season, but it makes for an insane week. Not to mention I have to pack my bags for both events before leaving. It's so worth the trouble, though. I had a lovely, laid back Christmas with my family, then a crazy fun bouncing-off-the-walls convention with my friends. We took pictures, made new friends, hung out with old friends, and probably spent waaaaay too much money on merch to feed our obsessions. I'd go into more details, but sleep was rather low on my list of priorities and I'm still a little spacey. I say that if you aren't good and tired by the end of con, you're doing it wrong. I may be tired and my wallet a bit lighter, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Needless to say, you can all stay up to meet the new year, but as for me, I'll be sleeping like the dead. This celebratory bowl of oats is the extent of my celebration.

See, there's sprinkles, that makes it festive.

And here's my family at Christmas. Aren't we cute?

Anyway, just because I was all over the country this weekend, doesn't mean I didn't cook! In fact, my family loves it when I make something fun for them. My family's Christmas dinner tradition is cheese fondue, which I love because not only is it delicious, it's something no one else really does. Plus, it's dipping things in cheese, what's not to love? It's nice for everyone to sit around the table, dipping meat and bread into a big pot of cheese and talking. It's one of many things I look forward to every year. However, we don't have a traditional Christmas morning breakfast. It's always something good, but it's not something that we only make for Christmas. Well, readers, I think I may have inadvertently created a new tradition. When helping to plan the brunch menu, I chose a french toast casserole recipe to make. We made it and it. Is. Gooooooood. If you've ever had monkey bread, it's a bit like that. It needs no syrup because it has this lovely streusel topping which we enhanced with red and green sprinkles because CHRISTMAS. The edge pieces are where it's at in terms of texture. It's crunchy, gooey, sticky perfection. We are definitely keeping this recipe around for special occasions, and you can try it out for yourself.

Recipe:

French Toast Casserole

Sprinkles of Kim:

-I used half and half

-I measured generously on the cinnamon and nutmeg, I also used Saigon cinnamon (thanks, mom!) which tastes even better.

-Topped with red and green sprinkles to be festive. Festive food tastes better, it's science.

I hope you all enjoyed your Christams and have a happy new year. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go try and find a place for all this loot before I go back into hibernation.