New Year’s Eve

Tasty Tuesday–Festive Feasts and Holiday Baking

Time for a last look back at the festive feasting season!

We started Thanksgiving week by baking…Christmas Funfetti cupcakes? There’s never a bad time for Funfetti!

Of course, the main attraction Thanksgiving week was the turkey dinner:

And seven pies!

We celebrated Nikolaustag with chicken Döner Kebab and gingerbread tiramisu:

The next special dinner was a week later, for Santa Lucia Day, featuring potato pancakes and kielbasa, with cranberry fluff for dessert…and let’s not forget the lussekattes for breakfast!

We had a gingerbread layer cake filled with gingerbread mousse and frosted with molasses cream cheese frosting on Christmas Eve:

And our favorite cherry coffee cake for breakfast on Christmas Day:

But the best meal of the year is the Christmas Day pick-out dinner!

For our “fancy” Christmas dinner, we had bolognese, breaded artichokes, and fresh baked Italian bread:

In keeping with the Italian theme, we had cannoli for dessert:

On New Year’s Eve, we had black bean soup and corn bread:

And our traditional hot chocolate bar, of course!

Our New Year’s Day dinner was enjoyed a day late…I made pork medallions and spaetzle:

And we had a Glühwein-Kuchen for dessert:

We also had a special “Lord of the Rings Day” celebration (on Tolkien’s birthday!), featuring one of the fanciest chicken recipes I make, and “Westfarthing Fairings” from the Recipes from the World of Tolkien cookbook:

For the last feast of the season, Ryan’s birthday dinner, (which also happens to be Epiphany), we had fry bread and chili:

And Boston Cream Pie for dessert:

We did lots of other baking along the way, including a pair of Italian Christmas cookies for Christmas school:

And all of our favorite fancy Christmas cookies…chocolate crinkles, linzer augen, chocolate peppermint, raspberry almond thumbprints, peppermint meltaways, and fig thumbprints:

With the addition of a few of the pudding cookies Bunny made, they created a beautiful Bunter Teller!

For our New Year’s Eve hot chocolate bar, we baked two kinds of hot chocolate cookies:

In addition to the Christmas cracker candy I usually make, we also tried a new recipe that had sliced almonds on top:

And on the last day of Christmas, we baked and decorated sugar and gingerbread cookies:

I made a couple of bonus pies along the way, too:

And a bevy of festive drinks, including standards like egg nog and wassail, and some frappe kits from Aldi:

And just as we made a special dessert at the beginning of Thanksgiving week, we ended Epiphany week with a carrot cake:

I think that’s it for festive feasts and holiday baking…I’m ready to close the Markel bakery for a bit!

Stretching Out the New Year

Thanks to the very unwelcome guest influenza, plus work schedules, we stretched out our New Year’s celebration over three days instead of the usual two!

On New Year’s Eve, I made black bean soup and cornbread:

And we had our customary hot chocolate bar, with a twist…Turkey made the hot chocolate from scratch for us! Chickadee helped me bake two kinds of hot chocolate themed cookies to go with it, too:

And somehow I managed to stay up until midnight to ring in the new year on Gloriana:

New Year’s Day was a pretty quiet day, lacking our usual trip to the mall and the Lego store, and we had our celebratory meal today instead. We spent most of the day watching the last few Christmas movies in our annual rotation, and I made some peppermint frappes from a kit I got at Aldi:

I went with a German theme again this year for dinner, featuring Schweinelendchen mit Pilzrahmsoße (pork medallions with a mushroom cream sauce) and spaetzle, plus roasted carrots and green beans with bacon.

For dessert, Bunny and I made a Glühwein-Kuchen (mulled wine cake).

I wasn’t intending to begin 2026 with illness, but at least we still had a few nice meals to end one year and begin another!

2025 in Review

Time for a look back at another fun and busy year in the Markel household!

January is always a rather quiet month, which is not unwelcome after the busyness of the holiday season. We began 2025 with our first family feast of the year, with a German twist. We enjoyed quite a bit of snow. Ladybug won first place in the high school category of our city’s winter art contest! And she began rollerblading (while dodging the stubborn patches of ice that insisted on sticking around).

February is historically my least-favorite month of the year, mainly because it’s just so boring. There were some bright spots, though, including Once Upon a Valentine in St. Charles, MO. We had more snow…and so did Bowling Green, KY, where we got to see what winter looks like on The Hill when we visited Bunny at college. We watched the Big Bear Eagle Cam with great interest, and also got to observe as our library hatched some chicks. And we had a flat tire, which was just a very February thing to have happen.

I’m always happy to see March arrive, because it’s a much more exciting month! I got to debut my Rare Dirndl custom dirndl just in time for Mary Blair March. Chickadee had her final baby teeth pulled. We fell in love with the eaglets on the Big Bear Eagle Cam. Bunny came home for spring break and we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day. Turkey turned 22. And just a few days later, Chickadee finally became a teenager! We celebrated the St. Louis Cardinals home opener, which was probably the high point of an otherwise disappointing season. Moose was inducted into Phi Theta Kappa, thanks to his excellent grades his first year of college.

April was a fun month. Ryan and I took Chickadee to see the Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon The Super Live at The Fabulous Fox Theatre in St. Louis as a late birthday gift. We celebrated Easter. Ladybug, Chickadee, and I went to the St. Louis Zoo for the lantern festival. And back at the zoo during the day, we finally got to see Jet, the zoo’s baby elephant! Bunny presented a 20+ page paper she wrote about Benedict Arnold at the History Undergrad Research Conference at Western Kentucky University and won the top award.

May (or “Big Feelings May” as I like to call it) was A LOT. Moose performed in his spring band concert the same night that Bunny was showered with awards at the WKU history department awards night. We had fun with annual our Star Wars Days celebrations, and then things really got busy. Bunny graduated from Western Kentucky University with a Bachelor’s Degree in history and as Scholar of the Potter College of Arts and Letters. While we were in Bowling Green, Ladybug turned 18 (although we waited to celebrate until we were back home). She also graduated from high school, and my K-12 homeschool, which was very emotional. The two of us went horseback riding as one last homeschool activity. We went on our annual trip to Chicagoland for the 10th anniversary of Combo Breaker, where we all worked hard, put in a lot of hours at the event, but also had some fun along the way.

We began June with “fledge watch” as we waited to see when Sunny and Gizmo, our favorite young eagles, would fly for the first time (6/2 and 6/7 respectively, if you’re curious). Our “Pokémon Summer” kicked off. Moose got to attend the Shriner’s Parade as a spectator instead of as a member of the marching band. I celebrated my birthday. As a birthday treat, we spent the day on a “Hit the Bricks” tour in St. Charles, MO. We also celebrated “Stitch Day.”

July was a pretty quiet month, probably because it was too hot to do much of anything. We did get to spend a fun day at Grant’s Farm. Bunny turned 21! And Chickadee and I went on a very interesting and moving summer school field trip to the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum.

In August, Bunny and I went on the other “Hit the Bricks” tour in St. Charles, MO. We wrapped up our “Pokémon Summer” which was a lot of fun. Ladybug started college! And Chickadee started 8th grade as the only student in my homeschool. Bunny decided against grad school, and instead started working. Turkey began his senior year of college, with plans for dual enrollment as a grad student in the second semester. And Moose started his second year of college. Chickadee and I went on a fun field trip to Busch Stadium. And we had a fun time at Greek Fest at the end of the month.

September means the beginning of Oktoberfest season! But first, Chickadee and I went on a fun field trip to the Central Library and Union Station in St. Louis. Our first Oktoberfest of the season was at Grant’s Farm. Our second Oktoberfest was closer to home on the town square in Belleville. We attended my favorite Oktoberfest in St. Charles, MO. We celebrated Michaelmas, which is one of my favorite church feast days.

Of course in October there were more Oktoberfests, in Soulard and at the St. Louis Zoo. Chickadee and I went on a library crawl, which was fun and unique. We visited the pumpkin patch. We had fun celebrating the 10th anniversary of Legends and Lanterns in St. Charles, MO.

Things really kicked into high gear in November. Chickadee broke her ankle on the seventh anniversary of when I broke mine…that might be the weirdest thing that happened all year! Moose celebrated his 20th birthday. We got to see the Northern Lights again. Chickadee and I attended the Thanks-for-Giving parade in downtown St. Louis for the first time. We baked a lot of pies. We had a nice Thanksgiving. Advent began, and with it, a new Lego project.

And that brings us to December. We kicked off the Christmas season in earnest by going to the Boar’s Head Festival. We celebrated Nikolaustag…and went to Christmas on the Hill on the same day. Moose’s concert band performed a lovely concert that ended with a Christmas favorite, “Sleigh Ride.” Our Christmas School focused on Christmas in Italy, in advance of the 2026 Winter Olympics. We celebrated Santa Lucia Day by going to Christmas Traditions in St. Charles, MO, (if you’re keeping track, that’s a record six visits to historic St. Charles this year!), where we got to visit with Santa Lucia herself. A few days later we attended Garden Glow at the Missouri Botanical Garden. The Fab Five completed Lego Rivendell and we celebrated Christmas!

This was another big year, and next year is looking pretty monumental, too, as Turkey will be graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree in mathematics and Chickadee will be starting high school…I’m sure there will be other notable events and fun surprises along the way, and I can’t see what to see 2026 holds for us!

Tasty Tuesday–Festive Feasts and Holiday Baking

Now that Epiphany has come and gone, I guess the holiday season is officially over (I’m still not taking my Christmas tree down yet, though!). Let’s take a look back at the festive feasts and holiday baking we enjoyed during the holidays!

As I did last year, I kicked off Thanksgiving week by making pumpkin-chocolate chip cookies:

Speaking of Thanksgiving, we enjoyed our traditional feast:

And TEN pies (the bonus cookie butter pie was still in the freezer)!

We had chicken döner and gingerbread whoopie pies for our postponed St. Nicholas Day dinner:

And for Santa Lucia Day, we had lussekattes, potato pancakes and kielbasa (a day late), and white-chocolate cranberry cupcakes:

We didn’t have a fancy dinner on Christmas Eve, but we did have a carrot cake filled with gingerbread mousse:

For Christmas Day breakfast we had our favorite coffee cake:

And the best meal of the year, the pick-out dinner!

I think our M*A*S*H Day dinner counts as a festive feast, because Tony Packo’s was a Christmas gift.

On New Year’s Eve, we had fondue:

And the hot chocolate bar:

New Year’s Day was a full German feast of schnitzel and spaetzle and red cabbage:

With a Black Forest cake for dessert:

We had one more turkey dinner while we waited for the first snowstorm of the year:

And our traditional snow day dinner of French toast the next day:

Our festive feasts always end with Ryan’s birthday dinner…this year, we had chili and fry bread:

And a Frango Mint cake for dessert!

Of course there was plenty of cookie baking, starting with the French Christmas cookies we made in school:

And all of our favorite Christmas cookies!

It made for a beautiful Bunter Teller!

We also enjoyed Christmas Tree Cake treats all season long, including both standard and big cakes, donuts, and ice cream:

And a few festive drinks along the way…wassail and eggnog:

This has been a great season of feasting…now it’s time to give the kitchen a break! (Who am I kidding…I’m already planning the next cake I’m going to bake!)

Guten Rutsch!

How is it 2025 already?!? It hardly seems possible that we’re at the quarter mark for this century. We’ve had a rather German celebration for the last two days, starting with fondue for dinner yesterday.

And of course we had our traditional hot chocolate bar for dessert…I was very excited about the addition of hot cocoa and marshmallow Hostess Donettes this year!

We watched Apollo 13 and Ocean’s 11, and I made it to midnight (but just barely) to ring in the new year in Animal Crossing.

This morning we were at the Lego store before they opened so we could look for a few new sets…the line was incredible, but we still managed to find everything we were looking for!

We did some shopping at Target and the Asian store and stopped for boba at what I think was a place we hadn’t tried before:

And we had another German meal for dinner:

Plus Black Forest cake for dessert:

Not a bad way to say “goodbye” to one year and “hello” to another…Guten Rutsch!

2024 in Review

Time for a look back at another fun, busy year!

January seemed even quieter than it usually does. We honestly didn’t do a whole lot, but we did enjoy one winter weather event, and a foggy trip to the Missouri Botanical Garden. I started a new monthly photo project there, but…spoiler ahead…I only made it partway through the year before we got so busy, I simply forgot to keep up with it!

February was surprisingly exciting. We went ice skating for a school field trip. The Orchid Show at the Missouri Botanical Garden was a welcome bright spot in the middle of the winter. We attended the premier “Once Upon a Valentine” event in St. Charles, MO. My hosting segment on SiriusXM’s Disney Hits channel aired! We took our annual Bobunk celebration on the road when we visited Bunny at college.

March was a total whirlwind. We celebrated MAR10 Day, Chicago Day, and STL Day in quick succession. Bunny came home for spring break. We celebrated St. Patrick’s Day, Turkey’s 21st birthday, and Chickadee’s 12th birthday, also in quick succession. We attended the Animals Aglow lantern festival at the St. Louis Zoo. Starbuck’s introduced the most perfect drink. The month ended with a very early Holy Week and Easter.

After the business of March, April was a bit more laid-back, but not by much. The Cardinals had their home opener, and I’m pretty sure that was the high point of the season. We celebrated First Contact Day, and then M*A*S*H Day (a holiday of my creation). Even though we weren’t in the path of full totality, we enjoyed the Great North American Eclipse. Moose was inducted into National Honor Society. I celebrated 60 years of “It’s a Small World.”

Where do I even start with May? It was a busy month full of milestones, especially for Moose, who had his final high school band concert. Bunny came home from college for the summer just in time to celebrate Star Wars Days. Ladybug turned 17. We finished another year of homeschool. Moose graduated from high school! Yes, I cried. We drove through a dust storm the likes of which I’ve never seen on the way to Combo Breaker. The Fab Five and I spent a day in downtown Chicago together for the first time in a long time. Bunny and I toured the amazing Downton Abbey Exhibition. Chickadee and I visited the Umbrella Sky Project. On the way home from Combo Breaker, we visited the Pullman National Historic Park.

In June we celebrated Donald Duck’s 90th birthday! We also celebrated my 45th birthday, which I guess makes me half his age! Our bunny friend, Harold, visited most evenings. We took a summer vacation to Minneapolis, with stops at the future birthplace of James T. Kirk in Riverside, IA, and the Surf Ballroom along the way. We really enjoyed the Mall of America and the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. We toured the beautiful Cathedral of St. Paul.

We tried to cram as much fun into July as possible. Ryan finally got to travel to Tokyo. It was a work trip, but he was able to stay a little longer and see some things he wanted to see…he can’t wait to go back! We visited Bahama Buck’s for the first time to try their Sonic Sno…I wish it wasn’t so far away! We celebrated Oktoberfest a few months early. Bunny turned 20! Dole Whip Day featured another Dole Whip-inspired recipe. The date might not have been right, but we had our own Captain Picard Day celebration. The Paris 2024 Olympics began.

August is always a month of change, but first, we continued to enjoy the Olympics, and I even finally mastered the Croquembouche! We were sad to say goodbye to Bunny when she left for her senior year of college. Turkey began his junior year of college at a new school. Moose started college! Ladybug began her senior of high school while Chickadee started junior high. We went back to Greek Fest in St. Louis for the first time in five years.

We settled into a routine in September. I grew pumpkins in the backyard! “Sandwich Week” was a huge hit. We visited Bunny at college…and went to Buc-ee’s for the first time. After months of waiting, a new bookstore opened in downtown Belleville! I started the custom dirndl process with Rare Dirndl. We went to Oktoberfest in St. Charles.

October was strangely busy. I received the sketches for my custom dirndl and made my choice. Following the success of “Sandwich Week,” we enjoyed “Breakfast-for-Dinner Week.” We were super excited to see the Northern Lights, not just with our cameras, but also the naked eye! And then we got a glimpse of a comet, too! We really enjoyed trying out recipes from The Wizard of Oz: The Official Cookbook. We wrapped up month-long celebration of Oktoberfest. Legends and Lanterns in St. Charles is always a favorite event. We visited Laumeier Sculpture Park so Ladybug could work on her photography. We had a Sonic & Shadow celebration the same day Ladybug took the ACT…and scored very well!

In November we took our annual walk around Creve Coeur Lake. Moose turned 19! We took a very muddy hike around Cahokia Mounds. I baked a few more cheesecakes. I got to try on my custom dirndl for the first time! We baked a lot of pies. Bunny made a whirlwind trip home for Thanksgiving.

And that brings us to December, the best month of the year! I am always happy to welcome Advent. We celebrated Bunny’s return home for Christmas break and Nikolaustag on the same day. Christmas School was a bit more laid-back than usual, but still fun. Garden Glow and the holiday flower and train show at the Missouri Botanical Garden are always highlights for us. Speaking of highlights, we were ecstatic to attend the 50th anniversary of Christmas Traditions in St. Charles, MO. And of course we enjoyed our traditional Markel Family Christmas.

2025 is shaping up to be an exciting and emotional year, too…I can’t wait to see what surprises are in store for us! Happy New Year!

Mani Monday

For my New Year’s mani, I went with the golden Holo Taco “Bottle Service” topped with “Cracked Taco Shell”…I think it’s reminiscent of popping the cork on a champagne bottle on New Year’s Eve!

Tasty Tuesday–Festive Feasts and Holiday Baking, 2023 Edition

It’s finally time for a look back at all of the Festive Feasts we enjoyed over the holiday season, and all the baking we did!

Let’s start with Thanksgiving, which was our traditional turkey dinner with the addition of some delicious roasted fennel this year:

And a record-tying nine pies!

Our next big holiday was Nikolaustag, and it’s become a tradition for us to enjoy Döner kebab on that day (or, as was the case this time, several days later, once Bunny got home from college). We also had a gingerbread-based dessert as has become our custom…this time, I made gingerbread bars with a cream cheese frosting that were amazing!

On Santa Lucia Day, we enjoyed lussekattes for breakfast, and potato pancakes with smoked salmon and Kielbasa for dinner (a day early), plus an cranberry-orange layer cake with rosemary for dessert:

On Christmas Eve, we had a peppermint chip cake after church:

And coffee cake for breakfast on Christmas morning:

On Christmas Day, we had the best dinner of the year, the “pick out dinner.”

And then things got kind of messed up because I hurt my back. We postponed the fancy Christmas dinner we were supposed to have on the 27th, but we did manage to have our annual hot chocolate bar on New Year’s Eve:

And I also postponed the (different) fancy dinner we were supposed to have on New Year’s Day, but I did manage to make a gingerbread layer cake with molasses mousse filling and cinnamon whipped cream frosting, garnished with sugared cranberries:

On Ryan’s birthday (which was also Epiphany), I finally made the tenderloin that was supposed to be the star of our fancy Christmas dinner, plus s’mores pie for dessert:

Yesterday, I finally got around to the turkey dinner we were supposed to have on New Year’s Day. We also tried a new recipe for replica Starbucks’ cranberry bliss bars for dessert. I haven’t had the original, but Bunny tells me these are even better, because they don’t have that mass-produced flavor!

Before my back injury, we spent a few days baking our favorite Christmas cookies (and I put together a Bunter Teller!):

And we did eventually get around to the sugar cookies (not the gingerbread, though…we just ran out of time, but at least we had lots of other gingerbread desserts!):

I made kinderpunsch, wassail several times (not pictured), and eggnog over the course of the holiday weeks:

And then there were lots of other festive treats spread through the holiday season, from the weekend before Thanksgiving when we made soft pumpkin chocolate chip cookies to the Valentine’s Day Funfetti Bunny made for us before she went back to school (and also my first attempt at Dampfnudeln, which were amazing!):

By my count, we ended up short one fancy meal, because normally the tenderloin wouldn’t have been available for Ryan’s birthday dinner. We were also short the gingerbread cookies and the cannoli that I had hoped to make for New Year’s Day, since I simply didn’t have the strength or energy to do much the whole week between Christmas and New Year’s. It certainly wasn’t my best effort at holiday food, but at least I hit all the highlights, right?

Christmas 2023

Now that I’m feeling more like myself, it’s finally time for a look back at our Markel Family Christmas (and New Year’s) celebration!

But first, let me back up a bit. A few days before Christmas, I was trying to be helpful by assisting in moving a couch, and I ended up hurting my back. I managed to make it through the pain until the day after Christmas, when I finally gave in and went to the ER, where they said based on the x-rays, I had a bad muscle strain and a possible slightly slipped disc. Anyway, because of that, I had to tone done our celebration some, although Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were fairly normal.

Christmas Eve was fun because it was also Advent IV, which means we got to go to church in the morning, too!

There was our traditional Christmas Crunch to be had:

And the Fab Five finished the Lego Home Alone house:

And then we headed back to church for the Christmas Eve service, which was lovely as always!

We tried to stop by the St. Louis Christmas tree on the way home, as we have for the last few years, but there was simply no parking, so we went on our merry way, and drove though the Way of Lights only:

When we got home, I took pictures as always:

And we enjoyed a peppermint cake by the light of the fully lit Advent wreath:

I was really not feeling too well, so we didn’t play Ticket to Ride like we usually do, but I did find energy for Animal Crossing:

And I got the stockings filled with some help, and our Little People nativity scene set up:

On Christmas Day, we didn’t have to be up terribly early, so we took our time with stockings and coffee cake:

And then we headed back to church, for the third service in two days:

We managed a nice family picture even though I was still feeling pretty badly:

We took another shot at seeing the St. Louis Christmas tree on the way home, and it worked out perfectly, because there was no one there! It’s not quite the same as seeing it at night, but at least it was overcast!

When we got home, we opened presents:

And had our traditional “Pick out Dinner.”

Ryan’s parents were scheduled to arrive the day after Christmas, and I was going to make our fancy Christmas dinner the day after that. But I was feeling pretty horrible on the 26th, so the fancy dinner was postponed, and like I said, I went to the hospital, and have spent the better part of the week between Christmas and New Year’s doing absolutely nothing, including not making our fancy New Year’s dinner, either. We did have our New Year’s Eve hot chocolate bar, though:

And I managed to be awake on 12-31-23 (how cool was that date?!?) to ring in 2024 on my island (although I wasn’t sure at all that would happen!).

And I finally made the gingerbread cake that was supposed to be the ending to our fancy Christmas dinner for New Year’s Day!

This wasn’t exactly the Christmas I wanted, because I really felt like I let my family down, but I suppose it will be one we remember, anyway, and we still have two fancy dinners to look forward to!