Christmas Eve

What would Christmas Eve be, without chaos?

Oh, right. It would be relaxing.

Ah, well. At least things worked out in the end! But it was a crazy frustrating day in the meantime.
I had sort of a tight schedule for how the day needed to play out. Jesse would go to work for only a few hours, and during that time I needed to finish the pillows that I was making for Jesse. You know, hand stitching an entire side shut... through thick upholstery fabric... when I'm not even good at hand stitching in the first place. But before I could even get to that fun, I needed to start the Pulla bread, so it would have time to rise, so I could bake it in time for us to enjoy in the evening, and maybe even take to people.

Right. That so didn't happen. And what a learning experience it was!!
This was the first time I had ever attempted to make Pulla. And I'll be honest, as much as the idea and finished product appeal to me, I rarely make bread. So I'm not an expert by any means. But I have worked with yeast recently enough that I should have seen my mistake coming from a mile away. The instructions read poorly. And I followed them without interpreting them.

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water. Stir in the lukewarm milk, sugar, salt, cardamom, 4 eggs, and enough flour to make a batter (approximately 2 cups). Beat until the dough is smooth and elastic.

Anyone else catch what mistake I would obviously make there? Right. I didn't let the yeast sit and activate. I dissolved the yeast in warm water, and immediately started stirring things in and making a batter. As it was beating, it dawned on me. Yeast usually sits for a while and gets all bubbly before you start throwing extra things in.

Crap.

Grab the phone, call mom, double-check with her the proper way to start Pulla. Yup, I definitely missed the mark on the first try. So, out goes the first batch (which, of course, included 2 cups of milk, 4 organic-definitely-not-cheap eggs, a whole tablespoon (I was adding extra) of not-cheap-cardamom, and 2 cups of flour). Fun.

Try #2. Yeast in warm water, with a few fingerfulls of sugar, set into a warm stove to activate. Check. Bubbles, check. Lukewarm milk and beaten eggs ready to go, check. Add everything together and start beating again, check. Hmm... oddly, the mixture seems too liquidy. What's the deal? I start reviewing the steps in my head, double-checking the instructions...

Crap.
Double crap.

I used a whole cup of warm water with the yeast instead of half a cup.

Out goes batch #2 of definitely-not-cheap and limited supply ingredients.

Try #3 starts. I carefully make sure I have the right amount of water for the yeast. The yeast concoction goes back into the just-barely-warm stove to activate, milk gets going, finally I get ready to beat everything. Jesse is now home. I have thrown out more ingredients than I care to admit, I'm super flustered, and no, I have not started on finishing those surprise-for-Jesse pillows yet. Awesome. Oh, and did I mention I had a cold, so I wasn't feeling great to start with? And I hadn't even showered yet? Mmm. Lovely.

And I think I called mom again sometime during this process to clarify the amount of flour to add. Or the type of beating to do. Or something. Point being, I called, probably a bit flustered.

Anyway... I finally beat it all and added all the sugar, and got it turned out into a bowl to rise. I set a cloth over the bowl and put the whole thing in the warm (not cooking heat) oven, and let it sit there for an hour, just like the directions said. In the meantime, I retreated back to the bedroom to hand-sew those darn pillows, grumbling about now having to make Jesse aware that I was even working on a surprise to begin with. After the hour is up, and my fingers tired from stitching, I check the dough.

It's barely raised at all. It was, according to the directions, supposed to have doubled in size during this time. It's raised maaaaaaybe half as much as it's original size.

Crap.

Grab the phone, call mom again, exclaiming that I'm giving up and the universe hates me or something like that. She calmed me down, and told me that it usually takes a few hours for her dough to double in size the first time around, and she always plans on at least 5 hours to make her Pulla. So, I got the oven warm again (it had cooled off by now), and let it sit again.

I took off to go buy those Santa gifts that Melinda wrote on her list, and when I got home an hour later, it still didn't look like it had changed all that much, but was maybe close to being somewhat doubled from its original size, so I punched it down and let it sit some more, still in that warm oven.

Finally, after waiting all day, and even eating dinner, I decided enough was enough. It was now 7pm, a good 7 hours or more since I had orignally set it to raise. I didn't think it looked quite raised enough, but I sure as heck wasn't going to wait any longer. I had things to do still that night!

So I rolled it out and braided it, and completely skipped the part where you let it raise another 15 minutes before baking it, because, I told myself, I couldn't see how it was possibly going to raise anymore after sitting all day long. And finally, I took it out of the oven, and it looked just right. I'm not sure how. After it cooled a bit, I sliced it up and tasted it. It even tasted just right!! A Christmas miracle!! It was maybe a little bit dense (I may have added too much flour?), but otherwise, I couldn't complain. Except for all the botched tries it took to get me there. ;)

And of course, the fun doesn't end there. The kids were now in bed, and wrapping must begin. Since I had just been stashing away gifts as they arrived in the mail (YAY for internet shopping!!), we had to wrap everything in one night. We didn't have a ton, but it was enough to keep us pretty busy. And then, of course, I pulled out a gift for Alex that I had totally forgotten was battery-operated. I sent Jesse out to Target to grab some batteries (because, yeah... we never have C batteries on hand!), and guess what? It was closed, completely dark and empty. Duh? I guess it's only the movies where stores are open all night on Christmas Eve. In the real world, employees get a holiday, too! He ended up stopping by 7-11, which was still open, to grab a Slurpee (call it a vice?) on his way to discover what stores might still be open which carried batteries, only to find that, yay! 7-11 had C batteries. And he came home, and we finished the wrapping.

But not, of course, without Alex waking up from his nap (darn, I was really hoping he was asleep for the night!), and wanting to terrorize the wrapping scene. I tried gating him into the playroom while we finished up, but that didn't work too well. He only wanted to come out and grab everything, and his frustration built quickly until he was having a full-blown meltdown. We ended up compromising and taking turns holding Alex and wrapping gifts. And then, finally, it was done, and only about 10pm, too!

We decided to watch Serenity before bed. Because what Christmas Eve is complete without a little action and adventure, Josh Whedon style? Oh, no. Really, it was because we watched the whole Firefly series in order a few weeks earlier at hulu.com, and then Jesse watched our copy of Serenity without me, the stinker!! So this was just a convenient time to get me caught up. :) I was surprised at how little I remembered of the plot of the movie. It was almost like watching it for the first time, again!

And then we went to bed. And that, my friends, is finally the whole of our Christmas celebration, because I already added the actual Christmas Day bit. Isn't this freeing? I feel like I'm finally caught up! Mostly! Kind of! Okay, not even close. But I'm getting there. Even if I did have to do three separate posts in one stinkin' night. ;)

Oh... and here's to hoping that next Christmas Eve, things will all go according to plan. :)