(no subject)

[the_rck]

Four packages arrived yesterday. All four were addressed to me, and Cordelia was burning with curiosity to know what was in them. I knew what was in each package, so I waited until she was at her evening birthday party before opening them. Her 2ds arrived. I probably ought to pull it out of the box tomorrow while Cordelia's at school and make sure it works. Of course, we only have one game for it, Mario Kart 7, and I'm not sure I can play that. Things in the Mario Karts we've got for the Wii tend to move faster than I can properly track visually.

Another package held some elastic shoe laces for Scott and a CD for me. I could have opened that one in front of Cordelia, but then she would have wanted me to open the other packages, too. The third package was a BookMooch book, Eric Flint's Worlds in paperback. I don't know when I'll read it, but I have all those BookMooch points just sitting there; I might as well use them if something comes up that I even vaguely want.

The last package held more stuff for Cordelia-- A doll and a CD, to be exact. It also held the Christmas ornaments that I ordered. The baby Po ornament is a bit smaller than I expected, but Cordelia adores it completely, so I count it a win. The six small owls are a little cruder than I hoped, but they'll look nice enough on the tree when viewed at usual tree viewing distance.

We haven't decided yet when we'll put up our tree. My family tradition was to hold off until quite late, around the 20th or so, but Scott's family tradition is to put it up early in December, so we might do it as early as next weekend. We just have to clean up the living room enough that we can fit the tree. Cordelia will have a friend over, and Scott and I will make or buy a variety of cookies for us all to eat while we decorate. I'll be experimenting with a new to me fudge recipe because I'm used to using marshmallows, and the friend Cordelia's likely to invite is Muslim and so mustn't have marshmallows. Though I wonder how hard it is to find the gelatin free kind and if they'd work in fudge the same way that normal marshmallows do.

We need to defrost the freezer in our basement. I really ought to do that today. It needs to be done before we buy our New Year's Eve turkey, and we ought to buy that very soon. There isn't a lot in the freezer right now. I think it would all fit in our cooler and our upstairs freezer.

Comments

[chomiji]

If you have a health store or something like Whole Foods in the area that caters to vegetarians, you may be able to find vegetarian marshmallows, which I believe would be halal (as confirmed here). You could ask the parent(s), of course.

Ingredients (according to another site): tapioca syrup, non-bone char sugar, tapioca starch and/or potato starch, filtered water, carrageenan, soy protein, natural vanilla flavor. The carrageenan (from seaweed) probably substitutes for the animal gelatin.

[the_rck]

We have a couple of Whole Foods within reasonable distance. We don't get over there very often, but an expedition is completely feasible.

Of course, another friend did some checking and it appears that marshmallow fluff/creme doesn't contain gelatin and is halal. I will check with Cordelia's friend's mother and have Scott check the ingredients on the jar before he buys, however. I really don't want to accidentally feed somebody something like that. (I remember feeling terrible when I discovered that a muffin mix I'd just used to make muffins for a Jewish friend contained lard. I was appalled and couldn't apologize enough. She wasn't particularly put out, fortunately, and understood that it had been an accident.)

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

Whole Foods carries vegan marshmallows. I'm pretty sure I've used them in rice krispie treats and they worked fine in that, so my guess is that they would behave reasonably well in the fudge recipe.

[the_rck]

We may go that route, but a friend elsewhere has pointed out that marshmallow fluff/creme doesn't generally contain gelatin. She did a little googling and confirmed that it's halal. I think I will consult with the friend's mother, though, just to be sure that the fluff/creme is safe by her standards. Using fluff/creme is easier than crossing town to get to Whole Foods.