A New Year's salad + other dishes

Look at that beauty!! :) This is a salad named «мой генерал» and it comes from this YouTube video. It's like any New Year's salad you would find in Ukraine: mayonnaise, mayonnaise, and mayonnaise. I miss Ukraine the most during the holidays, so I decided to make a few things that are served there this time of year.

The salad is a variation on the popular holiday salad olivie, which D's mom makes every December. (Here's a good recipe for that salad.) I liked the layers and the look of «мой генерал», though. It was SO EASY to make. You simply layer chicken + vegetables, with a nearly-catastrophic layer of mayonnaise in between everything.

The next idea came from a Russian-language pin on Pinterest:

Hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, and (more) mayo.

When my mom saw this plate, she balked. "I know that your husband's mother would not allow that on the table!" (Remember that time we gave his mom a deadly doormat?)

A short Christmas poem

Merry Christmas!!! :)

Wildlife refuge

Sunday.

Ok, so I shouldn't have said it snowed the other week, because this last week it really snowed. Don't laugh, you guys, but we got a whole 1-3 inches of snow in this area. People abandoned their cars. Buses were chained up to drive on the ice. School was canceled for the next two days. And, like always, the tweets summed it all up.

Cat matryoshka

Best gift ever: a matryoshka doll with 4 little cats and a mouse! Thank you, Joyce!

Here's the core of the doll: a teeny tiny mouse, a (yellow?) persian cat, and a tuxedo cat.

Snowfall + Tea Haul!

Well, that post about the snow in Kharkiv must have worked some magic... there is actually snow in Portland! For most cities, it's a tiny bit of snow. For this city, it's ARCTIC BLAST SNOWPOCALYPSE 2016.

School is canceled. People are staying home from work. The library is closed. The buses have chains on. There are only two kinds of creatures you'll find outside (here's the other kind.)

Kharkiv in the snow

This is what it looks like in Kharkiv right now. 

A traveling friend just sent along these pictures after a day of walking the city's snowy streets. It's so pretty- take a look!

The church on the hill above Sarzhine Yar...

Two guys who aren't afraid of the cold...

Thanksgiving

Happy December! Yesterday I got out my box of holiday decorations. Drunken Santa is still around, but Кит's Christmas hat disappeared. (Кит is not-so-secretly thrilled about this.)