THIS WELCOME HAS BEEN, SO NICE AND WARM

I'm just now getting over my food coma resulting from the annual Christmas pasta party with the wonderful Shields family. This is the event I look forward to every year- when kindred spirits join together, with their varying levels of culinary genius, to create the world's finest homemade pastas, sauces, and stick-to-your-ribs yummy goodness that Paula Dean couldn't hold a candle to.

Pasta making is fun, and sexy. Godsister Mollie and Hecate dazzling us with their spinach ravioli skills.

"The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling."

-Henry David Thoreau

Well Thoreau, switch out the 'bloom on fruits' for lip-smacking-good pasta dough, and you've get Hecate penned.

Ma Dukes served her brilliant manicotti, Mollie created her superb squash ravioli with sage-butter sauce, and the joint effort of many resulted in terrific spinach ravioli with Godmother Ann's magnificent meatballs and sauce. (breathe) I'm getting full all over again just reminiscing!

The Paz-ta king himself, either making a mess or helping-- perhaps a combination of the two?

Pasta cutters make fine weapons, no?

Laughter in the kitchen is what makes the food taste sooooo good! (I suppose the excessive use of butter helps, too)

And of course, the dessert tray - served up by the finest bouffant to grace Christmas: Hecate herself. Oh Hecate, you really were born in the wrong era!

All in all, a wonderfully magical Christmas. Especially when it comes to the gift Hecate gave me:

Antlers. AWESOME.

(All recipes are closely guarded by the Shields/Higgins families, so as to make for more fitting wives who bring to new families the magic that we've grown up enjoying. Hell, we need every upper hand we can get!!)