hannukah is almost over for this year. we celebrated with joe’s family on saturday night. this year, it turned out being an entire family affair with joe’s family, dave’s family and my whole family. it was a lot of fun. i am so lucky that my family gets along so well with joe’s and dave’s families, and vice versa. we always have a blast together.

as always, the food was fabulous. joe’s mom made latkes, a hannukah staple; pasta salad; fruit salad; and i believe tuna salad. since i don’t eat meat, i don’t really know what else there was. 🙂

for dessert, i made a walnut chocolate torte. from scratch. and by that, i mean both the cake *and* the frosting. as you can see, i’m pretty proud of myself. i had never made a torte before, but it really turned out well. the frosting was the best part. it was awesome. and, i used my fabulous cake decorator to decorate the cake. it was the first time i’d used it, and it turned out really well. everyone loved my torte so much they didn’t even touch joe’s mom’s cookies. i felt kind of bad about that.

and what would hannukah be without presents? we both got some great gifts. joe’s parents got me a bunch of apple-themed items for my kitchen. yay! they also got us a nice memory box from bombay. it was another nice holiday.