Too cute to eat...

A Christmas tradition - when our children were young - was to put several small boxes of cereal in each child's Christmas stocking - the single-serving size - in the hopes that they would be inspired to eat something healthier than candy and chocolate for breakfast on Christmas morning.














My son remembered this on a recent trip to Japan, and brought back these Japanese single serving boxes of breakfast cereal for our Christmas stockings. They're so cute - I haven't eaten mine yet!

Before Christmas, I came across a marzipan pig - a symbol of good luck - at a local deli, so. I bought it for New Year's Day. Then my traveling son surprised me with two more mini marzipan pigs that he had found in Switzerland.














They are all still sitting on the table, together with the glass pig container of truffle-flavored vinegar that I bought after reading about French truffles in Peter Mayle's books: A Year in Provence and Toujours Provence (both of which I highly recommend if you like armchair-travel.) The marzipan pigs also look too cute to eat!

As an aside, in case you're wondering how a pig is connected to truffle vinegar: Pigs are used to find truffles - the expensive mushroom kind. Pigs love to eat truffles, and are good at locating them in forests. A good truffle-pig is as important to a truffle gatherer as a good hunting dog is to a hunter. (All this wonderful information comes - of course - from Peter Mayle!)