 My life's kind of boring, but I'll film it anyway. No one else for this. Oh my God, please never let me do that again. Good morning everyone, welcome to Vlogmas number 10. This is getting, we're getting up there. It is currently a Sunday when I'm filming this and we are gonna have a little cute Sunday fun day, go to Trader Joe's, maybe get like some holiday stuff. We haven't really gotten any holiday stuff from Trader Joe's yet this year, so gonna stop by and get some coffee, get some Trader Joe's. We're leaving in a few days so this is more just like for fun. This is honestly like our idea of a good time, so gonna get like a holiday-ish coffee, find a coffee shop on the way and have a cute little Sunday fun day. So come on, let's go. What are we doing? What are we doing? That's what I actually think. I'm gonna get the taking notes. I would like this table in my house immediately. Now I haven't tasted my coffee. Cheers. Cheers. I really haven't tried mine yet, but he has. And you said it's good? Yeah, it tastes like eggnog. All right. I got the peppermint mocha and he got an eggnog latte. Sorry, an oatnog latte. Oatnog, no egg crunch. Mmm. Actually, you know what? I could have done all the syrup. I asked for like half the amount of syrup that they usually do, but it's really good. Delicious. Okay, off to Trader Joe's. Annually devastated, they don't have my tangerine juice. So sad, it's the best. Side note, we tried these jicama wraps as taco shells one night and they actually were really good. They feel like a good fresh crunch. All right, we're on the hunt for pesto. They have a really good vegan pesto. I've never seen these before. They're called a protein dark chocolate muffin. I've never tried it, but I'm going to. I don't know why I'm so intrigued by this. Drew said it looks gross, but I really wanna try it. So you're coming home with me. Trader Joe's, it was kind of a flop, but we did find some things at the end. So, all right. Let's show you our holiday Trader Joe's haul. Actually, I kind of want to get rid of the frozen stuff first. Layla is letting everyone know that she's here. Hi, Maywise, hi, hi, hello baby. All right, so I'll do the frozen stuff first. We got two more of the Jasmine Ripes. I feel like I show this now in every Trader Joe's haul, but it's just so convenient. You literally put it in the microwave for two minutes and it kind of just tastes the same as normal rice. So we got that. We got some mini chicken tacos. These are a classic. I have been getting these for, God knows how long, years at this point. We got these egg-wish breadless breakfast sandwich. Why is that so hard for me to say? It's turkey sausage and American cheese, and then the patties are actually made out of egg and Drew likes those, so we got those. And then I did let my curiosity get the best of me. I did get these Philly cheesesteak bow buns. It says Philly cheesesteak and a fluffy bow bun with shredded beef, onion, and bell pepper, and that just sounds delicious to me. And I like barbecue chicken bow buns and interesting flavor combos. Why not, let's try it. Next, semi-holiday-ish. We got these soft-baked snickerdoodles. These are so delicious, and I'm pretty sure yet they're vegan and gluten-free. I don't know what they're made out of, but these are so good. And I'm pretty sure these are available year-round, so you don't just have to get them during the holidays, but they are so, so good. I love that those will be gone in no time. I got some egg bites. These are the cheddar cheese and uncured bacon kind. They are delicious, put a little hot sauce on them. They're amazing. We got some pasta sauce just to have. This is just their tomato basil marinara sauce. We got two more tunas. Drew is a big Trader Joe's tuna fan. Did you say you like this better than grocery store tuna, like normal? Yeah, it's chunkier. It's chunkier, so there you go. We also got two of the vanilla overnight oats. I really like the mush brand, but Drew really likes this one. I mean, I like it all, it's all delicious. That one's really good. I wish they had more flavors though. I wish they had chocolate or like, they have an almond butter one, but that one's not my favorite, so vanilla's good. We got pesto, which is why we came, and this is the vegan kale, cashew, and basil pesto. It's really delicious, so we're gonna make our favorite pasta tonight, which is tortellini, zucchini, summer squash, and pesto, and it's all good. Oh, and sausage. And then we got a couple croissants. We got chocolate for me, butter croissants for Drew, just to have for the next couple of mornings before we head out. Going back to Arizona a few days, oh my God. And then we got some avocado. Avocados number, what does that mean? Avocados number guacamole to go, avocado. Finally, division problem solved. We could think of no better name for this guacamole than avocado's number. The number of premium pasta avocados mixed into this guacamole boggles the mind, not unlike Avogadro's number, the brain child of mathematical physics professor Lorenzo Avogadro. I knew there was like, I was like, what is going on? I got some guacamole, Jesus Christ. Anyways, why am I like this? Yeah, that's him on the front, I guess. Sorry, I get very easily distracted. I thought this was really cool, this isn't holiday-ish, or maybe it is, I don't know, but they have like Trader Joe's versions of Tim Tams. If any of you are in Australia, I know you're probably like, I'm sorry, what? Those are not Tim Tams, I agree. I thought it'd be fun to try it. It does look like they look pretty similar. We have a lot to do the Tim Tams, I know. We've had actual Tim Tams from Australia, one of our friends a few years ago dated someone from Australia and like, we went to a party, he was there, he brought Tim Tams for everyone, but also we've had like the American version. So we'll have to see what those are like. I got more of these dark chocolate peanut butter date royales. It's like these dates that are filled with peanut butter covered in chocolate. A lot of people make these, but these are just nice to have. They're like little individually wrapped ones. They're really good. I did get a candle. I can't say no to candles because a lot of you noticed that when we went to the mall a couple of long misses ago, I was gonna go to Bath & Body Works and I was like, I don't wanna carry around all this stuff, so we'll just go on the way out. And then when we're on our way out, we kind of forgot, but also like everything was closing. So we didn't get any candles, which is probably the best, but. This is the Cedar balsam candle. It literally just smells like the most delicious Christmas tree. I'm gonna light that right now. Oh, why can't I grasp anything with my hands? Okay. Then the rest of this stuff is like more holidayish stuff. Oh, besides this, I showed this, but this is a protein dark chocolate muffin. I don't know, it's kind of like those. I don't know if I'll be okay. Yeah, I thought I'd try that. Who knows if that's good or not. And then, okay, we got these. I am so sorry in advance because I am not gonna pronounce this correctly, but this is called the sugar glazed lebkuchen cookies. And these are from Nuremberg, Germany. My dad would be very disappointed that I mispronounced it. It's been made for 600 years. Monks began adding a flavorful dough to the wafers being made for masks. And over time, more ingredients and spices were added. This is Trader Joe's version of these German. It looks like Christmas cookies. They look very festive. They do have nuts and fruit or nuts and spices, which is like Drew's worst nightmare, but we're gonna try it. Why? I'm sorry. Speaking of nuts, we got some toffee to try. And this is the dark chocolate roasted pistachio toffee. We both like pistachios. I feel like this might be good, but I'm not like a big toffee person, but we're gonna try it. Why not? We got some more toffee for Drew's grandma. We're gonna give some of this to her for Christmas. How cute. Look, we have a big bed. We have a little guard. We have a phone tower. Don't remind me. All I've been thinking about is that I wanna, or a phone booth, phone booth, whatever. All I've been thinking about is that I wanna go back to England, so I'm devastated. These are called decked out tree cookies with milk chocolate filling, white chocolate drizzle, and festive sprinkles. How cute are these? Hope we're telling them we made them. Yeah, cause we're just gonna put them on the tray of like cookies. We're making one kind of cookie tonight. And then we're just, the rest is just pre-made stuff. So anyways, and then we got Trader Joe's favorite sweets, an inspired truffle collection. There is strew waffle flavor. Yum. Yeah. Peppermint chocolate flavor. Panettone, panettone flavor, and gingerbread truffle. What is panettone? It's a cake. Well, I got one, so I'll tell you in a second. And then, as love would have it, is this like this so people can hang them on the tree? I don't know. That's kind of cute, or is it just supposed to look like that? Is it called panettone or panettone? It's Italian. I don't wanna un-culture it to twine. I'm not saying, I don't know. But I know that they're big in the UK as well, or at least I see people eat them at Christmas time, panettone. It looks like a bread that's filled with raisins and maybe fruit, ginger, something like that. Orange peels. Typical Christmas flavor, so we'll try that. And then last but not least, we got some salsa. That's to go with mini chicken tacos. So there we have it. That is our Trader Joe's Christmas haul, holiday haul. We're going to test some of that stuff out later, but in the meantime, we're gonna maybe get some lunch. We were really devastated because we really wanted to get the Korean short ribs from Trader Joe's. We've been seeing everyone talk about them on TikTok and saying that they're actually pretty good. And we wanted to try them, but they didn't have them. So we might like order some from Erewhon or maybe like try and find like Korean restaurant nearby and order some, because that just sounds really good for lunch, but we'll reconvene later. It is many hours later, it is now 6 p.m. And I will let you take one guess as to what happened when we got home this afternoon. We sat on the couch, we watched TikToks, we ordered lunch from Erewhon and we fell asleep as per usual. That's what Sundays are for, you know? So we're back at it, we're refreshed. Drew just took a shower, he's feeling like himself again and I just guzzled like half of this water. And we're gonna have a fun festive night. It's like one of the last nights that I'm gonna be vlogging for Vlogmas. So we're gonna just like do all of the cozy vibes. The tree is on, it's been on since this morning. We're gonna like watch some good movies or maybe possibly the Gavin and Stacy Christmas special. We'll see. So we're gonna try our Trader Joe's treats, make our cookies, but first we're gonna make mold wine. And we've done this before. I can't remember if we use this exact recipe, but we're gonna be using none other than Miss Mary Berry's recipe. Mold wine isn't like super popular here in the U.S. Obviously if you're from here, you know that. Maybe in like colder states, but. Maybe the East Coast, but in the Southwest. Not in Arizona or California that I'm aware of. And so we just thought we would like bring a little bit of holiday coziness. So if we're making this incorrectly, oh well. It's hot wine, what do you want? So okay, let's look up the recipe. Oh, that is definitely gonna fall. You are resting on a jar of dog treats. So my Godspeed. All right, be resting, oh my gosh, I got 20. And we use it like every time we cook. You literally do this or this. And you can put either like a cookbook or your tablet or if you do it this way, vertically, put your phone on it. I don't know if they still make it. No. I can't eat. Anyways, okay. So we're going to pull up the recipe. Merry, very old wine. So you like pour the wine. You cut up the citrus. You put the spices. So we're gonna show you what we're at in two hours from this recipe. We're gonna do a loose interpretation of Miss Mary, Mary's recipe. So, all right. I'm going to wash. In she goes. Kind of splashing actually. Mm, mm, mm. Hot wine. So here we have our wine. Don't mind the splashes. It's fine. Now we are going to add all of our citrus. We're using one lemon, one navel orange, and three little clementine cuties. We're gonna use maybe two cinnamon sticks because they're not like that pungent. It's like one and then one sort of little or one. And then we're gonna do like eight cloves. I don't know if that's too many but that's what we're doing. And yes, mind your business. We'll start it on here. Drew was genius and he has these bags, these like tea bags for loose leaf tea. And so he put the cloves in there so they're not like loose all over the place although people do often do that. I wouldn't care but he's very organized. So there you go. I'm only doing this because Mary, Barry said so but I am gonna add a little bit of water. I'm just gonna do like that much because we are simmering it and I don't want it to turn into syrup. Okay, now we're gonna cut up our citrus. So we're gonna do some lemons. I'm just gonna stick these in there, squeeze these and then I'm actually gonna do the zest as well. Again, this is like, you know, an adaptation. If we're not doing this correctly, go fricking well. Beautiful, look at that zest. Look at that zest. That is so zesty and then I guess I'll squeeze that in there as well. So we're gonna do our little lemon slices. We got some lemon in there. Beautiful. So I'll just, then we're gonna do the oranges. Great. Thank you. Oh, forgot the zest. Oh, we're going back. Look at that. So festive. Now we're gonna do the same thing for the oranges. Okay, orange peels and then we're gonna squeeze this in. These got the good juice. Oh my god, look how cute. What do they call them cuties? And then I'll just squeeze the other two. Feels like a lot more citrus than we used last time. Oops. It's fine, right? We'll see. This looks very festive. Like how cute is that? Is this cinnamon and stuff? Now we let her simmer and we just see what happens, right? Hopefully it tastes good. It's gonna taste like orange juice. Okay, here's what it's looking like and we're gonna add a little bit of sugar as well. I'm gonna do like two tablespoons and then we'll see. Cause I don't want it to be too sweet but it smells good. Of course we have to relight our Christmas candle. It smells really good. Trader Joe's really does have good candles and they're very affordable. I think it's like $5. So now we're just putting the lid on it and letting it cook for a little bit. I don't think we're gonna let it cook for an hour cause we wanna drink it and then we're gonna add the brandy to it when it's done being cooked. Okay, we found a different angle. Oh, look at like it's all steamy in the background. That's so cute. That is. It's Christmas. Oh, Christmas. Okay, so next we're gonna make a personal Drew favorite and it's called avalanche cookies. And didn't you say like someone at your old job would bring them in or something? Yeah. I have someone I work with who used to do like a cookie spot with her family. So you'd make like 48 cookies and then you bring all your cookies and then you go around each person and you take two cookie fees. So you'd come home with 50 cookies but each one was different. Oh, that's cool. So that's how he discovered it and I guess she would bring in like the leftovers to work or whatever. My older manager and I used to fire ovens. That's cool. And so we started making them probably like four or five years ago. And also, you don't have to bake them. Yeah, they're super easy. This is a drop cookie. We were really ambitious last year. I think last year we made like three different kinds of cookies. And we turned out the best. That would be easy. Yeah, and so they're the best. So basically all you're gonna need is two cups of rice krispies. You're gonna need a cup of mini marshmallows which thank God we have because I placed an Instagram order and they gave me the big ones. So we had these left over. A pound of white chocolate. This isn't quite a pound but it's still new. And then a half a cup of creamy peanut butter. They were out of jail. Don't come for me. All length of recipe we're using down below. This particular one is from cookies and cups. Got our foil, parchment paper is better, but whatever. We're working with what we got. So we're gonna mix our cereal and our marshmallows in the bowl. And Drew is gonna melt the peanut butter in the chocolate. And we add that extra. Should I just add more? Yeah. Well, you're a little baby. And then two cups of cereal that I just spilled one cup of. Things are going well for me. I'll do like a little less. Yeah, I love rice krispies. Yeah, actually I'm okay with a little bit more. I'm okay with like a full cookie. Yeah, these are very... I'm not allowed to do the dropping part. Why? They're too big. Yeah, Drew makes them huge. Okay, got those in the bowl. Gonna mix them up. Look at her. Absolutely stunning. I would just eat that honestly. Give me a spoon. And then this combination. Oh, my God. And then how like seconds at a time are you doing? 30? 30 seconds at a time. If you were, you know, more professional, you could definitely do like a double broiler or whatever it's called, double broiler. But we're doing the lazy man's version, but definitely don't overcook the chocolate. Oh, now we're gonna put her into her and watch the magic happen. In the fridge you go, friends. You don't have to set them in the fridge, but we're going to and we're gonna make dinner. We are bored and impatient while we're waiting for our dinner. So we've got these cute little mugs. I think these are similar to like what you're supposed to serve while buying it. I think the regular ones are like a little bit taller, but that's okay. And we are gonna do a little bit of brandy in each one. I'm gonna do like half a shot. There we go. And I've garnished it with like a cute little clementine. And I just ladle it in here. Smells very spice and very festive. It kind of smells like popery, to be honest. Oh, yum. Mine is like the rose petals. I guess I probably could have strained it. It's fine, it's fine. All right. Cheers. Cheers. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. What's your name, everybody? It's actually really good. It's really good. Wow. I just like walking around with this and it's like smelling outside. And there's like- And in your Christmas market, you all just kidding. I'm jealous. We're so jealous. It's really good. This is really good, honestly. It's pretty tasty. Really, really good. It's literally hot, spice. I forget I'm drinking wine and I wanna drink. Like it's so warm and cozy. I just wanna like drink it down, but then I remember it's wine and- Don't be careful. I'm sure that in like the cooking process, like some of the alcohol gets cooked. Yeah, it's like she had a brandy at the end. Yeah. Brandy was the move. It's not too sweet. It's not too spiced or too sick to see. It's just right. Wow. You go, Mary, Mary. Oh, buddy. Berks. It is Berks. Are you cozy under here? Yeah, it's so warm. I haven't shown you a lot this vlogmas. I haven't shown either of the pets a lot during vlogmas. Just honestly, because they've been going through like health stuff and I don't know, I don't wanna shove a camera in their face. Also, they're both old. So like they just lay around all day long now. Like move sleeps 20 hours a day, I would say. Maybe more at this point. All he wants to do is like be under a blanket of some sorts and be asleep and be not fricking bothered. And then when he wants to, he wants to be like laying on you or cuddled or whatever. But he's still here. He's still chugging along. Aren't you move? Thank you, buddy. You're only out because we have food. Wherever the food is, you can count on this one being there. Oh my God. She literally looks like a loaf. Love it. Way up in the mountains, in the high range of pontoons. We have to, obviously. Yes. Okay, I've just made the most incredible Christmas board ever. It's a cookie board. Look at that. Well, Christmas treats. So we have the lebukin cookies I think they're called. We have the Christmas tree cookies, the pistachio toffee, the gingerbread snickerdoodles. Or sorry, they're just like regular snickerdoodles. The avalanche cookies, we cut up the panettone and we got the truffles. We have someone joining us in the background. He's like perfectly in the middle of us. Okay. Taste test time. If you can hear the grinch in the background, we do apologize, but we got to have the festivities. We're watching a Christmas movie like every night until Christmas. Okay, where should we start? I don't want these. Oh, the truffles. So I don't know if I should, did I show them? Yes, this is what they look like. So we have strupe waffle. One of these is panettone. One of them is gingerbread, peppermint and strupe waffle. Can I have half of that? Look at that. Drew loves a strupe waffle. It kind of tastes like caramel. Yeah. Very rich. So sweet. I don't know if I want to try the other ones. No, so sweet. I'm going to try first. Pistachio toffee. Pretty good. I like toffee. It's like toffee in the middle and then a layer of dark chocolate and pistachio. It's pretty good. The dark chocolate really helps. Kind of through the sweet. Who's next? Moo, you decide. Which one should we try next? Let's try that out. Yeah, I actually need to look it back up again so that I know how to say it. Labcuchin. That's what Google says. Labcuchin. Labcuchin. Okay, we're going to try these labcuchin cookies. Are you ready? Yeah. Oh, it's like so fluffy. Yeah, I think so. It's like chewy, don't we? This feels like flavors you would like. I think it's really good. Pretty tasty. It's sort of loosely like way less orangey, but it kind of has like the same spices and flavors as like minced pies. Just way less intense. But it's really good. I like the like hard icing on the top. I thought it was going to be really sweet because of the icing, but it's not. And the cookie is really chewy. That's really good. Okay, should we try the Christmas tree? Yeah. Boy. So it looks like I think it's just like a short red cookie. Yeah, and then chocolate and sprinkles. The chocolate is soft. That's my favorite so far. It's almost like if the people are off the page. I was about to say that. I was going to say the same thing. People are off the page because it's like that punch. It's not too sweet either. You've had these before, haven't we? They're so soft. They're so chewy. It's almost like dough. Let's go. Let's go with like tea and coffee. That's how we used to eat them back in the day when we used to get them. We would just have them with like our morning coffee. And they're vegan and gluten-free. Nice. I know. All right, should we try the bread? 10 out of 10 by the way. I'll have the bottom because there's like less raisins. It's like a raisin bread. Like raisin and orange. It's good. Yeah, it's like an orange bread with raisins in it. Last but not least. We can split this one too. They're so good. Everything's really good. And so now we're just going to put foil over this, pick away at this. And we'll also bring it with us to Arizona because we have like extras of all of this stuff. But that's going to do it for vlogmas today. It is like 8 p.m. We're going to watch the rest of the Grinch. Oh, I'm sure you want a baby Grinch. I love baby Grinch. Anyway, thanks for watching. We have two more left. We're getting down to the wire. And I'm excited, but also kind of sad. It's been so fun this year. I feel like we've been like extra festive this year. We've done like so many different things. So happy about it. A lot, yeah. So thank you for watching and we'll see you next time. Bye.