Celebrating Christmas in July

I had never heard of celebrating Christmas in July before. But it was a lot of fun. There isn't really a holiday in the US between Independence Day (July 4th) and Labor Day (the first Monday in September). So Christmas in July is a funky little side holiday. Just an excuse to eat delicious food, set up Christmas decorations, sing Christmas songs, and just have a good time with friends!

To have food at our Christmas in July celebration, we organized a pot luck. I decided to make a desert because I love sweet things and truthfully I find baking much more fun than cooking. I decided to make a stone fruit and lemon mousse trifle! 

First I had to bake the stone fruit.
I decided to use nectarines because they are in season right now! So I sliced them all up. It's hard to slice nectarines because of the stone in the middle.
Apparently if you twist them then stone breaks in half, but it didn't work for me! No matter how many times and different ways I tried to twist the fruit. There must be a special technique that I do not know.
When I baked the nectarines, they smelt so good, the whole floor smelt delicious. It was wonderful!

Then I made the lemon mousse.
Mousse is one of my favourite desserts. It is so versatile. Not only can it be made from many different base ingredients, but it can go with lots of different things too. I had fun whipping it to peaks using the electric hand whisk. It took a while to get to peaks, so I was confused, then suddenly I saw peaks in the bowl and understood exactly what they were.

Next it was layering time.
A layer of pound cake, a layer of lemon mousse, a layer of nectarines. And repeat thrice.
Not too hard at all.
It had to go into the fridge overnight so the mousse would firm up a bit more and so that the pound cake would absorb the flavours of the nectarines and the lemon mousse.

Finally out of the fridge.
And the last step was decorating the top with lemon zest and lemon peel. Just to make it look prettier. It looks quite nice!
And I thought it tasted quite nice too!
There was very little left at the end of the night, so it must have been good. 

There was lots of other food at the party since we had a potluck style affair. Most people brought things alone or collaborated with others to bring something together. Here's just a few of the foods we had:

Some peppermint and plain chocolate brownies.
And some bruschetta.
And some peanut noodle salad.
I was quite full by the end of the night!

In keeping with the spirit of Christmas we decorated the whole living room with paper snowflakes, wreathes, and other festive decorations. We even had a Christmas tree with lights and baubles thanks to the SERC administration who let us borrow the tree they use each year to decorate the administration building. We even did a Secret Santa gift exchange, can you see all of our gifts to each other under the tree? There was definitely Christmas spirit in Green Village that night.