Dear Rebecca,
This seems to be the best format in which to tell you that I won't be returning your cardigan. I've decided to keep it. Thank you for letting me borrow it, and I'm sorry (sort of) that I won't be returning it to you. If you want, I'll pay you $15 for it.
xoxo,
Lauren
I know, I know, two food posts in a row. My apologies. But seriously. If you'd had this for dinner, you'd write about it too. The sauce was so good that I'm not sure I even made it myself. Shrimp chilaquiles with salsa verde. page 179. Go get the book.
Well, these were just as good as I thought they were going to be. I have all of Sara Foster's cookbooks. This recipe is from her most recent (although, as usual, I'm behind the eight-ball and it's almost a year old), called Casual Cooking. Like Ina, Sara is a protege of Martha's, but where Ina has a New York/Hampton's vibe, this is more North Carolina/Southern. Foster's Market is located in Durham, NC, and she has one in Chapel Hill too now. I want to go. Road trip. Second best though are her books. Go get one. And then get the rest.
So I've had the latest cookbook for a week or two now and spent that time happily browsing. Great photographs and some inspiring-looking recipes, but these quesadillas were the first we tried. You can't raise a toddler and preschooler in Southern California without making a bazillion quesadillas, and they're a normal staple of our dinner week (my usual has chicken, apple, carmelized onion and brie), but this was definitely a new take.
2 cups cooked, shredded chicken
1/2 cup bottled bbq sauce (I had more chicken, so I used more sauce)
1 can chickpeas, drained, with 2T liquid reserved
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 scallions, minced (we were out of these, but managed just fine)
8 flour tortillas
1/2 cup fresh cilantro
1/2 cup smoked Gouda, shredded
1/2 cup shredded Monterey Jack
oil for the grill panPre-heat oven to 200 degrees.
Combine chicken and barbeque sauce, season with salt and pepper and toss gently to coat.
In a separate bowl, combine chickpeas, reserved liquid, the garlic and scallions and mash together with a potato masher, leaving the mix slightly chunky. Season with salt and pepper and stir to combine.
Lay tortillas on a flat surface and spread chicken and chickpea mix over half of each tortilla, dividing evenly. Sprinkle with cheese and cilantro, fold in half to form half moons.
Lightly grease a grill pan or skillet and heat over medium high heat until hot. Place two quesadillas in skillet and grill for two minutes per side, turning once until cheese is melted and tortillas are golden brown. Transfer to baking sheet and keep warm as you repeat process with remaining quesadillas. Cut into wedges and serve warm.
It's so hard to take dinnertime pictures in winter. I wish I had the time to set up a properly lovely shot. The time and the daylight. Perhaps these were gobbled up too fast.
I'm on a little bit of a Jane Austen kick. Neel started it. Well not the initial kick. That started, too early perhaps, back in eighth grade. That was the first time I read Pride and Prejudice. (It's barely possible that the much beat-up copy you see near the top of the stack is the same copy, but doubtful. I'm like a little bird when it comes to new things, and a college reading list is no different. Give me a list and a bookstore and I'm toast.) As much of a reader as I was even back in the eighth grade P&P was a definite reach for me. My main impression was of lots of talking and dark ballrooms. Callum would say it was talkey.
Jane Austen, and her novels are the kinds of things that you (well, English Literature Majors at least, and the former ones) like to think you have a special relationship with. You know, I love her books best. We're so close. I understand her so well. And then somehow you turn it around and think that she must know that about you too. Somehow she knows that you understand her so well. Amazing how one woman who wrote so long ago and lived such a retired life can still be doing that to readers centuries later. When my favorite English professor in college declared it to be, in his opinion, one of the best novels ever written, well, we all had to love it that much more.
So Neel started me on my most recent kick. We watch the BBC production about once a year or so. When it first came out we were living in Pennsylvania while Neel was in graduate school for his Ph.D. Our closest friends were a group of gay men (most of whom were named Mark), and as soon as Mr. Darcy walked out of his pond at Pemberly, Mark called me. Colin Firth has that effect on everybody it seems. So a few weeks ago we watched the BBC production, and it really is the best, but I started thinking how long it had been since I'd read Pride and Prejudice itself. Have we talked about this before? Are you a re-reader? Because it absolutely blew my mind to hear that there are people out there who will read every book once and never reread them. There I definitely books whose covers I will never turn again, but I have my stand-bys. I have books that I look forward to returning to each year. They are like my winter jammies. Soft and cozy.
And then really, how can you read Pride and Prejudice and not want more? There are so many interesting spin-offs and variations out there. It's been fun to explore. Just from me personally, (you know because Jane and I are so close), I'd have to say that Pamela Aiden's Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman series (three books) captures the man the best, although I could have just as easily left out the middle book, I loved the third. Darcy's Story was fine, and Without Reserve by Abigail Reynolds, a really, really interesting concept. She has several of these and tells the "what if?" For example, what if Elizabeth had accepted another proposal and Darcy had to win her affection from another man. I was totally intrigued by the idea and intrigued to hear that they were a bit, ahem, racy, but this one at least fell down for me. The proposal Elizabeth accepts is out of duty, a premise I have trouble believing even more than the pre-marital sex. Needless to say the racy bits were a bit gratuitous. Still, she captured the sense and the language well. When I have a bit more pin money, I may try again.
Well, you can't have too much Jane, so I moved on to Persuasion, my second favorite of her novels, and that's when, low and behold, I discovered that sometimes the universe does pay attention to me. Masterpiece Theater is doing a whole Jane Austen thing for weeks and weeks on end and airing film adaptations of all of her novels (some of them new), starting with Persuasion. (Although when did it become Masterpiece and not Masterpiece Theater and why did they change the music?) Again, this is just me, but movie-wise, I thought Persuasion was a bust (poor Neel who had never read it could not follow at all... go get the 1995 version, it's much better), but Northanger Abbey was great. Funny and spooky all at once. This week, upcoming (with a sad lack of football) we have Mansfield Park. I'm looking forward to it. And, it seems as if there is a whole world of spin-offs out there. Frederick Wentworth, Captain is in the stack up there, and I can't wait to dig into it.
What with all this book talk floating around, it seems a really appropriate time to wish the happiest of birthdays to Shoshana, one of my favorite readers. I have what I think is a great photo of her wearing a bucket hat and looking goofy, but somehow I think part of my gift to her will be not to share it here. She's the kind of friend that stretches me and that I always wish I could see more of, and that, I think is a very good thing in a friend. Happy, happy birthday my dear.
Oh weather, why do I get so invested in you? After building us up with promises of an "Urgent Weather Situation!!" what we have in the photo above is all you managed to deliver. Powdered-sugar frosting on the roofs of houses and our cars. I yearn for snow. We had soft fluffy flurries all night on Saturday night. It was really quite lovely, actually. The roads grew slick, and there was the excitement and promise of snow in the air. I'm holding out hope for this winter, still.
What we have instead is bitter cold and sunny. Callum spent his day playing football with the neighborhood boys, and I spent it huddled under blankets and dogs. It's cold in the house. I watched a movie and a House Hunters International Marathon and knit a scarf.
This scarf, actually. It's yarnmonster's tambourine scarf (In her July archives), but it's my two play-off games, one movie and a House Hunter's International Marathon Scarf. I needed something mustard-y to go go with this...
It's my totally funky new coat that I got on serious sale at Boden last week. I'm not sure I can completely rock this coat, but I sure am going to try. I'm going to use it to distract me from the fact that I want to pull up all my stakes and move to someplace exotic. Just like everybody did in all those episodes of House Hunters International.
I mean seriously, how funky is that? It should be warmer tomorrow, so I'll take it on a test drive.
Oh, and apropos of nothing, if you haven't made the Moo Shu Pork from this month's Everyday Food, I highly recommend it. Go grab yourself a pork tenderloin right now. It was that good. Like real Chinese food! Paired with a chilled Hefeweizen and a wedge of lemon this was about the perfect winter meal. Callum finished reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory today so we're off to watch the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp version. I need my blanket and three dogs. And my scarf.
I never see her as much as I want to, and to me, that's a good sign in a friend. She stretches me.
Oh, happy happy birthday to my best beloved and dearest friend. We've spent more birthdays together than we have apart now... I'm grateful for every single one, and I look forward to all the rest. I love you like the stars above...
Rest a little, rest a little, cheep, cheep, cheep... I cried "uncle." Took a couple days off from the Bat Cave of my office and decided to hunker down at home. Nice idea. It's raining here today. Our winter. Rain and forty degrees. So I finished Neel's hat, and I'm going to clear out the mess that has become the Blue Rain Room, do some laundry, make plans for Neel's birthday dinner... that kind of thing. It's just nice to be alone (aside from the dogs) in the house and know that I have the next few days stretching before me.
So, it snowed today. I know. It's a little hard to tell. Still, except in extreme circumstances, this really is about as good as it gets for us. Life in the coastal south. We're more likely to get Hurricane Days instead of Snow Days. I know I've mentioned that I work at a school, and as much fun as it is to be at a school at holiday time, it's really fun to be there when it snows. I looked up from my computer to see the flurries swirling and headed out to try to get some pictures only to find the kids literally pouring out of the Lower School building.
I have a very distinct memory of elementary school and a snow day from when I was growing up. In East Tennessee it didn't snow a lot, but back then (you know, back then, when I was a little girl...) we definitely had more snow than we do here. This memory was in fifth grade. My math class was in an odd corner room that had a long angular bank of windows overlooking the playground. Math was in the morning (to be gotten over with), and one morning, out of the blue, it started to snow. You know, back then, when I was a little girl, I wasn't glued to the Weather Channel ten days beforehand... And it snowed and snowed and snowed. So we tried to work. Everyone sneaking peaks away from our worksheets of fractions and out the windows. Pretty soon the grassy fields beyond the basketball and four-square courts were white. And, amazingly, not long after that, the basketball court grew white. There was a sizzle of energy in the room. Who could pay attention to a fraction with that sea of white in front of us? Mr. Holt, our math teacher was clearly restless too. When he left the room, the whispered rumors started.
"They can't get in touch with our parents or they'd let us out now."
"They have to keep us half a day because the cafeteria has started making lunch already."
"If we get a day off now we have to make them up in the summer."
Everyone speaking with total and complete authority. I believed them all, each and every one. The funny things is that after that morning class spent in awe of the whitening fields and increasingly heavy skies filled with snow, I don't remember specifics of what happened. I remember a jumble of kids in the hallway as we rushed back to Homeroom (Callum doesn't have Homeroom, his school has one class per grade, and I certainly don't think he feels the lack.), and I still remember the sizzle of excitement. Did we go home early? We we out of school the next day? Who knows. I guess excitement is what lasts when specifics don't.
Look how thrilled these kids are!
What I learned yesterday is that it doesn't go away. And as our kids, from Lower to Middle School poured out of their classes, I saw that teachers get excited too. (Heck even our Business Manager squealed on the phone to me when a second wave of flurries moved through!) There was barely enough snow to catch a flake on your tongue, but there we all were. For some of us (those who don't see it that much, I imagine!), it doesn't go away. I'm holding out hope for a snow day this year. I'll keep you posted.
If you heard an anguished scream and the sound of breaking glass sometime last week, that was me... the scream and then me slamming myself headfirst into my computer. It's been a bad week. The weekend proved perfect for jammies, though, and I swear I didn't get out of them until noon on Sunday. I did nothing but read, watch football (Go Chargers!), eat football food and knit. Neel's birthday is coming up this week, and I want to get a quick hat knitted up for his chilly pate.
I love this row of hats from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. One of my less appealing traits is how I love abundance, and it would please me very much to have a row of hats like this to choose from every morning. This won't work for several reasons. First of all, it just doesn't get that cold here. And as much as I love hats, hair with bangs and hats don't really agree, so I'd wear them more on snowy days and we really don't have those here either. Neel, however, does not have the hat-head problem. So onward with a hat for Neel. He wants ear-flaps, but I'm not sure that ear-flaps jive with the more sophisticated colors we're using here (black with some hints of deep red), so maybe two hats will be necessary. Really aren't two hats necessary?
Well Violet and Thea had a little...ahem...procedure done today. You know, the removal of their lady parts. And now everyone is draped over a loved one and languishing. All is well, but much love and extra kisses are definitely prescribed. Keeping them quiet tonight is no problem, but how the heck are we going to keep them quiet tomorrow?
A place I'd rather be, the Caldera at sunset, Santorini
Four jobs I have had in my life:
1. Camp Counselor, YMCA Camp Montvale
2. Cafe manager, The North Street Grocer
3. Doula and Childbirth Educator
4. Advancement Slave, present position.
Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. Pride and Prejudice (the BBC version...what's your favorite, Catherine?)
2. Pirates of the Caribbean (the first one)
3. A Few Good Men
4. Any caper movie like Ocean's Eleven or The Italian Job.
Four places I have lived:
1. Tennessee
2. Indiana
3. Pennsylvania
4. California
Four TV shows I watch:
1. Project Runway
2. Top Chef
3. What Not to Wear
4. Monday Night Football
Four places I have been:
1. England
2. Germany
3. Austria
4. Greece
Four of my favorite foods:
1. Scallops, anyway you can cook 'em.
2. Ode to Doumar's tuna and cone from The Vintage Kitchen
3. Neel's chicken and stones which I haven't had in awhile, by the way.
4. I'm just gonna say it. Bacon.
Four of my least favorite foods:
1. Orange juice
2. Goat, although Neel says I just haven't had it made well.
3. Brussels Sprouts
4. Chocolate covered cherries.
Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Ocean Side Park, Del Mar, CA, eating Del Mar pizza and watching the sunset
2. on the overnight ferry from Piraeus to Crete, knowing we're going to wake up in Crete
3. eating dinner at the Attikus Restaurant in the shadow of the Parthenon
4. right here, oceanfront, book in hand, friends alongside, kids swimming, just about hot enough to be ready to get in the water
Four things I am looking forward to this year:
1. I'd like to go on a little trip somewhere with my family...
2. sewing more, knitting more, making more
3. Getting squared away in my work life. (Finding balance and organization and maintaining joy)
4. Becoming a better me.
Four goals I am pursuing:
1. Spend less money (Can you hear Neel cheering from where you are? I can.)
2. Be less absolute in my judgements.
3. Getting squared away in my work life.
4. My main catch all resolution for every year: to be a better me.
This one is for Megan. I made Chicken Korma for dinner last night. She has trouble when she orders it out. We were going to have it Saturday, but the chicken has to marinate overnight, and we'd had a big lunch, so it was Indian food in front of the Chargers-Titans game.
I have mixed feelings about this recipe. It's from a cookbook called, catchily enough, Complete Indian. You can find it at amazon.com, but I'm really having trouble inserting links, so I'm going to be lazy and give it a pass today. It's a hard balance to make things spicy enough for me and Neel and still doable for Callum (although he will eat spicier than most), but it felt pretty mild to us. I have a feeling that I'll like it better tomorrow, but regardless of my misgivings I'll share it here and you can be the judge.
1. Blend 3/4 cup yogurt, 2t tumeric and a clove of garlic in a blender or food processor until smooth. Pour over 4 cubed chicken breasts and marinate in the refrigerator overnight.
2. Heat 4T vegetable oil in a large skillet, add one large sliced (or chopped) onion and saute' until soft. Add the following spices: 1t ground ginger, 2 inch piece of cinnamon stick, 5 cloves, 5 cardamom pods, 1T crushed coriander seeds, 1t ground cumin, 1/2t chili powder, and 1t salt. Saute' for 3 minutes longer.
3. Add the chicken with its marinade... and here's where I mixed it up a little: The recipe calls for 1.5T dried coconut, but I used coconut milk mostly because it was what I had. Maybe a couple tablespoons worth. Mix well. Cover the pan with a tight-fitting lid and simmer gently for 45 minutes or until the chicken is cooked and tender. Sprinkle with almonds and serve with rice.
4. Here's how I do my favorite rice: use equal parts water and coconut milk (what the hell else was I going to do with it after only using two or so tablespoons?) and the zest of one lime.
So all in all, a good meal. I could have used some more spice, a little more kick, but it was definitely Korma and not Vindaloo... In place of Naan, I brushed some flatbread with olive oil and roasted garlic. So a quasi-Indian dinner. Pretty yum.
Well, I took a little bit of a break there didn't I? That was unexpected. I kinda thought I'd blog a lot while we were home from work and school, but no go, huh? I never dreamed that I'd ever work at a school (now that's a whole other post), but I love the build up to the holiday break. The concerts, the parties, the wee gifties in my mailbox. A school is a vibrant place to be when the kids are about to go on vacation. The teachers and staff get a little excited too. As exciting as it was, boy we all needed a break. And we took one too. Here's a brief recap.
It all started when my dad got here for Christmas. We went to dinner a lot. We went to the mall a lot. We went to the grocery store a lot. We ate a lot and drank a lot. I think there were cookies too. Thank God my mom sent them or we wouldn't have had them otherwise. I kept trying to figure how we had Christmas cookies every year when both my parents worked full time. I just can't get it all pulled together. And then I realized that my grandmas always stepped in and made us cookies. Well, Ama (Callum's grandma) stepped in and made us cookies. Ama to the rescue. You've heard all about our SOBO progressive dinner, boy that was fun. But there were other parties too. There were oyster roasts (I ate oysters!), and a lovely Christmas Eve Eve party where someone asked my dad if he'd ever considered retirement communities (If you've ever met my dad, you'd know how funny that is. And if you've ever met me, you'll be able to guess how quickly we turned "retirement community" into "assisted living." Sorry Dad. You know we're not thinking along those lines yet.) Nice evening. We ate chili and drank beer and sat under a tent in the dark back yard as the rain dripped down. It was good to just sit and let Christmas slip up on us.
Assisted Living, Violet-Style.
On Christmas Eve morning our fridge died. Right after we did all of the grocery shopping for Christmas Eve and Christmas Dinner. That was fun. Neel moved all of our frozen stuff to a freezer in the lab... and I promise that's not as scary as it sounds. We made do with two mini fridges and a cooler on the back porch for the almost two weeks it took to get the damn thing fixed.
Christmas Eve evening was great, sausages and seven-layer salad. Oh how I love seven-layer salad. It was the kind of the kind of salad I never had except at a potluck. And you knew it was a good potluck if someone brought seven-layer salad. And then one Christmas, when Neel and I were living in Pennsylvania, after my Grandad had his stroke, we were all gathered at my Grandparent's house for Christmas. On Christmas Eve a friend of my grandparents came by and brought us a seven-layer salad. I can still picture him, and I have no idea who it was, silhouetted by bright sunshine in the arched door of my grandparent's home. It was a generous gift, really thoughtful at that time of year when you're busy doing cooking and baking for your own family. He didn't linger. He handed it off and ran, and ever since I have had this image of some friend of my Grandma Charlotte's making that salad and then sending her husband out to deliver it. And that day was the first time it occurred to me that I could actually make seven-layer salad. Okay, so I'm a little slow, but I've been making it ever since. What a lot to say about seven-layer salad. I'm glad we had it on Christmas Eve. And then Santa dialed up an early Christmas present when the San Diego Chargers won their game against the Broncos, but that meant we stayed up late and totally forgot to leave him milk and cookies. I'm hoping that by bribing him with Scotch next year, he'll forgive us.
Par for the course, Callum slept in on Christmas morning, but that meant I could get up and make bread pudding for Christmas breakfast. We ate that while we opened presents. There were a lot of presents... it took hours. We talked to friends and family and settled in for the day. We stacked our presents under the tree and looked at new books and kept the fire burning. I always knit something for myself on Christmas so I worked on a scarf while Neel, Callum and my dad put together roller coasters and played video games. We had Beef Wellington for dinner and chestnut soup and lots of Champagne.
Violet and Thea study this Christmas present business.
After Christmas things become a blur. We went to the mall to spend gift cards (just trying to do our part to keep the US economy plugging along), and went out to a last dinner with my dad before taking him to the airport. Pretty sharpish after Christmas I took down the tree. As much as I love putting the Christmas stuff up, oh, I love taking it back down. It felt so good that I rearranged our living room and tv room and have all sorts of plans for remodels we can't afford. We had a lovely brunch with some good friends on a gray and rainy Sunday. A fire in the fireplace, she crab soup, ham biscuits, asparagus wrapped in prosciutto, egg and cheese casserole. Man, I love brunch. I wish we did it more. We should do it more. It was just the best way to while away a dreary afternoon.
Oh the things we did over this lovely long break. We played games, both video and board. We watched football, both college and pro. The dogs escaped at least three times. Once on Christmas morning. My personal favorite was when it happened right after Neel came in and announced, "They're not getting out now." I finished my scarf and promptly sprained my wrist, so that was the end of knitting for awhile. I had a New Year's Eve lunch with some girlfriends where we struggled to come up with some decent resolutions. We split our New Year's Eve with friends and family. We sipped Patrone from the bottle and ate salmon fresh from Alaska. We drank (more) Champagne and we watched movies and played with a Wii. (Some of us are still yearning for said Wii.) We stayed up till midnight (no small feat for this family!) and shot off bottle rockets. Welcome, 2008.
Oh the things we did this long and lovely break. It's no wonder we all look like this (the girls got matching collars and leashes in their stocking). We're coasting into the weekend with more football, more games and more relaxing. It's been a great finish to 2007 and a great start to 2008. I've been doing a lot of thinking about things. Those of you who know me or who have been hanging out in the Blue Rain Room a while now know me well enough to know I'll be talking about all of those things soon enough.
Welcome, 2008.
We started the day with a conked-out fridge (great timing, huh?), and are finishing it with a frenzy of wrapping. In between was a requisite trip to the mall and some present delivery. Christmas Eve is such a funny mix of frantic and final. You hit a point where there is nothing left to do...or at least nothing else you can do.
Traditionally, we'll have sausages for dinner tonight. This dates back to Christmases spent with a German friend of ours and it stuck. And then we'll settle in. It's funny. When I did that Christmas meme, it made me think about how differently Neel and I have framed Christmas for our family than how I spent Christmas growing up. My dad and I talked about it a little this week. For him, it was some about the presents, but a lot about the fighting going on around him too. For me there was none of that. My grandparents were there. Black bean soup for dinner with Moyers potato chips. When I was very small we went to Christmas Eve services, but as I grew older we stopped doing that. We opened our presents on Christmas Eve (here's hoping Callum doesn't read this!) and Santa came on Christmas morning. It was all about the presents the food and the love. I thought we did it perfectly and loved every minute of it.
We do it very differently now, and I still think it's pretty perfect. A big part of me misses having a place to go for Christmas Eve services, but we haven't found our home for that yet. So tonight we'll eat some sausages and watch some San Diego Chargers football. We'll open our presents on Christmas morning, with Bloody Marys and bread pudding, and finish the day with Beef Wellington and a lot of champagne.
What a month it's been. I didn't do a lot of crafting or baking or any of the other things I used to do when I was home with my boy and didn't have a job to go to everyday, but man, we had a lot of fun. School's out now, so we'll see what the next few weeks bring. I feel like my family is wrapped around me right now, in the best of ways. Merry, merry Christmas. My heart is full.
We had our Second Annual SOBO Progressive Dinner last night. Last year, two of us (not me!) were pregnant and we had so. much. food. Let me tell you about all the food we had last year. I think every person thought they were they only household having a party. We started with appetizers at my house, and soup and salad at Rebecca's and then HAM...WITH SIDE DISHES at Jean and Paul's and then dessert at Tyler and Catherine's. It was a bit much.
Who needs food when you can have all appetizers? We started at our house again. Callum insisted. Two different drinks. Pomegranate Martinis and our own family concoction, the Tidewater Tini (recipes follow the post). Fried Greek Cheese, some olives, and a Brie en Croute with figs and walnuts.
I teased Neel that he kept refilling our glasses like a waitress at Shoney's with the iced tea pitcher. He pointed out that no one was saying, "No thanks, I'm good."
I am not too embarrassed to say that I was too busy eating Hot Wing Dip at Jean and Paul's take pictures of it, but their tree is beautiful, as is their newly painted dining room. Callum sang for us and played with the kids, but all the pictures of that were too personal to share in this forum.
On to Rebecca's where we insisted she make us her She Crab soup again this year and she surprised us with ham biscuits, oh joy!
It's a pretty amazing soup that starts with sherry in the bottom of the mug and finishes with Worchestershire and Old Bay, and drinking it out of a mug was divine. I've already put in a request for lunch left-overs, but she seems to be avoiding me...
Top it off with a champagne cordial, and we head to Tyler and Catherine's for dessert.
Oh God, I love Catherine's Strawberry Trifle. The thing that was so fun about this evening is that everybody made the thing that we love them to make. For us it was the fried Greek cheese. For Jean and Paul the Hot Wing Dip. Rebecca's She Crab Coup and finally Catherine's Trifle. (Catherine put her foot down at Dorito Salad, so we let her handle dessert.) I'm sure for those of us doing the cooking, it's a little like Jimmy Buffet singing Margaritaville, but what a gift to know people so well that they have favorite recipes and they'll make them for you. Maybe next year we'll branch out, but this was very nice indeed.
Her surprise treat was this Champagne drinkie, complete with pineapple sherbet. Oh, deliciousness! I'm already thinking New Year's...
It was a wonderful night, made more special by the fact that my dad had arrived in time to join in the fun. Merry, merry Christmas my neighbor family. You've brought so much light to my life, and being with you lit the darkest night of the year.
There are about a gillion pomegranate martini recipes gracing the internet these days (Thanks Al Gore!), but the Tidewater Tini is our very own. We tend to just glug in the vodka and other ingredients to taste, but I will endeavor to make some sense of it here for you. Enjoy!
1 oz vanilla vodka
2 oz pineapple juice
1/2 oz triple sec.
mix with ice in a martini shaker and strain into a glass...garnish with a lemon peel or maraschino cherry.
Okay, he's still winning in the present department, little twerp. All three under the tree from Callum.
But check this out...
Boxes piled as high as the sky. Once I get started, I'm going to catch up fast. Oh, wait, look again!
We've added a boy and a dog. Should I wrap them up too? I'm going to close with bits and pieces of a Christmas meme that I got in an e-mail today.
1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?
For under the tree, wrapping paper, for gifts exchanged outside of my house, both
2. Real tree or artificial tree?
Real, although if I get that box of ornaments that my dad has, I'm going looking for a retro-inspired white or silver tree for those.
3. When do you put up the tree/decorate?
First week of December
4. When do you take the tree/decorations down?
Depends, sometimes the day after Christmas, sometimes New Years' Day.
5. Do you like eggnog?
In small doses. Although I've heard a cinnamon schnapps version that sounds interesting.
6. Favorite gift received as a child?
If I had to pick, I'd say my Emergency! play set, or my first bike...so many good Christmases, it's hard to choose.
7. Do you have a nativity scene?
No. I'm jonesin' for a village though.
8. Hardest person to buy for?
Neel. But then, our anniversary is in October and his birthday is in mid-January and he never wants anything. I however, am exceedingly easy to buy for, right Neel?
9. Easiest person to buy for?
Callum and Megan who are both hard to actually stop buying for. Seriously, I think I have both of their birthdays started already.
10. Mail or email Christmas cards?
Mail. My own special system of mailing one out the day I receive one so it's not too overwhelming.
11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
Do my in-laws read this, because there was that year they were moving and cleared out their attic...
12. Favorite Christmas Movie?
I don't have a favorite. I've been dying to watch Elf and we watched the George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol last night.
13. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?
I feel sure that I have. Probably thrown some out too!
14. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?
Do you have all day? Iced rich roll cookies, thumb print cookies, chestnut stuffing, seven-layer salad, Tyler and Catherine's Trash Mix, our homemade Chex Mix, German sausages on Christmas Eve... oh God, stop me.
15. Clear lights or colored on the tree?
Clear.
16. Favorite Christmas song?
It varies. This year I'm digging Destiny's Child doing Carol of the Bells, and The Bob's with Santa's Got a Brand New Bag. Always Dona Nobis Pachem and Silent Night.
17. Travel at Christmas or stay home?
We traveled when Callum was really small. Now we stay home.
18. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?
Christmas Morning
19. Most annoying thing about this time of year?
The fights over parking places! And I'm just gonna say it, our school's Holiday Program...I have a love/hate relationship with that one.
22. Favorite for Christmas dinner?
This year I think we're having Beef Wellington. We tend to switch things up more at Christmas than Thanksgiving.
23. Angel or Star on Tree top?
Star
24. What do you want for Christmas this year?
Sparkling Diamonds? A Canon digital Rebel EOS camera? Seriously, though. I'm doing work that I love, spending time with friends that I love. I'm enriched by my amazing family, I can only hope for more of the same in 2008.
My friend Shoshana's husband returns from the USS Enterprise today. Her son flew down earlier this week to ride in with his dad and today is the day, after six long months of waiting that he comes home. I'm such a dork. Tearing up as I write this. Happy family. Happy day. Welcome home.
Well of course Santa is real, here he is coming through the door!
Some friends of ours clued us into a great holiday tradition at a local Victorian restaurant, and we joined them this year for Tea with Santa.
The kids sat together and were remarkably well behaved, despite the considerable amount of sugar cubes (both in and out of the tea) which were consumed.
This left the grown-ups to their own sandwich tray (minus the PB&J). Scones with blackberry jam, lemon curd and clotted cream, pimento cheese and chicken salad sandwiches, and lots of cookies.
And tea, of course. Apricot for the moms and English Breakfast for the dads. Must be a man/woman thing.
This is the door that Santa came through. Each kid got to sit on his lap and tell him what they wanted for Christmas. Can you believe that this was the first time Callum ever sat on Santa's lap? We had to prep him! (For the record, he asked for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, both the movie and the XBOX game.)
After that excitement, you dip another scone in the lemon curd and clotted cream and have another cup of tea. The kids get jittery from all the sugar, and some of us start to wonder if we'll make it home in time for kick off of the Dallas-Eagles game.
But there's one last thing! Carols around the piano! Santa has a great singing voice, let me tell you, and my kid can belt them out too. A few songs, and he was done, so even if we missed kick-off, we had a lovely afternoon, and we're home and cozy now. It's blustery outside, and as Santa kept reminding us: CHRISTMAS! IT'S NINE. DAYS. (oh crap, eight now) AWAY!
I'm thrilled to hear this story. Second grade was a rough year for me. For reasons that won't be enumerated where an eight-year old who will want to read this post can see. Suffice it to say that I can still picture exactly where I was standing in front of the blackboard when I got the news. And from whom. Christmas is going to be great this year.
