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Happy New Year! January 300 WordsWhat I Ate On Christmas Eve we went to Woodstock and watched Santa arrive in a huge flapping peace dove, attached to a crane. He was lowered onto a stage shaped like an electric guitar and then took up his own axe and proceeded to play Purple Haze while all the locals and their children chanted “Santa! Santa!’ The temperature suddenly dropped and we felt underdressed, so, shivering, we left Santa to his concert and wandered down the hill back to where our car was parked. On the way home we stopped at a local barbecue joint. We ate honey glazed cornbread and soft white biscuits in the car. When we got home we had half a rack of spare ribs with two different sauces – both hot and sweet, a sandwich of pulled pork, some garlic mashed potatoes, and the “braised green of the day� (I think it was chard, but I can’t be certain because it was laced with onions and, sadly, I cannot abide onions). For dessert we had our choice of Wicked Grandma’s Spiced Christmas Cookies (with or without nuts) homemade fudge, twists of caramels, and almond roca from R’s stepmother, a box of divinity from the supermarket, fatigmann from R’s mother, and/or very rich local eggnog from a glass milk bottle. On Christmas morning we woke up very early because The Boy came rocketing into our room at daybreak, screeching about a present that Santa left on his bed. We blearily stumbled downstairs and watched the boy tear through his presents. I was worried he might vomit from the excess of excitement and joy he was feeling. This fear was not without precedent – one year my youngest brother did just that upon seeing the bounty under our family tree. R and I opened a few presents of our own – new, very good sheets for our bed (thick, white, high thread count, we’ve been luxuriating in them all week. I feel like I’m sleeping in cream) a butane kitchen torch so I can make the crust on crème brulee, Joan Didion’s newest and completely heartbreaking book (which I proceeded to read cover to cover on the couch in front of the fire. I now fear widowhood in a whole new way) a new sweater, a pair of boots that might also be slippers, an underwear and bra set made of some iridescent pink stretchy material… I made Ina Garten’s harvest muffins – substituting dried cherries for the figs because I didn’t have figs. They were delicious – fresh cranberries (which I admit to being a bit obsessed with this year for some reason. I crave the tartness) and the dried cherries, lots of brown sugar which made them taste caramelized – a satisfying denseness – more like coffee cake, said R. We ate them hot with cold knobs of butter. I had “Christmas tea� which my in-laws had brought me from London – black tea with dried orange peel and chunks of cinnamon sticks – I take half and half and sugar in my tea. “You like your tea to taste like dessert,� my cousin once told me. Indeed. R had coffee. The Boy had orange juice. We nibbled on stocking bounty for the rest of the afternoon – smoked oysters and clementines, extra smooth milk chocolate with almonds and raisins, a bar of dark chocolate with caramelized rice crispies… In the late afternoon I stuffed a turkey with bunches of fresh thyme and quartered lemons, brushed it with butter, and stuck it in the oven to roast. I made roasted winter vegetables (carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes, butternut squash cut up into inch long pieces and tossed with lots of olive oil and roasted at a very high temperature until they crisp and carmelize on the outside and get soft and gooey on the inside) and green beans dressed with toasted almonds ground up with a clove of garlic. The next day I made turkey stock and then pureed the leftover winter vegetables and added some of the turkey stock and a drizzle of cream to make soup for lunch. We ate it along with a piece of toasted sourdough bread smeared with butter and a dusting of melted parmesan. We went to a Boxing Day party that afternoon. I made a Pavlova – a disc of chocolate meringue just baked long enough to crisp on the outside but still be a little squidgy on the inside, topped with a big pile of whipped cream and then a pile of fat blackberries (for some reason I can always find them this time of the year) and shaved bittersweet chocolate on top of that. It is actually a much lighter dessert than it sounds. It was a big hit. I also ate some incredibly good warm artichoke dip, some mediocre ham, a little cheese and crackers, some unremarkable Christmas cookies, and quite a lot of red wine at that party. The party was in a house that deeply reminded me of houses I knew in Oregon growing up – very hand made and comfortable – with art built into in the walls and floors, and a gigantic garden outside. They also had an open fire in the kitchen which made me a little wild with jealousy. We had people over for dinner one night. The first friend I made here along with her family. I have known this woman for 4 ½ years, see her almost every week, and yet I have never had her over for dinner. She had my family over for dinner once around this time last year – our first time – and I have just finally returned the invitation. It’s not as strange as it sounds. We are daytime buddies – we do tea and lunch and playdates with our two boys together all the time – but rarely socialize in the evenings. Anyway, I finally had them over for dinner and I was bound and determined to make something simple and comforting. I know that she doesn’t like to feel “fussed over� – in fact she made a point of telling me several times that she didn’t want me to do anything “Fancy�. So I settled on a simple menu that I hoped would be warm and homey for a cold night – salad, beef stew, a big bowl of mashed potatoes, and something warm and gooey for dessert. This menu got adjusted after I realized that the recipe for beef stew I had been thinking about was from Laurie Colwin’s cookbook and that I had returned this book to the library without writing down the recipe. So I started looking at different recipes and nothing was quite right – finally I came across Ina Garten’s recipe for beef bourguignon - beef, carrots, tiny little pearl onions, an ENTIRE bottle of red wine, some flamed cognac – how bad could this be, right? Plus I would make it ahead so my friend would never know I “fussed�. But of course, once I went the bourguignon route – well, then I decided that the salad would be a composed one – endive, ripe red pear wedges, toasted walnuts and blue cheese – but they had to be plated – not made in one big bowl – so that ended up looking like fussing – and then the stew was served not over potatoes as planned, but big slices of toasted bread rubbed with garlic, and somehow that also looked like fussing, and then for dessert I found a very simple recipe for molten chocolate cake, but they were individually cooked in little ramekins and then turned out onto the plate. I swear to god that they were easy (and so, so, so good – with a spoonful of whipped cream and a few raspberries – drool) but of course, that REALLY looked fussy. I also made the mistake of offering a celebratory cocktail – a raspberry royale (champagne, a couple of raspberries and a teaspoon of chambord) and having warm walnuts tossed with butter and rosemary, a little red pepper, and some brown sugar with it. So, although the dinner was really fucking good if I do say so myself, and actually pretty simple - my friend just couldn’t stop feeling “fussed over� and was sort of mortified. She couldn’t seem to relax no matter how much wine I plied her with. She did, however, bring me homemade Madelines, some dipped in chocolate, which were amazingly good – and The Boy and I ate the lot of them the next day – me dipped into tea and him out of hand, just one after another. On New Years Eve we were supposed to be at my friend C’s for dinner at 4. She had friends coming up from the city to stay and was putting out a big buffet for us to pick at all evening. We were running late – R was paying bills and I was lazing around reading, so we didn’t notice that snow was coming down – coming down hard and sticking. I put on a tight, low cut grey sweater spangled with silver sequins around the neckline (this was more cool and less trashy than it sounds), a push up bra (because I kind of have to make cleavage not having been blessed with much to begin with) some dark jeans, and a pair of black vinyl pointy toed stiletto boots. I hadn’t been feeling very festive, but dressing up helped. It helps to feel beautiful. Hair pulled up, even slapped on some mascara – which really is an occasion. Anyway, we all got dressed up and in the car and about half way down the road before we realized we could barely SEE the road – that we were sliding everywhere, that the snow didn’t look like it was going to let up. So we turned around. Much to the very vocal disappointment of The Boy. We came home. Had some leftover beef bourguignon. A last Madeline. Slipped back into my sweatpants and stretchy Green Day shirt I stole from The Boy (yes, I can share shirts with my six year old son – this is because he is extremely tall for his age and, like I said, I don’t have much of a bust). At nine the snow seemed to have stopped and the snowplows had made their way through. I called my friend and she said that her friend was there and that she had grown up in the same town as me and, in fact, knew one of my older brothers, so I had to get there RIGHT away. I put on the sweater etc again, we loaded up the car again, the roads were much better. We made it there. We ate very good ham, battered deep friend shrimp, more (but different) artichoke dip, cheese, crackers, fat green olives, some celery and cheese dip, and a creation called “Holland Rusk� that my friend had been talking about making for weeks – a cookie bottom, a custard center, more cookie on top, then copious amounts of whipped cream. Red wine. Champagne. There was a hound dog (my friend’s) and two little long haired chihuahuas that bopped around like tiny fairies begging and walking on their hind legs. Today I was hung over. Once I got past feeling sick I had a hangover cure breakfast – eggs in a bowl (which is, as we all know, total nursery food – soft boiled eggs mixed up with buttered toast torn into bite sized pieces, more butter just mixed in, and salt and pepper. Plus we added a little crumbled bacon.) I squeezed some fresh orange juice. Then I lied down on the couch in front of the fire and read Peter Mayle’s Provence books all day – sometimes dozing off with my pit bull curled up beneath my legs – while R and The Boy put together a complicated Leggo project at the dining room table and we all listened to various c-ds. For dinner we made homemade macaroni and cheese, which I will admit was something of a disappointment – we tried a new recipe which looked delicious and tasted entirely too bland. Needed garlic. But we had some nice steamed broccoli with that – napped with fake hollandaise sauce (a childhood recipe – two tablespoons of mayo combined with one of Dijon mustard and a little lemon juice. It’s delicious on broccoli and no one ever has any idea what they’re eating when I serve it). And later, I think I will have a cup of tea. |
