Yearly Archives: 2007

Perfect Vacation — at Home

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Inspired by this article in the Times of London, I holed up and took a lovely, restorative vacation at home after Christmas. Christmas was lovely — we all had a great time. There was lots of food and wine and by ten that night we had six kids under five doing the Toddler Disco in the middle of the living room floor. Perfect.

I woke up on the 26th a tiny bit hung over, and decided the tree was coming down. It was a pretty tree and we had fun decorating it — the big girls came over to help me. But I was done with Christmas. I’d done so much cooking and wrapping and festivity in the run up to the big day that by the 26th, I was over it. Plus, I kind of like taking down the tree — it’s quiet, and sort of meditative. Packing everything up again for another year.

And then I started my lovely lovely vacation at home. A dog walk in the mornings. Chores — a little cleaning, some food shopping, a quick stop at Nina’s to see what the kids are doing. Then home by noon or one, and a whole quiet afternoon stretches ahead of me and it’s down into my basement office to work in peace on my new book. It’s been a great vacation — nearly 4000 words and I’ve still got today and tomorrow before I have to go back to work. Then a few quiet evenings in a row to read or watch Netflix movies that have been piling up — after the string of parties before Christmas, parties that were fun but left me feeling all talked out and with that jittery energy that too much socializing instills in me — four whole days to settle back into my book was the best holiday I could have imagined.

Tonights festivities are going to be very low key — dinner with Nina and the kids who are leaving to go back to LA on Friday. We’ll cook some food and then watch the ball drop in New York at 10, and then home. I’m superstitious about the New Year — I hate welcoming a new year hung over. I like to greet New Year’s day bright eyed and well rested — I’ll do a little housecleaning — take the recycling out — and we’re off into 2008. Happy Happy everyone ….

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I Did It …

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I got all the boxes in the mail — granted, the last two, to my aunt and my grandmother (who live together) didn’t go out until yesterday — but they celebrate Christmas on whichever day next week is most convenient — and well, my grandmother is 96, and while she still has most of her marbles, she’s old enough not to care if her chocolate truffles get there a day late.

I love making food presents for everyone — but next year I have to remember that it does actually take some time, and perhaps I should start sooner than the last weekend before Christmas. It would also help if we don’t have a big fire-drill crisis at the Big Corporation two days before we all leave for the holidays.

So, one more day of power-editing at my day job (nothing says fun like 12 hour days hunched over my monitor crisis-editing docs that missed an edit cycle and now have to go out the door next week) and then I ‘m done. I have all of next week off. I’m so looking forward to it …

I’m spending Christmas with my friends Nina and Elwood and their four kids — it’s always a fun holiday — there are lots of people I love, good food and fancy wines, the kids sing carols (including our Sophia-of-the-perfect-pitch), put on a play and there’s ribbon and wrapping paper and running around and all sorts of excitement.

Then four full days off with no plans and no event cooking on the horizon. Four days to walk with the dogs, hang out with my friends, ski if there’s some snow, read books and re-aqcuaint myself with my basement writing office.

I hope everyone out there has a great Christmas (or whichever holiday you celebrate). Eat, drink, be merry … Ho Ho Ho ….

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Now If I Can Only Get Them in the Mail …

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It’s been a weekend of cooking cooking cooking … with a couple of small breaks for tree trimming and kids’ recitals …

So if you’re on my Christmas list — stop reading now. Go away. Come back after your box arrives.

For the rest of you — here’s the weekend:

I made truffles for my grandmother. I made chocolate hazelnut cookies, pfeffernussen (I can’t find the recipe online — but it was a good one — with grated lemon rind and some candied citron and orange and ginger — they came out chewy and delicious, not powdery and terrible like those ones in the package), and chocolate hermits. I wanted three kinds of round drop cookies that all taste surprisingly great — and I think that’s what I got. I need to package them up this morning, but I think I now have a pile of little gifts for people like my mailman and for hostess gifts.

I also invented a Christmas Cake — it’s based on a traditional English Christmas cake recipe I found on the Guardian site. But instead of dried and glaceed fruits, I used the plums and cherries I put up last summer. I drained them of the sugar syrup I put them up in (or of the spiced sugar syrup — I did half and half) and soaked them overnight in brandy. The cake batter is a heavy, spicy batter with lots of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cardamom and powdered ginger in it. Then the fruit, some candied orange, ginger and citron peel, walnuts and the grated rind of a lemon get folded in. I found some little bundt pans at Cost Plus, so I baked them in those — they came out great! They smell all rich and Christmassy and this morning I’m going to make some Royal Icing for them — now I just have to figure out how to pack them for shipping. I think they need to go in their own box inside the bigger hamper box.

It wasn’t all sweets around here either. I made a gorgeous version of the Pate Grandmere from Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie book — instead of pork liver I used half the liver from my antelope — unlike the horrifying moose liver, antelope liver is lovely. Antelope liver is not mushy, it’s just tidy and has the loveliest texture. I thought the Pate Grandmere would be good because it’s a very livery terrine — you sear the liver before grinding it, and while I don’t like slices of liver as much as the MH does, I think it’s going to make for a lovely terrine. And it didn’t break — I don’t have a fancy pate mold but I have to say, my old Pyex bread pan works really well, and it’s the perfect size to use a foil-wrapped brick as a weight. So the terrine will get cut into slices, packed with my vaccuum sealer, frozen and shipped along with the moose pate and some buffalo summer sausage I bought from a local butcher for the game portion of Christmas.

Now I just have to make a couple more Christmas cakes, pack up all the cookies, slice and pack and freeze the terrines, pack the boxes and get things shipped …. yikes! Oh, and work my day job — which is really busy this week — ho ho ho!

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Let the Baking Begin …

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Because too many of the people on my Christmas list read my blog, I can’t be too specific — but let’s say that this weekend is all about baking — cookies, cake, pate (well, it’s baked anyhow) and chocolate-chile truffles for my grandmother — I have a hunch that it might be another lost weekend as far as writing goes, since there’s so much to do, and my favorite children are back in town. It’s the holiday rush!

And although it sounds a little hectic — I’m looking forward to a house full of cinnamon and cardamon and cloves. I’m looking forward to packing cookies in little cellophane bags and figuring out how to ship some other goodies I don’t want to be too specific about. I love the idea of my far-away friends and family opening boxes of goodies and having something fun to share on Christmas Eve or Day when I can’t be with them.

So HO HO HO everyone … time to decorate the tree and get out the sprinkles and shiny silver ball decors that they tell you you’re not supposed to eat but whatever. Time to shred more paper for packing and put the little freezer packs in to get cold. Time to dig out the Christmas music — Dean Martin, Rosie Clooney, and my all-time favorite The Rat Pack Christmas.

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