Perfect Vacation — at Home

Posted on December 31, 2007 by cmf

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 ….

I Did It …

Posted on December 21, 2007 by cmf

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 ….

New West on the Ameya Preserve

Posted on December 20, 2007 by cmf

I managed to get the last packaged in the mail this afternoon and I’m swamped putting out some last-minute fires at my Corporate Job.

In the meantime — check out this five-part investigative piece on the Ameya Preserve that New West is publishing. I’ve only read part one thus far, but seems like a cogent discussion of the issues.

Now If I Can Only Get Them in the Mail …

Posted on December 17, 2007 by cmf

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!

Let the Baking Begin …

Posted on December 14, 2007 by cmf

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.

Lessing’s Nobel Speech

Posted on December 12, 2007 by cmf

The least interesting part of Doris Lessing’s Nobel Prize speech has been getting a lot of attention this week — the part where she claims that the speed by which the internet has been developed has led to a sort of mesmerism by screen, and has subsequently caused a serious devaluation of the book and of reading and of education and expertise. I don’t think she’s entirely wrong, nor do I think the online reaction, that this is the part of her speech where she sounds most like a cranky old woman, is invalid either.

But that was not the part of the speech that spoke to me — the paragraph that gave me heart was this:

Writers are often asked: “How do you write? With a word processor? an electric typewriter? a quill? longhand?” But the essential question is: “Have you found a space, that empty space, which should surround you when you write? Into that space, which is like a form of listening, of attention, will come the words, the words your characters will speak, ideas – inspiration.” If a writer cannot find this space, then poems and stories may be stillborn. When writers talk to each other, what they discuss is always to do with this imaginative space, this other time. “Have you found it? Are you holding it fast?”

These past few months, I’ve been making steady progress on my new book. The way I’ve done this is by becoming very fierce about my weekends. I might go out on a Friday evening, because the day has already been ruined by my real job — but Saturday and Sunday I make no plans, and see nobody. I take the dogs for a walk in the morning — if the weather isn’t terrible we go up to Pine Creek or Suce Creek where we can walk outdoors, in nature (see my piece at Culinate for my feelings on the importance of walking outside.) Then home to do a little cleaning, maybe put in some laundry, and then I have the whole afternoon and evening ahead of me to read, and write, and live inside my own head. I’ve been managing between 750 and 1500 words a weekend — which isn’t bad. I wish it was more, but it is what it is.

Now, I’ve written before about how important Lessing has been to me — how she’s always been a writer I’ve turned to for courage, and here she is again, at 88 years old, giving me faith and courage to continue. Because let’s face it, spending your weekends in your basement office is an odd and anti-social thing to be doing with your time. Turning down dates, or dinner invitations and refusing to join in social activities because you only have two days a week to yourself and you’ve discovered that they must be guarded is weird. And here’s Lessing, as always, telling me that yup, kind of weird, but if that’s what it takes to access “that empty space” then, well, that’s what it takes. So maybe in honor of Doris Lessing’s Nobel Prize we should all turn off the screens for a bit, and immerse ourselves in an evening with a good book — spend a couple of hours not looking at a screen, but looking at pages …

Green Christmas Packing tip …

Posted on December 11, 2007 by cmf

I’ve been using the shreddy stuff out of my shredder to pack boxes with. It’s recycleable, something I’d have to throw out or compost myself, and since I have a huge backlog of old manuscript paged, a nearly-endless resource. I packed the black Chamba pot I sent to my cousin Elizabeth in shredded credit card offers, and it arrived safe and sound.

So sorry all my friends and family out there — you’re going to have to contend with paper shreds. Not as bad as styrofoam peanuts, but kind of a pain, I know …

Food Presents?

Posted on December 10, 2007 by cmf

The past few years I’ve been giving people food presents — we all have so much stuff in our lives, so why do we need more little objects? Particularly for those folks on our lists who we love, and to whom we want to give a little something, but who aren’t family or the kind of friends we buy big presents for — you know, the folks you’d buy a candle or bath products of something like that.

Last year I did really swanky Christmas baskets for my family members — cookies, chocolates, some jam I made, cheese, a little pate — into the boxes they went and off the Santa post office took them.

What I like about baskets is that all year I’m thinking about Christmas — making jam in the middle of the summer, or collecting mushrooms in the spring, and then as the holiday approaches, looking at what cookies I did last year and which ones I want to repeat, which new ones I want to try. It’s all fun. And at the end of it, aside from a festive basket which I’d encourage recipients to recycle this year, no one has a bunch of objects in their house that they don’t quite know what to do with …

So what about you? Are you making things for people? What are you making?

English Food for Christmas

Posted on December 7, 2007 by cmf

No matter how much French and Italian food I might cook the rest of the year, for me, Christmas is all about English Food (well, and German — I did grow up in the Midwest after all). I don’t understand people who have turkey for Christmas — people! you just had a turkey! Branch out! (And in our family, ham was for Easter, not Christmas. Every family has it’s holiday food rules and that was just one of ours.)

No, Christmas in our family was always beef — either a whole filet for a crowd (boring, even when done as a Wellington) or my favorite, a standing rib roast. The best Christmas I ever cooked was in California, before we moved here. I spent a small fortune on a gorgeous, dry-aged, Niman Ranch standing rib roast and did it with some lovely green beans and carrots (blanched, then reheated with Christmas-only quantities of butter), and a yorkshire pudding. I’d never done one of those myself and I remember pouring the batter into the hot beef fat in the roasting pan. “Well that’s never going to work,” I thought as I put the pan back in the oven. I was sure the pudding was going to be a disaster but it wasn’t — it actually puffed up and did it’s thing and was delicious — a triumph.

My other standby when I was younger and too poor to even think about something as fabulous as a standing rib roast was goose — goose isn’t really that expensive and there’s a terrific recipe in The New James Beard that had an apple and prune stuffing. It’s really wonderful and because goose is so rich, you can feed a lot of people off one goose — I’ve done a Christmas goose for eight a couple of times. (And as an added incentive, you get a nice jar of gorgeous goose fat out of it — there is really nothing better than potatoes roasted in goose fat. Sigh.)

Now that I don’t host Christmas any more, I’m always on the lookout for things to bring. A few years ago, it was the Croquembouche that Wouldn’t Die, and last year I made a trifle that Nina requested specifically (she gave me the recipe she wanted me to make). I love her, but that was boring and it included cake from a mix!? Yuck. And Maderia — double yuck.

This year I’m thinking of steamed puddings? I have all those plums that I put up last fall — Plum Pudding is made with prunes of course, but I might be able to futz around with a recipe. Or some sort of German Plum Stollen? I’m going to have to go do a little investigative googling … But we had a steamed persimmon pudding at Thanksgiving that was delicious — cakey and nice and not too sweet and warm — it was really great. And of course, anything you can light on fire is always a hit with the kids.

I’ve also been thinking of doing an Antelope Wellington for Christmas appetizers — without the pate but with lots of wild mushrooms. Maybe Antelope/Morel Wellington? Talk about local … Or maybe I can talk the MH into giving me some birds so I can make this gorgeous Game Pie that Gordon Ramsey published in the Times of Londonlast week.

Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho … the holidays are coming … all sorts of fun cooking ahead!

“Only Connect”

Posted on December 6, 2007 by cmf

There was a terrific little piece on Zen Habits last week, Faith in Humanity: How to Bring People Closer, and Restore Kindness. I read it right after I’d come back from paying my local utilities bill — there never seems any point to paying that bill by mail since the office is just down on the other side of town. So, once a month, I drive down, hand my check through the drive up window, chat with the lady who always puts dog cookies in with my receipt, and drive off with a little smile and with two dogs happily munching away.

It’s a little thing, but it’s typical of the way we treat one another around here. People are friendly. We say “hello” when we pass on the street, and usually wave a little if we’re driving out on one of the country roads and someone with a Park County license plate comes toward us in the opposite lane. We stop and chat on the trail, or at the dog park. Nothing major – just pleasant conversation. You can tell the urban tourists in the summer because they don’t say “Hi” — and they look hostile or apalled that you’re saying “Nice day, isn’t it?”

It’s important, this layer of friendliness. Sure — it’s a different beast than real freindship — there are people in town that I don’t particularly like but with whom I’ll still exchange a casual hello, will ask about their holiday, what the kids are up to. It’s a small town. It keeps the social fabric together.

And it’s so easy to lose. A few fancy subdivisions, a couple of big box stores, the encroachment of wide streets with strip malls on each side where people are frightened or frustrated by the time they park and it starts to erode. Once that toxic miasma of being “in a hurry” creeps in (and I am completely guilty of this, especially while travelling. Nothing makes me crankier than someone meandering in an airport, someone who isn’t with the program, someone who doesn’t know we’re all supposed to be purposeful and in a hurry).

As someone who works at home, the social fabric provided by the general friendliness in town is crucial in my life. There may be days where the only actual human contact I have is with that lady at the Utilities office, or the checker at my grocery store, or with the guy at the coffee shop. One of the reasons I moved to a small town was so I could live someplace where I’m not a stranger — where I’m known. Where I can go out for coffee, or a drink, or dinner and run into people I know.

And so, I’m going to try to shop locally for Christmas. I know there are a couple of things I need to buy online, and I’ll probably still have to drive over to Bozeman, but I’m going to start close to home, and see what I can find — we are a town of artists and crafters after all. Plus, I’d rather go shopping here, where I know people, where shopping is a series of pleasant encounters with people I know, than go to a mall, or to Target, or even over to Main Street in Bozeman, which is great, but which isn’t my town.

LivingSmall

Life, Literature, and the Subversive Power of Living Small

Yearly Archives: 2007