Christmas 2010

Christmas this year followed our familiar patten: 6:00pm Mass at Queen of All Saints on Christmas Eve, dinner of spinach and white beans (a remarkably delicious if frugal dish), opening presents on Christmas morning, dinner and birthday cake in the evening.

I have no established Christmas dinner menu and I don’t recall one from my childhood. This year I made a sort of mini Beef Wellington with a red wine sauce, pilaf of wild and brown rice, and braised kale with garlic and red pepper. 2007 Frei Brothers Cabernet Savignon.

I had a Very Oxo Christmas this year—my wife gave me a couple of new spatulas (at least partially a pretext for throwing out my old spatula which had become quite disreputable), a large stirring spoon, and a perforated stirring spoon. She also gave me a couple of DVDs (more about these later), a Wii fitness and exercise game, and some new pillows. I gave her a Stephen Sondheim’s new book, Finishing the Hat, and a Makita compact driver-drill and an impact drill along with the matching drill bits. My wife is an extraordinary woman.

I received some very lovely wooden stirring spoons from two of my siblings and the latest Supreme Court Law Review from some dear old friends as has been their custom for many years.

As our Christmas brunch I prepared some of the country ham I received in the southern care package we’d received from other dear old friends.

During the day we watched two of the DVDs I’d received. The commentary to the Crosby-Astaire musical Holiday Inn was extraordinarily good. I recommend it highly. Did you know that Fred Astaire was actually drunk when he did the “drunk dance” New Year’s Eve number in the film? Neither did I. Film historian Ken Barnes’s treatment of the blackface Abraham production number struck exactly the right note: rather than sidestepping it or deprecating it he put it in context. IMO that’s how we should be dealing with the aspects of our history of which we are less than proud rather than simply denying they ever happened as seems to be the case today.

I wish all of you Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, or simply a peaceful and restful day. Celebrate the good!

Update

I neglected to mention some presents, one a very significant one. My wife gave me a Japanese tetsubin teapot. Very nice. I also received an Oxo cheese grater.

10 comments… add one
  • michael reynolds Link

    You might try the small black plastic spatula from Williams-Sonoma. I don’t think it has a name, really, but it’s small with holes and they often hide it away in the back so as to allow lesser — more expensive — spatulas to be sold.

    I think it is unequaled for eggs, omelettes, or indeed anything that occurs within the confines of a small saute pan. I like the stiffness of it as well as the narrowness.

    One warning: if you buy it your dogs might attempt to eat it. Our recently-departed Lab, Goofy, may have been responsible for as many as a dozen over the course of his lifetime. Granted Labs will eat anything, up to and including furniture, but he had a real thing for these particular spats.

  • Is this the one you mean? I got the Oxo equivalent of this.

  • michael reynolds Link

    No. Williams-Sonoma (or possibly the Trilateralists) seems to have “disappeared” the spatula. Fortunately, I was able to outwit their evil plan and can show you this link:

    http://www.dinnerplates.com/Berndes-9011-bds1157.html

  • Thanks. I’ve got one on order.

  • john personna Link

    Merry Christmas!

    And I will not have another cookie today. Well, maybe one more …

  • Thank you, jp. And to you and yours.

  • john personna Link

    Here is a classic story! This just in …

    So at family Christmas my sister brought me some particularly scary snacks she had bought in China. I opened one, what looked like candied ginger, and found it was a dried fish snack. It was … what the sushi bars call “challenging.” It tasted just like aquarium food smells. I kind of “forgot” the snacks when I was leaving.

    This is the classic part. I was talking to my mom, and learned that she had taken them home “because she didn’t want them to go to waste.”

    lol. Poor mom. I promised I’d help her eat them. There are some peanut snacks in the pack …

  • steve Link

    Merry Christmas!

    Steve

  • michael reynolds Link

    May it serve you well.

  • Merry (belated) Christmas!

    That’s a very handsome tree Dave!

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