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It’s being a windy, sunny Christmas Day here, and I wish all who celebrate it a Merry one wherever you are. For those with other traditions, the same sentiment of joy and peace and goodwill expressed in your way and toward your own traditions. Happy Holidays, best wishes for a joyful, peaceful, prosperous New Year.
The blustery wind is out of the SSW, freeing up all the pollen in every male Ashe juniper from a hundred miles around and blowing it up every “cedar-fever-sensitive” nose. I’m not in that category yet, or only barely, but woke up with a splitting headache that a dose of decongestant helped–so my lifelong immunity to the annual cedar-fever blight may be weakening. We had our traditional Christmas breakfast (a tradition re-started last year when I gave in to my own base desire for a waffle iron, a round one about like my mother used to have.) Waffles and bacon. YES. Feels right. Dinner will be ham and boiled potatoes seasoned with butter and (I hope it’s big enough) parsley from the garden. Christmas here has only two meals, because we don’t get home from the midnight service until around 1:30-2 am. Breakfast is late; supper is somewhere within an hour of 6, usually, though sometimes it’s split between the main meal at 4-5ish and dessert a couple of hours later. Grazing on carrot and celery sticks (and sometimes Christmas treats) occurs in between. I’m trying to stick to the raw veggies, myself. Nonetheless, some dark chocolate with espresso beans found its way into my mouth earlier.
Today’s dessert is pumpkin pie, now in the oven. The ham, a pre-cooked object, will not take long after the pie comes out. I’ll slather it with mustard, then top-glaze with homemade spiced pear jam that, this year, also included the last of the apple butter in one jar, a little honey, a little maple syrup, and a splash of Shiraz, along with the cinnamon, cloves, allspice, ginger that went in with the pears and brown sugar. I made enough at Thanksgiving to use again today.
Comment by Wickersham's Conscience — December 25, 2014 @ 8:23 pm
And a very Merry Christmas to you, too, Ms. Moon. Here in Fairbanks the weather is very mild for the season (+20 degrees) and mostly dark, with just three and three quarters hour when the sun is barely above the horizon.
Christmas breakfast was french toast; supper was a half ham cooked with a mustard-honey-lemon-clove glaze, locally grown mashed potatoes and veggies. Desert will be blueberry sour cream pie, after a suitable interval for digestion.
Santa was very good to me, I’d expected only a lump of coal. I got a very nice down swather, an extremely practical gift in this part of the world. Family, friends, boodle and good food. Pretty wonderful.
All the best to you and yours in 2015.
Comment by Nadine Barter Bowlus — December 26, 2014 @ 12:40 am
Best wishes for the new year flow back to you. Just finished Deeds of Honor. An utterly satifying finish to the closest thing we have in this culture and this place to a Midwinter Feast. Walked out of our older son’s home into the chill air, looked up to see Orion, the Hunter, in full glory. Thanks and Praise.
Comment by Naomi — December 26, 2014 @ 6:44 am
All the best wishes for the holiday season from Kortenberg Belgium and all the best for 2015
Comment by Lise — December 26, 2014 @ 9:55 am
All the best to you for the new year!
Fresh parsley for Christmas dinner? Wow!
The temperature is unseasonably warm here in Montreal, but only in the “there is less snow on the ground and big puddles everywhere” sense. The only plants active are the conifers and the plants that grow under the snow. The streets were almost clear of ice, but there was still enough to enhance the Christmas lights. All in all a good year for people travelling.
Comment by Kaye M — December 26, 2014 @ 10:25 am
Add fresh green beans to the ham and boiled potatoes, and you would have had a dish that my mother often served…and when the ham is close to the bone, the same ingredients made a fine soup. Pancakes or waffles for breakfast, certainly!
I, too, just downloaded “Deeds of Honor” to my PC Kindle Reader, and hope to start reading it soon. As a fellow cataract surgery survivor, I am now blessed with 20/20 for driving, etc., and some technical corrections in my Rx readers. So, yes, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from a 76-year-old fan in the RGV.
Comment by Daniel Glover — December 26, 2014 @ 12:45 pm
Elizabeth,
My brother, whom you met at DragonCon, went out and bought me Shattered Shields for Christmas, which I devoured before going to sleep last night. So I’m definitely going to need to get Deeds of Honor in some format soon.
Merry Christmas to all …
Comment by Larryp — December 26, 2014 @ 2:51 pm
God bless and give you a good new year. Thank you for all the good stories you have written of the years and hope for years more.
Comment by elizabeth — December 26, 2014 @ 5:23 pm
Hi and thanks to all of you!
Comment by Susan — December 26, 2014 @ 11:33 pm
Many blessings to you and yours, Elizabeth, and thanks for the joy you spread!
(And I hope you enjoyed some fantastic music at your Christmas services!)
Comment by Annabel — December 27, 2014 @ 10:31 am
I hope you had a lovely Christmas! We did, and had a traditional English Christmas Dinner, cooked by my daughter. We did have chicken instead of turkey, but that was largely because even the smallest turkey would have been too much for us. With roast potatoes, parsnips, carrots and Brussels sprouts, cranberry sauce and gravy (traditional is bread sauce, but my daughter doesn’t like that, which is a Great Pity). Followed, of course, by Christmas pudding flamed in brandy, with brandy butter for the adults and custard for the children. It was my younger grandson’s first Christmas Dinner, and he adored every mouthful, except the sprouts!
Comment by Amy — December 31, 2014 @ 10:36 am
Spiced pear butter!!!! I have never had it but I love it.
Comment by Richard (Simpkin) — January 1, 2015 @ 2:17 am
Happy 2015 Elizabeth. Happy 2015 everybody.
Annabel, “snap!” (Except that we had bread sauce but no cranberry.) I stayed with my aunt but (after many years of her having friends in for Christmas dinner) we went to one of her friends this year. Friend lit brandy by pouring it onto the pudding and striking a match, whereas my aunt knows the trick of getting it to ignite by heating it in a spoon over a candle flame. (She has one silver spoon specially to do this.)
The turkey tradition is a comparatively recent innovation here; my sister follows the older custom of cooking a goose.