cellio | mail call, and food

Today's mail brought a lovely card from

browngirl (the "happy everything" card), along with a completely-unexpected card from

lyev. Thanks, guys! (In case you hadn't figured it out, I use "guys" in the gender-neutral sense. :-) )

Today's mail did not yet bring a couple of DVDs I ordered nearly two weeks ago. Sigh. Fortunately, we are getting together with my family the weekend after Christmas, not the weekend before, so there's plenty of time yet.

The choir dinner was tonight. Wonderful food and pleasant company, and I left with fewer cookies than I arrived with. I brought home some assorted dairy cookies that I couldn't eat tonight with the meat; I'll ration them over the next few days. :-)

Fran roasted a turkey. They were away for Thanksgiving, and apparently she missed doing it. The turkey was good; the stuffing was wonderful. I'll have to get her recipe at some point. It included apples, raisins, and chestnuts; I've never cooked with chestnuts before (or knowingly eaten them, actually).

It's enough that Fran and Alan let us invade their house every week when neither of them is even in the choir. And then they feed us in grand fashion once a year. I guess we don't sound too bad. :-)

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So, being in the throes of the second year in which Christmas has been A Big Fucking Issue ... how did you manage to do this scheduling bit, such that your presence isn't demanded on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day?

Last year was my first December at a new job, and a minor negotiating point during the interview (it turned out to be minor to them) was that I could move holidays around -- work Dec 25 and take off Yom Kippur instead, and that kind of thing. That means that for the first time I'm not burning vacation days for holidays all the time. (And as a bonus, it's easy to be productive when there's no one else around to interrupt. :-) )

So I explained to my parents that my employer was letting me do this, and "as you can see all the fall holidays landed on weekdays this year" (not true this year, but it was true last year), and asked if they'd mind terribly if we got together the Sunday before instead of on Christmas. This was ok with them. Having done it once, it was pretty easy to repeat this year; while most of the fall holidays were on weekends, we still had Yom Kippur, Shavuot, and of course Pesach to account for.

So I guess I'm using my job as an excuse, but not in the traditional way. But I figure that once we've broken the Christmas-day pattern for a few years, it'll be easy to keep doing in the future.

I hope you're able to work out something with your family. I've been taking small steps with mine, and it takes time but it seems to be working.

*blush* You're welcome. :) I hope the DVDs arrive soon.

I suggested to my mom that if she made a turkey for the choir dinner this year, she could still have her turkey-vegetable soup made with the carcass even though we didn't have Thanksgiving at home. This translates into she made the turkey for choir dinner because I asked her to. Either way, I got turkey, so I'm happy. It always makes me crazy when she cooks a ham - I'm not comfortable with all that cooking going on in the same kitchen and making sure you know what is kosher.

The choir dinner came about because one year, the choir took up a collection and got them a present in thanks for letting us use the house. I think I wasn't living there anymore at that time, or else was not currently in the choir, or something. Anyway, the following year, Mom decided she wanted to make a dinner for the choir, and back and forth and back and forth.

At this point, I can safely say there is a big mutual admiration society going on - she often mentions 'her choir' to her friends. :) But she chooses to do the ironing with the TV on and the sewing room door shut whenever we start a new, complex, piece.

But she chooses to do the ironing with the TV on and the sewing room door shut whenever we start a new, complex, piece.

:-) I wonder if we should be trying to warn her when we're going to do that so she can plan around it...

My first experience of roasted chestnuts was @25 years ago in New York City. Mom and Dad bought me some from a street vendor. Now they usually have peanuts or cashews already shelled. It's not the same thing. This is a quintessential New York experience, IMO, eating hot chestnuts bought from a street vendor while walking down wind-swept streets between skyscrapers... ah.

Anyway, it is not too hard to cook chestnuts. Joy of Cooking describes how to do it. In a nutshell (pun intended), you cut an X in the flat part of the nut, spritz with oil, and cook in the oven. Cooking time and heat will vary. They peel more easily while hot, which is a bit of a challenge. I thought she was going to put the nuts through the food processor, but she just tossed them in as they had come out of the shells, which is why there were recognizable nut pieces in the stuffing.

I would be happy to make you chestnuts sometime. They are quite tasty, even without the blustery New York streets as a spice.

I would also be happy to post the stuffing recipe.

Ooh, chestnuts without blustery winds? You've got a deal. :-) (Actually, I'm not sure I'd recognize a chestnut if I met it in the grocery store. As I said, no prior exposure...)

Please do post the stuffing recipe!

"In a nutshell (pun intended), you cut an X in the flat part of the nut, spritz with oil, and cook in the oven."

*Sigh!* You poor thing. Never having tasted the flavor of (song cue) "chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." (song off). I understand. That's how I had chestnuts the first four decades of my life. Our house has a wood burning fireplace. Our first Christmas here, I roasted chestnuts in it. There's a difference! They're far better than oven roasted chestnuts. It's like the difference between a live concert and a tape. BTW, the first batch I made I put them in an aluminum pie tin just like I used to do with the oven. The fire ate thru the bottom and dumped them into the flames. Now I used the 'coal scuttle' that hangs there. (We've got all the toys, the scuttle, the poker, the bellows, etc. What's a fireplace without theatre? :D))

mail call, and food

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Turkey and the evolution of the choir dinner

Re: Turkey and the evolution of the choir dinner

Chestnuts

Re: Chestnuts

In the oven???