And so, Christmas really begins….

 

Our bountiful table

Jordan and I hosted our regular neighborhood ladies’ get-together tonight, but with a difference: it was a holiday potluck, and oh my! we all went overboard. The bountiful table is pictured above. Pru brought tenderloin sandwiches and marinated mushrooms; Mary, poire rouge (a wine concoction that everyone raved about, except I stuck to chardonnay—better safe than sorry) and a wonderful citrus tart with chocolate ganache and real whipped cream; Jordan fixed a cheese and salami platter and our family favorite salmon spread, and I added pickled herring (Jordan and Pru didn’t touch it, but Mary and I love it), and a goat cheese log filled with pesto and rolled in toasted sesame seeds (usually I burn one batch and then do a second, but this time I watched and was successful on the first try). A wonderful and satisfying meal.

And we exchanged gifts. I have gotten one or two gifts and put them aside, so tonight we opened all. Some great and good surprises. Remember that song, “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas?” That’s how I feel tonight. My cottage is brightly lit, my tiny fake fireplace blazes away, the outdoor lights are bright and beautiful, Sophie is calm and sleeping (she did filch the top half of my tenderloin sandwich!), and all is well in the cottage.

After we cleaned up, Jordan and I had sort of a conference call with Megan, doing some menu planning for the big Alter get-together. There will be at least eighteen of us this year—a wonderful resumption of tradition after last year’s Covid isolation. Everyone is self-testing a day or two before we get together, and we are being extra cautious. But I am looking forward so much to having all my children and grandchildren together.

Christmas aside, I ran into some trivia today that I can’t resist sharing. Here’s a quote that I liked:

Books have a soul.... A book that sits on a shelf is nothing but a bundle of paper. Unless it is opened, a book possessing great power or an epic story is mere scraps of paper. But a book that has been cherished, and loved, filled with human thoughts, has been endowed with a soul.

From The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa

 

The reasons this struck me so particularly today is that on Bookbub I saw an advertisement for a $1.99 version of the Iliad on Kindle. Maybe it’s just me, but something struck me as so wrong about that. I admit I have not read the Iliad in its entirety—I have read portions, I have studied about it, but I’ve never read it (in contrast to Beowulf which I actually had to read and memorize in graduate school—I think it’s a rite of passage). But to have that mammoth and classic work available in electronic form for pennies just seemed wrong to me. I guess I think it should be carved on rare tablets of stone. And no, it wasn’t abridged! Reminds me of the summer my oldest child swore to read Moby Dick. I don’t think he ever made it all the way through.

And then there are matters culinary: for your enjoyment, I suggest the newest wine on the market: Oreo. Seriously. It’s a cookie-flavored red wine from the Barefoot Wine people. They claim it has “flavors of chocolate and cookies and creme along with notes of oak," and "has aromas of chocolate, with natural flavors of blackberry and dark cherries for a smooth and lingering finish." I think I’ll pass.

No Oreo wine for you? You can try pastrami tacos. In Los Angeles, there’s a young couple who are mixing Jewish cuisine (hers) with Mexican from Guadalajara (his). Think matzoh ball soup meets caldo de pollo or chicken liver tostadas. When they met, he was a sous chef, she the lead line cook at a prestigious restaurant. During quarantine, they began to combine their cuisines, and apparently, they are the hit of those who know in LA. So far, they offer their menu three nights a week at Malli, a pop-up in a wine bar, but look for them to expand.

The wonderful world of food never ceases to amaze me, from a sumptuous Christmas potluck to a pastrami taco. And a little picked herring and live paté along the way.