Christmas in the Air

Grapeshot:  Christmas, 1968.  In the words of a friend:  the days of our youth were the days of our glory. 

Another frigid December day.  Seems impossible that we actually went for a walk on Monday, remarking on the perfect walking weather.  After the Sunday snow and monsoons.  You know what they say about Boston (and Chicago and etc.).  If you don't like the weather, wait for ten minutes and it will change.

So today we actually went out and bought a tree.  We have been going to Pollilio's in Stoughton, MA for years and always get a good, reasonably-priced tree and friendly service.  Nothing to sniff at these days.  In the mood for some Christmas music, more of the sacred variety, not Rudolph, and found a concert in a Back Bay church tomorrow.  In the afternoon, even better.  Bad weather predicted for Sunday, so we'll hole up with a football game and a fire, maybe even some chips and dip.  Chips and dip are such a rarity at Chez Grapeshot that it's considered a real treat, right up there with a cheeseburger.

About the cookies there was the following to say:  the  Orange Meltaways (not Orange Dreams) were excellent, and the Cardamon Cookies somewhat of a disappointment.  O.K., but not great.  The  cheese twists were soggy!    Really not up to snuff.  I froze them and I'll heat them up in a piping hot oven and hope for the best.

Last night we had an Asian dish that we have become very fond of.  It has the virtues of taste, nutrition and thrift.  A veritable trifecta  on the dinner table.  Downside?  All the veggie are cooked separately.  And it only feeds 2 or 3.  Perfect for a couple and someone gets a nice lunch.  Today that was moi!

Significant Other is decorating the tree, and I have to confess that taking out some of the ornaments we got from my GREAT grandparents or stuff we bought when the kids were babies makes me terribly nostalgic and sentimental and practically weepy.  The weight of years.

Tonight we're having a third meal of a quickie lasagne.  I'll pub the recipe.  It's from the Dragone coupon in the Sunday coupons.  You cheat and use bottled spaghetti sauce and frozen meatballs and I cheated more and used pre-grated cheeses.  Also, no-cook lasagne noodles.  Kids, this was really good and serves 6-8.  I have to say that pasta has become a definite comfort food in our house--pasta in all its many forms.

One glaring fact that  causes me a bit of angst is that my Chinese and Mexican cooking is better than 85% of all restaurants, and I'm fearful that will happen with Italian, too.  This is not necessarily a good thing.  Ditto for ALL desserts that come from the supermarket.  Bought some frozen Perdu barbequed chicken a while back on a BOGO, and it wasn't very good.  Sometimes, a girl just likes to be taken out.

S.O. just appeared with the cocktail shaker and two Bardstown Slings, now our house drink.  It is very fine, and packs a whallop, which is also fine.  Wimpy food and drink are anathema in this household.

The trees blocking the sliding door to the deck necessitated that we FINALLY bring in the cushions, etc., stored in a ventilated box on the deck.  These is a cardboard box within the box where the covers for the teak chairs should be (another story), and the box contained about 1000 acorns.  Some very busy critter somehow climbed thru the louvers and stashed a winter's worth of acorns.  We took the cushions (which would have provided a cozy winter nest) and left the food supplies.  So, finally, on December 18th, all the fall tasks are done.  Well, it ain't winter  yet.


Tree is mostly decorated, as is house.  My mother's handmade wreaths (from cones and pods) are hung.  More sentiment, more nostalgia.  More thoughts of Christmases past in Kansas, Colorado, Illinois and even here in MA.

I hope you have good memories of past holidays and not the disfunctional kind.  I read so many horror stories, but most of our holidays have been good.  I promise to post the Orange Melt-A-Ways and the Asian stir try that really rocks.

Grapeshot

Discomfort at the Comfort Inn

Most of the Thanksgiving weight is gone, and I only had an orange for breakfast. By lunchtime I'm experiencing serious hunger, specific in that I want a bowl of chili. We don't keep stuff like that in the house, mostly because it is only fit to eat if there's a power failure and you are reduced to heating canned food in the fireplace.

Off to The 99, except they don't have chili so I settle for a pretty decent bowl of the New England version of Tortilla Soup. S.O. has a cheeseburger. We're talking about our Christmases as kids and what we remember, because the Brown Food Writing Course has unleashed a tsunami of memories, and I remember Christmas at my Grandma's in Kansas, in Kearney Nebraska, in McPherson Kansas, in Ft. Morgan, Colorado.

O.K., so I didn't have a Bright Lights, Big City childhood. At least we always had pleasant meals with cameraderie, not the hideous disfuncional kind that are grist for the writer's mill. What can I say? O.K. my mom and her brother argued politics, but very civilly.

So after a decent lunch and I have to tell you The 99 (The Ninety-Nine) serves LARGE glasses of wine, not the three little slurps you might get elsewhere, we toddle off.

Next door there's a "Comfort Inn," and two people are carrying something large out of the back. "Looks like a dead body," I say, half-joking. I am thinking they are removing an old rug, because the "parcel" is wrapped so strangely in what appears to be a brown container.

Except when we pull around and can actually see, there's a cop car sitting at the front door and the vehicle the "rug" is going into is actually a mortuary van. Therefore it must have been a body.

Some poor soul died at the motel. Heart attack? Stroke? Suicide? I don't think "murder" because there would be a gazillion cop cars. Probably. I think of the hotel maid who must have opened the room and discovered the corpse. Yikes. Not pleasant for her. I suppose they see it all and like none of it.

Must have been a man because the parcel was so long. I swear to you it did look like a big parcel. Like a rug.

We'll have to wait to read the paper next week, since local papers are never exactly johnny on the spot with the news and the paper is published tomorrow and must have long gone to press before the body was even cold.

Right before Christmas, too. A business traveller? Must be a story there. We writers can always imagine a story.

A small press actually asked to read "World of Mirrors" today. How do you like them apples?

Onward,

Grapeshot