A correlation: wind chill and fat consumption

The last three days, in pictures:

Heaven-on-earth: homemade mushroom pizza.

Feta, ricotta, fresh dill, and egg on its way to becoming spanakopita filling.

The colder it is outside, the more I crave big whopping gobs of butter and melted cheese in my dinner. Today's high temperature: 22 degrees. I see a trend emerging.

We have a busy weekend ahead of us: a friend's housewarming, some live music, a double-inlaws dinner party, and a Sunday afternoon at the cafe. I'm hoping to squirrel away a little gift-wrapping time in there, as well. We'll see how that goes.

Where will this weekend be taking you?

Christmas cards

Dining room table, 7:45 pm last night. What do holiday preparations look like at your house?

Christmas fever, in full swing

I don't know about the rest of you, but I can't bring myself to put my Christmas decorations up so soon after Thanksgiving. I need time to think and reflect, digest and spend a few more days in the company of fall leaves and Indian corn before breaking out the tinsel. Thanksgiving is, after all, a farewell to autumn before we move solemnly into winter. As you can tell, I'm a little reluctant about that. I needed time.

Friends, it didn't take long. Four days, to be exact, and driving homeward in the early dark one evening, belting out White Christmas (the Drifters' version, it was on the radio) and seeing all the other homes with their pretty, twinkly lights and Christmas trees inside their front windows... I cracked. I pulled into our driveway, turned off the car and sprinted inside, straight up to the attic, and began hauling down the boxes.

When Patrick came through the door fifteen minutes later, he stopped dead in his tracks: the tree was lit, the stockings were hung, and I was drinking tea from a santa mug. He claims I had a "crazed gleam" in my eye, but I'm not sure about that part.

After dinner, we decorated the tree together. Scenes:

Diesel, the tenth reindeer. He's wishing you the merriest of holidays this year.

Pete, who likes to participate (but is shockingly well-behaved when it comes to tree etiquette).

The finished tree.

Thanks be to my sweet husband, who gamely indulges me in Christmas preparations. He even endured Christmas music this year, including Little Drummer Boy (Johnny Cash version) my personal favorite. Whoa.

In a couple of weeks, I'll be posting my bloggy Christmas Tree Tour, a link list of fellow bloggers' Christmas trees. If you've got one on your blog (or will soon) leave the link as a comment and I'll be sure to include you in the post!

The most fun you'll have at the grocery store

Image via tiny palpitation.

At our house, grocery shopping is a team effort. I'm the coupon-clipper and list-maker, Patrick is the cart pusher. I stay home and hum while he goes forth and shops. Patrick, not being one of those mythical Guys Who Likes to Shop, hates it. The weekly trip to the grocery store possibly ranks below cleaning cat boxes as his most onerous household chore. But, he goes. He goes because he is immune to impulse buys. No $4 jars of roasted marinated artichoke hearts are finding their way into his cart. With Patrick as designated shopper, we spend a little less than fifty dollars each week.

About once a month, I try to plan it so we skip a week. With Thanksgiving just behind us, (and a fridge beset with a bounty of leftovers) skipping this week was a no-brainer. I liked that idea. But little by little, after hearing one radio story after another, I also started to like another idea. We were going to take our $50 and buy groceries for the food bank.

And that's why Wednesday after dinner we both climbed into the car, grocery-store bound. Patrick, I'm pretty sure, was dreading the whole thing. A quick run through the entire history of our relationship clearly reveals that the grocery store parking lot is the most volatile time for faux pas, miscommuniques, and minor squabbles. Checkout lines and crowded aisles never fail to put us in a bad mood. We entered with trepidation.

Once inside, it was a straight shot from sliding doors to stewed tomatoes. Immediately, dove into a battle of wits with Del Monte and Hunt's, Heinz and store brand, trying to score the biggest bang for our buck. Store brand pasta was on sale. Hormel canned chili was about half the price of Campbell's, and we scored a 12-pack of store brand mac and cheese for the same price as a Kraft mac 6-pack. Being a bargain nerd myself, this was fun. Patrick was gently and eloquently talking me out of things like pickled beets, and enjoying putting his superior mathematical skills to use.

By the time we wheeled our cart towards the check-out, we both sported giant, goofy shit-eating grins. Nothing beats that tingly and a little bit obnoxious good-samaritan feeling. The total? $50.37. And a lot of folks are going to be a little less stressed out about putting food on the table.

So, there you go. Food bank shopping-therapy. You should try it, it's terrific.

The only thing sweeter...

...than pie is pie with ice cream. Specifically, chocolate cranberry pie with Edy's French Vanilla ice cream. Post-Thanksgiving has visited the founding of new (though short-lived) tradition on our house: Daily Pie. Every night, after dinner, we have pie. We couldn't let it go to waste, now, could we?

(Of course not!)

The promise of kale

Yesterday afternoon, I stood looking out the window, thinking about winter. Oh sure, I thought, it's all fun and games now. There's Christmas to look forward to, and the powdery thrill of the season's first snowfall. There's scarf weather and soup weather and tea drinking weather, and for right now it's still sort of novel.

And that novelty, my friend, will end. It always does, in the northern climes, where winter lasts approximately three months longer than you want it to. It always gets old, at some point. Maybe, I stood thinking, maybe if I just prepare for it, mentally, it won't be so bad?

I'm twenty six. I know what to expect. Icicles, cold toes, car scrapers. Really cold toes. The absence of green and growing things for a barren gray eternity. The more I thought about it, the more getting tired of winter seemed like a certainty.

And then I saw the kale.

Bright green leaves, craggy and magnificent, defiantly proud and tall in the face of frost. The tomatoes, the carrots, the green beans have all since chickened out and withered down to their roots. The tree leaves have all fainted with fright and dropped. Even the lawn is starting to show signs of surrender. And through it all, the kale doesn't flinch.

While I'm not about to root myself in the ground and bear winter with the stoic calm of a cruciferous vegetable, I think the kale just might help me get through it. It's still richly green-- that alone might be enough. It's the promise that the ground will thaw, the geese will return, and in April I'll be back out there with my rustling seed packets and my hoe.

Cross my heart, says the kale. Winter will be long and cold. But Spring will come again.

Thanksgiving 2009

What a happy, warm, and tasty day.

When it's all said and done, the best possible thing is to be able to sit and reflect over the food that was eaten, the wine that was drunk, and the sweetness of knowing so many terrific people. It's the ultimate vote of love and approval: your family and friends set aside whatever other plans they may have had the opportunity to make, and decide your house is worth spending the holiday at. They're confident in your abilities to provide comfort and warmth, laughter and a whole tableful of food. They trust you. They trust you to make it a good one.

(I'm pretty sure their trust has nothing to do with clean baseboards, but let me tell you, Saturday morning my baseboards were gleaming.)

On the menu this year:

Rosemary Walnut Rolls
Cranberry Mustard Relish
Golden Crusted Brussels Sprouts
Vanilla Mashed Sweet Potatoes
Platter Salad with Maple-Cider dressing
Roast Mixed Vegetables with mustard sauce (from The Vegetarian Hearth)
Old-Fashioned Bread Stuffing (from Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker)
Mushroom Coulibiac (from The Vegetarian Hearth)
Spiced Pumpkin Phyllo Pie
Cranberry Chocolate Tart (from Moosewood Celebrates)
Ginger Mousse (from Bon Appetit, October 2009)

Despite forgetting to put the water on the table, despite tripling the salt in the rolls, despite the mushroom coulibiac splitting open and spilling its creamy and delicious guts... well, everything was okay anyway. Thank goodness.

It was nice to spend time with this gal again. The first Thanksgiving we spent together was our sophomore year of college, when we sat around my aunt's table drinking Bully Hill or watered-down Mudslides or some other godawful thing, sashaying into bookshelves on our way to the bathroom. There have been minor interruptions in the tradition since then (Japan, grad school, menfolk) but happily she made her return this year. It just isn't a proper Thanksgiving without Alexis.

Pete, as usual, was the life of the party.

Finally, dinner was on the table.

(Good lord, are we really gonna eat all that?)

A happy sight.

The requisite Dad-Diesel picture.

The dessert buffet.

The happy (and tuckered) hosts.

I hope everyone's Thanksgiving was happy, warm, and tasty, too.