Christmas

lattdad.jpgI associate mail order food with my father.  When I was growing up, he and I had very few connections.  He took me to only one professional football game.  He never came to Back-to-School Night and had no interest in any of my hobbies.  I remember him as dour, not very talkative and disapproving.  I was part of his second family and he was, I’m certain, just a bit too old to have a young kid running around. 

Added to that, my father was burdened by tragedy.  He was the eldest son of a prosperous Jewish family in Odessa on the Black Sea.  Unfortunately when the Russian Revolution swept across the country, Bolsheviks rampaged through his neighborhood, lining up and shooting many people, including my father’s family.  Being Jewish and well-to-do were two strikes too many at a time when “line them up against the wall” was taken literally.

Luckily for my father, when all this happened, he was studying at the University of Kiev.  He learned later that his mother had survived because she had very thick hair.  When she was shot at point blank range, the gunpowder was apparently so weak that the bullet merely lodged in her hair, knocking her unconscious and otherwise leaving her unharmed. My father never returned home to Odessa, having been told that he needed to flee the country, which he promptly did.

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charliebrowntree11.jpgChristmas is only three days away, and I’m beginning to think I did it wrong. I am not panicked, abject, or guilty; I am simply enjoying a relatively light workweek with the promise of family and a great dinner on Friday. Outside of my mellow sphere, however, there are signs that we are waiting not for a holiday, but for the end of the world, as we know it. The guy in the Sherlock Holmes hat at the Post Office talking loudly to himself about how he “didn’t need this aggravation,” the parents searching frantically for the last few gifts, the women with jobs and children beating themselves up because they haven’t gotten their cards out yet…it’s out there. Are they crazy or am I a flake?

I have had Annie’s Very Hysterical Christmas (followed by Annie’s Very Bad Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), but this year I decided to let the red & green chips fall where they may. We got a tree and a wreath, but when the day came to get the tree and Sam was busy at a friend’s house I chose not to have a fit and gnash my teeth because it was not our tradition and it was all RUINED. Rob and I went and had a lovely time, and we now have a lit and decorated tree and a wreath on the front door. The process of bringing the Christmas decorations was marred by the fact that approximately 700 squirrels have taken up residence in our attic, and at least one of the boxes didn’t make it down the ladder, as a result of which we are missing the nativity scene, several angels and some snowmen, all of which are probably far above my head providing bedding and snacks for the bushy-tailed enemy. I declined offers from Sam to shoot the offenders with his airsoft guns, and from Rob to set the cats on them; why shouldn’t the squirrels enjoy Christmas, too?

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eggnogcrepesInfused with the holiday spirit, I’ve found myself putting eggnog-type flavorings in everything lately, including these French crepes I made for breakfast.

They’d be equally good for dessert, perhaps with a dash of rum in the warmed maple syrup on top?

Here’s the recipe, which makes 8 thin crepes:

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mainesnow.jpgHere in Maine we await a "super storm" that is huge and rushing across the United States, or so they say. Six to twelve inches of snow, turning to freezing rain with high winds.  Sounds  like Winter weather in Maine, not too unusual. It isn't the size of the storm it's what you find to make it fun that counts and I have a plan to enjoy it!  In between plowing I will be making our Mother's tortiere pies and perhaps having a slice for lunch and another with a pot of hot tea in the afternoon to warm up.

What is tortiere pie? To my family it is a ground pork and beef pie flavored with chopped onions, spices and thickened with mashed Maine potatoes then put into a double butter crust. I said my family, the Gagne family, my Mother's recipe, made the same way for at least 5 generations. It isn't like the Belanger's who add no beef just pork, a totally different spice mixture and a Crisco crust or the Bourassa family that adds small chunks of pork instead of ground pork, they add no potatoes, quatre spice and a lard pastry crust.

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From the L.A. Times

xmascookies.jpgBy Thanksgiving weekend, the prep work was well underway. All year long she'd been saving the boxes from stationery and from her nylon stockings, stashed with the Christmas ornaments. She'd made lists in her perfectly inscrutable handwriting. In our basement refrigerator, she had squirreled away some of the raspberry jam she made during the summer.

So every fall, when my mom told us that she'd grown tired of the whole idea of Christmas cookies and was giving them up, she didn't mean it. We were never sure, though. And we'd whine on cue, begging her to please at least make the kind we just couldn't live without -- for me, the Russian tea cakes, for my brother, the spice cookies called pepparkakor.

But most of her work went on in secret, while we were at school or after we'd gone to bed.

And by Christmas Eve, we'd have maybe 100 dozen cookies, as many as 20 varieties of exquisite, painstakingly formed cookies, stored in our freezer.

As a small child, bringing out box after box of cookies that morning was kind of a miracle. Not quite as wonderful as Santa, who would get a plate of them that night, but part of the blur of a holiday full of magic and surprise.

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