Holidays

Happy Holidays! I am still here but, as most of the blogosphere has been doing for the past few weeks, I’ve been lazy.  Very, very lazy — computerwise. When it comes down to choosing between enjoying a mug of hot cocoa with the umpteenth replay of “Christmas Vacation” (I love that movie!) and actually logging on and putting my brain into gear and thinking my way past the visions of sugar plums dancing in my head (and the baking and cleaning and organizing and wrapping and …) – I’ve been choosing the easy way out. But no more! Time to get back to normal. Time to put away Christmas things. Time to … oh, who am I kidding? It’s still the holidays, our little tree is still up and I’m still eating sugar cookies and cheese balls and the last of the Chex Mix. But I will do better about blogging. Promise.

So how was y’all’s Christmas? Hope everybody had a good one. Kudos to those who, like Older Daughter, had four celebrations on that one day. She and my son-in-law and grandson Capt. Adorable made it to all of them, although the day of travel left the 21-month-old Captain dazed and confused.

Christmas

What says “holidays” better than food, family and friends — especially if that food includes all the Christmas cookies you ever wanted to eat? This year my cooking club, the Gingers (Girls In Need of Gourmet Experience Really Soon), came to my house for lunch and a cookie exchange. I went with red and white and borrowed my mom’s Christmas tableware (thanks, Mom!) for an easy meal of soup, cheese, crackers and muffins. (And, by the way, I have a great soup recipe: Find a caterer or restaurant who makes excellent soup and become a regular and valued customer. Works every time.) Then it was time to distribute our cookie choices. Yum!!! Just imagine having six people each give you a dozen of the most delicious Christmas cookies you’ve ever tasted — unbelievable. We all agreed this definitely will be an annual event for us. And in honor of the Gingers coming to my house, I put up a cooking table-top tree for them. It wasn’t difficult to find miniature decorations for it — for some reason, many of the ornaments I have for our big tree revolve around food and drink. Go figure. I had some vintage cooking utensils from my mom’s antiques shop and other leftovers from when the Gingers decorated a 15-footer for the annual Christmas-tree display at our local arts center a couple years ago, so the little cooking tree came together easily. The only downside is it makes me hungry every time I look at — but that’s not a problem when you have a practically endless supply of cookies in the house.

Christmas Decor

I am a lazy Christmas person. Don’t get me wrong — I love silver bells and starry nights and sugar cookies — but I’m not very good at the decking-the-halls part. Luckily, I know people who are — people who excel at Christmas. Like my friend Evelyn. I love the dinner table she set and the way she’s festived-up her living room with rich red and gold accents and a touch of green. This is how you do Christmas. I just light a lot of candles and hope the twinkle lights cover up the cat hair.

Home Decor

Anybody who’s worried about today’s young people shouldn’t — at least based on their decorating skills. Isn’t this apartment absolutely adorable? I’d move in in a minute! It belongs to Rachel, a 25-year-old who’s one of Younger Daughter’s friends in Birmingham, Alabama. Rachel is a recent college graduate and recently started working — and although interior decorating is not her field, I think it should be. I loved the way Rachel used inexpensive touches — she shops in consignment and discount stores — to express her style and create a calm and peaceful environment combined with a sense of whimsy. And she’s got such inspiring ideas. For instance, she paints small wooden window shutters, hangs them vertically on the wall and puts photos in the individual slats — brilliant! She also found a practice climbing wall with various size handholds and set it up above a doorway for stress-releasing fun. And I love the way she uses the simple basic elements of candles and coffee beans for earthy and fragrant tablescapes. And she has such a good eye — her comfy thrift-store sofa and weathered chest of drawers with intriguing mismatched drawer pulls look as if they came from a top designer boutique. Rachel’s efforts have convinced me that when it comes to interior decor, money and time constraints are no excuse. Lesson learned. Thank you, Rachel!

Gifts

One of my friends is so organized that she’s already giving her Christmas presents — and am I lucky to be on her list! I’m so impressed with the way she did her gifting that I’m going to steal share some of her ideas. First, she knows that gift bags/baskets are always fun to receive – who doesn’t like reaching in and pulling out all sorts of goodies? Second, she went with a theme — always a good idea. Having a theme provides some structure and consistency for gift buying, which is especially good for somebody like me who sort of buys little things here-and-there without any overriding goal and then ends up with five coffee mugs and three calendars and a bottle of balsamic vinegar. Plus, having a theme leads to point No. 3 — buying “in bulk.” My friend knows that we all love food, love cooking, love eating and love New Orleans, so she brought New Orleans to us here in landlocked northwest Alabama with iconic Central Grocery bags filled with such Cajun classics as hot sauce, Creole mustard and olive salad for authentic muffulettas. And, finally, she personalized our bags by adding the latest issue of magazines she knew we liked but didn’t subscribe to. I think she had as much fun putting these together as we did opening them up — the mark of successful gift giving!

Friends

You think you can trust your girl friends, right? You think that the people who are with you through thick and thin — literally — wouldn’t turn on you. You think that the only people — besides maybe your husband – who know what you look like without makeup would not set up a trap for you. But that’s exactly what happened to me: Three friends turned on me … and forced me to learn how to play bridge, a game I had long declared to be on my list of things-I-hate-more-than-lima-beans. Go to my weekly TimesDaily newspaper column at http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20091127/ARTICLES/911275000 to find out how I was the victim of a (friendly) bridge-napping.

Travel

Oh my goodness — the holidays really haven’t officially started yet but I bet you’re already feeling stressed. Let’s see if any of these things are on your list: Baking, cooking, cleaning, organizing, traveling, shopping, keeping everybody happy. Sound familiar? Yikes. Well, I’m going to help you out here. For just a minute, slip away to this wondrously quiet and peaceful little piece of Alabama. This past weekend some friends and I rented a house at Lake Smith — and did absolutely nothing. The only two rules were that we couldn’t move the cars once we got there (and really there’s no place to go) and that it was an official  MUFW (Makeup-Free Weekend). We pretty much hung out in our baggy PJ pants and T-shirts, talked and ate all weekend. But, look – we saved a chair for you! So in the next few days, when things get hectic and you start to wonder why those Pilgrims were so thankful anyway, hang in there and remember: Christmas is only a month away.

Food and Books

This past week, my four-woman book club had our November meeting at my house with the book “The Space Between us” by India-native Thrity Umrigar. We had just finished “The Help,” about black maids and the white women they worked for in Jackson, Mississippi, during the 1960s Civil Rights movement, and “The Space Between Us” is much the same story — privileged upper class women and lower-class servants. However, “Space” focuses more on the relationship between two individual women and what happens when that relationship is tested. We all loved this book for the insight into Indian culture and the stories of struggle, love and loss the two women main-characters endured. Highly recommended. And because book club is just us four friends, whoever is hosting usually tries to find some favors and cook a dinner that goes along with the theme of the book we read that month. Luckily, for my turn I found three oh-so-cute enameled trinket boxes from India at the World Market in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. And for cooking, I turned to Indian chef Madhur Jaffrey’s “Easy East/West Menus for Family and Friends.” Okay, I didn’t actually cook anything from that cookbook — you know me better than that – but I did get some good quick and easy menu ideas (thank you, grocery stores!): Roasted onion and garlic jam on toasted strips of nan bread, sauteed chicken breasts in a garlic and ginger sauce, turmeric rice with onions and golden raisins, roasted asparagus, a couple ready-made heat-and-eat curry dishes (hot, hot, hot — but tasty, in a hot mouth-burning sort of way) and English tea cookies for dessert. Good friends, good books, good discussion, not-so-bad food — and my three friends don’t mind the bonus cat hair they get at my house, at all.

Random Thoughts

Have you ever had people say things to you — and I’m talking nice things here — that made you see yourself as someone other than the person you think you are? It always amazes when I see myself from somebody else’s perspective since usually the image does not jive at all with the image I have of myself. I mean, it sort of makes you wonder if the private you — the one that mostly lives inside your head — and the public you — the one that goes to work and the grocery store and PTA meetings — have anything in common whatsoever. This past week I had three people say things to me/ask me questions that threw me for a loop: 1) The person who cuts and styles my hair told me, “You’re always so sweet and cheerful when you come in. It just makes me day,” when really I think of myself as crabby and grumpy, especially when I have to spend $$$ just to make my hair look presentable; 2) the person working in the dressing rooms at my favorite discount-clothing store asked me if I knew where to find a purse with a clasp closure for a Christmas present, when I really think of myself as someone who can barely find her own purse and get outside the door with two matching shoes; and 3) a person in local-theater circles and I were chatting at a local coffee shop about the struggles of writing and what to do when you hit a wall and I said that caffeine always helps and this person said that (insert name of illegal drug) helps, too, and then sort of paused as if waiting for me to suggest we go get some. So in the space of three days, I’ve been identified as sweet, stylish and a drug user  – when really I’m just a grouchy un-put-together coffee fiend. Sigh.

Food

I love going to cooking classes, mainly because that sort of gives the illusion that I actually cook — you know, much like driving past a gym while you’re wearing tennis shoes makes you think that maybe possibly you might work out sometime eventually. But I do truly learn things in cooking classes, such as the one I took recently at the Shoals Culinary Complex in Florence, Alabama. Justin Letson, chef de cuisine (I’m not really sure what that means, but I’m impressed anyway) at the nearby Robert Trent Jones Golf Course, demonstrated a fall menu featuring apples, pork and one of his favorite dishes — Pommes Anna. This potato dish is known for its beautiful spiral design of thin and delicious potato slices, and Justin shared his secrets for making it perfect: Patience, a steady hand and patience. And a mandolin you can use — several class members admitted to buying one, taking it home, getting frustrated at not being able to operate it and taking it back. I haven’t even taken mine out of the box … since I bought it a couple years ago. And, granted, while patience is not my strong point. But this dish is so stunning and lovely, I may finally face my mandolin fear and summon up some patience and give it a try. And you should, too. Justin’s recipe for Pommes Anna is below, and if you want to find out more about his apple recipes — which really were the stars of the class — read the TimesDaily story  at http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20091104/ARTICLES/911045000

Pommes Anna

Prepare 1 cup brown butter (melt butter over medium heat until nutty brown), 6 tablespoons minced garlic and 6 tablespoons of a fresh herb blend (suggestions include thyme, rosemary, oregano and sage). With a mandolin, slice 4 potatoes 1/8-inch thick and arrange slices in a spiral pattern in a buttered non-stick oven-proof saute pan. Drizzle potatoes with butter and sprinkle lightly with salt, pepper and herb mix. Repeat layers as often as desired. Place pan on stove top for a minute until sides start to lightly sizzle and bubble. Place pan in 350-degree oven for 20 to 30 minutes until cooked through. Test with knife — if insertion and removal are easy, it’s done. Invert onto plate, slice and serve.