Tuesday's Child

The Food

To my mind, Christmas is just as much about the food as it is about the presents.  Maybe this year it's been a little too much about the food for me - ahem (oh well, that's what New Year's resolutions are for).  I have cooked more and used more butter this month that in the previous 11 months combined.  It all culminated in Christmas dinner, which we actually ate on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day.  Here's what was on the menu:

Vegetarian Chopped Liver and melba toasts (delicious - highly recommend)

Cranberry relish, because it wouldn't be Christmas without it

Vegetarian Quorn Wellington (really good)

Cornbread Dressing (essential at any holiday)

Roasted potatoes with tumeric and chili

Green Beans sauteed in olive oil and garlic

Salad with radish, jicama, and avocado

And the crowning glory of the meal - my first croquembouche!  OK, the cake boss I am not.  It turns out I should have used a smaller styrofoam cone as the base, and for some reason my caramel sauce ended up crystallizing as it cooled, instead of forming nice syrupy strings draped artistically around the whole thing.  The end result looks a little like the Grinch's mountain, which wasn't exactly the effect I was going for.  Oh well, fortunately everyone was mostly too full to mind.

 

 

Christmas Is...

...a blanket of new fallen snow, transforming an ordinary landscape into an extraordinary place of enchantment.

 

...Sandhill Cranes pausing to rest in the fields of Corrales.

 
(Declan took this picture - pretty good, huh?)

...sitting on Santa's knee, at least, unless you are way too grown up and mature (which is why there is only one child in this photo).

 

...spending time with family, and remembering that Christmas is for children, and for those who are children at heart.

...and also for catching your Uncle Ryan in the act of taking off his Santa suit out in the garage and not hesitating to triumphantly announce that fact to everyone else!

 

 

...for spending Christmas Day sledding in the Jemez Mountains, and eating cold hot dogs for Christmas dinner, and taking your nieces sledding for the very first time.

 

 

 

 
Sydney is not so sure about this sledding thing.

 
But McKenzie took to it like a duck to water, hurling her tiny little body down the hill.

 
Uncle Ryan assuming his rocket position.

 

 

 
Kenzie took to the hills at one point - not sure she would have ever come back if left to her own devices.

 

...parents who are still smoochy after nearly 40 years of marriage.

 

...exploring new places and seeing strange new things.

 

 

...checking out your new presents.

 

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Playing Catch Up

So much has happened this month.  Believe it or not, I've actually written a couple of new posts, but we had some cable issues that was preventing me from uploading any pictures.  I'd like to blame Comcast, but it turns out we created the problem ourselves when we moved the old TV up into the loft and added a splitter for the cable.  But all that is in the past, and with the addition of a new router, the internet is now blazing fast!

The first weekend in December was Corrales' annual Starlight Parade.  As soon as the sun set the kids and I walked down to Corrales Road and staked out a good spot.  Before long the parade came by - a motley collection of tractors, vintage cars, fire trucks, and one dump truck all decorated in Christmas lights.  Many of the participants threw candy to the children.  There is nothing to add a little excitement to your Saturday night like having your children run into the road in the dark to pick up candy before being run over by a fire truck!

 

 

 

Afterward, we went over to the Corrales Community Center, where St. Nicholas was waiting with bags of goodies for the children.  He told Declan he needs to get all A's and B's, and told Aislin she needs to clean her room without complaining.  It made an impact, because the next morning she told me she needed to "do the promise" so she could get the toy she asked for!

 

There was a huge bonfire, and cookies and cider, popcorn, and smores.  By the time we got home, everyone was ready to sit down and watch the Polar Express with yet more hot cocoa.  Don't ask how much sugar they had that night - their dentist would be appalled.

 

 

On December 12, Declan and Aislin had their annual Christmas program at SVE.  It was a 2 1/2 hour extravaganza!  I was amazed at how well they all did - there was tons of choreography, and everyone had something to do.  The gym was packed - some people came from as far away as Espanola!  Declan was the prophet Zephaniah, and Aislin was a shepherd.  Actually, she was supposed to be a donkey, until she flat-out refused and had a hissy fit until they made her a shepherd instead.  My girl has already mastered the art of assertiveness.

 

 

 

 


This month there have also been church programs and office parties and Christmas shopping and decorating and all kinds of things.  I've eaten too many sweets, and baked more often and used more butter than I have in the rest of this year put together.  It's hard to believe that Christmas Eve is on Friday.  I'm pretty proud of myself, though.  My Christmas shopping is done and the presents are all wrapped!  I think that deserves an eggnog, don't you?

Memory Lane

This evening I was going through some things on the shelves up in the loft, when I came across a small wooden box with my name painted on it.  A couple of years ago, my mom decided it was a good idea to clean out her basement by giving me and my brothers family heirlooms for Christmas, including the treasure boxes my grandpa made for us one year when I was about 10 or so.  Inside my treasure box my mom had included a stack of pictures of me from the time I was a newborn up through college.  The photos were originals, and I fervently hope they were the only copies, because they included gems such as me with my pink and blue tinted glasses, with bad perms and zits, and let's not forget that classic photo right after my wisdom teeth were pulled when my cheeks were swelled up like an overgrown chipmunk's.

I edited out the most embarrassing pictures, but posted for your delight and delectation is a slideshow of me through my formative years. Try not to laugh too hard.  

The End is in Sight - Maybe

You may be wondering, based on my lack of posts, whether anything at all has happened to the kitchen renovation project, or whether we finally just threw our hands up in despair and went to Acapulco instead.  In actual fact, progress has been slow and steady. 

The actual assembly of the cabinets was easy enough - eventually we got it down to a system so that each cabinet only took about 10 or 15 minutes to assemble.  Even the actual installation was fairly simple.  The upper cabinets hang on a rail, so all you have to do is make sure the rail is level, then slide on the cabinet and tighten it up.  The base units sit on adjustable legs, so they can be easily raised and lowered. 

The hard part - well, there are two hard parts.  The kind of hard part is making sure everything is level, plumb and square.  This is very, very important and should not be ignored.  Don't believe me?  Just try closing your cabinet doors if all three of these items are not as they should be.The doors won't close completely, or they will not line up, or they will be crooked.  Trust me, I know.

The really hard part is agreeing on design decisions, like what to do when your wall cabinets are an inch higher than the top of your high cabinet, or how the crown molding should be installed. 

I'm kind of proud of what has been accomplished so far, though.  We've used a number of custom modifications, like modifying the corner wall cabinets to form a blind corner, instead of using the bulky corner cabinet Ikea carries.  We also installed tip-outs behind the false fronts on the sink, and cut down a wine rack to fill an extra six inches of space at the end of a run.  This house has a bunch of challenges, too, like adobe walls in two places where there is no framing to attach the cabinets to.  This made for some tricky business - we had to build a frame to support the cabinet over the fridge, and used cables to tack the pantry units to the beam running above them.  Those two still need a little fine tuning.

But today I feel like real progress has been made - the countertops went in!  Originally I had my heart set on quartz countertops, but granite was cheaper, and I think it ties in well with the dark cabinets.  Of course the guys didn't arrive until an hour after they were supposed to, and then they promptly took a long lunch break, which meant they didn't finish until nearly 4:00 this afternoon, but I think the result was worth it.  I have a kitchen counter for the first time since May!!!!  There may be some light at the end of the tunnel!

I'm in Print!

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email to my Flickr account, asking for permission to use one of my photos.  I agreed, and in the mail today arrived two copies of a fly fishing map of the Rio de Los Pinos with my picture on the cover!  I even got a photo credit on the back.  If you want to buy a copy, I would be happy to autograph it for you. 

Florida

This summer is already going by so quickly.  Here it is almost July, and I feel like school only just ended!  Nevertheless, I managed to sneak in a few days away in Florida last week for my brother Eric's wedding on Sunday, June 20.  Getting there was quite a trip - we left at 5:00 Saturday night and didn't arrive in Jacksonville until 9:30 Sunday morning.  These are the sacrifices you have to make when you are flying with frequent flyer miles these days.  Let me tell you, sleeping on a bench in Chicago O'Hare is not much fun!  I must be getting old, because the adventure of the whole thing started wearing thin.

But at least we got there, and had four lovely days remembering what summer in Florida feels like.  As soon as I walked out of the airport my hair curled up and it didn't unkink until I got back home again.  Fortunately the weather cooperated for the most part, and it only rained a little, although it goes without saying that it was pretty hot. 

It isn't often that my whole family has the chance to get together anymore.  This was the first time that all of the cousins/grandchildren were together at the same time.  The babies aren't really babies anymore, so it was a lot of fun to watch all the kids playing together, and great to see all my spread out relatives, too! This summer those spread out relatives include Declan and Aislin, since they are spending the summer with their Nannie and Poppie.  It was kind of hard to say goodbye to them again, but at least I'll be seeing them for the weekend later in July.

Since this was a short trip, we stayed in the St. Augustine area and did tourist stuff like the Alligator Farm, the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum, and of course an afternoon at the beach.  My family likes the beach at Anastasia State Park.  We've been going there since I was a little girl, and it has the softest sand of just about any beach I've ever been to. 

Here is a slideshow with a few pictures from Florida.  I haven't had a chance to edit the wedding pictures yet, so I'll post those in a couple of days.

The Catwalk

Today's adventure consisted of a hike up the Catwalk, a series of bridges and trails into Whitewater Canyon in the Mogollon Mountains. Part of the trail is suspended about 20 feet over the stream between the canyon walls. It follows the route of a water line installed by miners in 1893 to serve some of the gold and silver mining towns in the mountains. Unfortunately I forgot my camera, but maybe these sad little pictures will give you some idea of how beautiful it was.

The Importance of Eating Local

Some of my friends and acquaintances have recently been promoting the virtues of eating locally grown food. While this is a fine and admirable thing, this post will examine the many reasons why one should also patronize local dining establishments, regardless of where the food originates.

Take our dinner this evening, for example. We are taking the scenic road from Silver City, New Mexico, back to Albuquerque. At dinner time, we found ourselves in the tiny town of Reserve. Reserve doesn't seem to have changed substantially in at least 50 years. It boasts three eating establishments: Uncle Bill's Bar (not sure if you can actually get more than liquid refreshment there), Carmen's Authentic Mexican American, and Ella's Cafe. We chose the latter, and were not disappointed.

Ella's is housed in a slightly sagging Depression era house which has been converted into a restaurant. The floors are red and white checked linoleum, and the decor is an eclectic mix of all items chicken related and hunting artifacts. Our booth featured a wall covered in framed photos advertising the local hunting outfit/taxidermist. There were pictures of hounds treeing a cougar, the victorious hunter with his prize, and the mounted trophies. Another wall was covered in portraits of prize hounds. The whole thing was made more cheery by a string of multi-colored Christmas lights wrapped around the ceiliing.

I knew the food would be great as soon as the menu arrived - the front cover depicted a cock fight. In keeping with the theme, we ordered the special, half a barbequed chicken covered in gravy, with mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and a roll. The food was plentiful, good, and cheap.

We were clearly the only non-locals. Everyone else seemed to know each other. We were treated to a discussion from the guys at the table behind us of the merits of cable vs. the Dish, and the malicious nature of government environmental regulations. One of them fondly recollected the old days, when they used to dump all kinds of stuff in the arroyos.

The next time you are in Reserve, I highly recommend you eat at Ella's. Why go to a soulless chain Chili's or Olive Garden when you can support your local businesses?

Love Letters

If I haven't mentioned it already, we are child-free this summer.  Declan and Aislin are staying with their Nannie and Poppie in Tennessee, doing fun things like going to the zoo, picking strawberries, driving Uncle Andy's boat, and spending lots of time at the YMCA. 

Although I miss them terribly, of course, we get daily updates in the form of emails and phone calls.  Here is a message from Aislin this morning, written by Aislin herself and interpreted verbatim by her Nannie:

sgyweyrt6e6tdw6sdufefhchdhdushggjgjtfjuufgjfgn7668tuyyguyuhdjgdfhcvbrhgfgrygjcjkcdnkdjfdkihlfl,vmrrikgrjgittuyigjtgyjkbfggjkiydijhjidjojkjyohlver8retryr8yruyufhu556678958dhhhufhrbjbhjfhhfhcsft7te7tft7tf7ete7fegymlmlnlklvnhjigbjiotjiohtjbigjkfjiufrvu8id8ureeoovkvijvbmkgbmgbkmhkghiffiruirirjjreout788899999tjvghutyhtuhjfguijfgggfyr9670h9hhyo0yhl jlyjl     fdjiffuhtyufyughuygyrtuurytugu

Dear Mommy and Daddy,

I wish I was home with you.  You are my favorite Mommy and Daddy.  I want to stay with you forever.  Declan's missing you.  I wish Declan never whined.  I hope you are sweet and kindful to Daddy.  You stay at the bottom of my feet.  Daddy whines and cries about you.  Sweet and kindful and stay together all by yourselves.  Daddy, be sure to put Fred in the dog hotel when you leave.  Sweet and stay together all by yourselves.

Love,

aislin