Decorating the Christmas Tree

I love our Christmas tree every year. I think there's been one year I wasn't super happy about it – it was a live tree with droopy limbs. But, for the most part, I love it, every single year. We've had live trees with bare spots and we sometimes use my Grandmama's fake tree (ever-lasting my Mama would say). I almost always wish our trees were taller. But, once you get the lights and ornaments on, it's beautiful. So beautiful.

Our ornaments are a delightfully quirky mix. There's a sled-full of clay snowmen with our names on them, and a Swarovski crystal star that proclaims the year is 2001. There's one made of cardboard glued to a red, wooden ring hung by red yarn with a picture of 5-year-old Amy in it. There's an elegant shell angel from my friend Lori's wedding and a cowboy boot from Texas. I always finish off the decorations with a tartan garland and pipe cleaner candy canes the boys made one year. I can't remember the last time we used white lights. It's colored lights for us. 

The tree is kind of funky. But, it's ours and I love it.

My problem comes in with the actual decorating of the tree. This year the boys put the tree up while I was out of the house. I thought they did a great job until I finished putting the lights on, which I've done since I was a high-schooler. Once the tree was smothered in lights I gathered the empty boxes to put in the attic when I noticed something funny about the Christmas tree box. It wasn't empty. There was a branch in there! The boys had left a whole branch off the tree. They claim they couldn't find an extra hole for it to go in, but that's never happened before and I know there's not an extra branch. I figured if I hadn't missed it while putting the lights on then no one else would miss it either.

After the lights, we all hang the ornaments together.

I always picture this going differently than it does in real life. I want us to have Christmas music playing gently in the background. There should be hot chocolate cooling in mugs on the coffee table. I want us to laugh and tell stories and reminisce about the ornaments, where they came from and why we got them. I want everyone to be ON BOARD and paying attention.

That doesn't happen in my house.

This year, I was just happy we were all home on the same night so we could hang ornaments together. I had thought we might need to divvy the ornaments into piles and let each person hang them when they were home. I sat on the floor by the tree with the huge plastic box of ornaments and a tangled pile of ornament hooks. I would say things like, “Here Allen, you hang this one. It's the twin bears in mittens that my friend Rosalie gave us right off her tree on your first Christmas.” And, “Bobby, you hang this one. It's a real silver bell!” 

 

They would humor me a little. Each would look at his ornament, smile, say “hmmm,” and find a place to hang the precious bauble. Then, they would refresh themselves, not with their hot chocolate, but with a minute or two of whatever football game happened to be on.

I wanted to huff and sigh. I wanted to say, “Hey, over here. This is all part of celebrating the birth of Jesus! Don't you care?!!”

But, I didn't.

I know they care. I came home one afternoon after the tree decorating to find Davis alone. He had plugged in the Christmas tree, but that's all. No lights in the front window. No lighted garland going up the stairs. No adorable Christmas Minion on the front porch. When I asked him about it he said, “The tree is all that's really necessary for me to feel like it's Christmas. Well, that and stockings.” 

So, I know they care...

They just care differently than I do, or differently than I want them to.

Maybe my love language is undivided attention to decorating the Christmas tree. Or, maybe I just need to get over it and be thankful for what I've got – three men in my life who let me decorate my dining room with a huge pink rug, who give me candles for my birthday and Christmas, who occasionally take me to the ballet and try really hard not to break the fancy china dishes when we use them.

Just like so many things in my life, the decorating of the Christmas tree doesn't “look” and feel exactly like I think it should. But, just like my crazy, quirky, mismatched tree, I want to love it or at least embrace it as mine.

I'll never stop oohing and aahing over the ornaments and wanting the boys to look at the pictures in their Noah's Ark First Christmas ornaments. I may still feel like sighing and huffing a little. I'll probably still make hot chocolate and turn Christmas music on. But, I hope I remember that none of this stuff really matters.

Whether we even have a tree or not, we'll still celebrate the birth of Jesus. We'll still sing carols at church and struggle to find the perfect gift for each family member. I hope I remember that it's not how we decorate the tree but who is decorating it. It's not the ornaments and stories, but those three men who love me so much and who I so desperately love. 

 I hope you loved your Christmas tree this year. But, whether you did or you didn't, my prayer for you and me in 2017 is that we love our lives, too; bare, missing pieces, mismatched, kind of funky and beautiful. Oh, so beautiful.

“Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.”

-Norman Vincent Peale

An Everlasting Meal

Several months ago I happened upon a book called An Everlasting Meal, Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler. I'm not sure where I first heard about it, but it's on 2 of my “want to read” lists. I read the book in bite-sized pieces over a couple of weeks and almost immediately started reading it again. It's wonderful, so I thought I should let you know about it.

I love this book and think it will end up living on my kitchen counter. It's well-written, practical and funny. Yes, it's a cookbook. But, no, it's not what you're thinking. There are some recipes, but it's mostly an ode to cooking and food. It's a book length letter, encouraging us that we too can make beautiful, delicious and thrifty things to eat when we're hungry.

In the foreward, Alice Waters (who is called the mother of American food and opened her restaurant, Chez Panisse, the year I was born) in speaking of the author says, “She is teaching people not just how to cook but how to love to cook.”

Tamar Adler suggests amazingly simple cooking, like the kind you do without a recipe, throwing whatever you have in the cupboard and crisper together, stiring and tasting along the way, until something delicious pops out. In fact, in a chapter called “How to Catch Your Tail” she says, “Or do the most sensible thing that you can in most kitchens at most times, which is put the tail ends of everything in a pot, season it well with salt, add a bit of cubed potato and some butter, and simmer it until it is all tender.” I love that she wants me to use what I have. I love that she's a big proponent of using salt, not to make things salty, but to make whatever you're cooking taste good. And, I love that she makes me think I can cook as she does.

Last night I made meatballs for dinner. They had 24 ingredients. They were delicious, if spicy, but 24 ingredients, seriously? Cooking doesn't have to be that complicated to be good. At the beginning of her book in a chapter appropriately called “How to Begin,” Adler recounts reading a fast-and-easy cooking magazine with recipes for “boil-and-toss pasta” and “last-minute omelets.” She says, “All pasta is 'boil and toss',” and “There's plain deceit in hawking 'last-minute' omelets. Omelets happen almost instantly, no matter what you do to speed them up or slow them down. Suggesting there are special 'last-minute' ones is akin to selling tips for breathing air more rapidly – if you have an egg, you have a meal that needs but a quick tap to be cracked open.”

Regarding the title, An Everlasting Meal, Adler refers to one meals' endings leading logically into the next. She cites fried rice and vegetable soup as examples. Upon thinking about this I realized that some of my favorite foods are made from the “leftovers”. Fried rice is one example, but my grandmother's cornbread dressing was originally made from leftover biscuits and cornbread. These stale scraps were broken apart, mixed with chicken stock, celery and onions, spooned into a pan and baked. It's one of the most delicious things you will ever eat. Adler says, “But cooking is best approached from wherever you find yourself when you are hungry, and should extend long past the end of the page. There should be serving, and also eating, and storing away what's left; there should be looking at a meals' remainders with interest and imagining all the good things they will become. I have tried to include more of that and fewer teaspoons and tablespoons and cups.”

All of this encouragement has had a rather profound effect on my attitude toward cooking. Though I've always enjoyed being in the kitchen, I admit that I don't cook like Adler suggests. I may sometimes begin with a lot of something that needs to be cooked, but then I go in search of a recipe, put ingredients on my grocery list and plan that meal into our week. But, since reading An Everlasting Meal, I'll put more things like rice and good olive oil, crusty bread and eggs on my list because, Adler says, you can make a meal out of that. I wish I could sit on a stool in Tamar's kitchen and watch her cook. I'm sure she would feed me delicious things to eat served on little toasts, rubbed with garlic. She seems fond of little toasts.

My notes from An Everlasting Meal so far!

Though I started writing this with a spoonful of canned frosting in my hand and I fed my family frozen pizza last week, I have high hopes for making better use of the produce that will soon roll in from our CSA or farm co-op. On Wednesdays when our delivery arrives, I'm going to start boiling a big pot of water and turn the oven on high. I'm going to start cooking our good stuff so meals for the week will already have begun. Tamar makes me think I can actually do it. Whether I fold those vegetables into rice or tuck them into omelets, I believe (I BELIEVE!) we'll end up eating them all. With simple directions like this, we can't go wrong: “All cooked vegetables, whether boiled or roasted, become wonderful salads. They need only a handful of toasted nuts, chopped fresh herbs, a few vinegar-soaked onions, and a sharp vinaigrette. It's really all most food ever needs. The combination may be the universe's only reliable youth serum.” Who doesn't want that?!

But, maybe the most influential and beautiful part of this book is the connection Adler makes between eating well and living well. Illustrating this is her chapter (yes, chapter!) about grits. If I didn't love her before, I certainly do now. Adler says that a 1952 Charleston newspaper declared that grits could make peace. She says, “...it's true that we all fight less when we eat well, which an abundance of grits guarantees. The paper was also right because grits...are vehicles for butter, cream, and cheese, and most tempers can be at least a little cooled by large quantities of those.”

Maybe I should feed my twin boys grits more often? I don't know about making peace with grits, but I will say that I once fed the pickiest boy on earth my grits casserole. Drew ate seconds happily, never knowing exactly what they were. This same boy wrinkled his nose at a turkey sandwich on homemade bread. So, maybe I was making peace after all.

Again, Alice Waters writes, “An Everlasting Meal is an important work about living fully, responsibly, and well, and gently reveals Tamar's philosophy that what we eat and how we eat it is inextricably linked to our happiness.”

CSA (Christ Supplies Amazingly? Christmas Surprises Amy? Oh, you mean Community Supported Agriculture!!)

I stood in my kitchen feeling a bit like I was drowning. Every inch of counter space was covered with fresh produce. It was beautiful and slightly dirty and I had no idea what I was going to do with it all. There were vegetables in the refrigerator from last week and probably some from the week before, slowly turning to mush. I could almost see the dollar signs and my family's good health wafting away as I opened the refrigerator door.

 We've been members of a farm co-op or CSA (community supported agriculture) off and on for over 7 years now. While I love to cook and we eat most of our meals at home, I think this kind of “alternative, locally based economic model of food distribution” (as Wikipedia says) can, and really should, be for everyone.

Yes, it can seem expensive and extravagant. Yes, it can be intimidating. And, yes, you could end up wasting some of it.

Expensive: Rod Dreher, in his book Crunchy Cons, says, "To appreciate how your food got to your table, to know how much we depend on the labor of others for our sustenance, is to begin to reestablish community, and even a kind of humility in the face of our radical dependence on each other. And that's worth something you cannot quantify on a balance sheet."

Joining a CSA will be financially costly up front. I average it into our grocery budget over time, subtracting $40 or so each week. Thus, by the end of the CSA we've come out even and will probably be ahead of the grocery game because there will be food that I've frozen for later.

If eating really well, introducing your family to new foods and flavors, supporting your local community and helping ensure small family farms survive for another generation is extravagant, then get ready to swim in your indulgence.

Intimidating: Looking at a bag of slightly unfamiliar vegetables that you've paid good money for can be daunting. Never cooked collard greens? Never seen a fresh black eyed pea? Never touched a baby Bok Choy? I've had to figure out what to do with Swiss chard and radish greens, kohlrabi and sunchokes and you can too! Your family will be better for it. My children sometimes complain about eating pinkish beet buns and they will ALWAYS wonder what I've secretly stuffed into their smoothies. But, they also take at least a bite of everything on their plates and will sweetly submit to huge salads for dinner (as long as there's meat, to a 16 year old boy it's not a real meal without meat).

 Wasteful: Though my goal is to consume, freeze or give away all the produce we receive each week, I admit that I'm rarely successful. I've been mad at myself for wasting perfectly good heads of romaine simply because they got buried somewhere under the organic carrots and the watermelon radishes. I've had to learn which vegetables will take happily to being stuffed raw into a Ziploc freezer bag and which need to be cooked first. I Google weird and exciting things all the time like “recipes using Mirliton” and “how do you shell Fava beans”.

I look at it as an adventure. A beautiful, organic, costly, frustrating, rewarding, delicious adventure.

We've been members of at least 4 of these wacky and wonderful CSAs and there have been 2 huge highlights. Maybe 3.

1. The food. You may be saying, “Duh.” But, let me be specific. If it had not been for CSAs, my family wouldn't love or even try Fried Collard Green Wontons, Greens with Cornbread Dumplings, Tomatillo Salsa, Arugula Pesto and Navy Beans with Ham.

 

The Delicious Fried Collard Green Wontons

2. Beverly. While living in Fort Worth, we joined a CSA called Locally Grown Good Stuff run almost entirely by a beautiful, blond, bright woman named Beverly. She had CSA members pick their share up in a private garden where she taught us that organic vegetables are probably going to be ugly, allowed me to sell homemade bread, had my kids selling fruit and CSA shares to customers, beat my kids at arm wrestling, dared Davis to eat a whole habanero pepper (he did, silly kid) and introduced us to goose eggs, real live goose eggs. She literally kept the food on our table during some rough patches and became a priceless, dear friend. I'm not saying every farmer who runs a CSA will become your friend. But, I hope they do. Oh, how I hope they do.

3. Lastly, supporting our local economy, feeding my family good stuff that brings us together around our table, and helping the earth too? It's just the right thing to do.

Once again, Rod Dreher, puts it beautifully when he writes, "It is a rare thing for Americans these days even to think about where their food comes from, but when you've seen the face of the woman who planted it, and shaken the hand of the man who harvested it, you become aware of the intimate human connection between you, the farmer, and the earth. To do so is to become aware of the radical giftedness of our lives."

Cream Cheese Pound Cake

Does this ever happen to you?

I planned to make a delicious Cream Cheese Pound Cake. I try to make some sort of dessert every week or so and this sounded wonderful to me. Does the rest of the country make pound cakes or is that just a Southern thing? Anyway...

In order to make this cake I dutifully left the butter, cream cheese and eggs sitting on the counter of my kitchen so they could come to room temperature. But, late in the day when I finally decided to mix the batter and bake the cake, I realized I didn't have any all-purpose flour, just white whole wheat flour. I asked Bobby what he thought I should do. His answer was, “Do it right.”

Right. I didn't tell him I had already messed this up by leaving the ingredients out to get warmed up, so I just agreed, mixed up the batter until I was supposed to add the flour, and put it in the refrigerator hoping for the best.

The next day I headed off to the grocery store determined to finish this cake. I was now hoping for good instead of the expected “wonderful”.

When I returned from the store I turned on my very old computer to find the recipe. As sometimes happens, my computer screen wouldn't come on. I had to unplug the whole contraption from the wall twice, waiting each time to see if the screen would grace me with it's presence. That's when I realized the keyboard wasn't working. I then had to find where the keyboard plugs in, plug that back in, and restart the computer, again.

Finally, the stars aligned. I had the recipe in view and the pound cake batter half finished from last night. I sifted (yes, sifted!) and beat in the flour.

After scooping the batter into 2 loaf pans because I don't own a “tube pan” and my bundt pan is too small, I put the cake in a cold oven, as directed. This cake takes forever to bake, so I had some time on my hands because you have to constantly adjust the oven temperature.

So, for my first 20 minutes I licked the beaters from my mixer and dropped batter on the kitchen rug. I folded some clothes and switched laundry from the washer to the dryer. Then, I began to wash the dishes that were accumulating by the kitchen sink.

In the next 20 minutes I continued the dishes, wrapped 2 very late Christmas gifts, and began eating lunch.

The 2 very belated Christmas gifts

Next, I continued lunch, watched the Good Wife on Amazon Prime, took a shower and washed my hair.

Finally, the cake was done. I was anxious, to say the least, to see how this puppy turned out.

The cake was good, delicious even. It had that perfect, pound cake, crispy top and a delicious interior. I was pleased to find there was no “sad streak”, as my mother calls it – that part of the cake that is notoriously under-done. The only slight flaw was that the cake collapsed slightly, but the crispy top just fused together more tightly.

We ate the cake as dessert and breakfast; with hot tea and tall glasses of water. We ate it with fruit and toasted it with butter. 

Delicious Grace Cake on lovely Christmas plates (relax, the Christmas plates have now been packed away)

I had thought I would give one of the cakes away, but we ate them both all up, savoring every moist crumb. I don't think I deserved to have a cake turn out that well, especially considering my efforts.

It's nice when life turns out like that, isn't it? Everything goes wrong, but somehow it all turns out right.

It's grace. I should call that cream cheese pound cake “Grace Cake” instead. Unmerited favor. Delicious.

This recipe comes to me and now to you curtesy of Rushton Waltchack who used to send out a new recipe every week along with a Bible verse.

Cream Cheese Pound Cake

Makes 1 Large cake

1 C. unsalted butter, room temperature

1 (80z.) cream cheese, room temperature

3 C. sugar

1 tsp. Salt

6 Large eggs, room temperature

4 tsp. Pure vanilla extract

3 C. sifted all-purpose flour

Butter and flour a 12-cup Bundt pan or tube pan. Using electric mixer, beat butter and cream cheese in a large bowl until fluffy. Add sugar and salt; beat 10 minutes, occasionally scrapping down the sides. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating until blended after each addition. Beat in vanilla. Beat in flour at low speed until batter is smooth (do not overbeat). Transfer batter to pan.

Place pan in a cold oven. Set temperature at 200 and bake for 20 minutes. Increase to 250; bake for 20 minutes. Increase to 275; bake for 10 minutes. Increase to 300; bake until toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean, about 1 hour. Cool in pan on wire rack for 15 minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely on wire rack. (Bon Appetit)

Rushton's Tips: A few hours before I know I am going to bake this, I set the eggs, cream cheese, and butter on the counter to warm up. They don’t have to totally be room temperature. Just make sure you are going to be home for a while when you make this since it has to bake for so long. Be sure and use pure vanilla and not imitation!

The Green Mirror

It is a fact universally acknowledged that stuff I whine about and put off and dread doing is usually not as bad as I think it's going to be.  For example, it takes less than 10 minutes to brush my teeth, floss, wash my face and moisturize before bed.  But, sometimes it seems like too much trouble. 

For another example, doing something creative is often less painful than I expect it to be.  We "inherited" a mirror from my husband's parents.  I don't think it's particularly precious, but it is particularly heavy.  It's about 3.5 feet by 2 feet and the frame is painted an interesting speckled green.  It hung in the foyer of my dear in laws home in Nashville and in the tiny, dark entry of our home in Birmingham.  Since then, it's followed us from state to state, never to show it's face again.  I did prop it against the wall in Nebraska and think hard about hanging it in the foyer there, but never did.  So, it's funny that after living in my present home for just 5 months, it already has pride of place opposite the front door.

I've put off hanging it in other places because it's so big and heavy.  I'm afraid it's going to awaken us in the depths of night by crashing to the floor.  And, though it has a regal sort of beauty, I'm not crazy about it.  I have grand ideas of painting the frame, but haven't gotten around to it.  Then, in a flash of brilliance, a motivating idea came into play.

I would give credit for this to someone, but I can't remember where I saw it or read about it.  I didn't pin it on pintrest and I don't think there's a magazine page folded down anywhere.  But, I'm sure the idea isn't original.

Here's the deal, I should paint a quote on it.  Simple.  So, why did it take me years to do it?

I could say I did it in stages - 1. Get an idea, 2.  Gather supplies,  3.  Execute idea.  But, that's not what happened.  I just needed the motivation to get it done and don't know why it happened just now, exactly.  It happened just after a visit from those dear in laws, but not before.  Weird, I know.

Also, it's not finished.  I didn't paint the frame.  I just bought paint pens (a long time ago), came up with a great quote, painted the quote on and hung the gigantic mirror up.

Maybe it's because I just had knee surgery.  I've got a new knee, so I can check that off my list and get on to other stuff.  I don't know.

After getting my kids to lay the mirror on the kitchen table, it took me about 6 minutes to decide which color paint pen to use (purple), basically block out where the words would go (they ended up slightly crooked), and paint it on.  It took another 6 minutes for my strong, curl-headed boy to help me carry the mirror to the front door, eyeball where I wanted the Hercules hooks to go, hang the mirror, realize the hooks were too low, reinsert hooks and rehang.  It took an additional 5 minutes to do a happy, hurt knee dance and get Bobby to the front door to admire my handy work.  He also ate up a minute or two pretending that I had misspelled something.

So, all added up, it took way less than an hour to execute the plan, but literal years to agonize over how to get it done.  And, I LOVE it.

Growing up, my husband had a neighbor named Amy Ashcraft.  Way ahead of her time, young Amy had a catch phrase.  She would say, "Bobby Britton, you is smart and goo-oo-od lookin too!"  The phrase stuck in Bobby's family and in Bobby's mind and he continues to use it off and on.  We still use it in our family when someone does something particularly noteworthy.  "Davis, go put your baseball stuff in the van.  I already did, Mom.  Wow!  Davis Britton, you is smart and goo-oo-od lookin too!"

So, that's what I painted on the mirror.  "You is smart and goo-oo-od lookin too!"  It makes me happy to know that anyone coming or going from my front door will receive that positive message.  It makes me laugh and it warms my heart.

So, why in tarnation did I not do it earlier?!!

It's like dreading washing the dishes or cleaning the shower.  The dread is much worse than the activity.  Nike says "just do it" and I suppose they're right.  I don't think we ever end up saying, "Man, I wish I had put off cleaning out the refrigerator just a little longer."  So, it is a fact universally acknowledged....

What have you been putting off?