Counting Sheep

New Year's Eve

I've been mired in preparation for entertaining over the next two nights.  Yesterday I hunted and gathered and returned home to bake Chocolate Espresso Cookies and make the custard for the cardamom/coffee ice cream that we will make tonight and I also made the apple and cranberry chutney for Saturday night.  This morning I was up bright and early and have already baked a Cranberry Egg Nog tart with bourbon, made the salmon and cucumber rolls and after I shower in a few minutes it's back into the kitchen to prep the Cauliflower, leek and gruyere gratin, get the Yorkshire pudding ingredients to room temperature and prepare the monster of a prime rib. Bread and Circus now dry ages beef , at least the one on Washington Street in Newton does, and if you have never had dry aged beef I urge you to give it a try sometime.  It will taste just like the meat in a fine steakhouse and melt like butter in your mouth. 
The playlist for the ipod has been created and downloaded and we need to select some wines. 
I'm looking forward to spending some time with friends and family over the next couple of days.
And I'm quite pleased that without advance reading of Chris' Western PA superstition we will be having Pork Roast tomorrow.  A lovely Pork Loin Roast with Rind-On that I had flown in from Williams in North Carolina, cause I'm nuts like that.  In the states pork is so stripped of it's fat and bred so lean that it no longer tastes like, well, pork.  The best pork roast that I ever had was in England.  That is because they keep the rind on the roast and the pigs have not been bred and raised to be so lean.  Don't scowl.  It's only once a year people.  And let me tell you, it will be good.

Over the next couple of days I will be putting all of the recipes up over at Amuse Bouche.
I'm also not a person who toots her own horn, but I am really excited to report that Amuse Bouche is one of the finalists in the Best of Blog (BOB) competition for the best Cooking/Recipe Blog category.  Voting starts January 1st if anyone would like to add a little tick next to my name.  I'll make you dinner...lol.

We shall see if I make it to midnight tonight after all of this.  If I don't, I'd like to wish all and sundry a happy, safe and prosperous New Year.

The holiday part II and a bit of humble pie

My Mom and S.D. drove the 8 hour trek again up from Virginia to have Christmas with husband and I this weekend as well as my stepsisters and his grandchildren today and Thursday.  We saw them this morning for a few minutes when they stopped by to unload a bureau we are taking in as an orphan from Grandma's old house and the gifts that we will open together when they stay down here on Friday and Saturday.  They hung out for awhile so Mom could dial in to work and run a few programs.  She's a Cobol programmer and works to keep the payroll running for a major newspaper chain.  Geekdom apparently runs in the family.  We were joking amongst ourselves (S.D. is a former programmer, now a Project manager at another major company) how much I WOULD NOT miss this sort of umbilical cord existence.  In fact for awhile yesterday it was touch and go as to whether Mom could even leave the office and come up to visit. 

We headed off after they left for a Starbucks and a visit to Home Depot Expo to order a few kitchen cabinets.  We have been slowly adding to our kitchen over the years and we have been looking for cabinets that will mount over my island and open like a ships locker (i.e. up instead of left to right), we finally found some from Kraft Maid and went to the Expo to have them order them for us.  They will become my spice cabinets.  I must have 50 or more spices and herbs in various jars and bottles and Penzey's are my best friends ever....Have I mentioned they are coming to Boston soon?

When I got home I had a call from one of my oldest friends.  She had been pregnant again in December and had lost the baby to an ectopic pregnancy.  As she was telling me the story about how the pain on a scale of 1 to 10 was really only a 4 and she was reluctant to go the the DR's as she thought it was 'just a miscarriage' and that she didn't 'see the need' to bother anyone and go through the ordeal in a strange place.  Luckily when she called the DR's office they told her to come in anyway.  As they were examining her she made a flinching motion and a small cry out.  They asked what hurt and she said, 'Oh it's just my shoulder'.  They suddenly jumped into action.  It seems that a pain in the shoulder meant internal bleeding (who knew?) and she was rushed into hospital with a ruptured tube and a loss of 9 pints of blood. A few more hours and the situation would have been dire.  She spent 4 or 5 days in hospital and was recently released.   This on top of how difficult it is for her to carry a baby to term this is going to make things a bit more complicated for her to bring her brood from one to four as she would like.  A humble lesson in not being a martyr to pain  and a humble lesson in how hard it is for some to carry the babies they want so desperately.

Off to bed now me thinks.  Tomorrow starts the cooking preparation for the weekends soirees. 

Goodnight Moon.
 

Busy Busy busy

Well let's see I have

Gone out and finally given Bill Gates some money after all these years
Installed XP Professional on my P.C.
Added all relevant drivers for sound card, video card, network card, then installed McAfee, Corel draw, Turbo Tax, Palm software, Office XP, Dreamweaver, Adobe, Firefox, Master Cook, Master Genealogist, itunes
Switched my speakers over
Switched my Palm Pilot over
Attached Shaun the Sheep to his tiny little cradle
Spent the last 5 hours ensuring my MP3 files all have the correct labels for track, artist and album.  Yea, I'm anal like that.  I haven't *even* started rating them or selecting genre yet.
I am sure I will see completion bars in my sleep tonight
3 loads of laundry
Scared the hawk away twice already

Busy, busy busy.....

Christmas Present

There on the wall you see what we call around here, the rare half spruce. Sadly it is the only Christmas tree we can fit in the house these days. My Mom bought it for me one year when I lived in a studio apartment and had no room for a tree. Thankfully I kept it over the years as it has come in handy. We had a lovely quiet morning with a fire lit and the pooper up on the couch with us opening gifts. Husband received all manor of tools including some really lovely wood chisels made in Sheffield from his brother and a set of beautiful German screwdrivers with pale wooden handles.
I bought him some CD's and films a lovely book of nudes by Roy Stuart and alas, more tools.  If you or someone you love likes woodworking this company, Garrett Wade, has some of the finest tools that I've ever seen and the other lovely thing about them is most of the tools are NOT made in China but in England, Germany and France.
I am the lucky recipient of many lovely gifts. My brother-in-law sent us a yummy selection of wines from Australia and Italy, and the moleskine notebook I requested as well as a delicious alpaca scarf. Husband did his husbandly duties and I have loads of new CD's to rip, including a copy of Wind in the Willows read by Alan Bennett and a few other Alan bennett CD's, books for the train, the new Anthony Bourdain cookbook (!), some perfume and the piece de resistance.......well just look here. 
Oh yes, I am a happy, HAPPY girl.  Thanks to the McMuffins and their letter writing campaign on my behalf. I had foolishly thought that I wanted the new 60GB with the photo option, but his research on that was not good. Users didn't like it and it is much larger than this lovely, luscious, pristine instrument of aural joy.
Miss Elsie has named hers Beatrice Lily Boo (I believe) and I do love that. I shall have to ponder long and hard for a suitable name. The device is currently plugged into it's umbilical cord in the wall charging up and I have a whole host of rearranging to do on my three P.C.'s before I settle everyone in. Now that I no longer need to devote a machine to work we have a bit or re imaging to do, introduction into the network, software installs, etc., before it can settle in. Geez, and I thought I was finished with all of that when I left my job!
In a bit we'll bundle up and stroll the pooper over to the doggie park for a frolic and then I'll be making us shepherd's pie and steamed pudding with custard for dinner along with one of those lovely new wines.  Keeping it simple until the big feasts next week.
I hope santa was kind to you all and at least one of your wishes was answered, I hope you're enjoying your time with your families and loved ones and most of all I hope that you all remember this Christmas Present fondly when it becomes a Christmas Past.

~jo

Christmas Past

In the last ten or fifteen years, okay, make that twenty or twenty five I've become the girl who 'doesn't want to know' (tm).  You could purchase a gift for me and place it on my side of the bed or on the kitchen table in full view and if I knew it were a gift I absolutely WOULD NOT touch it. These days I enjoy the surprise, almost I have to say, more than the gift itself.  I adore all of the mysteries behind Christmas.  Sadly, this was not always the case.

When I was  younger I was a very, very bad girl.  I would sneak into my parents bedroom,  slide open the triple closet doors and head straight for the back of the closet.  The gifts would all be wrapped already and tucked away behind Dad's smelly shoes and under his ratty robe.
You see even then both of my parents worked. I was home from school at 2:30 or 3:00 and no one arrived back home until 5:30 or 6:00.  After I had started dinner, done my cleaning chores, and snuck in am illicit viewing of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman in the family room watching the cars approaching through the plate glass windows to be sure Mom hadn't snuck home early, I would head to 'the closet'. 

My weapon of choice was a butter knife or a good serrated knife.  I would carefully, oh so carefully, slice open the tape on one side of the package.  In those days the wrapping paper was tissue paper thin, not the heavy foil wraps we have now so the risk of the pattern coming off on the tape and rendering the tape un-useable, or tearing the paper, and exposing my acts  was a great risk in this operation.  I would pull back just enough paper to see what was inside the box and then quickly tape it back up, pressing hard to get the tape to stick to the package and place it, ever so carefully, back in the EXACT position it came from initially.  I would slide that closet door back in place leaving the 2 or 3 cm of space between the wall and the closet door to ensure that no one would know that I have even entered their room. I would then have to feign immense surprise when 'Santa' left me the same items under the tree on Christmas morning.

Every Christmas Eve would be my Grandfather Ray and Grand mother Polly coming out from Topsfield in my Grandmother the antique dealer's huge blue van, or in the earlier days her faux wood panelled station wagon (Brits, read: Estate car).  Grandma always drove, Grandpa ever the passenger. Their dog, Conrad, in the early days, Choo Choo, later, would come with them as well.  The gifts were always piled high in hand made handled baskets that hung the rest of the year from nails in the garage. Inside was also a home-made pie or two in a special two tiered pie basket, a la Wizard of Oz. 

  We would help them empty the van and place all of the presents around the tree.  In a concession to my father's Italian heritage we  would have seafood, usually lobster, and then roast beef for dinner in the dining room that was decorated boldly in dark, dark, ornately carved Spanish furniture that was all the rage in the mid 70's. The room was repleat with a portrait of Don Quixote De La Mancha in gilt frame and one of my favourite portraits by Goya staring down at me.  I often wonder if all this Spanish influence led my Dad to remarry later to Cuban woman.  After dinner we would retire to the living room with its Shag carpet, chrome and glass end tables, chairs and lamps, a corduroy pit couch and teak coffee table. The very epitome of 70's chic. The  brick fireplace, painted white, would be burning and we would open our gifts.  Grandma always demanded we 'SAVE THE BOWS' and we would dutifully oblige. In later years when we tired of separating out the bows that never stuck anymore from the gift wrap that we burned in the fireplace, the very first gift we would make Grandma open was a box filled with bows for next year so we could toss away all of the gift wrap without sorting through it for the bows.

Since Grandma was an antique dealer my dad would often be the recipient of a rather odd gift that Grandma had found at some or another auction over the previous year.  There were Toby jugs of Winston Churchill for the bar, a full brass diving helmet from the early 1900's, a bubble gum machine we turned into a lamp, old soda water dispensers of hand blown glass for the bar, the 1800's Louis Vuitton freighter trunk that became a coffee table (it now holds my sweaters), the blown glass lobster trap balls, the wine glasses whose stems were of nude women of frosted glass holding up the bowl, a beautiful charcoal drawing in black and white of a nude that lived over the fireplace (I'm still trying to wrestle that one away from my stepmother).  You never knew what would be under the gift wrap, and you were always implored to 'not pay attention to the box' as those were also often recycled year after year.

Sometimes I'm sad that I didn't allow myself the surprises then that I so crave now.  I don't understand why I wished to spoil it all like I did.  Now, to me, Christmas is a time for excitement, for surprise,  a reason to hide things and to try hard to find something of substance to give my husband or family member that they never expected.  Perhaps you heard them mention something once during an off hand conversation and that seed remained planted all year long just waiting for its moment.  It has become harder and harder over the years for me to do this since as we get older we often buy ourselves the things that we want during the year never saving anything for later.  I think that this is directly robbing ourselves of the anticipation.
Can anyone remember what it felt like to go to bed on Christmas Eve?  The bundle of nerves and excitement?  The terror that Santa or whoever you believed in, would not stop here, would not have heard your pleas for the desire of the moment? That pit of your stomach feeling that something exciting was going to happen overnight and that tomorrow everything would be new and different?  I think we all need a little of that anticipation in our lives.  We are all too enamoured with instant gratification and jaded about the giving of gifts.  Wouldn't it be nice if it all meant more than just a gift card or something from a perfectly crafted list? If I could have one surprise this Chrstmas it would be to find my Grandfather ringing the doorbell wearing his old corduroy coat with dog biscuits and butter rum lifesavers in his pocket and Choo Choo by his side saying hello and coming in for a sit down and for a bourbon and water while I catch him up on the last 20 years.

Song of the day....(Anyone familiar with the WGBH radio show, 'Jazz with Eric and the Evening' will recognize this song)

What would you like to be surprised with on Christmas morning?

I got it!!!!!*

The Full Monty!

The whole Grant.

All the buckeroonies.

$10,000 grand off my school tuition.

I'm gonna go back and kiss that post man.

*No exclamation points were harmed in the making of this post.

Geek Alert

I have just pre-ordered the new Harry Potter from amazon.co.uk.  Happy Christmas in July to me!

Dust motes and past lives

I'm here in the office today packing up the last of my desk.  Dad will meet me out front and take my 10 years of accumulated junque (more than just junk you know) back to my house tomorrow.  The phone has been scrubbed of numbers, the Palm Pilot divested of recipes and personal details, the music deleted off of the hard drive, the paperwork that was 'so important' just months ago has been dumped in a big recycling bin.  We went over to the Elephant and Castle for a farewell lunch and one of the ladies brought me back a couple of Cannoli's from Mike's in the North End.

I found my day planners in the drawer from 1996, 1997 and 1998.  I had  a flick through them and they document my moving into my house, building the kitchen, getting the pooper (I now know she will be 9 in January), husband's first trip over for our first official 'date' and his second trip and his third and my subsequent trip over all the way up to the wedding.  I'm really pleased that I saved these for as long as I did.  I also realized what a lemon my SAAB 900 was.  Every other frikken week was 'SAAB in shop, car at mechanic....lol.  My how we are able to forget the pain.  It was a pretty good trip down the lane.

The pictures are down off of my wall, my Michael Sowa calender packed, the Beagle toy that one of the contractors hung from his tail by the ceiling tiles has been rescued and placed in my bag, my Wallace and Grommit WWII aeroplane pencil sharpener is tucked away, my Shaun the Sheep pencil is safely packed, my sushi chopsticks and won ton soup spoon and all other traces of my personality have been removed from my grey cubicle walls.

I've bequeathed the fridge under my desk to one of my old bosses as well as my two Guatemalan worry dolls that have been taped to my monitor and pricked with various pins more times than I can count in the effort to ward off some evil corporate person or another.  And the change jar left to me by Justin's wife when she left the bank has been passed on to my boss, change included.  It's just good karma that way.

It's rather nice to shed the corporate skin.

Damn!!!  This feels GOOD!

Song of the Day

Love at first site

Oh Hedwig.  Oh Hedwig!  Where have you been my whole life?

Sure, Rocky Horror you were my first, Dr. Frank N. Furter my introduction.
Then it was you Terrence and your wicked Priscilla,  Queen of the Desert, but Hedwig you goddess! 

There I was flicking through the channels last night and what on IFC should my wandering eyes see, Hedwig and the Angry Inch just seconds away from starting.  Now I know I'm late to the party.  The film was out ages ago.  I knew that I would want to see it. But you know how it is, other moves were released, books published, web sites delivered.  The media swept me away. But never again shall I sway.  I sat there for two straight hours completely sucked up into that film.  Loved, loved, loved it.

DVD and CD went straight into my wish list.  I *need* to hear 'Origin of Love' this instant.  How soon do you think the shops open?

Reservations

Poor husband.  You see his birthday is Christmas Eve.  Not just around Christmas like my Mom (Dec 30th) or my stepdad (Dec 29th) but on Christmas Eve.  For the first couple of years I managed to find a nice restaurant that was open and book reservations but two of those places have since closed.  I have spent the last three days trying desperately to find a nice place to have Christmas Eve dinner.  The one caveat to all of this is that he doesn't want to go into Boston.  If he would I'd be dining at Loche Ober so fast it would make your head spin as it is now owned by my cooking goddess Lydia Shire.  I have been combing the web, making calls and striking out heartily.  If they are open they have nothing that his bland British taste buds would like.  If they have a menu that would suit both of us they are closed.  It is no easy task being a gourmand married to a meat and two veg man let me tell you.

Things at work are winding down and I managed yesterday to migrate all 8 databases from SQL 7.0 over to 2000.  Just a few web servers to set up and my tasks at Big American Bank are through.  I signed my separation paperwork and sent it off in the mail. Next Tuesday I hand over my ID's and palm pilots and best of all, leash cellphone.  I'll head home and have a big celebratory Martini.

One of the things I love to listen to every year around Christmas is David Sedaris reading his bit called Santaland Diaries.  If you have never heard of David Sedaris or have never heard this piece before, please, I implore you...have a listen or from here.  (Search for Santaland Diaries)

Ripping some more of my CD's today so here is the song of the day.

My T.A.B.E. test was fine, in fact it was all rather silly and if you are terribly interested in reading about how the instructor fell asleep and snored through 14 minutes of the test.....carry on.

On Tuesday I had to head back to the local D.E.T (Department of employment and Training) office to take my T.A.B.E (Testing Adult Basic Education) test.  I have to take this fill in the bubble test because I don't have a degree and I am asking them for grant money in order to go back to school.  They need to prove that the money they will invest in you shall not be wasted because you don't have the basics down before you go back in.
The scene is a little like this...
I check in at the front desk and take a sit over in the waiting area at one of the round tables.
In typical fashion there are approx 6 - 8 round tables with 4 - 5 chairs around each.  Because we all require our personal space there is one person each at three of the tables.  I make the 4th person at the 4th table.
After a few minutes spent not looking at each other and pretending to be thoroughly engrossed in the provided reading materials a gentlemen walks over and very loudly announces;
'If any customer is here to take the Test for Basic Adult Education we will be walking across the office to the testing room in the corner.  That is the T.A.B.E. Test for Basic Adult Education.  If you are a customer here for this test please follow me.'
This was announced loudly enough to cause all heads to swivel and stare at the voice that had just interrupted their job searching reverie.
Three of us get up and gather our possessions and I lead the way because this is now my fourth visit to this conference room and dammit, I want my favourite seat.
We again space ourselves nicely around the room led by my first grab of a coveted corner of the horseshoe.
Our instructor wearing a striped tie past his belt buckle, a striped shirt, stripe going in the opposite direction, and looking not a little bit like Robert DeNiro with a paunch and a receding hair line.  Add rather strong Boston/Medford accent to this combo and a booming voice to make up for the stature.
He explains that he will be supplying us with two freshly sharpened pencils, 'Be careful you don't stab yourself with these because I just sharpened these points', because this will be a pencil and paper test.
He passes out a sheet and tells us to wait until we have our sheets so we can 'do it together'.  'Please fill in your last name, your first name and your middle initial, my name is Jim, J-I-M, I am the instructor, please put JIM on the instructor line.  Today's date is 12, 14, 2004.'
He now holds up the booklet and explains that this is the T.A.B.E test, why we are taking the test as well as how easy this test will be.  He says there will be sample questions before each chapter and he walks around to our three spots pointing at the sample answer section on the sheet.  Everything AND I MEAN EVERYTHING is repeated TWICE.
'This is a timed test', says Jim holding up a Polder kitchen timer.  'The first chapter is 8 minutes and the other 3 are 14 minutes each.  We will all be taking this test together, when the timer goes off you have to STOP.  If you finish a chapter before the timer goes off you must put your pencil down and wait for everyone to catch up.'
We all nod sagely.

He then explains that the books cost a lot of money and that we are not allowed to write in these books.  He holds up a piece of paper.

'I will be giving you all a piece of blank paper for your calculations in the math sections of this test.  Please write your name and your Social Security Number on the top of this blank piece of paper'.  Shows us both sides to prove that it is indeed blank and as he puts it down he repeats, 'Name and Social Security number'.  Our man Jim continues  'There is plenty more paper where this came from, I can give you two, three pieces, whatever you require.'

Thanks Jim.

He picks up the test book and reads out the test question;
'This question wants you to choose an answer that best represents a like word in relation to  the underlined word.  The statement is
He repairs the truck.

The answers could be
A: fixes
B: moves
C: starts
D: pushes
Which answer do you think is the most appropriate for this question?' 

All of this is repeated again.

I am wishing that I could now tear my eyes out of my head and resist smirking broadly.
Thankfully he supplies us with the answer and we move along to actually taking the test.
For section one our  man Jim strolls out and has a wander around arriving back in the conference room with a minute to spare.  Two of us are done, one of us is still filling in bubbles and reading.  The kitchen timer rings.  Jim looks seriously at the girl who has not finished, she indicates two more questions.  He allows her to finish. 
As she's wrapping up he makes a spot for himself at the top of the horseshoe of tables, opens a book and pulls up a chair.

When all of us are ready he goes through the first test question in section 2.  He tells us 14 minutes and sets the timer.
We begin scribbling away.  After a minute or two I hear a noise coming form the top of the horseshoe. 

Snaaaaark...snort...

Oh no, he did not just snore did he?

I answer a few more questions.....SNAAARRRRKKKKKK, SNORT,,,,ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Oh yea, our man Jim is havin himself a nice mid afternoon nap while we take our test.

14 minutes of Jim's nasal symphony later and the kitchen timer goes off again.  Bee deep, Bee deep, Bee deep, Bee Deep.
Jim's snoring away, head down, drool getting ready to form in the corner of his mouth.

Tester number two and I look across the tables at each other and shrug our shoulders.  Tester number two coughs loudly.  The timer continues...Bee Deep, Bee Depp, Bee Deep.

Our man Jim snaps to attention, shuts off the timer and continues on like nothing ever happened.

Such are the indignities we non college graduates need to endure.