Kitchen’s A Mess, Must Have Been A Good Christmas

When my kitchen looks like this, it only means one thing.  It was a great time. You too?

I”m still hand-washing the heirloom bone china I received this year from my aunt Marion, and the silver flatware I bought on Ebay over the summer.  The Christmas tablecloth remains stained on the dining room table along with a water glass and a single unused cloth napkin that one of my young “gentlemen” must have neglected to place on their lap and use during the meal.

We had the usual high-expectation holiday highs and lows.  On their way home from their dad’s house I asked my three boys to pick up bread at Columbus Bakery on the north side.  Well they called a few times to say they were having trouble finding the place and when I asked them to keep trying you would think I demanded they make the loaves themselves from scratch.  While standing on their heads.  In a prison yard.  Really now.  For all the work I was putting into the rest of the meal…

My forever friend Valerie Navarre whose house Christian and I went to in Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving came for three days of non-stop conversation and cooking.   Valerie used to own a small chain of pastry shops and offered to bake my favorite dessert of all time, her buche de noel which means “Christmas log”; a light, thin rectangular sponge cake soaked in sugar, water and champagne, then topped with chocolate cream, rolled and topped with more chocolate spread.  It is way too delicious and I’ve prepared my taste buds since Valerie made one last year,  but there was a hitch.  My pantry is stocked with great basics for cooking but not for baking, and I lacked the chocolate Valerie needed.

Without a single grocery store open Christmas Day, Valerie went to the gas station and purchased ordinary chocolate bars near the cash register and as the French say, “Voila!”, a buche de noel worthy of the finest Parisian restaurant only for all our laughs I’m certain we will call it a Sunoco buche de noel from now on.

The only other curve was a squirrel that entered the top of one of the bird feeders outdoors and got stuck.  Charlie noticed it first and all activity stopped so I could rescue the darned thing and give him many more years of eating me out of all my bird seed.  I sometimes take an air horn to the backyard when the squirrels get out of hand, but the thought of one of them dying, trapped upside down in the clear plastic cylinder bird feeder right outside my sun room window was more than I could bear.

It was quite an operation as I brought it in through the window and out the kitchen door for extraction.  With fellow animal-lover Valerie watching from the door, and Charlie inquiring about the progress from his comfy spot on the sofa in front of the TV,  I kept shaking the feeder until the squirrel eventually slid out and took off like lightning.  Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a little drama.

What I used to offer up in gifts to little children I now put into the meal for growing boys; braised short ribs, soup, salad, the Columbus bread.  The boys were appreciative and at the table for maybe 30 minutes which is 20 minutes more than an ordinary day.  That was a gift for me and it left the remainder of the evening for Valerie and I to do more talking.  I remember glancing at my watch at 9:15 and the next time I looked at it, it was 12:15. We had not moved from our sun room chairs.

No sooner was the mess cleaned up this morning when the cooking started again.  I made a light breakfast of French toast from the day-old bread and coffee from my French press.  Are you seeing a theme here?

Not all family members were able to be here, but thank goodness our group was happy and healthy and filled with humor, some of it occasionally rising to what is appropriate for the dinner table.  It warms my heart to see my children sacrifice and buy a little something for each other, and even for me which I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to.  There’s something about the way Christmas works in me that senses gifts go from the top down and not the bottom up like a river that shouldn’t flow backward but I am touched more than you know to have my battery-operated massager, my scented candle and my note cards.  I always say my children aren’t perfect but they are perfectly suited to me. I’m one lucky girl.

How was your Christmas?  Please share.

Tagged as: children, Christmas, family, friends, holiday dinner