Our Christmases over the years here have evolved into a pattern:
- Christmas Eve with our friends for food and the white elephant exchange;
- A quiet Christmas à deux (actually à quatre, including the cats); followed by
- “Jewish Christmas” dinner with friends.
I had the morning and early afternoon to myself, given Julian’s propensity to sleep late. I sent out email holiday letters, reorganized my filing system for clipped recipes, called my family in New York, and read the Sunday paper. The river was quiet, except for the ducks and geese. One of our neighborhood eagles was hunting for Christmas dinner. I saw a lone duffer on the golf course across the river from us.
Julian got up, and we had grilled brie and apple sandwiches for lunch. This is a specialty of one of our old Greensboro haunts, the Liberty Oak. We then emptied the cats’ stockings (with predictable ensuing chaos) and exchanged our gifts. I got two cookbooks (no surprise here; see below). Unlike many of the bad-boy chefs who’ve written cookbooks of late, Bourdain can write two sentences in a row without including an expletive. The Short Stack Cookbook focuses on recipes for specific ingredients in each chapter, such as winter squash, chicken, and mayonnaise (EEEUW!!!). I got Julian two Northwest-themed books: Short Nights of the Shadow-Catcher, about the early 20th-century photographer Edward Curtis; and Eruption, about Mount St. Helens.
The cats also made out well. Luka (right) was hogging the toys before this photo was taken.
In past years, we’ve done Jewish Christmas in Chinese restaurants, most notably Facing East in Bellevue. This year we switched to Indian food, as one of the Known Twentysomethings in our group is now a gluten-free vegan. We wound up at Chutneys Bistro, in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle. Dinner was buffet-style, and the offerings I had were very good. I talked food with my former next-door neighbor, and talked shop with the nurse practitioner in our group. We essentially closed the restaurant down.
It was still early when we got home, so we watched a movie, Age of Adeline. Julian categorized it as a science fiction romance. I categorized it as a gemisch of Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray and Robin Cook medical sci-fi, only with a happy ending.
I hope you all had a Christmas (second night of Hanukkah, or December 25) of peace, joy, good food, and love.
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