I'm not sure I can face writing it all again - not to mention I can't remember what I wrote so I will have to try to reconstruct it using the photos I had for this post.
Packing and Moving
The day after I got back from Germany, it was back to reality. I had to sort everything. The movers packed all the things going back to Australia and when they were finished, there was a distressing amount of stuff left in the flat - it hardly looked like a dent had been made. The rest of the day was spent packing, schelpping things to a friend's house for storage and throwing away rubbish. I'm not quite sure how much crap can accumulate in such a small space. Luckily for me, I had made dinner plans with a friend from LCB for that night, which gave a welcome cut-off time for all the moving and packing nonsense. It was much needed and we had a delicious Mexican meal at a place called Lupita just off the Strand. They even made guacamole in front of us, which brought to mind a scene from The West Wing in which President Barlett has a conversation with his daughter about guacamole in a restaurant in LA. We had the fresh guacamole with the chips (the fried cheese in the bottom photo came with guacamole which was already made in the kitchen.Don't quit your day job...
In which I discovered I will never be a criminal mastermind...one of the things that could strike fear into any traveller, no matter how seasoned, is the thought of having to make a connecting flight through LAX with an international to domestic transfer and a short amount of time in which to do it. When the time is about 3 hours and one has to clear customs and immigration after picking up one's bags to switch from an international to a domestic flight, the anxiety level escalates dramatically. This becomes an exponential thing as the first (international flight) becomes later and later - in our case, an hour late. Somehow I got through the disorganized customes and immigration, collecting my boarding pass for the second leg from a British Airways groundstaff member and it looked like the connection might end easily.
The only problem came with the second security checkpoint - LAX has one of those body scanner things and given that a lot of doctors say they don't know how much of the bad x-rays or whatever go through you, I thought it would be better not to chance it. Pat down finished, there was (I thought) undue interest in my bags. In my defence, I had only slept about 6 hours out of the previous 48 hours so it took a little while to see what they were seeing when they pulled my quick cure salt out of my bag: 1kg of white, powdery substance in 2 layers of plastic baggies, one of them a zip lock. Then I twigged. Oh - white, powder...I asked the security guard what it looked like in the x-ray. "Very interesting" was the answer. Luckily the security guy had had confit duck before, so that made the quick cure a lot easier to explain. He laughed when I said, "This is what comes of even contemplating cooking for your fmaily over the holidays!" and I had no objection to there being no testing of the quick cure. Guessing they must have decided that no one would be stupid enough to schlep a kilo of a naughty white substance in their carry on...
Cleared security just in the nick of time - just enough wiggle room to grab a bottle of water in the airline lounge, then it was time to board for home.
In which we channel Dorothy
There's no place like home. We didn't even have the smell of jet fuel tainting the air when we landed - warm, flower scented air as soon as we stepped out of the gates and into the terminal. Managed to overlap with Brother #2 and family - my first night was their last. I had to laugh as my nephew picked me up and twirled me around. It's always nice to be greeted so enthusiastically by a handsome (and buff) young man - even nicer when you know that you're on his list of favorite people who always merits a hug and a kiss. On the right is one of the beautiful and rather common sights. I can generally count on seeing a rainbow in the late afternoons most days. It used to be on the way home from the ballet studio, but since the studio moved, I now just look up the hill from my little balcony.
A couple of days of catching up with friends followed my arrival. One of the things you can always count on over the holidays is that people somehow make their way back here. It might not be often or on a regular basis, but sooner or later we come back. I suppose part of it is that it's a great excuse and place to take a break from cold and dark days when one lives somewhere where the days tend to get quite short as the year draws to a close. Any of that is more bearable if you are heading for warmer climes...'Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the house, little creatures were stirring. My little niece was restive and not inclined to go to sleep because Santa was coming. She had started making some cookies for Santa but it was temporarily put on hold while my sister tended to my new nephew - at which point I took over supervision of Santa's cookies. My white hairs multiplied by a magnitude at several points - once when the 2 year-old picked up the blade attachment for the food processor before I could stop her (luckily by the plastic handle) and again when her hand got too close to the moving parts of the stand mixer. Eventually she lost interest (when it was time to cook the cookies) but only after she added the chocolate chips to the cookie dough. The quality testing of the chocolate chips was a big hit.It was almost midnight before both kidlets were finally settled in for the night at which point my sister and I finished wrapping various presents. I then went back home where I had a few more presents to finish wrapping - possibly a good time for jet lag to hit.
Christmas morning dawned too early for those of us who had been awake until 5am. This jetlag thing from the opposite side of the world is just not that conducive to a good night's sleep on local time...a few bites of breakfast, then I toddled down the hill to watch the opening of Christmas presents. My niece was very excited that Santa had eaten the cookies and drunk the milk. Here is one of the little dresses I bought in London - they were so cute I couldn't resist buying several of them. Lucky for me she wants to wear all of them although it's a bit doubtful whether she meant all at once (each dress was greeted with the comment "I want to wear it Mommy").
2nd Breakfast
And then came my Hobbit impersonation. How can anyone turn down an offer to make them breakfast? My brother-in-law kindly offered, extending this month's tradition of having meals cooked by other people's spouses. In this case, 2nd breakfast was "hapa rice" (2 parts brown rice : 1part white rice), Portuguese sausage and eggs scrambled with vegetables. FYI, eggs needed just a little something to give them a little kick. I tried Tobasco (the best one), Frank's Red Hot or something like that (it's the one they use for Buffalo wings) and the ubiquitous Vietnames "cock" sauce - the plastic bottle with the green top and a drawing of a rooster on the front. Father and daughter then went to a basketball game, which left my sister and me free to prepare for the afternoon.Attempting to cook...
We had set up the vegetables at my sister's house so that there wouldn't be any issue as to space / stove / fridge / time while I tried to cook with my gimpy hand. Thank goodness for shortcuts - I used canned tomatoes and a mandoline to help with all the slicing. There were 5 people attending who were unable to eat gluten, 3 of whom were also allergic to eggs and 1 of whom was vegan (but willing to make an exception for Christmas dinner). I was a little stuck for ideas until my sister said something about stuffed cabbage, at which point I tried a variation of the stuffed cabbage we did at school. Then it was a matter of praying that it would turn out ok - there was a terrible moment when I tasted the tomato concasse and found it too acidic / flavorless / un-tomato-y. I adjusted with a little sugar, but it was too much sugar and on went the adjusting. Eventually satisfied with the taste of the sauce, I readied the rest of the mise en place.
The only thing is that I very carefully assembled the stuffed cabbage lasagne / gratin bayaldi with the outside of the cabbage facing out - that is to say, the wrong way out. I blame the lack of sleep and jetlag for the snafu. It turned out ok although I could hear a chorus of Chefs' voices in my head when we ate it that the zucchini was undercooked and the assembly uneven, not to mention it wasn't hot. As a trial run, it could have been better but it could also have been worse. For the moment, the notes I have are to cook the zucchini longer before assembly, drain everything much better, to have the cabbage with the inside of the leaves facing out, to make more tomato sauce and to heat the thing for about 15 minutes before service instead of 10 minutes. For whatever reason, we always seem to end up with not enough tomato sauce and it needed rather a lot of adjusting the seasoning and acidity with red wine, salt and sugar. It ended as one of those things where the people you cook for enjoyed the food but by the standards which I now expect of myself, the dish was lacking in several crucial ways - hence the chorus in my head of what feedback I would expect for the dish. I remember early on that we were told that the chefs expected perfection. Of course you never achieve it but that doesn't mean that you don't strive for it anyway, or else why would we be there?
Dinner was the usual food extravaganza for 15 people. There was a very large turkey, a ham and a backup turkey as well as all the fixings and several side dishes. Also as is usual for us here, appetisers were poke (pronounced "pokay" for those of you who have not been to Hawaii) with beer and tortilla chips with hummus.
My eldest brother made the roast turkey. There was gluten free gravy and gluten free stuffing. I found some of the gluten free alternatives to food rather disappointing because either the taste or the texture is usually not as nice as the normal one. One of our guests also made mochi (pounded glutinous rice, sometimes with stuffing) and colored it - with the effect that it blends in with the plate. Find the mochi on the tablecloth on the right...quite a good camouflage, I thought. Given the amount of contributions, I thought we did quite well with consuming most of the food on the night. The turkey leftovers were gone by the next day except for the carcass which is slated to make broth for a turkey stew I am going to try to make. BS isn't a huge fan of soups but he will try a stew...
There was also a mini cask of rum. Not some gimmicky thing or a scary home made attempt but rather proper rum which was stored in an aged French oak barrel (or something like that). I'm hoping I said this correctly - I don't speak specialist alcohol language. All I know is that generally alcohol makes everything better (and sometimes the food too). This was to go with the figgy pudding - I've forgotten the song but I know it's one of the latter verses of "We wish you a merry Christmas".It was wonderful to spend such a happy night with friends and family. So until next time, may you have as wonderful a holiday and family time as I have.
