#281
Oh the weather outside is frightful
I started putting up the Christmas decorations on Sunday. I know myself and I know that if I sit and think about how omg haaarrrrrrrd it will be to bring it all upstairs, it will never be brought upstairs. So I started slowly with my little pre-lit trees that go by the fireplace, some fake candles, and a wreath.
I didn’t want to buy anything new for holiday decorating this year, which meant that despite all the innovations in fake garland that seem to have flooded the market recently, I am toughing it out and using the very bad fake garland I bought untold years ago and god knows where to wrap our downstairs newel post, something I’ve not done in years past. It looks fine. It could use a big festive red ribbon but I don’t have one and as I said am reluctant to buy one. I spent most of the pandemic years going cuckoo-crazy for holiday decor and I have more than enough. Also now that I am thinking about it, perhaps my mom has one or eight red bows to choose from in her 60-some year holiday decor archive.
Sidebar, if you’d like to know what snapped me out of my Christmas gewgaws shopping spree, it was buying (and returning!!!) this red velvet dress in December 2022:
I definitely believe in swanning about one’s house ensconced in velvet but this, for me, ultimately proved a bridge too far. The refunded purchase price was better spent on Champagne, which you can drink in flannel pajamas.
I did a little bit of work on the day after Thanksgiving, but other than that I very much enjoyed a five-day weekend which not only included the turkey-eating but also my husband’s birthday. I already ordered this year’s Irish meats for the holidays so we cooked up some of those for breakfast and checked out a new-ish restaurant for happy hour, and it was a very good prelude to Thanksgiving Day at my sister-in-law’s. Somewhat unfortunately, it dumped down snow the entire time we were there, rendering the drive home a real white-knuckler on utterly unplowed roads AND THE INTERSTATE (never change, ODOT).
We spent the next day on the couch cuddling with the dogs and watching Stranger Things. On Sunday I told my French tutor that Stranger Things is almost too scary this season and she laughed at me. Sorry, my tolerance for goo and slime is very low! I just do not understand why everything in that show has to be pulsating and damp! Also:
He always makes an entrance, usually from behind a glowing red curtain of flame. The walk is on point, the manicure is fresh. Why is he so fabulous this season! He’s the bad guy, let us hate him!
Speaking of camp, Emily in Paris season five starts on December 18. I will do my best, but I was actually insulted by the dumbness of season four. Even the guy who plays beautiful, dim chef Gabriel is like “this show is dumb AF” so I don’t have high expectations. But, you know, in the depth of winter you take what you can get and sometimes what you can get is hate-watching a very silly show you will forget as soon as you hear the mournful keen of the Shetland theme song.
What did I cook this week, now that it is fully cozy foods season? My husband made boeuf bourguignon over the weekend, so it was hard to top that. I made Chrissy Teigen’s minestrone soup (yes I know she is cancelled and no the mayo toasts are not really worth it), which is a very good stuff-you-probably-have-on-hand recipe. One of the reasons I decided to make it, in fact, was the thought of finally using one lingering can of pandemic-era green beans.
Well. I checked the date on the green beans and they were rather older than I thought, so I inspected them before chucking them into the bubbling soup and WOW they were not okay! As I told my friend Christine I am glad I was not confronted with these beans in a fallout shelter scenario. Obviously the dinner options would be my chief concern at such a time.
Speaking of the pandemic (again!), one of my enduring culinary memories of that time is all the pizzas we made. I had a favorite crust recipe and a sauce recipe, which I later threw over for a different sauce. Now I am pleased to announced I have moved on to a new crust recipe, and more often than not I just use a jar of Rao’s due to laziness (and the fact that it is usually quite the deal at Grocery Outlet).
Even with my pre-lit faux Christmas trees glowing all around me and my little dogs snoring beside me, I can’t help but feeling a little down at the moment. I find the holidays stressful for many family- and expectations-related reasons but also because of this duh moment I had years ago, when I was still on Twitter:
Guys I just think it is against our nature to ramp up performative perfection, overspending, and constant activity at a time of year when, in many parts of the world anyway, it is suddenly cold and dark all the time. I strongly feel, deep in my microplastic-riddled bones, that this is a time for staying inside and making shepherd’s pie.
Also, this goes without saying, it is just hard to deck my halls with any real sincerity when not a day goes by without news of what the actual worst people in the world are up to. It’s a shame that “let’s circle back on this in January” does not apply to The Persistent Horrors.