Christmas in my family has come in two parts for the last couple of years, Christmas Day when we hold an open house for eggnog and make a roast for Christmas dinner and Boxing Day when my brother and his family join us for waffles. Both this year went very well, I think. We had friends and family and small children and a firetruck, the plastic kind, enthusiastically zoomed around in the house in company of a garbage truck and an ambulance by Fox. My niece brought her stuffed Olaf and tried plum pudding for the first time. We watched the 1951 Scrooge with Alastair Sim. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch and I had vague plans to see Mel Brooks' Silent Movie (1975) at the Brattle, but we came home and collapsed instead.
My mother and I did not succeed in cooking all of the lost Christmas recipes of Gourmet, although in one case we were thwarted mostly by not having a second refrigerator in which to store a marinating roast, but we did make the potato and leek gratin, the citrusy haricots verts, and the candied kumquats, which I can recommend even without the extra roll in sugar at the end; they taste like tiny soft marmalade bombs. The orange-ginger pickled baby carrots were a mysterious disaster that came out smelling like turpentine—which we're pretty sure removing the chiles from the recipe shouldn't have done—and were binned without delay. The pudding mold of my childhood gave up its tarnished and suet-polished ghost at the end of last year, so this year's plum pudding was dome-shaped instead of bundt-ish, but it caught on brandy-blue fire just the same.
Having come into the holiday direct from a hell-cold and a performance, I feel somewhat trampled now that it's over, but also in possession of many books, including Gemma Files' Drawn Up from Deep Places (2018), Cyril Hare's An English Murder (1951), Robin Robertson's The Long Take: A Noir Narrative (2018), and a titanic omnibus of Daniel Fuchs' Brooklyn novels—Summer in Williamsburg (1934), Homage to Blenholt (1936), and Low Company (1937). Rob got me an annotated edition of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep (1939) and all three Lowriders graphic novels by Cathy Camper and Raúl the Third. I got him a biography of Alfred Jarry and a book about the real murder cases behind the play/musical Chicago. Also we got socks, but that's actually great. My feet get cold.
According to Locus' listing of New & Notable Books, I am a celebrated poet and story writer. I hope "celebrated" in this case means "drowning in royalties come February," but I'm pleased with the notice regardless.
Did I mention I'll be in D.C. this weekend? For about twenty-four hours. On Friday, I am traveling once again at aaagh o'clock in the morning in order to meetselkie for Arena Stage's Indecent. 'Tis really the season of ignoring my internal clock for the sake of art.
Maybe tomorrow I'll just stay in bed and read.
spatch and I had vague plans to see Mel Brooks' Silent Movie (1975) at the Brattle, but we came home and collapsed instead.My mother and I did not succeed in cooking all of the lost Christmas recipes of Gourmet, although in one case we were thwarted mostly by not having a second refrigerator in which to store a marinating roast, but we did make the potato and leek gratin, the citrusy haricots verts, and the candied kumquats, which I can recommend even without the extra roll in sugar at the end; they taste like tiny soft marmalade bombs. The orange-ginger pickled baby carrots were a mysterious disaster that came out smelling like turpentine—which we're pretty sure removing the chiles from the recipe shouldn't have done—and were binned without delay. The pudding mold of my childhood gave up its tarnished and suet-polished ghost at the end of last year, so this year's plum pudding was dome-shaped instead of bundt-ish, but it caught on brandy-blue fire just the same.
Having come into the holiday direct from a hell-cold and a performance, I feel somewhat trampled now that it's over, but also in possession of many books, including Gemma Files' Drawn Up from Deep Places (2018), Cyril Hare's An English Murder (1951), Robin Robertson's The Long Take: A Noir Narrative (2018), and a titanic omnibus of Daniel Fuchs' Brooklyn novels—Summer in Williamsburg (1934), Homage to Blenholt (1936), and Low Company (1937). Rob got me an annotated edition of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep (1939) and all three Lowriders graphic novels by Cathy Camper and Raúl the Third. I got him a biography of Alfred Jarry and a book about the real murder cases behind the play/musical Chicago. Also we got socks, but that's actually great. My feet get cold.
According to Locus' listing of New & Notable Books, I am a celebrated poet and story writer. I hope "celebrated" in this case means "drowning in royalties come February," but I'm pleased with the notice regardless.
Did I mention I'll be in D.C. this weekend? For about twenty-four hours. On Friday, I am traveling once again at aaagh o'clock in the morning in order to meet
selkie for Arena Stage's Indecent. 'Tis really the season of ignoring my internal clock for the sake of art.Maybe tomorrow I'll just stay in bed and read.
