Decorating for Christmas

I hear so many people saying right after Thanksgiving “Why are people decorating so early for Christmas?” Now that I am getting older, I begin to understand why. When you reach 50, it seems like Christmas starts coming every three months because time is passing so fast. It’s almost like if we don’t catch it when it comes by, we will miss it all together.

I have always loved Christmas. I love the color. I love the ceremony. I love the festivities I love  the celebration. I never understood the people who were too busy to savor it. I do understand how working parents are stressed. I remember the days of hunting that one certain most popular of the season toy. That was when I wished there really was a Santa Claus so he could do all the looking for the Cabbage Patch doll. 

Now that the children are grown and gone, I enjoy the season more. I still decorate like there are toddlers all over the place. I didn’t realize what a repertoire of decorations I had accumulated over the years until I went into the attic and started looking for them. I found things I had forgotten about and things I swear, I never saw before.

I went to a big warehouse sale this year and got carried away with the bargains. I got things I still have to figure out where to use. Some of them I just passed on to others in hopes that they could figure out where to put them. I got 2 glitter covered twig wreaths that were marked $70 retail for $5 each. I had a hard time fitting them into my red, green and gold color scheme, but I finally figured out how to do it. I added a small glazed fruit and greens swag to the top half of them and tied it with the ribbons that made them match with everything else (which I also got at the sale).

I am not a hanger of outdoor lights. I am pretty clumsy with a ladder and can’t risk ruining my holiday with a sprained ankle or worse. I just festoon the door and its surroundings. I use lots of ribbons and color in my swage. The swags around the door are not as elaborate as last year, because it was too heavy and kept falling on my guests as they entered. That is not a good way to say “good will to men”.
I am a true southerner in that I like sparkle and slightly gaudy. Rural Southwest Alabama is in the heart of Dixie, and we keep Dixie in our hearts. We know we are different from the rest of the nation because we like more glamour and noise in our Christmas. There is nothing puritanical about our decorating = our politics maybe, but not our decorations. We are the colorful birds of plumage in our Christmas sweaters and our holiday decorations. As for myself, I love a glittery mantle. Since all my chimneys were knocked down when they finished the second story of my house, none of the mantles are functional. Therefore, I don’t have to worry about catching the house on fire from the greenery on the mantles. I don’t use real greenery, anyway, because I leave it up so long. It would be dead as a doornail by New Years.

I always leave my decorations up until January 6th. Somewhere in my ancestry there were Anglicans who celebrated Epiphany and early settlers who came down the Federal Road who called it “Old Christmas”. There must have been some Druids way up the line, too, because I am crazy about greenery. I do have some that is read, because nowhere else can you get that smell, but from real cedar? I left two bowls on the dining room mantle to be filled with holly and cedar. They’ll have to be fresh when company’s coming. I plan to have lots of company this holiday season. But I want it in small groups so we can sit and catch up on our visiting. I don’t plan to have a soirée’ that keeps me hopping too much to have fun at my own party! I consider (like the rest of the South) where 3 or more or gathered – it’s a party.

Dressing or Stuffing?

Since holiday time is arriving, the one thing we see the most of, no matter what else is on the menu is dressing. At least that’s what we call it in the South. On television, they call it stuffing. I guess that’s because they stuff the turkey with it. I can’t imagine anything worse than soggy bread crumbs flavored with sage stuffed up a turkey’s behind. That is what stuffing looks like to me. In rural Southwest Alabama, we make dressing instead. I don’t know why we call it dressing. It must be an ancestral thing. We’ve just always called it that. My Uncle Daddy, who came originally from Ohio called it pudding the first time he saw it. He was used to the soggy bread crumb stuff, so when he saw the nicely browned pan of cornbread dressing, he thought it was some kind of savory bread pudding. I guess by definition, that is what it is. We first cook a pan of cornbread, and then we crumble it up. We add lots of celery, onions, (and a little bell pepper, if we are so inclined), cover it with rich well seasoned broth We may then add some bread or biscuit to give it more body and bind it with eggs. We chop the aforementioned vegetables fine. We may put them in raw or we may sauté them in butter. I prefer to sauté them in butter, the way my friend Patsy taught me. I remember reading in one of Paul Prudhomme’s cookbooks that sautéing the vegetables gives more definition to the flavor for most dishes. I know that is true of dressing.

One thing that I find totally amazing is how legions of people can take the same recipe and it will taste entirely different from one cook to the next. Dressing is the most outstanding example of this. The dressing that my two grandmothers made was made identically in process, but tasted like two different recipes. Both were good, but nothing alike.

I guess that dressing is my favorite food of all time. I used to work with senior citizens and each of the 17 groups would have a Thanksgiving dinner every year. I had dressing 17 times, plus the family gatherings. I never got tired of it. We had it again at our holiday banquet. Nobody complained about too much dressing.

Stuffing just can’t hold a candle to dressing. The only really delicious stuffing I ever had was some made by my neighbor from Wisconsin when she roasted a chicken. It had toasted bread cubes, onions, celery and walnuts. I wasn’t expecting much, but it was good. It was not stuffed up the chicken’s behind. It was fixed on the stove in a pan. It was not the least bit soggy and not overly sagey, but it still wasn’t southern dressing.

I think the thing that makes dressing so good is the cornbread base. When the vegetables are added, they just seem to disappear into the dressing. The cornbread binds them together. The dish just seems to undergo some kind of alchemy that make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Dressing does one thing. The turkey may not be stuffed, but the diners are. Maybe a better way to put it is that we are happily replete. Dressing is one of those comfort foods that we can never get enough of. We don’t have to wait for a turkey to stuff. We can get dressing any time. We eat it all year around, but we love it most during the holidays. We’re about to begin the feasting time of the year. Gentlemen, start your ovens! We’re off the a race through the holidays with a pan of dressing on every table.

How to Spend a Holiday in September

Sometimes you just need a day with nobody in it. You just need to walk around in your nightgown all day long wearing no makeup and shoes. There needs to be a day when nobody is coming over, you are not going anywhere and haven’t racked up a list of chores to do. This is one of those days. The weather is cool and pleasant enough to just sit on the front porch. The noisy neighbors are not running their lawn equipment. The cat finally got off my lap and found her own chair. I have been perusing the stack of magazines that have accumulated since my last porch sit.

Some people like to sleep late on a holiday. Maybe I used to, but o have learned that the best part of the day comes early. I grab a cup of tea or a bad for me diet cola over crushed ice and head for my chair. It is a Victorian caned rocker in the corner of the porch where I can see everything that happens in my little corner of the world. I am surrounded by beautiful green plants and trees. I see that my 10 foot tall confederate rose is finally starting to get buds. I hear all manner of noisy birds, but they are in a different category from the neighbors’ machinery.

I use the first part of the day to read something inspirational to think about, then I daydream awhile looking at the magazine stack. I then decide what I’m going to cook. To me, cooking is a form of recreation. It is a thing I do to relax and create. I set some perimeters for myself, because that is part of the creative process. I know that I must use foods that I have on hand, so I won’t have to dress and go to the store. Part of the treat of the holiday is that I don’t have to scurry around like I do on most ordinary days. I know that I must use what is on hand and create from that.

Yesterday, I came in from a trip. I had been invited to my friend Melissa’s for Indian Food. I put it in capitals because the serving of authentically prepared Indian food in rural Southwest Alabama is an Event. On top of that, after dinner, we went to see the movie Julie and Julia down at the local picture show. We are so fortunate to get first run movies. I was proudly showing the local theater to my city nephew. I pointed out to him that we have first run movies. He dashed my pride by saying “You mean you don’t have but one?”. One is enough when a food movie is showing right after a home cooked Indian dinner.

My contribution to the meal was to be some mango chutney. I bought some in the city along with some good madras curry powder. It was raining when we got home, so I left them in my mama’s car. I looked for them long enough to realize what I had done, so I went to plan B. We had stopped at a roadside stand in Georgia to buy some fresh peaches. I spied them lying on the counter and thought “Why not?”. I whipped up some peach chutney on the spot. It turned out so good, I decided to use the rest of the peaches in a larger batch of chutney today. My son had gifted me with some lovely red sweet Hungarian peppers which I had used along with some grocery store yellow onions in the chutney. I always keep fresh cilantro on hand sine the local Walmart started carrying it for the growing Oriental and Hispanic populations. However, I have been on the road so much lately that it was wilted into oblivion.

I love to shop Big Lots for unusual ingredients and snack. Apparently they get the foods that big companies test market that don’t turn out to be winners or else they overstocked then closed out. I found some cilantro bouillon cubes which turned out to be perfect for the recipe.

Here’s the Emergency Peach Chutney recipe I came up with:

2 large fresh peaches, ripe, but firm, one big chopped onion, 5 red Hungarian peppers or 2 red bell peppers, ¾ c dark brown sugar, ¼ c balsamic vinegar, 1 tbsp cumin, 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice ( who said it was authentic?), dash msg, dash turmeric. Cook until onions are transparent and other ingredients tender. If I’d had raisins I’d have put them in, but I didn’t.

It turned out very well. The other Indian Food was authentic, so it was just a condiment – a fusion sort of thing. Maybe soon I’ll find the seven dollar jar, but in the meantime, I’m making another batch. In this batch I put a little hot pepper and some garlic.

A friend just called and said she was stopping by. She lives out in the country and is a renowned cook, so I asked her if she had any little canning jars sitting around that she wasn’t using. As a matter of fact she did. She is saving me a trip to town, so I’m surprising her and her husband with lunch. I just happen to have made another dish while I was in the kitchen whipping up the chutney. I wanted to do a casserole, so I checked my freezer. I had a good many fresh frozen wild Alabama shrimp that a friend gave me in my birthday box. I decided to make a shrimp pot pie. I’d never made one and thought iy might be a fun thing to create.

What goes in one? I had a crawfish pie once, so I figured the shrimp one couldn’t be too different in it is ingredients. I thought of the holy trinity – onions, bell pepper and celery. I didn’t have any celery. Two out of three are not bad, so I chopped the bell pepper and onions. I did have some celery seed, so I threw that in. I peeled a pound of raw shrimp and put them in a gratin pan. I put four small red potatoes in the microwave for 3 minutes to make sure they were not crisp in the final dish. I chopped them. I added some garlic, some Zatarain’s powdered shrimp boil, ¼ c of ketchup and a can of golden mushroom soup. I didn’t intent to use golden mushroom soup, but I didn’t have any cream of mushroom on hand. I mixed everything up and put it in with the shrimp/ I topped the whole thing with defrosted frozen biscuits. I stretched the biscuits out thin and tamped them down around the edges of the pan, so none of the goody would escape. It turned out gorgeously puffed and attractive.

The morning’s barely gone and I’ve felt very creatively expressed. I am back on the porch waiting for my lunch guinea pigs to arrive and test the shrimp pie. Nothing you can do to fresh shrimp could be that bad unless you candied it. That will be a creative endeavor for another day.