Matt and I were talking last night before bed about how neither of us are quite feeling holiday-ish yet. It's ironic, really. I'm the girl who was pining for the rest of the world to catch up to my desire for the holiday mood, and now it's a week into December, and I don't feel quite bitten by the holiday bug. Perhaps it's because our oven knob has been broken since we moved in (it's slated to be fixed TOMORROW...yay!), and so I haven't been able to bake any Christmas cookies. Or perhaps it's because we haven't had time yet to do a lot of spirited decorating. We have most of our Christmas decorations out and about - we have our Christmas tree up and strung with lights (no ornaments yet, though), and we have a Scandinavian candelabra in our living room window, and I've put out some glass Christmas trees and a festive red glass tea-light candleholder on the coffee table, and I even replaced our Bermuda coffee-table book with our copy of the Grinch - but we haven't had the time to really devote time to decorating the right way. And by "the right way," I mean devoting an evening to turning on Christmas music and decorating the apartment together, worry-free, and then following our decorating up with a viewing of the (original!) Grinch or some other Christmas movie and hot chocolate or cider. I'm very attached to picturesque evenings like that, and we simply haven't had the time for that. It's one of the necessary consequences of being a seminary student/law student married couple.
But I'm working on getting fully immersed into Christmas cheer (or at least Advent anticipation!). I make sure to turn on the Christmas tree lights when I get up in the morning to light our dim apartment. And I'm listening to as much Christmas music as I can, on my ipod when I have the opportunity, or at least leaving the radio in my car permanently set to the all-Christmas station. I've been plotting Christmas presents for my family and Matt's family. And I'm thinking about putting together a Christmas letter and sending out a whole bundle of Christmas cards.
I associate food and holidays. One of the best things about my family is that we have always been intent about eating together, and holidays are no exception. My dad loves to bake, and my mom makes the best mashed potatoes in the entire world - being home for the holidays means being around the people that I love, eating wonderful food and doing silly things like hanging spoons on our noses and trying to make our water goblets sing by running our fingers around their rims. This past weekend, Matt and I headed up to Andersonville to eat lunch at Wickstrom's, an amazing Swedish deli that ranks among our favorite food places in Chicago. We ordered our sandwiches amidst holiday shoppers stocking up on potato sausage, bondost cheese, and glogg mix. My dad makes glogg at Christmastime, and I love it. It's warm, sweet, drowsy (read: highly alcoholic...I can't drink much more than half a mug), and festive, especially with all of the raisins and almonds flavoring your cup. That being said, I am about to offend many Christmas drink traditionalists with my next statement:
I am NOT an eggnog fan.
I suppose I need to qualify that. I don't think I've ever tasted real eggnog, but I know that I'm not a big fan of eggnog ice cream or eggnog lattes at Starbucks. Truth be told, I had never been all that certain as to exactly what eggnog was. I knew it was some sort of white, think, creamy drink, and I knew that nutmeg was somehow involved, but how exactly are eggs involved in it? And what is nog, anyway? Well, the Wikipedia entry on eggnog was a good start. And then I was watching Paula Deen on the Food Network this morning, and she was making her mother's famous eggnog.
Oh my. Watching her make it was confirmation that I just don't get the eggnog craze.
You make a meringue (like the top of a lemon meringue pie), but you don't cook it. You mix it in with egg yolks beaten with sugar, and then mix that all with whipped cream. And then you add milk and vanilla and Bourbon and nutmeg, and then freeze it all until it gets think and almost icy. I find myself just baffled by it. The ingredients sound okay enough...but they all sound like BAKING ingredients. Not drink-them-raw ingredients. And I don't quite understand a drink that is part liquid (the milk and bourbon) and part thickened mostly-frozen cream (the eggs and cream). Sort of like a milk and egg float? I'm not quite sure. I'd take a root beer float any day. Or another mug of glogg.
Amen to those mashed potatoes! I don't go for eggnog anymore either. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI was talking with Dave (the PTS chef) about his eggnog that he made for the faculty xmas party, and he said he used 15 dozen eggs. I asked him about the whole getting sick from the eggs thing and he said that it is not a problem because they're pasturized eggs. As long as something's pasturized (which most things are), then it's safe to eat it.
ReplyDeleteHe also said that if some food's bad, you're going to get sick whether or not you eat it raw or cooked. I thought that was an interesting statement.