Thanksgiving
weekend we went to New York, which was lovely since we haven't been there for
Thanksgiving--um, ever, I think--and since we haven't celebrated Thanksgiving
with my parents since they came out to LA to join us. We had Aunt Mary with
us for the whole weekend, and we got to make the first holiday meal in Mom and
Dad's beautiful new Bayside co-op. We also got to eat delicious Korean food
and empanadas and other tasty treats.
On Saturday we went up to see Yia-ya (pictured at left with Mom and Dad), and we visited with her for awhile before eating the most delicious fried fish and shrimp on City Island. The weekend was filled with lots of online word games (we introduced Aunt Mary to the wonders of Internet gaming--on one level, at least), and we flew back Saturday night to go to Allison and Mark's wedding in Boston on Sunday.
Then,
the weekend after Thanksgiving, Mom and Dad came up to Boston, and while Dad
and Robert replumbed the kitchen sink and did other chores and repair jobs around
the house, Mom joined me and Sarah at the Magi Moment (women's Christmas crafts
at Park Street). We each made a fresh centerpiece wreath, together finishing
ours in just an hour, then staying and chatting with each other another half
hour, and then leaving while virtually every other woman in the room still worked
obsessively to get her greens in the perfect spot. Sarah, Mom, and I can all
be obsessively perfectionist about many things, but apparently this sort of
wreath-making is not among them. We had a good time, though, and I gave the
wreath to Robert's grandmother to make her apartment a little more festive.
This
weekend, the second weekend in December, we had lots of fun things planned too:
Sunday John was coming down from New Hampshire, so Robert and I and Bob set
aside the day to spend with him. We all had a heavenly brunch at Henrietta's
Table in Harvard Square (fabulous fat shrimp, luscious pates and cheeses and
breads, excellent raw oysters, and that was just part of it!), after which Bob
and Robert and I walked around window shopping and actually shopping (Bob bought
a rocking chair, we bought a storage bed). Saturday, however, was a very different
sort of day: while Robert visited his grandmother, Sarah and Meg came over and
we made challah--a lot of it. I have a recipe sized to make a batch of challah
from a five-pound bag of bread flour, which I thought would be fun to do (at
least once), but I clearly didn't have the person-power or freezer-space to
either consume o
r
store that much challah. So Sarah and Meg stepped in, Meg going home with four
medium loaves (free-form single-strand twist braids, each about 11" x 5")
for herself, along with a giant loaf (10" x 16" or so) to store in
her freezer (since Sarah and I never have any space in ours) and then bring
to Sarah's Hanukkah party). We also brought a baker's dozen (excuse me, I mean
the twelve tribes of Israel plus one to grow on) of good-sized (Kaiser-roll
sized) rolls to Miriam's housewarming party later that night, along with some
good cultured salted butter and a cream cheese spread with garlic chives. In
addition, I made a 9" x 5" loaf to freeze for Christmas Day and six
small loaves (6-7" x 3" or so) that I wrapped as gifts for various
people. The challah itself was delicious, light and not too sweet, and I was
able to rotate loaves in and out of warm spots and hot spots and the oven so
that everything both rose and baked properly--quite a feat, considering the
scale of this endeavor.
Above left is me, the night before, realizing that the proofing container I had wasn't big enough to keep the dough during its first, chilled, overnight proofing period. I'm wincing because I knew it would open with quite the pop. At right is me with the dough now split in two, each half in a giant Tupperware "ThatsaBowl" bowl to finish rising. Below left you see Sarah and Meg as they form some rolls, and below right you see some of the baked rolls and loaves cooling.
At
Miriam's that night, the rolls were much enjoyed, along with the other goodies
she'd prepared for her and Davis's housewarming. It's a beautiful house, really,
and absolutely huge. There's even a wood-burning stove in their den, off of
the kitchen; at left, you see Davis, Sarah, Miriam, and Miriam's mother (visiting
for the weekend) posing near the stove.
At right, you see me entering a new stage of hairdye (it's Manic Panic After Midnight Blue, another product of our Cambridge shopping foray with Bob on Sunday)--it seemed like a good time to do it, since my roots were starting to show in the Halloween blonde, and since I'm pretty sure I couldn't get this much of a tint to my hair normally without bleaching it first--and as I proved to myself from the triple-bleach experiment in October, that's an awful lot of work. Wait, what's my favorite color again? I can't seem to remember. I'll leave it this color through Christmas, at least, and then we'll see what happens.
Go back to web essays or over to links.
robertandchristina.com
was made with a Mac.
© 2006 C&R Enterprises
Email christina@robertandchristina.com
or robert@robertandchristina.com
Created: 12/12/06. Last Modified: 12/12/06.