Put down the heart-shaped bones; pick up the nog

Back in August, I threw a hissy fit (well-deserved, I maintain) over the discovery that Hallowe'en decor was already appearing in stores.

Cue Fit Number Two.

Yesterday--that is, December 29--we encountered this display in Target:



Yep, we're not even out of 2007 yet, and they've already started with the Valentine's merch.

Not sufficiently astounded? Look more closely.



Because it's never too early to start shopping for a sweetheart outfit. For your dog.

It's official: Santa hates us

He hates us and everyone we hold dear.

What cause do I have for making such an outrageous claim? Oh, I don't know; maybe it was the fact that we tracked his movements on Christmas Eve, thanks to NORAD's high-tech spy satellites (the same ones used "in providing warning of possible missile launches aimed at North America").

You see us when we're sleeping, Santa. But we know when you're slacking off.

By the time we checked in with NORAD's Santa-tracking operations center, around 7pm on Monday night, he'd already finished throwing presents down the chimneys of most of Europe and was wandering around South America. And then, for no apparent reason, he shot up to deploy gifts over northeast Canada. And then zipped back down to Argentina.

Not exactly efficient, for sure.

He spent a serious amount of time in Cuba--that is to say, in Guantanamo. And then he started working his way up the southern US states, from Florida to Tennessee.

At which point we gave up and had some nog.

We checked in with NORAD later. Goodness! Santa had been everywhere!



Well ... not quite everywhere.

See, he hadn't been to England, apart from a cursory flyover of London.



And he hadn't been to Puerto Rico at all, apparently oblivious to the call of sweet, sweet lechón.



I suspect he assumed we'd be on one of those islands, as we've spent Christmas in one place or the other for the past few years.

In which case, he'd have no trouble visiting Boston. Right? Right??



Worcester? WOOSTAH? (Raises fist) Saaanttaaaaa!!!

What we done fer Christmas

1) Dinner on Christmas Eve: The Boy brought together Puerto Rican and English influences with pork tenderloin massaged with garlic and oregano, roasted alongside brussels sprouts, carrots, fennel, golden beets and beet greens with garlic, served with a fresh redcurrant sauce, accompanied by a fruity young Australian pinot noir.

Before:



After:



2) Breakfast on Christmas Day: somehow it has become tradition that we always have Stollen (has to be the kind with marzipan in the middle). So we did.



3) Frenzy of wrapping paper destruction.



The cat is indifferent about her new toys. But I love my camcorder. And The Boy loves his parmo t-shirt.



4) Tearful excitement over the discovery that The Boy is taking me to Aruba for my birthday. He kept it a complete surprise, the sly dog. Oh, no--what should I pack??

5) Lunch and dinner: a selection of cheeses (Maitre Seguin, Idiazabal, Wensleydale with cranberries, also a soft goat cheese wrapped in cherry leaves), prosciutto, olives, grapes, cherry tomatoes, pate and a crusty baguette ("Baguette?"). It was nice not to have to do the peeling/chopping/cooking/cleaning thing for once, and instead just nibble at stuff over a glass of Veuve.

6) Oh, also, a smackerel of something around four-ish: real proper Christmas cake with marzipan and icing, and a mince pie. Mr. Kipling's, of course.

7) That was pretty much the limit of our exertion. We read, watched TV, listened to festive music, pulled crackers and made some charitable donations (check out the options at Changing the Present).

8) Oh yeah--and we wore our pajamas all day long. Mostly.

Merry Christmas!

Hey, Finley! Check out this snow!

Finley, your mum told me you're disappointed because your toboggan is just sitting there, waiting for snow, and you don't have any.

Well, I can't send you real snow for Christmas (I think it would melt in the box before it got to your house), so this will have to do for now.

This was the view from our front window last week:



The snow at the end of the street was piled into a big hill:



It was very pretty at first:



But every time it snows, we have to shovel the path and dig out the car. Some people don't bother to do that:



You can see all our snow pictures here.

And here's a cool video someone else made of the snowstorm in Boston last February:



Maybe one day you can come and visit us in winter. Until then, I'll try and wish some snow in your direction!!

No taxation without a nice chocolate coating

We British do love our sweet indulgences, as the amount of floor space dedicated to pastries in the average supermarket illustrates.



And cookies--we love those, too (except we call them biscuits. Or bickies. As in, "Would you like a nice choccy bickie?").

But the distinction between the former and the latter is not always clearly drawn. The Jaffa Cake is an example of this: it says "cake" right there on the box. It's made from spongecake topped with chocolate, with an orangey filling. But you usually find them alongside HobNobs and Chocolate Digestives (the original choccy bickie).

I know, I know. You're wondering why it matters. What's the big deal, anyway?

The big deal, my Yankee Doodle friend, is in that which comes to all of us: taxation.

From Teacake mistake could cost Treasury, The Guardian, December 14:

Confusion over the chocolate-covered teacake--a dome of marshmallow on a biscuit swathed in milk chocolate--could cost the British government £3.5m after an EU court adviser said the retailer Marks & Spencer should get a refund of the tax it paid during the decades that tax authorities insisted they were biscuits.

HM Customs and Excise states that cakes and biscuits are exempt from VAT (think sales tax). However, chocolate-covered biscuits are considered a luxury item, and must be priced to include the 17.5% VAT.

So in this case, M&S had been pricing the teacakes as luxureh biscuits until "Britain saw the error of its ways in late 1994, agreeing that the items were cakes."

1) Don't you love that the government of My People takes the time to deliberate such issues?



2)Rorschach time: What does this look like to you? Cake or biscuit?

(Imagine biting through the crisp chocolate shell, feeling it yield and break, the soft, sweet marshmallow springing up willingly against the roof of your mouth, the chocolate now melting slightly, warm and rich on your tongue, and then the biscuit base, feigning resistance but falling apart under pressure, filling your mouth with generous, buttery crumbs ...)

Uhh ... sorry, what?

Mature ladies, good with hands

The Interwebs, as we know, have opened up vast new arenas for illicit fantasies and perverse pleasures that would, at one time, have been hidden under the mattress or experienced furtively in darkened rooms.

But not any more, oh no; now, it's all out there to be discovered, experienced and cleaned up after.

And I thought I'd seen my fair share of the Strange and Unusual. But then I discovered a Swiss site that allows you to select a mature lady and have her
do your bidding. The photos are right there; the women are smiling as they demonstrate their manual dexterity. Click an image, and you'll find a teasing quote from the performer.

Gertrud says, "Ich kann nicht einfach nur da sitzen, meine Hände müssen etwas zu tun haben." (I can't just sit there, my hands need something to do.")

Doris B reveals that what she does "ist für mich, wie für andere Yoga" ("for me, it's as yoga is for other people.")

Well, now the whole world knows what you're doing, Doris. You and your socks habit.

Knitting! She's knitting, people! (What did you think it was, huh?)

The service is called NetGranny; you start by choosing a prospective knitter ("Wähle deine Granny") and then click on a sock color (or let granny surprise you with her own design).

Then you pay $40 and wait two weeks.

For a pair of socks.

Wow. I sure hope those grannies know how to satisfy.

A decadent winter afternoon

Tim and Peter mark 15 years of togetherness in April, but have decided, in a fit of brilliance, to spread the celebration out over the next few months. Genius.

For December, that meant a weekend at the Copley Plaza, and they invited us to share their rented luxury, starting with lunch in the Oak Room.

We'd been given a table for 2pm--which turned out to be the same time the kitchen closed--but the staff were very apologetic and kept things running long enough for us to eat. The food was pretty good all round, though Peter made the winning choices. First, fluffy, fist-sized crab cakes on a fresh red-pepper coulis:



And then eggs Benedict topped with caviar, with insanely light roast potatoes:



We were the only people in the room, apart from a table of four black-clad dowagers in fur-covered hats. The walls were paneled in oak (natch), carved with leaves and acorns, decorated with stag heads; the ceiling had plaster cherubs and half-clad reclining women.

And then the waiter brought an extra plate of Boston cream pie.



I like this place.

Other ways the Copley Plaza does customer service well:

Lobby dog!
Catie the black lab hangs out in the hotel's lobby, and is available for walks and snorgling. Sadly, she wasn't around on Saturday (I guess she needs a day off from being fussed over). Still, the concept suggests a friendly, unpretentious, comfortable atmosphere.

Fairmont Fit
Available throughout the Plaza's corporate chain, this program delivers workout gear to your room, to save you traveling with sneakers and yoga mats. Of course, I have no personal interest in, you know, exercise, but it's a nice example of identifying a user need and filling it.

Gold Floor
The hotel's fourth floor, whence we retired after lunch. It feels like a private club; guests staying on that floor have access to large sitting rooms with leather wing chairs and books and board games, and a kitchen regularly replenished with wine, champagne, egg nog, cheeses and fruits and sausage rolls and pretzels and olives and roasted artichokes.

We liked it. A lot.



Just when it seemed things couldn't get any better, halfway through an intense game of Scrabble, the waiter/concierge guy came round with oversized chocolate-chip cookies. Yay!

There were only two downsides to the afternoon: the fact that the piped-in music consisted of exactly one song (something by Enya that just kept going and going and going), and the fact that we had to leave, eventually, and go back out into the freezing night.

Parmo vote: the results are in

And, surprising no-one, I did not make the cut in the finals of the World Parmo Cooking Championships, despite my best efforts to stuff the ballot box. Probably just as well, given the improbability of me being able to catch a flight to Teesside and make it to Stockton High Street this week, what with the snow and all.



So who are the finalists? The three winners include Borges (not Argentinean, as you might expect, but rather Italian) and Billingham's Mexi-maybe Mohujos, whose Angolan chef is trained in Portuguese cuisine. I guess, if nothing else, that this validates the "World" part of the contest's title.

So big thanks to everyone who voted for me. I owe you all several beers, followed by a deep-fried slice of chicken smothered in cheese, topped with more cheese.

Here's how the MSM tells it. (Votes from Cardiff, huh? I wonder which post code??)

Bacon's bad! No, it's good! No, it's on the rocks!

I'm the last person to pay attention to media reports on the health risks of food, on the premise that, much like New England weather, a ten-minute wait will see the wind blowing in the opposite direction (see salt, wine, eggs, et cetera).

But even I was perturbed by the recent revelation that eating processed meats could increase one's risk of cancer. You know what that means? Ham. Sausage.

And ... yes ... (no!) ... yes. Bacon.



If this is wrong, then I don't wanna be right.

Apparently, it's also bad for the lungs (what? You're not supposed to snort it, people!!).

Which is why it's so damned agonizing that, in this (slightly tired) age of molecular gastronomy and culinary science, we now have a gajillion ways to celebrate bacon. And as if that weren't enough, there's now a movement--albeit tentative--toward bacon cocktails. It's just not fair.

But wait ... did I just see the weather-vane spin to the west? Have the clouds given way to blue skies? Because now we have a report from UT Houston suggesting that nitrate-rich foods may help heart-attack victims recover more quickly.

So ... we should eat enough bacon to prevent a coronary, but not so much we stop breathing. Oh, it's all so confusing.

I need a drink.

Boo, winter! Yay, soup!

Monday morning looked like this:



That was the view from the inside of the car; the ice was so thick that it distorted the view through the windows. The black blur in the picture is The Boy's arm.

The only thing that can make such a day better is Caldo Gallego.

This Galician soup is a staple in Puerto Rico. Which is funny when you think about it: a dish originally from the cool climes of northwest Spain being a big hit in the 80-degree humidity of the Caribbean.

The recipe has variations that include chicken and turnip greens (only available frozen in Puerto Rico); the old-school version, from Cocina Criolla (the Puerto Rican Joy of Cooking) involves making ham stock from scratch to cook the dry beans.

We have a quick mid-week version that's good for a cold winter night, when anything more than a one-pot meal is too much to handle.

So throw into a dutch oven:

one onion, diced
three to four cloves of garlic, minced
two slices of roughly chopped ham
two (or three) chorizos (or, to be inauthentic, andouille sausage)
one 15-oz can of cannellini beans
two pints of chicken stock
one large potato, cubed
a big ol' bunch of leafy greens (kale, collards, turnip greens, broccoli rabe), torn into bite-sized pieces

Bring to a boil, uncovered, then turn the heat down and let it simmer with the lid on for about 20 minutes.



Doesn't that just warm your cockles?

I know fruitcake. You, sir, are no fruitcake

One of the best things about Christmas is fruitcake. And when I say that, I'm speaking English, not American. I have come to understand translation is required.

Fruitcake in England is a true celebration cake, served at weddings as well as during the holidays. It's rich, dark, buttery, moist, loaded with raisins and currants and sultanas.

(And more: my grandmother always made her cake at the end of October and spent the intervening weeks feeding it brandy until it was an aromatic fire hazard.)

In contrast, fruitcake in America is a block of concrete topped with neon fruitlike food substances.

People laugh at fruitcake, because that's the only practical use it has.

I must admit, at first I thought this was an exaggerated reaction to a couple of bad experiences, inflated for comedic purposes. So I bought a fruitcake from WholeFoods to find out for myself. And then I realized that we laugh because we don't want to cry.



The black things are dried prunes. Oh yeah. Enjoy, wontcha?

I mean, it wasn't bad. It was a little dry, and the cake itself was bland and underseasoned. The main problem was that it was hopelessly overstuffed with candied fruit, and every mouthful held big, chewy chunks of the stuff, the flavors indistinguishable from each other. It would be kind to say it was ... an unsubtle experience.



Which leads to the question: why does it appear every year? Who is buying this stuff in great enough quantities that bakeries across the country think it profitable to produce?

Answers below, please.

Meanwhile, I stand by my conviction that real fruitcake is a wonderful thing. One day I'll show you. I'll show you all.

The antidote to a winter night

You take one of these:



And some of this:



And you put them together to create this:



Custard hot enough that you can feel the warmth in your throat. Cake light and spicy and studded with fruit.

Don't knock it if you haven't tried it.

Oh hai winter

Can you leave now?

K THX BYE