Christmas 2023: The Word is "Subdued"

You know what? Colds suck.

Sometimes in life, all your plans end up for naught, what in the software business we used to call "overcome by events." This holiday season was such a time in our lives for Annie and me. We had all kinds of plans to celebrate with friends, to make some great food, and to open some really nice bottles of wine, not much of which happened.

Three days before Christmas, Ann started dragging and it just got worse. By Christmas Eve, she had a full-blown cold which took until the 30th to wear off, just in time to celebrate New Year's Eve with Rob and Dyce. New Year's Eve day, Dyce called to say that on the heels of their trip to Italy, he'd been sick and now Rob was down with it. So much for New Year's Eve; we pushed our celebration out to the first weekend in January, this coming weekend. 

Ann planned to make a lot of different cookies to share with friends and neighbors, especially the lovely kids next door. She ended up only making one kind and I ended up baking them while she went to shower to try to make herself feel better. I spent an entire day making a beef ragù to stuff into paccheri pasta for a gathering at our house. We canceled that and the ragù sits in the refrigerator still. Christmas Eve, we were going to friends' house for smoked brisket and I was going to make a casserole of pommes dauphinois; we begged off.

Christmas Day, we were going to make a batch of some sort of Calabrese rolled pasta such as fileja with a spicy 'nduja sauce. That didn't happen either. Just after Christmas, we were going to Yakima to see an old friend and spend the night exploring the beer of the Yakima Valley. I ended up going by myself, fighting horrible fog both ways, jamming the trip into a single day.

We had planned to pour some nice bottles for our holiday meals; they sit untouched in the cooler.

How does the old saying go? "Man plans and Fate laughs." Truth.

Here's what we did manage to accomplish for the holidays in spite of illness.

What Ann Calls "Monster Cookies," for the Neighbor Kids

Putting a Brave Face on Feeling Miserable

Christmas Eve, we had no plans to dine at home, having been invited for brisket at our friends' house. We canceled first thing that morning, not wanting to infect anyone else. Still, Ann was trying to make herself feel better and asked me if I would get a loaf of bread and a La Tur cheese, then roast the piece of lamb shoulder that I had in the freezer. I obliged, but it just wasn't the same, the way she was feeling.

La Tur Cheese

Roasted Local Lamb Shoulder
Served with Red Wine-Whole Grain Mustard Sauce

Usually, I plan a nice brunch dish for Christmas Day, but with Ann not feeling well, I assumed breakfast was off. Later on in the day, she asked me for some eggs, so I made some creamy eggs with bacon, green onions, and Brie, stirred fairly constantly to make them medium-curd, an intermediate between the large curds that I normally do and the tiny curds of oeufs brouillés that I make every so often. These eggs were right sexy.

French Scramble with Bacon, Green Onions, and Brie

Fortunately, we got our tree the second week of December and had plenty of time to decorate it before Ann fell ill. Otherwise, we probably wouldn't have bothered. We have retired all the old ornaments and are starting over with a food and drink-themed tree. If you enlarge the photo below, you can see that all of the garland is made from beads and wine corks, thanks to many years of effort by great friend Donald.

Don't You Have a Garlic Ornament on Your Tree?

Home Sweet Home!

Christmas Day, Ann and I had planned to make a spicy batch of homemade pasta for which I had ordered some 'nduja, that spicy spreadable salame from Calabria. I had given up on making dinner, just planning to graze out of the refrigerator, but late in the afternoon, Ann asked if I would make a simple, non-spicy pasta for us for dinner. And, so I obliged her with the simplest pasta I know, amatriciana, with only three ingredients: guanciale, tomato passata, and salt.

Rendering Guanciale for Amatriciana Sauce

Spicy 'Nduja, Left for Another Occasion

Did a Rat Take a Bite out of the Pecorino?
No, That's a Clear Sign that Ann Was in the Cheese

Penne Amatriciana

Delicious Sancerre Rouge

We didn't open any of the really good bottles for the holidays, but with our amatriciana, we did open a fairly obscure red Sancerre which was delicious and stylistically very different from our Oregon Pinots, the relatively big tannins and high acid working well with the pasta sauce.

So for our holidays in 2023, things just didn't go as planned. But that is life. Nothing is ever perfect and all you can do is play the hand you are dealt the best that you are able. I think Ann and I did a pretty good job making the best of our marginal hand, even if things were subdued. I'm just sorry that she felt so rotten the entire time.