Happy New Year!

Life's a Party!

My grandmother, the late, great Gaga, used to say that it was vitally important to choose your New Year's Eve activities well. However you started the year was how you were destined to end it.

I wish I could say that Gaga was right - it would make life so much easier! But the year that started with the all-night rave at the L.A. Coliseum was my most sober. The year that started with the 5:00 A.M. hike in Topanga Canyon was my unhealthiest. So, there goes that theory.

Looking back, the New Years I've enjoyed the most (perhaps because they are the ones that I remember most clearly!) have involved a small and close group of family and friends, a bottle of Nicolas Feuillate Rose, and a card game or two. I'll be following this successful formula tonight.

Friends, may you all have a very happy and healthy 2013!

Merry Christmas!

Dear Readers,

Thank you for your comments, encouragement, and kindness these last few months. I have enjoyed peeking into your fabulous lives, and I sincerely hope you've had some fun poking around in my little corner of the blogosphere.

This Christmas will be a bittersweet one for my family: bitter because it will be our first one without my father who died in August, sweet because we will focus on the joy of my soon to be four-year-old niece.

My dad wasn't much of a drinker, but he always looked forward to this punch my sister would make every Christmas morning.

Milk Punch 
(Makes 6 cocktails)

Ingredients:
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
8 ounces brandy
4 ounces bourbon
1 egg white (optional)
1 tbsp vanilla extract
Grated nutmeg

Make a simple syrup by combining the sugar and water in a saucepan. Heat over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is boiling.  Let simmer until the mixture is clear, about 8 minutes.  Pour into a jar and cool.  Refrigerate until cold.

Combine the syrup, milk, cream, alcohol, egg white, and vanilla in a large pitcher.  Stir well, or, if you have a lid, shake.  Serve in old-fashioned glasses and sprinkle each cocktail with some nutmeg.

Note: If you don't have time to make a simple syrup, don't despair. Just make sure the water is really, really cold, throw all the ingredients except the nutmeg together, and stir well.

The Longest Night

Burn a bayberry candle at the close of the year, and you'll have good luck in the next.  As the saying goes, "A bayberry candle burned to the socket brings food to the larder and gold to the pocket." Opinions differ on the optimal evening to light the wick - some say Christmas Eve, others say New Year's Eve.  But with the fiscal cliff fast approaching and the Mayan End of Times looming, it hardly seems prudent to wait much longer.  The winter solstice is as good an excuse as any for a candle-lit dinner. 

The Bee Man Candle Company

Good night, and good luck!

A Sweater Only a Mom Could Love



Oh, the humiliation.

I have a confession to make: I am a huge QVC fan.  At the end of excruciatingly bad weekdays, I flop onto the bed with the Merry Dog, down a dry martini, and watch the overly-animated QVC hosts talk up the pros of heat-treated topaz rings, 15" Dell laptop computers, and patent-pending cellulite creams.

It's all television gold, but my favorite segments are devoted to the Christmas sweaters created by the evil geniuses at Quacker Factory.  By any sartorial standard, these sweaters are just...awful.  In fact, they are so awful that, out of concern for your precious eyeballs, I'm not even going to provide a link to them, lest you be tempted to gaze upon their blinding glory.  Google at your own risk.   

But my reptile brain is entranced by these horrid little sweaters. Is it the gaudy flash of red and green rhinestones? (Sequined evergreen trees! Bedazzled candy canes! LED reindeer noses!) Or maybe the earnest testimonials of call-in guests who gush about their Quaker Factory sweaters of Christmases past and present? ("You won't see yourself coming and going in one of these sweaters!")

I don't know.  I do know, however, that I am not alone in this sick obsession with the Ugly Christmas Sweater.

Over the past several years, the U.C.S. competition has become a popular Yuletide event. In the beginning, it was easy fun.  Raid your mom's closet, grab at random one of the many, many (why, Lord, so many?) red scratchy cotton-acrylic blend crewnecks with seasonally-appropriate 3D appliques, and you were good for at least third place. 

But the competition this year is fierce. Several of my friends have remarked upon the difficulty of obtaining a truly ugly U.C.S.  Previously reliable sources (e.g. Aaardvark's in Redondo Beach) sold all the "good" ones weeks ago to hyper-prepared hipsters. Many a party-goer is resorting to embellishing a not-ugly-enough U.C.S with holiday pins or puffy-paint pens. Is this cheating, or at the very least, not in keeping with the found object spirit of the competition?  Purists say yes.   But you'd be surprised how low people will stoop when a bottle of Bailey's is on the line.    

Thanksgiving with all the (Christmas) Trimmings

Last year, I didn't decorate for Christmas.  The Merry Husband and I spent the holidays in Brooklyn, and it seemed silly to put up decorations if we weren't even going to be in town.  I, of course, regretted the decision and have been itching for a do-over for eleven months.  So yesterday, MH hauled out the tree for me, and I put on the album my parents always played while decking the halls.

It just wouldn't be Christmas without hearing Tammy Wynette's "(If This is What You Call a Merry Christmas) We Must be Having One."

My tree has seen better days, and I think this year may be its last.  It's always been a bit of a Charlie Brown tree, skinny and sparse, but yesterday, no amount of floofing its plastic branches seemed to help.

Nevertheless, I was happy to see my favorite ornaments again, like my Radko hula girl and the miniature Belleek plates from my sister.

As I dug through the decorations, I came across a small embroidered tablecloth that I bought in July at the Long Beach flea market.  It is just about the right size for my side table.

I filled a bowl with circa 1960 German ball ornaments I found at Alpine Village in Torrance.

Diana Vreeland once said that a little bad taste is like a nice splash of paprika.  Well, here's our big heapin' spoonful - the jackalope head that MH just *had* to have when we saw it last October at the Indian Trading Post in Calumet, Oklahoma.

I love vintage and retro Christmas decorations, and am currently on the lookout for a candle carousel similar to this one:

I'd be thrilled to find some vintage bubble lights like these too.

What are your favorite decorations?

The Nice List

The Merry Husband and I spent the bulk of yesterday driving through rural Nevada and California on the US-395, avoiding the retail hell that is Black Friday.  We stopped long enough in Bishop to make a purchase from Mahogany Smoked Meats, where, luckily, there was enough smoked salmon and habanero buffalo jerky to feed us and our fellow shoppers, scary-looking but polite bikers.

Nevertheless, I won't be able to avoid the mace-wielding crowds forever.  It's time to tackle the Nice List.

A Lenox cocktail shaker for Sis, the entertainer.

A statement necklace from Cristina V. for Mom, the Scorpio. 

Running socks for my husband, the marathoner.

A giant Elmo for my niece.

(Okay, maybe not that giant, but you get the idea.)

And a little something for myself.

When Holidays Go Wrong

Thanksgiving dinner presents a unique challenge for the cooking enthusiast.  Egomaniacs Hostesses like myself jump at the opportunity to amaze our friends and family members with our perfect pie crusts and mad turkey-brining skills.  But expectations run high.  James Beard used to say, "Anyone who doesn't think the best burgers are to be found in his own hometown is a ninny."  So it is with Thanksgiving.  Every guest knows in his heart-of-hearts that his beloved Meemaw made the best Jell-O salad ever.

Knowing that we cannot compete with remembrances of meemaws past, is it any surprise that some years we are tempted to ignore tradition and forge our own way forward?  Bitter experience has taught me to avoid that landmine-fraught path.  In the wake of a family member's health scare in 2001, I insisted on cooking all sides and desserts from my depressingly large collection of heart-friendly cookbooks.  I was especially excited about creamed chard with a twist - soy milk and (because my grocery store didn't stock the usual green) red chard.  It had not occurred to me that the beet color would leach from the stalks, turning the dish a shade of puce that my sister compared unfavorably to McDonaldland's Grimace.

Then there was 2007, the Year of the Tofurkey.  The less said about that year the better.

This year, it's back to the basics.  The Merry Husband and I have been invited to join the celebration at my sister's in-laws' home in Incline Village, Nevada.  These tried-and-true recipes will make an appearance.

Mom Parson's Cranberries

Roasted Parsnip Bread Pudding

Carrots with Ginger and Honey

Chocolate Pecan Pie with Bourbon

The turkey has been ordered from Willie Bird.

Potluck Season

Thanksgiving is *gasp* less than two weeks away, and for many of us the next six weeks will be a blur of potlucks.  Casseroles, pies, cookies...we'll make them all, arrange them on pretty platters, and tote them off to our offices, churches, and friends' houses. 

On the surface, potlucks seem especially suited to the holiday spirit of sharing and cooperation, like that Stone Soup story come to life.  But let's face the ugly truth.  These things are a viper's nest of culinary competition.  God forbid two ladies somehow sign up to bring the same dish - oh the horror!  You'd better avoid them both for the rest of the night, lest one of them discovers you didn't find her chicken salad superior in every way.

With the stakes so high, it's worth considering first impressions.  Planning just to walk into the party with tin foil slapped on top of your casserole dish?  Well, Vonny has got you covered.  Based in Southern California but run by Southerners, this little company makes the cutest casserole, pie, and market totes you've ever seen. 

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

And if everything you own must be monogrammed, In This Very Room can help (or enable, as the case may be).

May the best pie win.