The Holy Days

Man, I’ve come to hate the Xmas crap DW insists I endure each year. Xmas is supposed to be Christmas, a religious holiday I don’t participate in because I’m not an Xian let alone a Christian. Having to be part of the commercial bull crap that her family (and damned near everyone else) demands each year rubs my cantankerous self in every wrong way.

I’ve mostly given up explaining that Scrooge was a miser and I’m anything but. Money flows through my fingers faster than an ATM can read a magnetic strip! I love giving gifts for no reason other than I can. And I love gifting any day of the year but Xmas. Explaining things to emotional, close-minded people is a waste of time and energy. So when DW says “Take me to a store, I need to buy Xmas crap (she doesn’t quite say it that way, that’s how I hear it) I carp and grumble as I drive to wherever she’s going to torment me with questions like “Do you think blah blah would like this? Or should we get blah blah this?”

My, “What’s this WE crap? Leave me the hell out of this!” get’s me the one eyed squint and I wander off to look at hammers and contemplate the murder of commercial Xmas.

The last few years we’ve begun a tradition of a New Year’s Day feast that brings a handful of people to our table for steamed shrimp and whatever else we feel like cooking for those who gather. Because we spend a lot more than we can afford on the New Year’s vittles I tend to keep my anger over Xmas to a low grumble. We have to begin buying shrimp in September in order to have close to 20 pounds by the first of January. If I irritate DW too much with my Xmas rants she’ll balk at my shrimp buying.

The 2013 feast was almost cancelled due to my not wanting to clean and rearrange our house to accommodate the seven or so guests that usually turn up. My being so grouchy about Xmas that year didn’t inspire feelings of sharing either. Simona spent a hour lecturing me about our feast being the one day of the year she does not have to prepare a meal and serve us! She allowed I owed her that one day of her being a guest!

I snarled and snapped (I hate being trapped) and pleaded that getting the house in order was simply too much work! She came back with not caring about the condition of our house; she would endure that to be a guest at our table. “This is the day I look forward to all year! Do not take this away from me! Your family, and this day, is as close to being with my family as I can get in this country!”

Damn. So we rearranged and cleaned, and gathered foods, and prepared. And Simona, and several other invited guests came down with a flu.

This year we prepared the unoccupied upstairs apartment for the feast. Twenty-two pounds of shrimp were steamed, four loaves of bread baked. Oxtail mushroom gravy, chicken Alfredo, roasted veggies and buttered egg noodles were set out. A roasted chicken and a duck were dissected and presented. Wine bottles were open, jugs of tea offered. DW brought out her broccoli salad, Harvey Wallbanger cake and gluten-free brownies.

Simona, a better cook than I on any day, tasted everything and offered that I had outdone myself. She would have to turn the table on me and show me up with some feast of her own! I argued that everything I offered was more accident than planned. Considering how much had gone wrong over the 3 days of meal prepping I’m surprised anything turned out edible! The Mad One did not care! I had set a table that impressed her and she took that as a challenge!

Simona turned from her plate and smiled. “This is all very good. How will you do better next year?”

“I’m already planning next year’s feast.” I said without a smile. She frowned and said something about outdoing me in the meantime. Cousin Luke rolled his eyes and groaned. He muttered something about “Here we go, a food war.”

Out of nowhere, the Mad One asks about the cabbages. “How are they doing?”

I don’t know if she was hoping I’d made a mess of them as I had two years ago, but I thought they were doing well enough so I took her to the back room to see the ferment bucket. (Because most people think fermenting cabbages stink I have to keep the bucket out of DW’s parts of the house.) Simona lifted the lid from the bucket and commented the scum that bubbled across the surface meant the ferment was ongoing. A good sign.

She stuck her finger into the brine and stuck the scum-covered digit into her mouth. He eyes expanded as she dashed out of the room for the sink. I caught something like “How did you do this?” She rushed back in with a cup, dipped brine from the bucket, and began sipping it as if I’d introduced her to a wine I was making!

“This is so good! This is so much better than my cabbages. What did you do?”

I’m confused by this time. “What did I do? Hell, I did what you told me to do!”

“Then why is yours so much better than mine? Oh, the dill comes through nicely and the horseradish undertones assert themselves after the wonderful salty dill fades away. This is SO good! How did you do this?”

“I followed the recipe you got from you dad.”

We return to the feast where people look at us as if we’re nuts. We’re talking about why the brine is saltier than her dad’s when we’ve followed his instructions. (She decides he makes a 55-gallon barrel of fermented cabbages while we’re working with two or three heads that can only absorb so much salt.) I’m explaining that I’ve found seeds for cabbages breed for just what we’re doing. I don’t tell her that next year’s garden is part of my next New Year’s Day feast plan.

Most everything DW and I prepared and set before the guests came from a supermarket. Some of it we assembled from boxed mixes, some came about as blends of whole foods and canned. Other than the garlic I roasted with the taters, celery, carrots and onions nothing was grown by us. Next year I plan to change as much of that as proves possible.

Should the garden come close to what we have planned, should we have laying hens and feeder lambs, perhaps a deer in the freezer, I intend to set a table fit for a Bulgarian foodie!

I’m going to have to learn to cook first. And there will have to be a tradeoff to my having to learn something I’m not wild about. Those who gather are going to have to feast on my holiday and that ain’t New Year’s Day. It’s the day of the Winter Solstice.