January 10, 2024
We had our in-town family
Christmas dinner this past Monday, bringing to a close our Christmas season
celebrations for another year. Every gift has been given and received, and
every morsel of turkey and stuffing are either eaten, or about to be (God Bless
leftovers).
As usual, our second daughter
presented us with a wonderful turkey, basted to perfection and so tasty. How
tasty, you may ask? Her turkey is the only one my dear husband will eat.
Prior to sitting down to the
meal proper, Sonja had laid the table with all sorts of appetizers, from a
veggie platter to olives to shrimp and potato chips.
I prepared my recent-years
specialty, a warm crab dip. And since I had taken it out of the oven just a
half hour before we left to go across town to Sonja’s, there was no need to heat
it up, because it was still warm.
Sonja loves this dip, and
always sits to have some as soon as we arrive. The two of us are the only ones
who really love the dish, and that’s just fine with us. The recipe yields about
5 cups, and I always give her about 2/3rds of it. Yes, I do retain a bit for myself.
If you refrigerate it, you can scoop out a bit at a time to warm gently in the
microwave and return to that happy-taste-bud heaven.
I also provide the stuffing
for the turkey, and usually the sweet potatoes. I also made my mother’s
traditional carrot pudding, and friends? That dessert disappeared this year in
record time.
The day before the dinner, I
prepared the stuffing, a very moist combination of bread, with chopped fruit (less
than a cup’s worth for two loaves of bread), mushrooms, onions, butter and
sage. The moistness comes from about a cup and a half of apple juice that the
dried and chopped fruit goes into, with cinnamon, to simmer just a bit, and
chicken broth. This is a mixture I came up with when I found a recipe for
stuffing that included some of the above ingredients, and a host of others that
didn’t appeal. I discovered that recipe several years ago, and have been making
more than just the bread, herbs and butter variety of stuffing ever since. Once
the stuffing is ready, it is delivered into Sonja’s hands, so she has it for
the next day.
The three remaining
contributions I brought to the table this year were all prepared Monday
morning. And as I sat at Sonja’s, just being with some of my grand and
great-grandchildren, prior to the mealtime Monday afternoon, I had an epiphanous
moment.
I can still do a fair number
of the things I always could. I just have to do them much slower, and they take
a hell of a lot more energy to accomplish than they ever did.
It’s all really just a matter
of choice. You see, like most people, I find that I resent the changes brought
on by growing older. While acknowledging that growing older is better
than the alternative, I can still not like some of the mobility and stamina
issues that accompany that state of grace.
So I choose to do those hard
things, understanding that, depending on how much I push myself, it could mean
I need to take it easy for a couple of days afterwards.
I won’t lie to you. Monday
morning, with preparing three dishes, was brutal; but Monday evening spent with
my loved ones made it all absolutely worth-while.
Our after-dinner entertainment
is a dice game I’ve mentioned before called left, right, center. We originally
played the two rounds of this using one-dollar coins, or loonies as they are
called. The last few times, including Monday, we used the two-dollar coins, aka
“toonies”.
Everyone except the youngest,
Sonja’s five-year-old granddaughter, played. And lest you worry that our 10-
and 9-year-old great-grandchildren are forced to gamble when they play, I
provide them with the coins to do so.
And happily—and with no
plotting on the part of the adults—once more, one of those two kids won one of
the games. His nanna, (our daughter) will be taking him shopping on the next Nanny
Tuesday so that he can get something special.
The laughter and the love of
our family times are woven together to become the soul-blanket that keeps me
warm throughout the year.
Love,
Morgan
https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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