Cook's Christmas

Last night I wondered briefly what could possibly be added to make my 31-year-old self feel the same way about Christmas this year. I couldn't think of anything, offhand. I enjoy getting gifts, and opening them. But I also enjoy giving gifts and seeing peoples' reactions to what I've come up with. (Yes, it's yet another way I get my ego stroked, I admit it.) And I have no trouble going to bed and getting to sleep the night before Christmas.

It seems kind of sad, in a way, yet I suppose I'd feel kind of pathetic if something as regular as Christmas made me feel this way, every year, at my age.

These days, the things that get me all worked up like this are not so regular, and seem to come out of the blue. It occurs to me that the last time I anticipated something as fervently as I once did Christmas was when Adrienne and I were going to have our first date.

I got some good stuff this year. Subrata had given me Sean McMullen's The Miocine Arrow (which I mentioned in Saturday's entry), I got a copy of the British Version of Philip Pullman's book Northern Lights (published in the US as The Golden Compass). My uncle gave me a granite-based replica model of Fenway Park, which looks pretty neat.

The gifts I gave seemed to go over pretty well, too (my sister called during the afternoon and said she liked what I'd bought her). I don't feel that this was my most inspired Christmas, gift-wise, but it was good enough.

In the evening I cooked dinner for my Dad and I, using a couple of recipes from Cook's Illustrated. I made a rice pilaf dish that I'd made for myself once before, with pine nuts and currants, as well as chicken breasts with a white wine and grape sauce. Both of these recipes were of the "a lot of time spent chopping things, and then everything goes really quickly once you throw things on the stove" variety. All-in-all I guess it took about an hour and a half to cook everything, and although I was afraid for a while that I'd completely screwed up the rice, everything seemed to come out fine in the end and we both stuffed ourselves with food and dessert during the evening.

Apparently I'm going to make a fine wife for some woman someday!

Overall a pretty successful Christmas.

And also a pretty cold one, as it was maybe ten degrees out during the daytime. There was also snow on the ground, left over from the week before, which apparently makes this qualify as one of the one-out-of-four "white Christmases" that Boston sees.