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holidays

Mix and Match

Saturday 01 June 2013

A busy day, with mowing, smoking, staking, moving, shaking -- a busy June beginning in preparation for a long-delayed first-birthday party for the Boy. It coincides with Dzien Dziecka, a holiday missing from the American calendar, so we'll be having a laughter-filled party (We have Mother's and Father's Day? Why do we leave the children out?)

But there was no time for pictures today. And so we have the mix-and-match: pictures from yesterday (L's kindergarten awards day) and a few words about today.

Blessings

Saturday 07 April 2012

Blessings are everywhere if we just look for them. I suppose that's called an optimistic outlook in secular terms. Perhaps hope? (The odd thing about hope: you have to have hope in something. There has to be a basis for that hope. Either you have hope in a deity or hope in the goodness of humanity, or hope something else.)

Today is a day of blessings, from a kind mother who does something as simple as trying new, time-consuming ways of putting patterns in colored eggs to bring a little different shade of joy to the Easter table.

Or a priest sprinkling holy water over baskets of food to be consumed as part of the Easter celebration.

Or people who embrace the traditions of the Old World and pass them on to their children.

Or family and friends who are with you at all the major markers of one's life.

Or children laughing and screaming in delight.

Or the pride of accomplishment. Or electricity.

Or new-found courage and independence.

Or a friend to hold you when you're hurt.

The Downward Side

Tuesday 27 December 2011

The holiday season is parabolic. We spend all this time preparing for it, getting excited for it, cooking for it, and then, in a rush and a flash, it’s all over. The lights are still shining; the tree is still up; the Girl still sings carols. But we all know that we’re on the downhill side of the parabola. And this morning, it was if the weather were supplying the scenery on cue.

In the past, this was a source of wistful sorrow, this let down after such an emotional high. It’s the return to the normal, a return from that time when everything seems to stand still for just long enough for us to catch a whisper of something greater than our everyday lives. In Polish, this normal life, this “everyday reality” is called codzienność, “everyday-ness,” and the clumsiness of that translation — that awkward “-ness” — seems somehow more appropriately descriptive of codzienność, without that scent of pseud-philosophy the “reality” part of the English equivalent provides.

Children, I think, get this on a daily, multi-dose basis on the playground. They stand in line for this or that piece of equipment, filled with an anticipation and excitement that only makes the wait more torturous. The actual activity — the slide, the swing — passes in a flash, and they’re back at the end of the line. In that sense, it’s not a parabola; it’s a sine curve. And I suppose it is for us adults as well, it’s just got a longer wave length.

Saint Stephen’s Day 2011

Monday 26 December 2011

For us, the holidays are a time of Wigilia leftovers. We’ve begun our lunch two days in a row now with barszcz z uszkami. The Girl likes her barszcz without the “ears,” (i.e., dumplings), though. For sane people, it’s the wild-mushroom-filled dumplings that elevate the dish to perfection, but the fact that L loves barszcz is enough.

It’s not the barszcz she’s used to, though. This is peppery, clear barszcz, made with fermented beet juice to give it an edge. The result is a testament to the Girl’s love of the soup: it’s peppery enough that afterward, she fusses about how her throat burns, and she eats it knowing this is coming.

After lunch, I pack her small bike and helmet in the trunk, and we head for our favorite park, leaving K at home to rest and enjoy some quiet. L quickly makes friends with a young Latino girl her age who is also on a bike, and the two spend the next ninety minutes together, playing games, comparing notes about second-language abilities, and being five-year-olds.

Later, when L and K are both in bed, I occupy myself with old pictures. I look through the pictures of our wedding in 2004, pictures I’ve seen dozens of times, then move to pictures from the day after: a small garden party, family and friends relaxing in a surprisingly warm day in my in-laws’ yard.

I drift into thoughts about how different this life is from that, and how similar.

Gnostic Preparation

Saturday 24 December 2011

What happens if the one individual who truly knows how to cook the traditional Christmas Eve meals doesn’t feel like doing much more than resting through her cold?

To begin with, she drinks folk remedies like egg yolks in hot milk — eggnog base, I guess — and a syrup of honey and garlic that produces breath foul enough to stop a charging rhino. (It’s sweet, though, and the Girl loves it: she takes a bit every night, and it truly helps ward off colds. But the best part for her is running around and breathing on everyone. Probably the fact that, in a fit of hyperbolic play, I fell down dramatically in the middle of the kitchen floor afterward helped encourage the game.)

It also means that the Polish-ized American husband gets his first shot and cooking barszcz from scratch.

This starts by making an beet-based vegetable stock from:

three carrots,
three beets,
two celery stalks,
two parsnips,
half an onion,
half a dozen cloves of garlic,
two prunes, and
one apple.

Cubed into large chunks, it all goes into a pot of water to boil, then simmer for two hours. Once everything has cooked soft, pour it through a strainer and all that’s left is a glistening, purple beet stock that has a sweet aftertaste and is ready to the final seasoning (which includes the addition of fermented beet juice) to turn it into barszcz.

As I strain it, I find myself thinking that perhaps this is the perfect food for gnostics. After all, if it’s the spirit — the essence — of a thing that has any value, as gnostics believed (and still believe), and the physical body itself is useless, what better food to illustrate that than a soup stock that ends with clarified, pure flavor and a steaming pile of now-refuse, vegetable bodies that once carried the essence of flavor but now, limp and colorless, are good only to be tossed in the compost?

Foolish thoughts, these ruminations of the theology of food: I have other things to worry about, like creating some kind of stuffing for the salmon fillets that will be tonight’s main course. With my usual on-the-fly cooking methods, I end up withÂ sautedÂ crab meat with crushed roasted garlic, capers, and walnuts with a light sprinkling of tarragon and ginger and a squirt of fresh lemon juice just before turning off the heat: a whole slew of flavors that will also be paired with smoked oysters and slivers of roasted garlic before being tucked into a sliced salmon, becauseÂ Gnostic denial of the senses has no place in the Christmas Eve kitchen.

Christmas 2011 Baking

Friday 23 December 2011

A day that starts like this — sunny and warm after a cold, cloudy day before — begs to be played in (and have passive voice sentences written in). We need to visit a park, go for a walk, play in the sun.

But it’s baking day, and the Girl has been waiting anxiously — pesteringly, one might even say — for this day because she gets to use her fabulous new holiday-themed cookie cutter set. After a quick lesson, she’s ready to go.

Soon we have candy canes, Christmas trees, gingerbread men (though cut from sugar cookie dough), and stockings ready for the oven.

All we need are a few sprinkles of decorative mystery color that the Girl picked out, filled with uncontrollable excitement, during a trip to the market yesterday.

The adult versions get a coating of frosting lemony frosting and a sprinkle of roasted pistachios. A cheese cake in the afternoon and the year’s modest holiday baking is complete.

Rainy Holidays

Thursday 22 December 2011

We wake to a gray, foggy, and rainy morning, a day that promises only to compound the misery of trying to do anything in town. It's the kind of day that one wants to stay inside, cuddle up,

and watch the Pacific Northwest Ballet's performance of The Nutcracker.

It's almost ninety minutes of dancing, with only limited, very sporadic narration, yet the Girl sits, fascinated. "When is the Sugar Plum Fairy coming?" she asks, over and over and over, with it often coming out as "Sugar Flum Pairy."

Yet it's not all relaxing, even if two of the three of us is feeling a little less than 100%. With Christmas nearing, it's time to get to work on the Wigilia dinner -- the Christmas Eve food extravaganza. Tonight, it's pierogi z kapustą i grzybami (dumplings with cabbage and mushrooms) and uszka z grzybami (smaller dumplings -- "ears" -- with mushrooms).

We all have different jobs, with the Girl having the most fun and consequently making the biggest mess.

Preparing the Meat

Thursday 15 December 2011

When Dziadek was here a few years ago and built us a rural smoker, we expected we'd be using it much more often than we do. "Think of all the things we can smoke: turkey, chicken, pork tenderloin -- all for great cold cuts that will be tastier and cheaper than anything we can buy."

It was a glorious plan. An idea that lacked only ~~a couple of~~ ~~a few~~ several steps to the dream of complete ~~food~~ cold cut self-sufficiency. Soon, though, we'd be raising and slaughtering our own swine, harvesting our own salt from the sea to mix with our homegrown onions and herbs.

The business of life, though, got in the way.

Still, the infrequency -- Christmas and Easter -- heightens the savoriness.

Decorations

Monday 12 December 2011

The lights are all up — at least as much as it’s going to happen this year. The addition of some a few new strings of lights and a couple of illuminated nets on a should-be-removed bush are the extent of this year’s lighting innovations

The tree stays much the same as last year’s: the same minimalist IkeaÂ white ornaments,

the same angel,

and a few additions: a memorial ornament from the Polish performance of last Christmas.

Christmas Decorating

Sunday 11 December 2011

A Christmas tree is an important decision: we'll pay close to fifty bucks for something that will last only a few weeks, so we have to make sure it's perfect in every way. Somehow, we manage to find the perfect tree each and every year.

The decoration process changes from year to year, though. As the Girl grows, she becomes more involved in the Christmas preparations, and she's developing some very definitive ideas about how to decorate a tree.

I'm also developing some very strong ideas about Christmas decorations. Inching along, moving the ladder innumerable times, and constantly fighting for a level ladder makes me wonder if I couldn't leave the lights up all year. Tracking down one single bad bulb that's affecting all its neighbors is just about enough to make me try a seeming gimmick.

Finally, though, the darkening sky puts an end to my light hanging -- with only one side of the house left -- and drives me inside to clean up for a family picture