Christmas Tradish

As I have said before, and as several of my blogettes have concurred, I love Christmas!  You would think we'd be entirely disaffected by now.  After all, the season comes every year with perfect regularity.  Yet I'm still so excited about the recipes, the sales, the TV programming, and the songs on the radio, even though not much of this changes year-to-year.  Maybe at some point I won't really care about the holidays, but I truly hope that day never comes.

One thing that has changed about my Christmas excitement is my perspective.  I now look at all Christmas stuff through the lens of a married lady.  For the first time, I have my own little family.  It's just me, my husband, and my dog-- but we're getting there.  Each family lives their lives in their own specific way.  And our little unit is no different.  We do some things like my parents, some like his, some like our friends, and some uniquely our own.  We keep the coffee in the freezer, we let the dog on some furniture, we say grace before eating.  It's fun to develop our ways of living.  The longer we've been married, the more carefully defined they become, and it's a wonderfully comforting and empowering feeling.

So back to Christmas.  The first few years you're in a serious relationship, it's common to go "home" to mom and dad for the holidays, if possible.  It often stays that way until you have kids, or even for a few years after that.  But sooner or later, the grandparents will probably come to you, or you'll just choose to stay at home.  Most people I know had Christmas at their own homes growing up.  I love hearing about my friends' Christmas experiences, because they always vary in the cutest ways.  And it gets my mind churning in terms of the traditions that will be a part of my household- some like my family, some like my husband's, and the new ones we create.

Luckily, most of my friends and I are in the married-without-kids or married-with-very-young-kids stage, which buys us some time to think of those special ways in which we can make Christmas special for our family units.  Christmas activities that could turn into traditions to create lasting memories.  I thought I'd have some fun sharing what I've heard from others and things I've come up with.  Enjoy!

Opening one gift Christmas Eve, and the rest in the morning.

Opening the gifts from mom and dad Christmas Eve, and the gifts from Santa in the morning.

Only wrapping the gifts not from Santa.  (His come straight from the workshop, didn't you know that?)

Putting out cookies and milk for Santa, or, alleging that you have the inside scoop and you happen to know for a FACT that Santa prefers Rice Krispy Treats, Brownies, or some other family favorite desert.

Leaving out carrots for the reindeer.

Getting the tree the weekend after Thanksgiving, or the first weekend in December, every year

A special Christmas morning breakfast that you don't usually eat

Getting a stocking stuffed with little presents, then one big, wrapped present

Having a holiday movie marathon on Christmas Eve

Making ornaments with the kids, or giving them each their own each year

One present given on Christmas Eve- pajamas, so the kids look cute opening their presents the next day in the photos

Volunteering with a charity during the holiday season, brining your kids along

Driving around the neighborhood, looking at light displays

Stockings filled with only that child's favorite candies

Let the youngest child pick up each present and read the name and hand it to the recipient

Order pizza, or something the kids really love, on Christmas Eve, or Christmas Day-- whatever day you are not having the big dinner

Be open to new traditions as they naturally develop!

Holiday Treats

Christmas is my favorite time of year! I could spend an entire blog dedicated to the reasons why I love Christmas (the smell of the pine needles mixed with subtle cinnamon aromas from my mom’s favorite holiday candles, the visual stimulus of the beautifully wrapped gifts under the trees, my huge clan of siblings running out on Christmas morning to quickly unveil their gifts). However, over the last three years I have created a new and exciting (and just a little silly) reason to love the holidays.

Those of you who know me have probably by now figured out one very obvious and sometimes surprising personality trait. I love good food! It is a good thing I enjoy running and working out or else I would most definitely be nearing about 300 pounds with the way I can put down food. It is a running joke in my office to try to see who can out-eat me at company events. And of all the wonderful tastes and flavors, the one that tempts me the most are sweets. What better time of year than the holidays to give in to this wonderful little desire? I love to indulge in the richest and most decadent flavors that seem to come hand-in-hand with the holidays.

Three years ago I decided to try to share this joy of holiday treats with as many loved ones as possible. I decided I would make a batch of homemade caramels and homemade fudge and send them to friends and family in cute little holiday containers. Well, that first year ended up being quite a disaster. I wasn’t aware that caramels are very sensitive candies and that if you don’t cook them long enough they end up too soft and if you cook them too long they become brittle. My batch was much much too soft and they were nearly impossible to wrap in wax paper. The batch of fudge did not have much more of a success story. I had lined the glass pan with butter to prevent the fudge from sticking. However, when I went to cut the fudge out of the glass pan, it had a weird, thick, white film on the outer edge of the fudge. One consequence of putting too much butter on the pan. I was far too embarrassed to actually give these treats to people, so they ended up in a huge metal bowl on top of my fridge. Slowly but surely (and with the help of my seven roommates) the candies disappeared over the next few weeks. Although I am sure my roommates enjoyed the candies, they never made it to the hands and mouths of those they were intended. I vowed that the next year I would put more thought and preparation into my holiday candies.

Last year, I decided to reach out to my grandma. She had always made wonderful caramels each year and was one of my favorite memories of visiting her house during the holidays. She sent me her tried-and-true recipe for caramels…they turned out great! Last year I also decided to add a few additional goodies to my “treat bag” that I was handing out to friends. I included fudge (with a new and improved recipe this year), divinity, nut brittle, and gingerbread. It was a huge hit!! I individually wrapped the candies, put them in cute decorated holiday paper bags and topped the bags with holiday tissue paper. I was dubbed the “Martha Stewart” of the office as everyone chowed down on the goodies.

This year I have made it a goal to create the best holiday treats yet! In my pursuit of the greatest holiday candies and treats I came up with an idea: I will post my recipe for caramels. If anyone has any great recipes that you think I should add to the mix then let me know! Post it on here and I will promise to add it to my collection of treats that I hand out this year.

Grandma Hatch’s Homemade Caramel Recipe
1 cup margarine or butter (don’t use corn-oil margarine. It will make your caramels too soft).
1 16-ounce package (2 ¼ cups) packed brown sugar
2 cups light cream
1 cup light corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla

Line an 8x8x2 or 9x9x2 inch baking pan with foil, extending foil over edges of pan. Butter the foil (or just spray it with cooking spray), set aside.

In a heavy and large pan, melt the butter over low heat. Add brown sugar, cream, and corn syrup; mix well. Cook and stir over medium-high heat to boiling. Clip a candy thermometer to the side of the pan. NOTE: Make sure that you do not leave the bottom of the thermometer touching the bottom of the pan as it will read inaccurately. Cook and stir mixture over medium heat to 248 degrees, firm-ball stage. This will take a while, about 45-60 minutes to do so. The temperature will probably linger at 225 for a while, that is normal, just keep stirring. You must continue stirring the entire time!

Remove the saucepan from heat; remove thermometer. Stir in vanilla. Immediately pour caramel mixture into the prepared pan. When caramel mixture is firm, us foil to lift it out of the pan. Use a buttered knife to cut into 1-inch squares. Wrap in caramel in wax paper and twist the ends of the wax paper around the caramel. Makes about 2 pounds (64 servings). Sometimes you can find wax paper with holiday prints, and that adds a nice touch when you are wrapping the caramels.

I hope you all enjoy this recipe as much as I do!!

Christmas, Finally

The week before I left for Boston was difficult for me.  Four weeks into a new job that was proving to be the most challenging I've ever had.  Live news, daily.  Working under a stressed-out, in-over-his-head senior producer (probably the same age as me, horrifyingly enough) who opts for public, after-the-fact criticism instead of instruction beforehand.  No matter what I do, I lose.  I am forced to defend myself in front of my coworkers and then I appear defensive.  I forfeit and I look guilty.  In four weeks I'd been so beaten down I began to avoid looking in the mirror wherever possible.  

And the news itself doesn't help.  Layoffs.  Disappearing retirement funds.  The big three.  Bailouts.  Proposition 8 protests.  A worker dies in black Friday madness.  One hundred and eighty something dead in Mumbai.  Cholera in Zimbabwe.     

And every night I leave work and walk past Radio City Music Hall to get to the bus I take home.  And every night I walk past multi-generational tourist families and holiday music blasting from the sidewalk speakers that hang from the marquee advertising for the Rockettes.

And every night I walk past a store and see huge "40% off" signs and I see people at the register discussing complicated coupons, trying to figure out how much more they need to spend before they can qualify for the deal.

And every night I walk past empty restaurants with bored-but-nervous waiters and "retail space available" signs over brown-papered windows.  

And Gray's Papaya now has a "recession special."      

Two nights before I left for Boston, I almost died while trying to make it to the bus to leave work.  Almost crushed to death by the throngs of people pushing to see the NBC tree-lighting ceremony.  I can't remember the last time I'd seen such acts of stupidity.

I'd had a really bad day at work.  And when the crowds started pressing me farther and farther from my bus stop and I had no control over anything, I just burst into tears and decided to walk home.  

I stopped at a Chinese takeout place on my way-- garland and tinsel and big metallic snowflakes hung around the restaurant.  And classic Christmas tunes played to an almost non-existent audience.  Just me.  Waiting for my chicken black bean.  Few things sadder than a Chinese restaurant during the holidays.  Well, except a girl with mascara tear tracks staining her cheeks, waiting for her number 81 special, all alone in a Chinese restaurant during the holidays.

But two days later I found myself in Boston.  Old, beautiful Boston.  Wide streets, lined with lighted trees and polite people who would say sorry or excuse themselves if they cut you off too close.  Quincy market-- full of trinkets and chocolate covered pretzels that are always there- not just during the holidays.  People eating fried foods at the Celtics game.  People spilling onto Hanover Street and into the Italian restaurants.  No one needs an excuse to indulge, or an annual festivity to drink to.  Music and history in the streets.  Cobblestones.  Gold eagles and old clocks... New York City is mostly black and gray. Boston is brick red.  There's rolling mountains behind the cityscape.  I did absolutely nothing all day and was fully entertained.  

When I woke up in my hotel room on my last day in Boston, snow covered the treetops. Everything in the entire city seemed still.  

Merry Christmas.

  

Wii wish you a Merry Christmas

I had vowed to write about something other than the holidays this week—but Charlie Brown Christmas is on, and I just got some new ornaments for the now-decorated tree, and I can’t help but get excited about Christmas morning.

My fiancé and I bought ourselves a Wii for Christmas. We were shocked when we walked into the Best Buy last night and they still had one in stock, and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to spend the Christmas season on my parents’ floor playing Mario Kart with our Wii Wheels.

Proud of our purchase, my fiancé then called his friends to let them know we’d gotten one. They promptly invited themselves over to play. Unfortunately for them, we informed them that we would be abiding by yet another of my “rules” – Christmas presents cannot, under no uncertain terms, be opened before Christmas morning. Aside from “early” Christmas presents like my new Christmas tree skirt, or the first ornaments my parents bought us, I refuse to give in to the desire to break open that new video game system and start playing.

I do the same thing with birthday presents. Even when I was in graduate school and my parents’ birthday presents would arrive weeks early, I would let the boxes sit on my apartment floor until midnight on my birthday, or, when I was exercising the utmost restraint, until the following morning. There’s something far too anticlimactic about opening them early—then there’s nothing to look forward on the day of.

The same thing goes double for Christmas. I still go to bed before my parents on Christmas Eve, and I still refuse to see the presents around the bottom of the tree until Christmas morning. Although their new house is only one story and it’s hard to go “upstairs” anymore, I always go hide when it’s time for Santa to come. To that end, I plan to wrap up our Wii and put it under the tree at my folks’ house, because even though we both know what it is, I want the joy of finding it under the tree and opening it and playing with it all day long on Christmas day.

Perhaps it’s something I will grow out of when I have my own children, and I’ve learned to appreciate the joy of their smiling faces on Christmas morning, as opposed to my own refusal to grow up. For now, however, I am having a hard time letting go of the little girl in me, perched at the top of the stairs, waiting with baited breath to be told I’m allowed to come downstairs and see the tree.

The End of the Internet

The internet isn’t that great, really. I once had a job for TWO years that gave me so much free time that I think I actually got to the end of the internet. Seriously. One Thursday (not that I remember exactly) afternoon, it just hit me that there was nothing else to look at. I couldn’t think of one single website that I hadn’t been to or one single headline, byline or pop-up ad, I hadn’t clicked on.

So that gave me the idea to give back (and really, hope you all will, in turn, give to me) by recommending some places to visit should you choose to spend some time during the day on the information superhighway.

I usually like to start my day with news: cnn.com, nytimes.com, washingtonpost.com, local papers, etc. I have four local papers that I read (don’t ask) – I like to know what’s going on in just about every major city that I’ve ever lived in. My favorite days are: wedding announcement Mondays in the NYT, and DateLab Sundays in the Washingtonpost. (this is a particularly good one: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/14/AR2008081401423.html). I also like the GoingOut Gurus and the Travel Discussion – it’s got me thinking about spending New Year’s in Iceland. If I want a laugh or get desperate I go to foxnews.com (sorry!).

And for real news, I also hit up the espn.com, which is sort of news, sort of pretty boys. Mmmmm. Pretty boys. Paying particular attention to Page 2, which is the funnier and less informative part of espn: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/index. Two of the best things to read are the SportsGuy and UniWatch. Good times, good times. And in the winter it’s uscho.com for your hockey fix. Another entertaining “news” site is eonline.com. As are theonion.com and people.com. And if you want to kill some major time, one of my all-times favorites is televisionwithoutpity.com.

At various times I also check email: yahoo.com, hotmail.com, and gmail.com (never know when someone might email that hotmail account I set up in 1995 and stopped using regularly in 1998). And my grad. school email account. Speaking of, if I get really desperate I hit up both the college and grad. school webpages, just in case somethin’s going down that I need to know about. My college has this great alumni note section where folks can post stuff, so I like visiting there when I’m feeling good about my life. Just to put my self-confidence in check. Married: nope, Lawyer: nope, Doctor: nope, Fulbright: nope, Baby: nope. Check.

I also do a little shopping: Nordstrom.com, amazon.com, ebay.com, cars.com (I’m alllllways car shopping), petfinder (cute puppies!), zillow.com (got to check the value of the house), bluefly.com, zappos.com, target.com, pollstar.com, horchow.com, ikea.com, and one of my favorites: nancykoltesathome.com.

Now don’t get me started on all the job-hunting sites I sometimes check, which are too numerous to mention, but the sum of which stands at an astounding 51. Not including such crappy sites as monster.com and careerbuilder.com which I actually find aren’t worth my time—and that’s saying something.