How's your Christmas season going? Got your Christmas shopping done?
I tend to be on both sides of the Christmas fence in that I like the consumer/commercial side and I am also very interested/moved by the religious aspects.
When I was a kid I loved to go to midnight mass and smell the incense, hear the priest singing in Latin. I liked the ceremony, the ritual. I was a good Catholic altar boy for a few years (well maybe not always so good like the time my cousin and I took beer from the Knights of Columbus beer stash in the church basement to have with our lunch during the annual 2 week summer catechism class the nuns put on....ahhhh but that's another story).
I remember one of my old old friends Jimma would be at midnight mass with a good whiskey buzz on...a religious, alcoholic, Irish-Catholic. Jimma was missing a piece of his ear from a fight. He was a good guy as far as I was concerned; my cousin and I would go visit him in his apartment and have few drinks when we were about....11 years old or so.
When I was around ten, eleven and twelve I would go to mass every morning on my bike and perform my routine with Father Kelly and later Father Tobin. Usually it was just us and a few older ladies during the week. Today it's sort of hard for me to recall what drove me to get up early and get out on the cold Montana mornings. One time Father Tobin gave me a pen that had red, green and blue ink...maybe that was it. I have always had a thing for pens and pencils.
I hope we can all enjoy the holidays no matter what they are. Hanukkah, Ramadan, Christmas, Tirupavai.....
That's the cool thing about living in the US of A we have a diverse and strong population that can live together and appreciate our differences.
I like to listen to Don Imus on the radio and a couple of funny thoughtful quotes I've heard him say recently about the holidays are -
From Jewish Cowboy Singer Comedian Kinky Friedman "The Jews say Santa Claus killed Jesus."
As someone said, "I celebrate whatever holiday gets me off work."
How about a nice barbeque to offset some of those holiday shopping, running, cooking, working, etc. etc. etc. stressors. There's something about playing with a fire and smelling smoke that appeals to our primitive selves (or maybe that's our pyromaniacal selves for some of us). In any event....
Beat The Wintertime Blues BBQ
Get yourself a Weber barbeque. That's one that's kettle shaped and has a lid with vents so you can control the heat.
What to cook....let's start with some oysters. One of the things I really appreciate about the great Pacific Northwest is the seafood. We have some great salman, shrimp, crab, clams, oysters...umm ummm ummm.
Get a few dozen, or as many as you need, fresh in the shell oysters
Light your barbeque (use a chimney, not presoaked briquets or lighter fluid unless you like that taste)
Eat a few of the oysters raw (they have to be small and cold for this to be enjoyable)
Put the rest of them on the grill a dozen or so at a time.
Prepare a small pan of garlic butter
Keep an eye on them oersters until they start to open a little or liquid bubbles out
When they are ready pop them open with your oyster knife (or something similar) and using a fork scrape the oyster into your pan of warm garlic butter
After you finish a batch call your friends and family outside and eat the oysters out of the pan with crusty french bread while drinking beer or sparkling soda or nothing.
Ever wonder if sometimes we eat things like escargot or maybe oysters because it gives us an excuse to eat garlic butter?
If you want you could make yourself a hangtown fry with some oysters. I was big on that for awhile after I read the story about that dish in a cookbook. You can pretend you are a gold miner or maybe an outlaw...
I googled to this site and clipped the little blurb below about the hangtown fry.
"Supposedly created in 1849 during the California goldrush, possibly at the Cary House in Hangtown (now Placerville). Food was expensive in the mining camps and towns, and oysters and eggs were the most expensive. Either a miner with a bag full of nuggets wanted the most expensive meal he could order, or it was the last request of an outlaw about to be hanged. The Hangtown Fry is eggs, oysters and bacon cooked together as a scramble or an omelette."
After we let those oysters settle let's cook a nice salmon on our BBQ.
See you all soon. Remember to breathe. Nice and deep...let it all go. Buy some flowers. Be good to yourself.
Peace to you and yours.
