Sylvia's Journal

I woke up from a bewildering dream of trying to check into a French chain hotel where the process was somewhat akin to the experience of going through customs and immigration. Along the way, through long hallways, ravines, slums, up and down staircases I lost my party and ended up with a staff member who showed me the staff quarters that had a foldaway bathtub – something the guestrooms did not have, she told me as if this was a most shocking revelation. And then she started to unburden herself about her employer. I woke up when her supervisor stuck her head around the door and caught her in the act of disloyalty. Still, when I am in Dubai I will prefer Le Meridien over the Marriott.

For many hours I was the only one awake on Christmas morning. I used my time to bake scones and then cinnamon buns, the latter being a whole lot more difficult than the pictures in the cookbook suggested. The buns were sweet and sticky, but also a little doughy confessed Tessa later but they are all gone now so they could not have been that bad.

We squeezed in our American Christmas between a late waking up of the key actors and early departure of Sita and Jim to one of his two families for Christmas dinner. A little hurried after our long and leisurely Christerklaas the night before. But then, there are no poems to read and several presents were still in a mail truck or depot somewhere in the area, or even on the doorstep of the wrong house, according to tracking information on the internet.

Axel had a late start preparing the turkey for the oven and then lost the recipe. Luckily he had made this Canadian style turkey (lots of bacon and maple syrup) last year and so he went by memory after a frustrating search that did not produce the recipe. If I had my way we’d eat a much simpler Dutch meal (boerenkool or andijvie stamppot) but that idea was voted out. And so I felt no compunction to start the turkey and instead concentrated on my baking before the oven would be off limits, entirely dedicated to the turkey. I did help out with the side dishes, sweet potatoes (including marshmellows on Tessa’s insistence), mashed potatoes, creamed onions and green beans with almonds. To the latter Tessa added some crispy things that came out of a can, made from palm oil, onion, wheat flour, soy flour, salt and dextrose; one of these traditions that come from a period in American culinary history that celebrated the magic of canned foods.

Anne and Chuck who consider us their immediate family in the area, joined us again this year. We sent them on a shopping errand as they drove down from Newburyport to pick up all these items that we had somehow forgotten. This included ingredients for martinis, one of Chuck’s specialties. I enjoyed my ‘framboise’ martini while on the phone with my siblings in Holland and in France, the latter just returned from a 10+ skiing day in the French Alps getting ready for their Christmas cheese fondue.

Tessa gave Sita a robot vacuum cleaner that sings a little song when it starts, when it finds a real mess (a special blue light comes on) and when its belly is full. We watched it as one would a new puppy. To given it even more life than it already has we put some eyes on it. It zips around the living room, hallway and kitchen with puppy Chicha following in bewilderment. It does tend to get tangled up in the fringe of the Afghan rug in the living room and squeaks helplessly when it does. Robots like this, we learned, are more effective in a house without stuff on the ground. We will miss it when it leaves this afternoon for Haydenville where it will, no doubt, piss off or freak out Sita’s neurotic cats Mooshi and Cortez.

And so now we have arrived at the other end of Christmas. We are planning to go to Chinatown later today to buy ingredients required to cook from my Christmas present (that is still en route), a cookbook about China that is from the same authors, photographers and traveloguers who wrote my favorite sub-continent cookbook (Mangoes and Curry Leaves) that has seen much use since my return from Dhaka.