Field Trip!

At holiday time, my meal planning shifts into overdrive. I shop for meals, second-guess my menus and recipes, prepare them anyway, clean up afterwards, and repeat the process. So what did I do the day after Christmas? I visited the first Houston location of Trader Joe's, the California-based specialty-grocery chain. 

This post isn't a plug for Trader Joe's, although I enjoyed my field trip and plan to make another, chiefly because TJ's doesn't pretend to offer everything a household needs, so a visit doesn't require a super-long list and two carts. More importantly, at a time of year when food-prep burnout looms with every invitation that requests my company PLUS a dish to share, I need a creativity jumpstart.  

Spent so much time in the kitchen you've got a cooking hang-over? Take a hair-of-the dog approach and visit a farmer's market, food bazaar, or new grocery store for ideas. While there, snap up an already-prepared shortcut. 

Trader Joe's olive tapenade will appear at  my house on New Year's Day. Later that week, I may mix it with cheese and butter, slather it on French bread, and tote it to a party. 

The strategy that eases kitchen burn-out works, with tweaks, in other areas. Exhausted by writing, teaching, working retail? Take a flyer on something related but different. 

If you write fiction, give blogging a shot. If you write science fiction, try your hand at contemporary suspense. 

Do you know any teacher who isn't bone-tired come holiday time? When exhaustion hits, it's tempting to eat, drink, and sleep away the school break, but those strategies are less effective than a classroom-role switcheroo.  If you teach, use the break to take a dance class, conversational Spanish, or learn basic auto repairs. 

Nothing kills holiday spirit like working retail. You're knee-deep in returns now, I know, but on your half-day off, deliver yourself to a restaurant, barber shop, or nail salon with a reputation for good service, and let someone wait on you/anticipate your needs for an hour. 

A new approach can be more invigorating than a nap and better for us than another cup of eggnog or a second cupcake. 

Olive tapenade, anyone?

Christmas Actually

To celebrate the holidays this year I'm pulling out one of my all time favorite Christmas movies, Love Actually. For the uninitiated, Love Actually is a charming 2003 British film with an impressive cast of heavyweight actors: Liam Neeson, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Bill Nighy, Keira Knightly, Martin Freeman and Colin Firth, just to name a few. There are too many story lines to mention--some romantic, some some touching, others a little sad--but they all come together at the end on Christmas. 

I won't ruin the film by leaking spoilers here, although I'll say that there's a great scene with Hugh Grant as the Prime Minister meeting with Billy Bob Thornton as the President of the United States.The storyline of the shy couple (Martin Freeman aka Bilbo Baggins and Joanna Page) who meet while working as body doubles for an adult film is cute, although probably not a good idea for family entertainment. Okay, the brief scenes with Rodrigo Santoro (see his Chanel No. 5 advert here.) may be reason enough to watch the movie and, aside from a couple misses, the soundtrack is great. If you've never seen it, Redbox just put it in their mix although apparently the on-demands like Netflix and Amazon don't have it for streaming. I sure hope I can find my DVD copy!

So to get you in the spirit, here's a video of short clips to Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!!!

Bitter Lessons

A cup of fresh-squeezed lemon juice sits in my refrigerator, and I've decided to freeze it. Usually, I'm a make-lemonade-from-lemons person, but not this day, week, month.

As I finish my holiday preparations, I think of the twenty children from Sandy Hook who won't enjoy the gifts their parents bought/made for them. You know as well as I do that presents for them were squirreled away in attics, basements, and guest-room closets. Will their grieving parents leave the gifts where they're hidden? I wouldn't be able to look at them. Not this year.

Some bereft parents will provide a semblance of Christmas for their other children. Others will take refuge with friends or family or snatch up their kids and flee Newtown for a few days away from reminders of their loss. December will never again be for them a month of quiet anticipation and unfettered joy.

My children are grown, but I remember how exciting first-grade was for them and how eager they were to share stories of what happened in school.

This past weekend, a thoughtful man sat at my dining-room table and explained how and why he learned to shoot. He hunted for food as a child and continues that pattern as an adult. He does not, however, own a semi-automatic weapon.

Yesterday, the Houston Chronicle printed a letter from Joe Hickman, who wrote: "As an avid hunter, I enjoy my hunting guns, but I cannot fathom any reason for any non-law enforcement individual to need a very high-capacity clip for a rifle or pistol.

"The federal government regulates the number of shotgun shells--three--in our guns while duck hunting. We get three tries at a duck but 15 to 30 at humans?"

The dead in Sandy Hook will spur changes in this country's gun laws and make it easier for the mentally ill to access treatment. Eventually, I'll view those advances as lemonade wrung from the bitterest of lemons.

Right now, though, I hurt for the parents who have lost a child and for whom the holiday season will forevermore be tinged with sorrow.