i'm making homemade vegetable soup for Christams dinner.
my family is traditional. i grew up regular. in spite of that, we never had a traditional Christmas dinner. you never knew what to expect. except not to expect turkey. i don't think we ever had a turkey for Christmas. the argument always went like this: we just had turkey at thanksgiving, why do we want it again? i remember the time, and i was pretty little when i said this so this was very nervy of me, but i remember the time i said to my dad - you just had a beer, why do you want one again?
but, anyway. it was never turkey. maybe ham, but never turkey.
it was sometimes roast beef, sometimes a pork roast, one time it was rack of lamb (grossed everybody out), and one time it was some colonial southern menu that my mom found in better homes and gardens or something like that and it featured about 89 different courses of essentially unrecognizable stuff. i remember all of it being good but none of it familiar. the only thing familiar was the ham and beans and cornbread and i remember thinking, isn't that enough? why do we have all these other 88 things, too?
i also remember the year we had authentic swiss steak and the year we had authentic swiss fondue. not sure what side of the family the bias for the swiss comes from. it's not like we don't take sides or anything.
then there was the time we had crown roast of beef and that hideous yorkshire pudding. at least the reviews from the kids' table were that it was hideous. i have never tried yorkshire pudding since. nor, likely, will i.
my grandma curtis made pork chops one year and she stuffed them with, well, stuffing, but she also got creative (for that era) and added some garlic and fresh spinach to it. i'm not sure if that was the first time i had ever had stuffed pork chops but it's the time that stands out - in. spades. i was in love with those pork chops - and with my grandmother - and with the world. by the time i got up from the table that year, i had decided to learn how to cook.
last year, i made julia child's beef stew. it's a recipe that takes 3 days to make but it was worth every minute and painstaking effort. it's a wonder, when you think about it, how julia child ever got fat. because when did she have time to eat the stuff she made? all of her recipes take forever. makes the pony express look like the concorde.
which brings me (quickly - ha!) to this year.
i have come, increasingly and in all areas of my life, to understand that less really is more. (the only time less is not more is when it comes to love. and even then, i guess, sometimes it is.)
we don't need a ham tomorrow. we don't need folks in the kitchen for 6 hours. we don't need an elaborate centerpiece and we don't need so much china and crystal and all the rest that you gotta start setting the table the day before. what we need is.......soup.
the simplest kind of soup there is. some homemade bread. a few chunks of cheese. and peppermint ice cream and gingersnaps for dessert. done.
the baby Jesus from my nativity scene will be the non-elaborate centerpiece.
less is more.
He said so.
