Scooba-Do

Gainesville

It's over. Thank god. I am cooked-out, at least for now. I'm sure the urge will return.

Sandy's ribs, which I made Christmas Eve, were probably the biggest success of all-- we loved them. I used the rub, chilled them for about 6 hours. I only got one, largish rack of baby backs, as I wanted to try them before piling up a lot of leftovers, especially on the eve of a big feast. Next time I will get two. I put the BBQ sauce (Bull's Eye Chipotle) on the table, but not on the ribs while cooking. Wonderful! I wish I had a pile of them in the fridge instead the the remains of the chicken.

Spent about five hours Christmas Even on PRE-prep for the next day-- mostly getting things ready to build the stuffing. Also made the Fresh Cranberry Relish, which was easy and very yummy-- my favorite part of the meal.

Even with that much prep, I was in the kitchen for 9 hours, with only time out for hot crab dip and stuffed celery around 1:00 (20 minutes) and to eat dinner around 6:30 (10 minutes-- Bill eats fast). Clean-up extends several hours after, despite having run the dishwasher once mid-prep.

The stuffing was a disappointment, especially given how much work it was, and how I labored over every ingredient. I had to bake it ahead -- only one oven is a handicap with this kind of meal -- but that's no excuse. I'm sure some of it was pilot error (overcooked the veggies a bit, maybe didn't get the moisture amount right), but still, it should have been better. The chicken was okay, but the glaze did not stick well, and that which did either burned or got stripped off after I tented it to prevent further burning. Then too, it was an inferior chicken, just a plain Publix one. I should have gotten a frozen kosher bird, as I've always had good luck with them.

The potatoes, well... they will get another chance. This is the recipe from the current FC-- boiled, smashed, cooled, doused with olive oil and salt, then roasted. I used Yukon Gold fingerlings. I had to bake them with the chicken, though, at 425, when what they wanted was 375. They got a bit tough, and are very greasy, but they were yummy yesterday, and made a great leftover today. I will definitely try this again.

We are both of the Christmas-Morning tradition, preserving the Santa's visit notion, stockings and all. We drink Champagne throughout the gift opening and resultant chaos. We also honor the morning crab tradition with famous "GD's Dip de Crab" -- Bill and Carrot both love it, and it's a whole lot easier than "Crab on a Red Sea," which the people like, but the cat disdains.

Didn't really get a chance to really look at new toys, let alone play with them yesterday. Started unearthing them from the chaos a bit at a time as I began the decluttering. Major gift this year was a Scooba-- Roomba's big brother, who purports to scrub floors. And we do have a lot of floors in need of scrubbing. Like any robot, Scooba-Do needs a lot of set-up and hand-holding at the start. We decided to try him on a small room-- the hall bathroom-- for his maiden scrub. No matter what we did, he refused to go, his "Check Tank" light coming on, along with his sound, a sort of "Uh-Oh!" I was all ready to call tech support, but after checking the web site, saw something about pressing down on both sides of the top, not on the latch, and poof! He suddenly started scurrying around the room, bouncing off things and presumably sweeping. But before he got to his water-phase, he shut himself down, complaining his battery was low. The instructions said he should be charged overnight the first time, but since his battery light indicated a full charge, we decided to go for it. Wrong. He's charging now, and we'll try again tomorrow. Now mind, it takes me ten minutes tops to do this bathroom's floor (swiffer dry, then wet), but I'm hoping that he can be a help with the impossible kitchen floor. We shall see. Maybe Scooba Don't.

Mom, your card today-- beautiful as always. You do set a high standard for yourself, and for the rest of us too. I find myself somewhat paralyzed trying to figure out how to put a message into what turned out to be blank cards. I have no problem personalizing with small touches a nicely printed message, but just don't have the artistic chops to do them all completely by hand. I know what I want it to look like, and have the perfect gold and silver shiny ink pens. Just not the skill. And there is no way to scan or copy the effect I want. "Oh, Naughty Words," as we used to say in high school.

Your mention of the **** reminded me of that old song, "The Thing" ... get out of here with that [thunk tha-thunk] and don't come back no more! Of course, I knew exactly what you meant... You didn't want to be a spoiler, right? :-)

Thanks for your great X-Eve post, Sandy. What beautiful ice-sparkly images! Neil lives near you, and recently posted some nice ice storm photos too, though not so dramatic as yours. Take a look at The Frozen World. More to say on this later.

I have thought about your Blog Challenge. It's strange, I don't have a memory of a specific Christmas, other than gifts: the year of Sparkle, of Toni, of the Bikes, of the Green Coats. The others run together in medleys: the trees and dinners at Pa and Dan's, the ones at Grandma's house. The trees on Berry moved around so much they blur, and I don't think we usually had a Christmas dinner there.

Maybe most vivid is driving around and looking at lighted homes (a tradition Bill and I have carried on, although not this year) -- I remember driving back from Oakland and/or Berkeley in pre-freeway days, going through lots of small neighborhoods and checking out all the trees in windows. This was before the days of yard extravaganzas. Once in awhile you'd see a string of multi-colored lights strung along a gabled roof, but that was the exception. Mostly it was trees in windows. Each one made me happy, and made the long drive home seem shorter. This is one reason I put up a tree every year, and make sure it is visible from the street. At least our neighbors, when driving to and fro at night, might see our tree, and maybe feel the small bit of affirmation I felt as a child, and still feel now, seeing multi-colored lights through a window.