What she said.

Although I consider myself a fairly flexible person and pretty much of a live-and-let-live frame of mind, there is one area in which I remain doggedly stubborn. If one chooses to eat meat on Christmas day, that meat must roast beef. Turkey on Thanksgiving, roast beef on Christmas and ham on Easter, that's the rule.


I'm mostly kidding, of course. I've been around enough to know that these kinds of culinary rules don't wash in our pluralistic society and that there are so many modes of gustatory beliefs and convictions that no one could possibly claim to have a lock on holiday feasting. So I amend my statement to say that in our house the Christmas meal revolves around roast beef, full-stop. I have willingly foregone an Easter ham (for vegetarian, Hindu and Muslim guests sharing the day) and I am more than happy to dispense with a Thanksgiving turkey in favor of a homemade macaroni and cheese but when Christmas roles around I become as dogmatic as your Great Aunt Melba. It's got to be roast beef or I'm not coming to the table.


After my marriage, the Yorkshire pudding made way for Polish potato dumplings and the mashed potatoes moved on to make space for pierogie. White bread rolls are now more often than not usurped by a risen saffron bread. None of these replacements bothers me in the least, but when it was suggested that I might replace the roast with a haunch of venison or some kind of game bird I drew a line in the sand. No. A thousdand nos.


However, as I said, I am a flexible woman. If your Christmas tradition involves yet another turkey with all the trimmings, or even if it doesn't, try this cranberry chutney. It's extremely delicious and even those with their own snobberies toward canned cranberry jelly or gelled cranberry salad find it to be, well, worth adopting a more flexible attitude.


Place a pound of picked over cranberries in a large saucepan with a cup of water, a cup of orange juice and a half a cup of sugar. Allow to come to a light boil and, when the cranberries begin to pop, add in a cup of chopped celery, a 14 oz. can of crushed pineapple (not drained), a half a cup of crushed walnuts, a cup of mixed raisons and about 2 teaspoons of crushed red pepper (or to taste). Mix well and allow to stay at a low simmer until the mixture is hot and gelled. This may be cooled and served within a couple days or packed into jars and processed in a hot water bath for 20 minutes. When I intend to process the chutney for storage, I usually at least double the recipe and use half pint jars.


This recipe can be easily messed with and still comes out great. Some people use lime juice instead of orange, or pecans instead of walnuts or no nuts at all but maybe some citrus rind. Whatever your fancy, working within these basic parameters will never let you down. If it looks too tight, add a bit more water or jucie. If it's too loose for your tastes, try a couple more cranberries and some pineapple. One friend even adds some coconut and leaves out the pineapple in favor of the chopped flesh of a blood orange and I've often thought about using a diced fresh hot pepper of some kind instead of the dried flakes. So, you know, whatever.


So, I'm curious. What are your holiday food biases and snobberies?

First, a little business. Henceforth, the Little Diva shall be known as Entropy Girl. Sue has pointed out that this change requires a photograph. She is right and one is forthcoming.

Second, when my new friend Wynn suggested that we take a Friday morning yoga class together I thought it a splendid idea. Why, my grace would make Christie Turlington weep with envy! I would set new standards for the accomplishment of peace and tranquility! My unfashionably broad but flexible hips, heretofore suitable only for rapid and drug-free childbearing, would help me to create an astonishingly effortless beauty of movement!

I have a lot to learn about yoga.

Yoga kicks my butt. Not only am I stretching muscles I never knew I had (years of exclusively treadmill or pool exercising allows one to completely deny entire sets of muscles) but I am finding it very difficult to achieve the necessary quietude to succeed where yoga is concerned. I don't know whether to throw in the towel, so to speak, or take it as a sign that I need to press forward for my own good, to expand the boundaries of what I currently know as my personality.

Part of the problem is that annoying water/bell/chime...well, I hesitate to call it music but I suppose it is. Also, my "essence" (as the instructor says) is 100% at odds with what seems to be in demand for yoga achievement. Perhaps even seeking yoga achievement is at odds with yoga achievement, I don't know. All I know is that for an hour I keep doing these contortions (tucking one's heel into one's yoni, while standing on the other foot and facing palms and eyes skyward is just odd, no matter what you call it or how much peace it might bring you) waiting for the actual class to begin. And then it's over. Meanwhile my brain is insisting on asking how many miles, how many flights, how many calories, how many laps, how many...well, just what exactly has been accomplished here.

And, today, when I mentioned to the very nice instructor that I was also looking forward to trying the beginning pilates class she looked as if I had mortally wounded her with a dull knife to the belly. Seriously. Her face went slack and her shoulders dropped and pulled inward, just like someone who has been struck. I felt awful and so I forgave her when she suggested that I might be more comfortable in the "plus sized yoga" that meets on Thursday afternoons.

And as if all this weren't strange enough, in doing a search for, yes, plus-size yoga gear (I ascribe to the "fake it till you make it" philosophy where fitness is concerned) I discovered that a high school friend, a lovely boy by the name of Andrew Zionts, has opened a yoga studio in Istanbul.

Of course he has.

Yikes.


The Little Diva is finally feeling better and I've finally made a dent in the laundry. I've long been amazed at how much extra work one tiny little person, when ill, can generate. The important thing now, though, is that she's well and on her way to being back on schedule, sleep-wise. Everything else is a bonus.


I realized that I never updated the "What's for Dinner" or the "What I'm Reading" listings, but they'll just have to keep for another couple days. One or two more nights of serious, nose to the grindstone work and I should be in the clear for blogging, cookie baking and a host of other more entertaining activities.


On my mind for when I return: interviewing for new projects and writing my CV, my newly-diagnosed diabetic dog, my freakin' cold house, the restaurant bet I won with my husband.


A few more days' indulgence?

This has been a bear of a week. I'm very much behind the eight ball work-wise (a condition that will not end until the conclusion of my contract at the end of the month) and the Little Diva has been sick since Saturday. Until today her disposition was sunny enough that I didn't mind a few extra poopy diapers and multiple changes of clothes (for both of us). It's all caught up to her now, though, and the entire household has taken on an air of...unwellness.

Bear with me over the next couple of days. I have a lot to tell you about and will be back soon.

We've never felt it necessary to place those brightly colored "Posted" signs around our property. You know the ones - usually yellow, red or orange, they warn against trespassing or, horror of horrors, "poaching" (usually meaning deer). For one thing, I've never quite understood the idea that when deer wander into the borders of what the state considers "mine" they suddenly belong to me, but when they wander out again, they don't. Second, I've got nothing specific against hunting per se (just stupid and greedy hunting - the kind that happens too close to a house or without verification of the actual presence of the animal). Third, I know personally of families nearby whose winters would be long and dark indeed without the benefit of their summer gardens and fall kills. So I've always felt that if a responsible hunter saw a legal shot that happened to bring him or her onto my property that was fine.


You know where this is going, right? We put up the Posted signs yesterday in response to two separate and coincidental events. First, someone did take a shot, or more accurately prepared to take a shot, on our property that was neither responsible nor legal. Way too close to the house when I saw him, I yelled to get his attention and in the process jolted the deer out of its stupor and caused it to run. The guy was furious but, hey, he was standing a mere 400 feet or so from my front door with a gun. I'd say that I have more of a ground, so to speak, for anger.


Second, we learned that we may be held accountable for hunting accidents that occur on our land, even if we weren't involved or even knowledgeable about them. Like the proverbial robber who trips down your stairs or vandal who cuts himself while chopping down your tree, a hunter who is hurt on your property may quickly become even more of a problem.


I'm saddened by this development. Although not a hunter myself, I do enjoy eating venison and rabbit and appreciate the gifts of game given to me by hunter friends. I am also accutely aware of the impact that burgeoning deer populations are having on our environment - two of the does in the little herd that visits us each had two sets of twins this year, making four little fawns who have stripped away the bark and are killing the trees that serve as shelter for birds which help keep the insect population in check which...you get the idea (the Wall Street Journal had an excellent article earlier this week on this very subject). Two of the fawns look too skinny to make it through the winter and I wonder about them as the days get shorter and colder, and foliage is much harder to come by. No, overly restricting hunting would be just as damaging as unregulated hunting.


And yet. My little corner of the world has now become part of the problem.