The perineum between Christmas and New Year’s festivities, a peaceful interlude. So far our holiday celebrations have been modest and peaceful. Modest, too, our Christmas gifts to one another. And we’re happy with that … there’s something to be said for getting old and having everything you need. I fully expect New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day to be quiet as well.
The inset photo: our traditional Christmas Eve clam chowder. The tradition started with my father, who saw the recipe in a newspaper and made it one year; it became his tradition, passed down to me and my sisters. My son makes it every year as well … I’ll have to check with my sisters but I’ll bet at least some of their adult children are chowderheads too. Here’s the recipe if you’d like to try making it yourself; it’s definitely the best chowder we’ve ever eaten.
For Christmas Day dinner, we ate the rest of the beef tenderloin we bought for our anniversary chateaubriand earlier this month. This time I pan-seared it in butter, salt, pepper, and herbs, then roasted it at 425° for 30 minutes. I prepared chateau potatoes to go with it; Donna steamed broccoli and made a spinach, apple, and walnut salad. Perfecto. Oh, did I mention the lobster tails? We had a couple of small ones in the freezer, so we ate those too. Haven’t decided what’ll be on the menu New Year’s Eve and Day, but there’s probably a low-country shrimp and sausage boil in the works. These recipes, like the one for clam chowder, are on Crouton’s Kitchen, my cooking blog.
Later today, there’s a new ink jet printer to install, and task I’m not looking forward to. Maybe Polly can do it … yeah, that’s the ticket! A task I did look forward to, changing the strap on a watch I bought myself for Christmas, proved to be too much for me. The watch, a Casio moonphase tank, came with a plain-Jane leather strap I want to replace with a Milanese-style metal mesh one I have laying around, but I can’t get the OG strap off. It’s secured with shoulderless spring bars and my regular spring bar tool doesn’t work. I’ll have to pay a watch repair shop to do it for me; frustratingly both shops on our side of town are closed for the holidays and it’ll have to wait. That new watch, by the way, is in the first photo, second from the right in the box:
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That’s the current state of my collection: a mix of quartz and mechanical watches, plus the smart watch I wear at night to monitor my heart rate. The overnight Apple Watch aside, I wear different watches every day but not in strict rotation; there are favorites, of course, which get more wrist time than the others. Watch collecting has proven to be an addictive hobby. Good thing I favor Seikos, Casios, and Timexes, otherwise we’d be bankrupt by now.
May your taint days be as serene as ours. If I don’t post again before then, happy New Year to you and yours!