Updates:
Boyfriend Jon has gone off to the wilds (aka, California) to spend the holidays with his family. It leaves me with two weeks of pure alone time after work. Although i miss him terribly, I've already started putting it to use; cleaning my bathroom from top to bottom. I'll wash the floor tonight.
Other cleaning is in the works including an entire empty and reorganize of my cupboards, emptying and sorting of all the boxes that have miscellaneous items shoved inside them when i had company coming over. Maybe i'll actually figure out where on earth my second hammer went to.
Then i have projects galore to work on. Wood working and sewing projects which for the time being will remain unspecified because they're Christmas presents.
All i can say is i'm very happy that i found a wood supplier online that has bubinga, one of my favorite woods.
Also, in my family, we have a holiday tradition that many people don't know anything about. It's called the Feast of the Seven Fishes. It stems in my family from my grandfather, my dad's father, who was born in southern Italy. It's supposed to be very religiously related, but there's very little rhetoric in my family. We believe what we believe and that's all there is to it. The Feast of the Seven Fishes has it's own traditional meaning for us that has nothing to do with religion. It is a very special time.
Then we would stop off at the grocery store and pick up any extra ingredients that were necessary. Then it was back to the house. By that time, usually it was past noon, and food preparation began immediately. I always got tasked with shelling shrimp and de-boneing what i could. And my dad would cook everything, dressed in his blue and white striped apron, going in and out of the back door to check on things cooking in the BBQ.
My mother would go outside with a pair of garden nippers and bring back in several branches from our cedar trees and occasionally the neighbor's pine tree. Then she would arrange it all, with some pine cones and ribbon into a beautiful center piece.
It took all of us years to figure out how he did it, but all the dishes hit the table at the same time. At which point we would dig in to spinach and garlic halibut, seared scallops, grilled salmon, a plethora of other mouth watering dishes.
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| Even this makes me want to throw up! |
One year my mother got the hair brained idea to run the cleaned out crab head through the dishwasher with the idea of keeping it to add to her collection of shells. Only she didn't count on my brother Johnny to be the one to empty the dishwasher that night. I'll give you three guesses as to what a sevenish year old boy did with a scary crab shell that made his little sister scream. Oh yeah, he chased me with it. It was cruel, but i survived usually by screaming so loud that my mother put a stop to it. Though to this day, i'm still terrified of crab in the shell. No problems with the meat, it's quite tasty actually. Just the disgusting, creepy, freakish exoskeleton, makes my stomach turn.
Anyway, that was the story when i was little. Now it's a whole different ballgame. Dad still throws a fit if any of us so much as thinks about not attending. But he always has volunteers to go do the fish shopping. When we had fifteen people to feed, the table would be filled with different dishes. Often only limited to seven KINDS of fish, but multiple variations of all of them. Now, we're all more health conscious. Baking instead of frying, and reducing the amounts of butter and cheeses in all the dishes. Also, my sister and I join in on the cooking often bringing a signature dish or two ourselves to save our dad some of the labor.
This year is another first. My sister finally finished her kitchen remodel and wants to host the Feast at her place. My father was giddy that he wouldn't have to cook. But then my sister ended up having to work. So we're going to try preparing some dishes ahead of time. And we won't be without some of my dad's signature dishes this time around.
