November 30, 2010

e pulled another postcard from our stash of entries, and the winner of our newest Christmas Package is Lucky Girl Melissa Ward from Georgia. Look in your mail Melissa, you’re getting a signed copy of Christmas Joy, a set of Mr. and Mrs. Claus Christmas Cards, gift tags, labels and holiday recipe cards, plus a dated collector’s edition ornament! Happy December! Christmas is definitely in the air!

old and dark this morning, but cozy in Christmas jammies. Like my outfit? Old holey cashmere sweater, scarf for warmth, new flannel jams. I guess I could have picked the fuzz balls off the sweater before taking the picture, but then the truth would be missing from the morning outfit. You also can’t see the soft little parker house roll next to me, toasted, buttered, w/cinnamon sugar. I lead an entire life before Joe even wakes up.

ho brought the green beans…mmm, who made the mashed potatoes?

ur Thanksgiving dinner turned out great! It wasn’t fancy, it wasn’t gourmet, no one’s really allowed to change anything so it was traditional with all the old-fashioned favorites from our childhoods…everyone brought something. Here’s the dish my girlfriend brought — actually it’s the dish her mom, Caroline, brought to share with all of us, filled with her delicious mashed potatoes. I’m always looking for a better way to make mashed potatoes that will make them healthier. For the last few years, I boil the Idaho potatoes with one clove of peeled garlic per potato … mash them together with salt and pepper, and stir in hot buttermilk to make them creamy. They have so much flavor I don’t miss the butter. At least that’s what I thought. Caroline does it differently. She mashed her potatoes with heavy cream. I forgot how good mashed potatoes can be when one buries two sticks of butter in them just before serving. The words “rivers of butter” come up in conversation. Then all conversation stops as delirium sets in.

think the bowl itself made her do it. Look at it. What self-respecting one-hundred-and-twenty-two-year-old sterling silver wedding bowl would have it any other way, than elegant and old fashioned, with cream and butter? Could you put diet mashed potatoes in a bowl like this? No. I think not. It might even hop away on its little feet.

sn’t it wonderful? Doesn’t it look like it could talk? Like it might have belonged to the Queen of Hearts at one time? There’s a dated inscription on the bottom — 1888. Think of all the dining room tables it has graced and all the stories it could tell. The Thanksgivings and weddings and all kinds of family celebrations through the generations? Wouldn’t that make a wonderful book? It could give us a fashion show too, describe what people are wearing, what their shoes look like, and tell us about the food on the table; what the people were talking about. This little dish served faithfully during the Victorian age, the Roaring Twenties, the War Years, the Swingin’ Sixties….it knows all the secrets.
love everything that’s old, because of the hands and hands and hands that have touched it; now we’ve added our own Thanksgiving to Caroline’s magic bowl; I was sorry to see this dish go (and actually, Caroline too), but we kept the potatoes!