The Christmas Pilgrimage

Last December, on a very bright, moonlit night, we took a walk to the unused church I can see from my kitchen window that our neighbor spotlights every Christmas season.

Poppy remembered this and wanted to do that again. Right before Christmas, however, I was disabled with a pinched nerve and wasn't walking anywhere. Right after Christmas, A. was hunting with the younger two boys. Then it was really windy.

But finally, Saturday night it wasn't windy, it wasn't cold, and everyone was here. So we walked to the church in the dark.

Well, there was still a little bit of light in the western sky, but it was mostly dark.

We started out using flashlights because of the clouds, but about halfway to the church, the moon rose above the clouds. Just like last year, it was bright enough to turn the flashlights off.

Nature's flashlight.

Getting closer. (The brightest light is the church. The smaller light to the left is our neighbor's house.)

We stayed at the church awhile, playing shadow puppets on the wall.

Yet another Christmas tradition observed, and just in time. Today is Epiphany, the feast commemorating the visit of the Magi to the newborn Jesus. This is the last day of the Christmas season for us. The kids all get one more present under the tree, as well as a few more Lindt truffles. I'm making a lasagna and Poppy is making brownies, and that's a wrap on Christmas 2025. The decorations will be put away tomorrow.

How about you? How long do you leave your Christmas decorations up?

Snapshots: Away I Go

Friday was the day of my annual Mom's Day and Night Off. I choose a day after New Year's Day and before school starts again, book a night at a hotel in a city about 100 miles away, and take myself off for about 24 hours.

This year, in addition to booking the hotel room, I also booked an appointment with a massage therapist in this city. I thought maybe it would help with the muscle tension that led to my debilitating pinched nerve a couple of weeks ago.

Obviously, one session was not going to fix everything, but the massage therapist was very knowledgeable and pointed out some places in my body that were contributing to my problems and that I would never have considered. She also pinpointed those so specifically that it reeealllly hurt later in those places, but that was okay, because I could just take a bath whenever I wanted. Which I did.

Other things I did . . .

I got a slice of pizza and a salad for lunch at this place that also has an arcade. I was not tempted by the arcade, however.

I walked around the plaza where the hotel is located, going in to some of the antique shops. 

The only thing I bought was a five-dollar book: An American Childhood, by Annie Dillard.

While I was in that shop looking at the books, the older guy who owns the shop was listening to the most awful, ridiculous "news" headlines at full volume on his phone. And then he answered a phone call on speaker (!), which meant that I could hear clear as day his friend telling him about the "weird" stuff Mary is getting involved in with some group that led to Mary trying to kill this friend more than once.

Ummm.

I figured a quick exit was prudent at this point. Thankfully, he asked his friend to hold on the phone while I paid for my book, so I didn't have to listen to anymore of that bizarre conversation. I jetted out of there, all the while shaking my head and laughing internally. Such a colorful place, New Mexico.

Exhibit B of Welcome to New Mexico:

It's a . . . tombstone? In a median in the middle of the plaza roundabout?

This was what I saw as I was sitting in the bar eating my dinner. I didn't recall seeing it before, and I asked the bartender about it. She had no idea what it was. I did some online searching, though, and I think maybe it's a memorial for the guy who carved the big wooden statues of the saints that are in the plaza. He died in March of last year, so I'm guessing this is his memorial.

Or maybe he's really buried there. Anything is possible in New Mexico.

Anyway.

One of my favorite things about this hotel is that it has books all over the place. In previous years, I've had a bookcase full of books actually in my room.

Not this year, unfortunately.

That's okay, though, because there are also little collections of books in the hallways.

Totally random ones.

After much searching, I finally found one I would actually read while I had my vodka and soda in the hotel bar.

I did not read while I was eating this, because that sandwich required both hands to manage.

Another thing I like about this hotel: Real Keys.

Also, pretty mirrors. Hi!

After I ate, I watched a movie, took a bath, and went to bed. Which is pretty much what I always do. 

The next morning I got my coffee from the hotel lobby, checked out, and entered the fray at Walmart for grocery shopping before heading home. Not the most gentle re-entry to the real world, but necessary.

There you have it! My (gadabout) life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: More Celebrating

Friday 

Short version: Tuna melt sandwiches, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: There were only three of us home for dinner this night, as A. was hunting with the younger two boys. For the kids at home, I made tuna melts. I had a salad, and I made them eat some, too. We had been sorely lacking in vegetables in recent days.

I sent leftover ham and scalloped potatoes with A. for their campfire meal.

Saturday

Short version: Ham and rice skillet, vanilla ice cream with chocolate/peanut butter fudge sauce

Long version: This is what I chose for my birthday meal. I had leftover rice and ham, so all I needed to do was heat those in a skillet with butter, already-cooked onion, frozen peas, and shredded carrots.

I actually love this kind of food. I also added the rest of the Christmas mushrooms to my bowl.

Yum.

I didn't want to have any kind of baked dessert for my birthday. We only had vanilla ice cream, which is not my favorite. That's why I made chocolate fudge sauce with peanut butter for it. I made this by following my old recipe for chocolate fudge sauce (corn syrup replaced with honey) to which I added a couple of spoonfuls of peanut butter.

The addition of the peanut butter made it more solid when it got cold, but it also made it more delicious. To me, anyway. And it was my birthday, after all.

Sunday

Short version: Hamburger patties, leftover scalloped potatoes, pickled radishes, dark chocolate

Long version: I had been relying heavily on Christmas leftovers, so I thought it was time for something besides ham. I took out ground beef unsure what I would do with it. In the end, I just made hamburger patties for the three of us at home. 

Instead of bread or buns, I heated up some of the leftover scalloped potatoes, so . . . still Christmas leftovers, actually.

The dark chocolate was one of my birthday gifts from my parents. I had a smooth bar, and one with cocao nibs. We did a taste test of both. The children preferred the smooth dark chocolate.

Monday

Short version: Green chile hamburger stew, cornbread

Long version: The hunters arrived home this day (no elk, unfortunately, though lots of stories). I made hamburger stew with the rest of the ground beef, along with potatoes, carrots, and green beans. I thought everyone could use some vegetables.

I asked A. if he would rather have cornbread or biscuits. He chose the cornbread, because they had been eating a lot of wheat bread while they were camping.

Tuesday

Short version: Rooster in tomato sauce, pasta, carrots, frozen peas, rice pudding

Long version: I took one of the roosters we butchered out of the freezer. I knew I would be gone in the afternoon, so I cooked it in the morning. All I did with it was brown it on the stove, then put it in a deep casserole dish with pureed tomatoes, sliced onion, garlic, and Italian spices. That cooked slowly in the oven with the baked rice pudding until it was done. I also cooked some carrots in there with the rooster.

Rice pudding and rooster.

At dinnertime, I just heated the chicken up and then used most of the tomato sauce the chicken had been cooking in for the pasta, along with cream and butter.

Wednesday

Short version: Daddy burgers, French fries, carrot sticks

Long version: A. came home from hunting with pre-made hamburger patties, bacon, American cheese, and butter bread he had bought to make his usual burgers. They came home before they could use those things, though, so he cooked them this night.

He also made the French fries. He actually pre-cooked them in lard before finishing them in the oven while the burgers cooked.

I added the carrot sticks. Because I'm a mom, and someone has to think about vegetables.

Thursday

Short version: Pork, black-eyed peas, rice, collard greens, pecan pie

Long version: Happy New Year! Of course we must ensure our health, wealth, happiness, peace, and joy with our traditional meal. Every year.

My children have added the peace and joy to the first three. The rice is for peace, and the pecan pie is for joy. Makes sense to me.

The greens this year came from the collard greens that will not die:

We have had a remarkably warm winter. Certainly nothing to discourage famously hearty collard greens.

Refrigerator check:

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?

The Light Shines in the Darkness*

Just in the last few years, I have realized how much I like having additional light in the winter. Not lamps and light fixtures--although I have added quite a few of those to our home over the last eight years--but less-direct light.

I started putting up my Time Change lights about five years ago, just to illuminate the dim area between the kitchen and dining room. It does add a bit more light, but mostly it just looks pretty and cozy.

When I finish up the dishes at night and we're all in the living room, I like to turn off all the lights in the kitchen except these.

Just in the last few years, I've started using candles more, too. I started putting them on our table when someone donated a very large box of taper candles to our church that we couldn't use on the altar (because altar candles have to be majority beeswax, and these are paraffin). My children really love having the candles lit for breakfast if it's still dark outside, and always for dinner in the winter.

This year, I added a candle to the living room, too, thanks to the candle molds that Poppy and I used. The wax for this came from church, too. I actually ordered the molds because there was a big box of candle stubs that would have just been disposed of if I hadn't taken them to make into new candles.

Just that one small candle on the bookcase shining after it gets dark makes me very happy.

We made this one pink, with what I assume was an old Advent candle.

Small things, but they bring a disproportionate amount of satisfaction.

* "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." From the Gospel of John.

Snapshots: Celebrations

Because of my immobility the Sunday before Christmas, I wasn't at church to help decorate. It was a fun surprise to show up and see what everyone else had done.

Outside.

Inside.

Last year when we put the church manger scene away, the star fell off. I meant to see if I could put it back, but it disappeared before I got to it. I looked online and at Walmart to try to find another star, and they were all so tacky and ugly that I decided we could just make one.

I printed out a Star of Bethlehem in what I thought would be the right size, then cut that out and used it to trace the star onto a piece of plywood. Eldest son cut this out for me using our band saw, and then I spray painted it with some of the bronze paint left from my bathroom painting.

Star of wonder . . .

I really like the way it came out.

Because our Christmas Day service is at 8 a.m., the children only looked in their stockings and opened their gifts from each other before Mass. They had to wait until after Mass to open most of their gifts.

The aftermath. But after cleaning up all the wrapping paper because I do that as they're opening presents.

A. spent much of Christmas afternoon getting ready to go hunting, and of course, gifts were spread all over the place as they were investigated and used. Which is why we had to clear all of this from the table in order to eat our Christmas dinner.

Hunting pack and various craft supplies. We are an eclectic household.

Poppy made a custom sign for my birthday yesterday.

I did not have a cake, nor did I have 46 candles. I did have two candles to blow out in my ice cream, though.

She also gave me her Birthday Princess ribbon to wear. 

I should have posted a selfie yesterday on my birthday, I guess. This is the most recent photo of me.

In the bathroom of our shotgun-house rental in New Orleans. I wondered if they put this mirror here expecting people to take selfies in it. It kind of looks like it.

And last, I came upon this frankly disturbing creation outside on a wall when I was feeding animals.

I think it was modeled on the Orcs from Lord of the Rings.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

And Now, 46

Today is my birthday. Having a birthday so soon after Christmas has always been challenging. There tends to be traveling at this time, everyone is pretty tired of eating and celebrating, and there's a general feeling of let-down.

It's my own fault, though, as I was born three weeks late*. So I should have been born at the beginning of December, a happy and excited time. Instead, my birthday is two days after Christmas. 

There are some benefits to this, however. When I was kid, I always enjoyed that I never had school on my birthday. I still enjoy this, because getting my own kids up and out the door for school, along with whatever after-school activities are occurring, would be a buzzkill.

I also like that the Christmas decorations are still up on my birthday. 

The view from my chair in the living room. I just now figured out how to do a panoramic photo, so you can see all of my living room. Because I am always learning and growing, ahem.

I always spend the day between Christmas and my birthday cleaning up. It's my birthday gift to myself. I am much happier in an orderly environment, and Christmas festivities have a bad effect on that. 

A. is hunting with two of the boys, so it's going to be a low-key day for us at home. The past two years, I've run a 5K on my birthday, just because I could. The joke I made that turned into a rule for my children is that I have to do it every year in less time than my age in years. Running a 5K in under 46 minutes is not much of a challenge. If I could run at all, that is. This year, thanks to my pinched nerve or whatever, I can't run. 

Instead, Poppy and I are going to do a stretching video to start the recovery from whatever I did to myself. Seems fitting for my mid-forties.

Anyway, happy birthday to me, and feel free to eat some cake in my honor today. Or run a 5K, if you're into that sort of thing.

* Sorry about that extra almost-month of late pregnancy, Mom. That was mean of me.

Friday Food: A. Takes Over

Friday 

Short version: Leftover chickpea curry and rice, ice cream

Long version: It was just the three younger children and me for dinner this night. We really needed to finish up the chicken and chickpea curry that had been in the refrigerator all week. We had had it twice already that week, so I knew it would not be welcomed rapturously. Which is why I bribed the children with the remainder of the ice cream from the previous night's birthday taste test.

That worked well.

Saturday

Short version: Barbecue pork sandwiches, pickled radishes

Long version: I still had quite a bit of pork left from the pork butt I had cooked awhile previously that also really needed to be used. I simmered it in barbecue sauce with the rest for the caramelized onions that had been in the refrigerator and the kids had that in sandwiches. 

The radishes were ones my mother had brought that were also really needed to be used. Obviously a theme in my kitchen this week. I pickled those, though, so they would last a lot longer. And were also very handy for a quick vegetable.

Sunday

Short version: Pork chops, baked potatoes, pickles, gingerbread cake and whipped cream

Long version: I did not make this meal. And the reason I did not make it was that I tore a rather significant muscle in my leg the night before and couldn't walk. At least, I thought that's what I had done. My father was of the opinion that it was a pinched nerve causing the pain. 

Whatever it was, it was debilitating. I couldn't walk or stand up for very long. Or even sit or lie down without pain. It was pretty bad.

I also couldn't put on a sock by myself. Poppy had to help me put on my sick socks.

Thankfully, A. came home this day, so he was able to take over with dinner. I did orchestrate dinner by having Poppy take the package of pork chops out of the freezer to thaw and also bake the potatoes while she was baking the gingerbread cake. She also made the cake, while I sat in the kitchen to read her the recipe and direct her.

Proudly cutting her cake.

The pickles were dill pickles I canned this year, mostly because I wanted to try using grape leaves to keep the pickles crisp when canned. They did keep the pickles mostly crisp, but they also imparted a surprisingly sweet taste to the pickles. It wasn't bad, just unexpected.

Monday

Short version: A.'s smothered burritos, leftover gingerbread cake

Long version: We had some of the skin still in the refrigerator from when I had cooked the pork butt that I saved so A. could make chicharrones. He used that, plus the remainder of the pork chops, flour tortillas, refried beans I pulled from the freezer, cheese, and salsa to make burritos. Then he made a chile sauce with cubes of pureed red chili, onion, beans, and the bones from the pork chops. He left a couple of the burritos plain for Poppy and I, who are not big on spicy things, but he poured the sauce over the rest of them and baked those with more cheese on top.

These were very good, and the chile sauce was a big hit.

Tuesday

Short version: Posadas potluck

Long version: This was the night of our parish Posadas, in which we re-enact Mary and Joseph's search for an inn. This is like a play, with children dressed as Mary and Joseph or shepherds and angels, and the rest of us either following them and singing the song asking for a room at the inn, or inside the house singing the response song that tells them to move on. Until they come to the last one, at which they are invited in.

It's very fun. We do it from a church to the rectory to the parish hall. I was so thankful that I was improved enough this day to limp through the posadas. I would have been sad to miss it.

On the move and very blurry.

There's a potluck in the parish hall afterwards. One family makes a big pot of pozole for the main dish, which is a New Mexican staple involving pork and posole (hominy, a.k.a dried corn kernels). The lady who made it told me that New Mexican pozole is much more plain in general than Mexican pozole, which I did not know. Fewer additions, like fresh corn, cilantro, raw onion, etc. She was kind enough to keep the chiles on the side in the form of a pureed sauce, which meant I could actually eat it. 

Last year, this potluck featured a lot more actual food--most too spicy for me because of all the chiles involved, but much appreciated by the rest of my family--and fewer desserts. This year there were more desserts than real food.

Poppy made our contribution of a double batch of these brownies. They were perfect, and they were all eaten, but if we do this next year, I need to bring an entree, too.

Wednesday

Short version: Pasta, leftover curry, eggnog and molasses cookies

Long version: I got back in the kitchen this day to make our traditional Christmas Eve eggnog, which we eat with Grandma Bishop's molasses cookies. Thankfully, I made the cookies before I hurt myself. They probably wouldn't have been made if I hadn't, as they require a couple of hours in the kitchen. 

The eggnog is much faster. I make it to use the yolks left from our Christmas Day roulade, so I just separate the eggs to make the eggnog and keep the whites in the refrigerator for the next day.

I was much better this day and able to stay on my feet to get some things done, as long as I rested in between. By the end of the day, however, I was getting pretty worn out and my body was starting to ache, which is why dinner came mostly from the freezer. 

I had a quart container of sausage meat sauce from a month or so ago that I combined with pasta and shredded asadero cheese from the freezer for the children's meal.  And then for A. and me, there was enough of the chicken and chickpea curry from a couple of weeks ago. I had frozen the last couple of servings. Surprisingly, all the dairy in it didn't separate at all when it was thawed. 

Thursday

Short version: Ham, scalloped potatoes, peas, sauteed mushrooms, chocolate roulade

Long version: Baking a ham is one of the least labor-intensive main dishes, especially if it's a pre-sliced spiral ham, which this was. Yay.

The potatoes require a bit more work only because they have to be sliced so thinly, but it was still doable.

The most labor-intensive part of this meal is the chocolate roulade. However, I have made it for years, so it's faster than it would be if it were a new recipe to me. 

It didn't crack too much this year.

I'm still forcing myself to go slow and rest, so as not to prolong my recovery or, God forbid, hurt myself further, so I rested both before and after making this. It's really annoying to me that I can't just get things done quickly, but I am so thankful that I can at least do things slowly now. It would have been a real bummer to be flat on my back in bed on Christmas.

Refrigerator check:

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?