Childhood Influences

The other day, I was asked by a friend of mine if I could contribute something to The Benchmark or The TBM, which are both publications of the New Hampshire Land Surveyor’s Association. On the drive home from work, I muddled around in my head some different ideas and topics, but nothing really struck me. There are a lot of guys out there who write really great articles, involving important professional topics, or interesting surveying life experiences. What could I contribute?

I began to think about surveying in general, and what I love about it. A lot of what I do in the Surveying profession incorporates so much of what I have always loved to do. I spend a lot of time working and getting paid to play at my interests and hobbies. Then it dawned on me that most of what I do… what I really like about surveying, came from childhood experiences.

So first of all, there is being out in the forest. Most of the early childhood memories, that I have any clarity about, involve hiking out in the woods with my Dad. Maybe it's just because that is all I remember, or maybe it’s because of the big impact being outside had on my life.

And it wasn’t all hiking, but more like time spent outdoors. I can recall so many hikes and outdoor adventures with Dad and the family. A lot of the memories are winter-ish, where we had camp fires, hot dogs or venison, cocoa or coffee, and usually my brother and grandfather were involved. The smell of tobacco was delicious on the cold winter air. On many of the hikes we had interesting stories about the history of the places we visited.

Huntley Mountain, in Marlow, where my family settled in the 1700’s was a popular hike. There were old family residences, wood frame houses, long abandoned, that were in various states of decay. In a few spots, only cellar holes remained. We would hike to these places, explore the ruins and listen to the stories of who lived there. A few hikes were plant gathering missions to dig up heirlooms; lilacs, lilies, iris and rhododendrons to landscape our home with “Huntley” plants.

Other places that stick out in my memory are the channel up in Marlow, where a bridge had once stood, now long gone. The Old Airport, in west Keene, with a hanger and pieces of old planes still scattered in the winterberry and dogwoods at the edge of cornfield. You could always find treasures to bring home. The old Forestry where Dad played and made forts as a kid, and where he worked when he was older. The Forestry is now completely overgrown and “lost”. The cellar holes on Highland Hill, where we mined a few chimney bricks from the ruins to make a small brick walk at home.

When I was 10, we moved to Westmoreland, where we had endless woods, fields, marshes, ravines and swamps to explore, right from the back door. We were always outside. We explored countless places in the woods and checked out so many cellar holes and ruins, and wondered, who lived there and what happened to them.

It was about this time that I started reading two of the authors who ended up being a big influence in my life.

The first was Eric Sloane. Aunt Chike and Uncle Bill bought me a set of books by Eric Sloane one year for Christmas. He wrote wonderful historic narratives and filled the pages with fantastic pen and ink drawings of early American colonial life. I learned how the stone walls came to be, what farms may have looked like, and why cellar holes and roads were arranged the way they were around our rural town from these books.

I learned about all the of the tree species in our area, and what their wood was used for historically. The trinkets and treasures that we found in the old cellar holes and stone walls took on new meaning, as I understood their historical context and importance.

Gardening, farming, herbs, building and creating things out of wood, 1830’s life and places like Old Sturbridge Village became a passion, as did something else… drawing, especially with pen and ink. Drawing pictures and plans for farms and gardens in India ink. Ink that was permanent. Plans that I still have today, 30 years later.

 

 

The other author that I discovered was J.R.R. Tolkien. If you don’t know who HE is, well…Where have you been? He is of course the author of The Hobbit, The Lord of The Rings, The Silmarillion, among other books. He is, in my mind, the founding father of the fantasy novel. His novels are full of dragons, goblins, elves and men, great cities and faraway lands and all kinds of maps and descriptions of these places.

My brother & I spent hours upon hours, days on end, making paths and roads through the woods, with outposts and kingdoms. We built walls and forts. We figured out the boundaries of our lands, and the land of the neighboring kids, and had mock wars. Our arrows were apples from the old trees along the borders and our shields were 50 gallon trash can lids.

There were hot disputes over where the borders between our lands actually were, and we spent hours drawing maps in pen and ink, on paper browned with coffee to look like parchment, so it could be ancient, and thus have the weight of truth. We surveyed all our lands, and mapped all the roads, the forts, the wet areas, the gravel pits, the resource areas and danger spots. We hid treasures throughout our kingdoms, treasures which could only be found again with these maps. Our kingdoms were documented for posterity, and again… many of those maps still survive today. My kids like to pull them out of my foot locker and look at the “ancient documents” some of which are written in Runes or Elvish script and that need translating. A few of the treasures they mark are still there, waiting.

So here I am, 36 years later, a Land Surveyor and a Wetland Scientist. I get hired to do a survey, and start off on another adventure or quest. It’s rarely the same job twice and there is usually something new and interesting to find out or see. I travel to other towns and walk properties I’ve always wanted to explore. I go to the town halls and registries and spend hours pondering over historical documents and maps, trying to find written evidence about the location of lost boundary corners, old stone walls or trees long since rotted… the hidden treasure.

More can be discovered at historical societies, libraries and the State Archives. I get to visit all these places and dig into ancient tomes and browse antique maps, searching for clues to the location of the hidden treasures.

Some days I spend hours walking through forests and swamps, trying to find the treasure that the deeds and plans reference; that hidden stone post or iron marker buried beneath the forest duff marking an ancient property corner. The treasure could be a set of triple blazes on an old beech tree or a stone wall that once marked a border of a pasture and a mowing. Or perhaps a stake and stones on some barren cliff surrounded by hemlocks, inaccessible and maybe not seen in scores of years. It could be the bar way in a stone wall that some ancient deed refers to as the beginning point of the “new” division line. Any these might be the treasure that I seek, the treasure that will solve the mystery of where the property boundaries that I'm looking for lie.

Once I’ve found the evidence and markers, I buckle on my machete (sword), put on my surveying vest (armor) and gather my surveying tools and jump in my truck (valiant steed). I may spend days measuring (adventuring), noting all the evidence of human occupation; physical boundaries, lines called for and occupied, and the roads and travelled ways by which these places have access.

When I come back to the office, I draw maps and plans of all these places. My plans show where the walls lie, where wetlands are located, where houses are built. They delineate the roads and paths and tree lines and springs.

I print my maps on Mylar, with permanent ink, and record them at the County Registry of Deeds, so that someday, a hundred years from now, someone can look at my ancient documents and know what was on the ground and where the boundaries were at that time. I am happy to say that I discovered an occupation that involves most of the things I have always loved to do and includes many of my hobbies.

I've talked to a lot of guys that when asked how they got into the profession, tell you they went to surveying school, or got experience in the military or picked up a job with a surveyor when they were young. Me? I blame Tolkien, Eric Sloan and my Dad. Best job ever, thanks guys!

Brewing beer

Well Folks, it’s apparently been ages since I last blogged. You’ve probably been worried. Where is Russ?  What has he been up to?  How can I go on without knowing what Russ is doing?  Right? … (Insert the sound of crickets chirping here).  OK… so maybe you aren’t holding your breath.  For all I know, you deleted me long ago, or only keep me bookmarked for a laugh.

So, whether you’ve been waiting with baited breath for my next post so you can go on with things, or with finger poised over the delete key, threatening to remove me from your life if I ever post again, if you’re reading along now, you are in for a treat. You are finally going to find out what I have been up to these last several months. Well… maybe not everything I’ve been doing over the course of the last years absence, but at least something that I’ve done and want to share in yet another witty and thought provoking post. If you’re as clever as I suspect all of my discerning readers are, you will have seen the title and saved yourself a whole lot of reading already.…but for those of you who may be a bit slow on the uptake, I’ll spell it out….this weekend I brewed a batch of beer.

Beer brewing has become a favorite hobby over the last year. It actually all started about 20 years ago, when I decided to try brewing beer after my friend Bill had completed a few successful batches. He got sick of it and gave me his gear. I tried to make beer 3 or 4 times. I had a couple poor batches, one that never fermented and one that fermented real well but tasted like what plastic band-aids smell like. …undrinkable to say the least.

Last June, a new shop, Brewtopia, opened up near Central Square in Keene. I was excited to see what they had for craft beers, so I stopped in. What to my wondering eyes did a appear, but a beautiful beer store AND a home brewing supply store, all in one. I talked about brewing to the guys a little bit and picked up a great book on making homebrew that they recommended.

I went home and read the book in one evening. It became quite clear why my original batches 20 years ago were so un-spectacular to downright horrid. The next weekend, I rummaged around in the basement and found my glass carboy and some of the other beer making stuff I still had and decided to give it a go again. I went back and asked AJ at Brewtopia to hook me up with the ingredients for a pale ale recipe, which he did. I didn't even bother to ask what they were or in what amounts. I just wanted to try out the brewing process.

My first brew came out ok. Very drinkable. Not an award winner, maybe, and not particularly reproducible, since I had no idea what I made it with, but good. I was hooked. I joined some online communities like Hopville and  Homebrewtalk , and got a subscription to Brew your Own magazine and a home brewing website called Beer Tools.(Ya, I know… I get a little obsessive at times)

So one evening, I was enjoying a Shipyard Export, and wondered if I could figure out how to make something that tasted like that. I opened up the Google Machine and Wham!  clone recipes galore.

The next weekend, I hit up Brewtopia, got my supplies and brewed up a batch. As luck would have it, we had a pig roast for the Elm City Derby Damez on the same weekend that the beer was ready, so I brought out a cooler full. It was a hit and disappeared pretty quickly.  I decided to call it “Pig Roast” and to keep tweaking the recipe and brewing it until I had something super delicious and of my own make, and so I have brewed the last 3 times the same recipe with various little additions, changes or subtractions. I’ve also picked up, or been given, better brewing gear, which has enhanced the whole brewing experience, as well as helped things look and taste better.

This weekend past, I brewed it again. This time, I used yeast that I had farmed from a bottle of an earlier batch. I had made a starter earlier in the week and built up a good sized yeast cake.

Once again, I messed around with the hop schedule and the various amounts of malt to try to find just that right combination.

The process is pretty easy and fun. It feels like working at the Alchemy Lab for all my Skyrim addict friends. First, I steeped my Wheat and Crystal-30 grains in a small pot on the stove for about 1/2 hour at 150+/- degrees.

 

Since it was a glorious Sunday, with the sun shining and the temps in the 70’s (a very rare occurrence in NH in March), once the steeping was done, I set up my burner and kettle out by the fire pit and played all afternoon at being a brew-miester. I brought my water to a boil, then added my steeped wort, my malt extract and the first addition of hops. I was trying something a little different, so I had to stay close in order to add hops at timed intervals, especially near the end of the hour long boil.

When I first made beer, I would get so wound up and have my books and directions out the whole time, checking to see if I was “doing it right” I have the process down now, so there’s less checking and more enjoying. That’s not to say stuff doesn’t come up that causes a panic now and then. I stepped away yesterday for just a moment and had a boil over that put out my burner. So I lost a little propane and about a quart of wort. That was a bummer. The dogs enjoyed liking the the fire pit patio stones though.

Once I was done boiling, I cooled the wort with my handy little cooling device, and then poured the chilled wort into the carboy. I found that I boiled down more volume that expected in an hour, so my 6 gallons to start with turned into about 4.8 in the carboy.

I expected 5.5 gallons, so the batch is a little denser than I expected. (An O.G. of 1.071 for you brewing types, whereas I was aiming for 1.060) The beer is also going to be a little hop-ier (more bitter) than the recipe goal, but I think it’ll be good anyway. It meets all the style characteristics of an OLD ALE, so I’m sure I’ll like it.

 

I pitched my home farmed yeast, and it took off…. the airlock started bubbling within a half hour of pitching. I hope that’s a good thing….sure seems so. It has a lot of work to do.

So now the beer is at its primary fermentation in the basement at about 65 degrees. Hopefully, I’ll bottle in two weeks and be sampling deliciousness around the 1st of May.

 

    Pig Roast Old Ale

Monadnock Monday’s Routes

Well folks, here it is the last few days of July and I have neglected to let you in on my Monadnock Monday hikes. I know…It’s been quite a while since I’ve written anything, in fact. I do plan on writing more again. Honestly, this summer has been so busy that I have have been reveling in “having” work (almost too much) instead of finding things to do and “wishing” I had work. So I haven't been  doing a lot of writing. Or if I do, its just quickie blurbs on Facebook. But I digress. I wanted to let you know what I’ve done to date for hikes.

Of course the first thing to tell you is that Instead of once a week, it has turned out that I’ve only managed to hike once a month or so, and now that work is so busy, I can’t afford to miss Mondays, and so the quest has been suspended until further notice. I hope to get back to hiking this fall, although there is still the chance that I’ll make the trek on a weekend or two this summer. I’ve made the trip 6 times this summer so far, and here is what I’ve done and where I’ve gone.

April 11, 2011 ~ I did a solo hike up the steep and beautiful Marlboro Trail , which usually promises to be devoid of other hikers. The promise held, and I met only one other person. Near the top it was a little treacherous, as there was still snow and ice in the sheltered areas, which also turned out to be the steeper tougher going areas. (1hr-45m up: 1hr-15m down)

 

April 18, 2011 ~ School vacation for the kids. I decided to take them up with me. While we were buying provisions at a fantastic sandwich shop in Keene, we ran into my sister-in-law Shelly and her kids and one of their friends. They were also heading to the mountain for a hike, so we decided to join them. Their destination was the Marlboro trail. It was interesting to see the changes in the trail in just one week. Buds were opening and the snow was almost all gone.

It was pretty fun hiking with a passle of kids, who ran up and down the mountain constantly while Shelli and I trudged along up after them. My kids were very excited to be hiking with their cousins. We even decided that we should do more family hikes and camping after this trip (2hrs up: 2hrs down)

May 2, 2011 ~ Another solo hike. This time I left from the State Park so that I could buy a trail guide at the headquarters gift shop. I ascended the White Cross Trail and came down the White Dot Trail. The White Cross is fairly steep, with a stairway in places…a good trail NOT to come down on with tired legs. The snow was finally gone from the mountain and I had a beautiful sunny breezy day to hike. 

The park headquarters was closed when I arrived, and when I got back. I spied a ranger and asked if that was the case, and she told me normally yes, but she could open up if I wanted to buy some stuff. So I did :)  I bought my trail guide and a sticker for my truck. I love the State and National Park gift shops. So many cool maps, books, guides, trinkets and gadgets. (1hr-40m up: 1hr-08m down)

May 9, 2011 ~ For this hike, I chose the Dublin Trail and hiked with Shelly. It turns out this is one of the hidden gems on Monadnock. It is a very pretty trail and not terribly difficult.

Although the trail head looked like it must get crowded later in the season or on weekends, there was only one other car when we arrived. When we arrived at the summit there wasn’t another soul around. We ate lunch and enjoyed the sunshine for about an hour. I know now to where sunscreen, no matter what…what a burn on my legs! By noon, a small crowd had ascended the mountain and filled the crags and crannies around us. We decided to leave and made a leisurely descent back to the car. (1hr-40m up: 1hr-30m down)

May 29, 2011 ~ The Family Hike. Once again, I hit the Dublin trail. Tracy, the kids and I met my sister Sarah and her husband Bruno, and my brother Dan, sis-in-law Shelly and their kids and did the family tour. It was a great day and we all enjoyed the group thing plus the little mini-conversations as people broke off at different hiking rates and chatted.

At the top we met a couple of Tracy’s Roller-derby team mates. The top was actually quite crowded…it was a pretty warm and sunny day, and if you check your calendars you’ll also note it was a Sunday. Not everyone can work 4-10 hour days and make their own schedule. (I think this hike was about a 5-1/2 hour round trip..forgot to write stuff down)

June 2, 2011 ~ The last hike so far this summer. I did a another solo adventure. I started at the State Campground on the Dublin Road and started up the mountain by the Birchtoft Trail. After a fairly easy, gently sloping wooded climb of about an hour I came to a cross roads and decided to hop onto the Cascade Link Trail. Fantastic choice!

It is almost all open ledges and  “the long way,” but its not very steep at all and its so sunny and open. There are so many great views and places to sit, and of course, no other hikers. Cascade ends at the Pumpelly Trail, which them leads to the top. It was a gorgeous day, so I took advantage of the weather and my free time to enjoy a leisurely lunch and a good book for about an hour, soaking up the sun in just my shorts and sunglasses on the summit.

I took the shortcut on the way down, the Red Spot Trail, which is quite a bit steeper.  (2hrs-30m up: 1hr-35m down)

Now I have three trails left to finish the quest of climbing all the main trails leading up to the summit. The halfway house trail, the Lost Farm Trail and the Pumpelly trail. The first tow are fairly short trails, but Pumpelly will eat up the whole day. I’ve done it before… its beautiful and follows the open ridges on the spur that runs southwesterly from Dublin Lake to the peak.

Life in New Hampshire

One of my favorite things about living in New Hampshire? By the time you are tired of the current season, a new one starts, and excitement and energy fill up the air all over again.  The last couple of days, the weather has been so warm… 50’s in February. I’m sure it’s just a warm spell, and I’m just as sure that Old Man Winter still has a few snowflakes to hurl in our direction, but he’s past his prime now.

I love the winter; and this winter has been a classic one.  Record snowfalls in some parts of New England, deep freezes for days on end, sub zero weather…the whole kit and caboodle. It does present a conflict in me… as an outdoor enthusiast, there are so many opportunities for fun… I look forward to fantastic snowy winters.

As a surveyor…. deep snow is a death knell. There is not much you can do when the job is to map the edge of the parking lot and all the utilities, and you have no idea where they may be under the piles of snow and ice. A stone monument marking a property line under 4 feet of snow in the middle of the woods is NOT an easy thing to find. 

So, you have to find the good and get over the bad. Enjoy the season that is upon you, until the next one arrives. I’ve been snow shoeing. I’ve enjoyed the cold air outside while the fire in the woodstove roars inside. The kids have been snowboarding and skating every week. We’ve made snow forts. Even the hard work of shoveling the snow out to the shed or off the roof was fun. Good exercise with a tangible end result.

But now… the winter has worn on me.  I’m ready to start doing something else. And low and behold – the weather turns, and its 50 degrees and sunny out. The patio ice melted away yesterday. The roof is bare.

There are some funky smells in the air… rotten, wet, frozen things have surfaced with all their pungencies…yet still…they are smells of spring… of life and death still happening under the frozen mantle of snow and ice.

I feel the sun’s energy. I’m thinking now of looking at my seed catalogues, planning 2011’s garden… of pruning my fruit trees and imagining the next additions to my orchard… of hanging some buckets on Maple trees to make some maple syrup with the kids. I’ve even contemplated fixing up my mountain bike and getting out and riding the muddied up snowmobile trails.

Sure… there is still plenty of winter to be had… some of our biggest winter snows arrive in March… but then they melt.

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Another one of my moments…

A few years ago, we had a huge ice storm here in New Hampshire. Thousands of trees were split and shattered, and power was out in our neck of the woods for about two weeks. We lost a few trees, including one 200’ tall, 30” diameter white pine, which came crashing down in a rush and a roar that launched both Tracy and I out of bed. It sounded like the end of the world. 

Well… It wasn’t, thank goodness, but it did leave a big mess of pine boughs, branches and tangled remains of all the little trees that it took with it in the fall. I spent two weekends cutting up the remains of most of the pine and the little trees that were on the bank or in the garden, and I built a big brush pile. Once the snow arrived, we spent a family afternoon burning brush.

The snow covered a lot of the remains, and there was such a tangle, that after the initial cleanup triage, I let the rest of the mess lie. I planned on cleaning it up in the spring. And that’s what I did. Over the last 2 years, during moments here and there, I dragged limbs and branches up to the corner of the yard near a stone wall, where the pile would be masked by the small trees, the bank, and the garden. The pile also turned into a repository for all things wood. Garden baskets that had lived their life, an old wooden bench whose legs had rotted, the board ends from countless back yard building projects. What started as a small place to drag a few branches began to have a life of its own, layers of the seasons work stacked in a mound. And as it happened, we had somewhat of a droughtish summer, so the wood dried to tinderbox quality.

Shift forward to this December Christmas vacation. We had our first substantial snowstorm here in Westmoreland on the day after Christmas. Not a blizzard of huge proportion, really, just the normal snowstorm of years past, and about 15” of white, dry, fluffy snow covered the ground. It was beautiful, and the winds, which accompanied the storm and that remained for days after, sculpted the snow around the house into all kinds of interesting lunaresque landscapes. The wind also blew all the snow off what now was a very substantial, and very visible, brush pile in the barren back yard.

I decided on Tuesday that if the winds subsided a bit, I would burn the brush pile, along with all the paper bags full of Christmas wrapping paper and cardboard gift boxes that filled the garage. Around noon time, it seemed like the winds had dulled to an occasional light breeze, so I began hauling up some of the bags and boxes. I lifted some of the limbs that stuck out from the unruly mound and began inserting the combustible materials. I pushed them deep into the mound, to make sure they would ignite the entire body, and when it all seemed ready, I lit a match. And another. And another. And another.  This wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought. It was going to take a little more manipulation get anything going. The paper and cardboard would slowly catch, then in an instant, erupt into a huge flame, licking the limbs and penetrating deep into the pile, but once the fires had consumed the more easily combustible materials, it left the rest of the pile smoldering but un-finished.

I’m not someone to give up, once I’ve decided to do something, so back to the garage I went for the remaining paper and cardboard, and this time I began to strategically place it where the smoldering limbs seemed most receptive to burning. As things began to burn, I pulled at the mound and draped dry limbs over the flames, to let them lick at the the branches, and slowly, but surely, the fire started to take hold. As luck would have it, the winds began to pick up again, and the fire began to heave and puff, like a living organism. The winds would slow and the fire would lick high, then delve deep as a new wave of pushed into the mound. Then, with only little warning, the pile began to make a rushing sound, and with a roar, the entire mound heaved upward and burst into flame.

The heat generated was enormous. Where moments ago, I had my face and hands close in the brush, working to get the pile to ignite, I now had to back off at least 20 feet to avoid being scorched. The flames roared and reached high above the mound.  Dry beech leaves and hemlock needles, 30 feet above the ground crackled and disappeared in smoke. All I could do for a while was let the waves of wind and flame consume the body of wood and tinder.

It seemed like an eternity, but in reality, the burst probably only lasted a few minutes. Soon the fire had taken most of the pile and it began to collapse on itself, although still burning fiercely. As the the heat began to subside a touch, I inched forward to gather stray limbs and push them deep inside the infernal heat… I wanted total consumption. The coals were glowing white and hot enough to easily melt glass. The day was cold, maybe 20 degrees outside with a fairly strong wind blowing now, but the heat from the fire created an envelope around me and I felt nothing but warmth. When heat of the fire ebbed, I would dart in, grabbing whatever I could, and push it back in toward the flame. Not without consequence. Most of the hairs on my fingers and wrist and a few eyebrow and mustache hairs writhed and melted in the process. My cheeks and fingers began to cook with a healthy red glow.

This went on all afternoon, a frantic dance to keep the wind, the fire and the wood working together to an ultimate finish. As the afternoon closed, and it started to get dark, the fire finally began to wind down. I could now sit down and bask in the glow and relax. Tracy brought me out a cup of coffee, and I sat down on the stone wall, with the woods and cold wind at my back and the fire in my face.

And here was my moment. I had been listening to seventies tunes on my iPod all afternoon as I worked. Now as I sat to sip my coffee and stare at the fire, “The City of New Orleans,” by Arlo Guthrie, began top play. I experienced something. The biting wind and cold on my back, neck and ears; the heat of the fire still burning red on my cheeks and hands; the delicious oxygen laden, crisp air coupled with the aromatic smoke and resin of burning pine; the bluesy sadness of the music playing in my earphones, while I happily danced inside and hummed the tune. Between verses, I could hear the cold winds alternately rushing and whispering in the pines above me. I had simultaneously a feeling of solitude, sadness, oneness and euphoria. I wanted to cry and laugh at the same time, but the flames and hot coals drew me in once again, and I could only stare. My thoughts disappeared, my mind quieted, and my spirit vibrated and hummed a tune of joy.

I  sat sipping my coffee, kicking my feet in time to the music, and humming until the coffee was gone. The fire was all but a few larger limbs now, burning slowly in the huge bed of coals. 

I stood up, and with a last look at the pile that was my world for the afternoon, took a deep breath and walked across the darkened yard toward the inviting warmth and glow of my house.

Christmas Dinner Menu - 2010

  Well folks, the big man is due in just a few days and I’ve been digging through my recipes to make my shopping list for our Christmas Dinner. It has become a tradition to host dinner at our house on Christmas Day. We usually do our Christmas’ mornings at our own houses, and then converge on 331 Poocham around 4-ish in the afternoon. We start with appetizers and wine and exchange Christmas presents between the cousins.

I usually serve dinner around 6:30 or 7:00. Usually, its a small gang of about 14 people and we have just enough room in our small dining room for everyone. One nice thing about a small room… it’s not conducive to getting up and moving around, so we all tend to sit, drink wine and chat until late in the evening (at least late for this family, especially after an exhausting Christmas day).

Most years we play a game or two at the table while we eat dessert; trivia, some new board game, or our seasonal favorite….the list game. Its really not Christmas until we’ve shared our lists. (Rules and procedures found here)

Of all things Christmas, the dinner is my favorite. I love cooking a big meal, especially things that are not normal weekly fare. I love the smiles that light up on faces as dinner is served; my guests see the feast in front of them and taste favorite dishes they have been looking forward to all year and then their faces speak of the pleasure that words just can’t express.  I love the party at the table afterwards, when my tasks are done, and I can just sit and soak up all the love and togetherness.

This year, I’m sticking to most of our traditional standbys. In fact, if you peruse last years menu, you won’t note much of a difference, a couple deletions, a few additions, but basically the same. For a few years, I tried to mix it up each time, a whole new and exciting menu for each Christmas, but a couple years ago I decided that tradition was important, too. When I was growing up we always had a certain meal at Thanksgiving, at Easter, on Christmas Eve, and on Christmas day. You looked forward to that meal and all the delicious dishes you knew would be there.

So this is one of my gifts to my family. I may not win any awards from the food network or Top Chef, but I make this meal with love and get great pleasure out of having everybody over and sharing it with them. That’s what Christmas is really all about.

So, without further adieu, here is this years menu:

appetizers

smoked trout
cheese and cracker plate
crab cakes*
curry spread*
parmesan stuffed dates wrapped in bacon
wines

entre

coriander crusted standing rib roast
scalloped potatoes with goat cheese and herb de Provence
green bean casserole*
oven roasted garden carrots in maple syrup
green salad*
devilled eggs*
cranberry sauce with crystallized ginger
homemade baguettes*
wine
  

Desserts

mince meat pie
apple pie
pecan pie
pumpkin pie
coffee

AND….

more wine

Buen provecho!

* contributions by guests.