Pomegranates are tiny gems of summer audacity, still ripe in vitamin-rich bright berry cheekiness. They exhibit a delightfully bratty tendency towards explosions of ruby-red splatter down the front of your best white shirt.
Pomegranates keep one humble.
(A scrubbing paste of Oxy-Clean and ice cold water seem to work best, BTW.)
So if you find yourself lacking in Holiday Giddy-Up and/or a spiritual insight into what Christmas is about, just have an incredibly delightful man peel a perfect mandarin orange and mix in a handful of July jewels for you.
This may look like another one of those annoying “What a lovely and romantic Saturday lunch Rick and Kathy had AGAIN!” posts.
And in a way, it sort of falls into that category.
Seriously, when your husband quizzes you on a Saturday morning as he’s cleaning up from the wonderful homemade bacon and egg breakfast he made, “Guess what I bought yesterday for our lunch today?”, you can just stop right there and call ‘er done.
No matter what comes out of his mouth at that point, he already had you at “I was thinking about how to make our weekend together fabulous and came up with a great idea for Saturday lunch.”
So while the cracked crab, fresh lemon and homemade seafood sauce were perfect with the pinot grigio, ciabatta, and unsalted butter in the warm December sunlight shared with someone who makes you happy just breathing the same air, that’s not what this blog post is about.
It’s a quiz.
Ready?
Which of the five photos above does not have crab in it?
Note to our collective self: for a great kick-off to the holiday season, get graciously swooped into a robust Thanksgiving clan-a-thon with 45 or so Italian Americans.
The “abbondanza” of the table is just the beginning.
There are pockets of generations everywhere you look, swapping recipes…
… exchanging vital personal information…
… and imprinting on upcoming generations the very real possibility of life-long love affairs.
It was so wonderful to remember that dishes are prepared with warm anticipation in one kitchen, then wrapped in a towel, schlepped on a lap, and unswaddled without fuss in another kitchen as a conga line of squealing anklebiters fly by in a blur just under your elbow.
COUSINS!!! IS THERE ANYTHING MORE FUN THAN COUSINS?!!
Nope, unless it’s having a great camera to chase them around with.
Not every offering at the table was personally squeezed in the produce section, washed, peeled, sauteed, spiced, spruced up, set to rest, and plated perfectly. Some bought and brought exquisite cheese, God bless them.
Others showed up with the fruit of their labor that had been several months, even years, in the preparation.
That wine, dear readers, was a gift. It was as though Nevi had thought last year, “I know! I’ll make an outstandingly full, warm yet clean, and European-style cabernet sauvignon with just the softest end note of cranberry. It will be great with Thanksgiving dinner next year.”
He would have been (was?) right.
Inside jokes…
A well planned menu…
The chance for everyone to help out…
The comfort of the “must haves”…
… and the celebration of the “Must Know”…
Another precious chance to laugh at the same old, wonderful stories…
… and the opportunity to get input on which to pile higher on what.
These are all part of the familial elixir fumes that are breathed in and stored up in the pulse of the memories of the generations.
But there is always room for something–
.. or someone–new at the table.
At least, that’s what one Thanksgiving celebration looked like this year.
We’re very grateful we got to share in it. Thank you, Nancy.
… and you can take four hours of conference calls from your office upstairs, or your living room in front of the fire, or from the north porch as the sun romps with the clouds over the mountains at sunset…
… and the local wildlife gets jiggy wid da snow.
Or, when the wind picks up and your butt gets sore from sitting through four hours of conference calls, you can switch to the south porch…
… and the sun starts futzing with your hair instead of the clouds and mountains.
I’m on the phone here via earphones and a blackberry, talking to some very smart women, trying to figure out how to market the company we work for.
And then once you hang up on the call, someone starts hollering, “Hey, come back around this side and check this out!”
Everything finds a place of calm and correctness and collected-at-the-end-of-the-day-ness…
I forgot to mention that they come with a set of built-in puppy pooper-outters: two black labs, names a’ Harry, the Senior, and Pablo, the Patient.
At just over two years old, Pablo isn’t much more than a pup himself, which means he was the perfect host to Winnie last weekend.
He’s not only completely good-natured and playful…
… he lives in an intensely glossy black coat, punctuated by the most incredible almond-shaped amber eyes this side of Rivendell. Honestly, you have to be careful when making eye contact with this animal: too long a gaze, and you feel your bones starting to dissolve.
Fortunately, Pablo mostly stays on the move.
Good thing.
He can chase as well as he leads.
Pablo is willing to share, and he knows some secrets…
… like aerobatics, for instance.
Who knew McNuggets could fly?
Harry, the Senior, spent most of the visit trying to stay one corner ahead of the furry vortex, preferring the company of other more civil and silver companions.
They said Pablo missed Winnie when we left.
Really? We thought he might’ve worn out his welcome..
… but we’re hoping the only thing worn out was Pablo.
We’ve been talking a lot about babies here lately, and about what it’s like to go from being just your family, to being just you, to being somebody’s parent.
We’ve been talking a lot about Kate, too.
We’ve talked about how transparent and open and vulnerable she can be…
… and how focused and creative she is…
… and how you can see the Love of Heaven in her eyes.
Always could.
She’s a really hard worker and doesn’t quit until the task is done, yet she ALWAYS takes time for what–and who–is important…
… who is everybody.
EVERY BODY.
She is a beautiful woman.
Always has been…
… and now that she’s just days (hours?) away from having a baby of her own to talk about…
(A scrubbing paste of Oxy-Clean and ice cold water seem to work best, BTW.)