Edible Christmas

Christmas hard candy

Wine, fine

Christmas dinner, simple, yummy

Lovely simmering cider

Since I had to work yesterday, today to me is like that lovely relaxed lazy day after Christmas, the day when in years past the kids would spend the day playing with new toys, the dinner would already be cooked, and at last, the mom, the great creator of Christmas, could enjoy the holiday. Of couse those crazy days are gone, but I still love the post Christmas days between Christmas and New Years. I am still enough of a Canadian to NOT end the holiday the day after, when a shocking number of Southerners take down all the lights and Christmas finery, put away the grog and the nog and return to doldrums of winter. In Toronto in the 80s you could still find houses lit at the end of January. In my own childhood in Florida, my mother NEVER spent New Year's Day taking down her decorations. New Year's Day was big deal to her, when she prepared yet another special meal with duck or goose or roast beef, and always invited friends and family. I think this was a holdover from her Scottish heritage, when those stern Presbyterians celebrated Christmas as a solemn holy day, but New Year's Day was a jolly celebration. Of course her immediate ancestors in Ottawa celebrated both with enthusiasm, as well as New Year's Eve.

Well, we never go out on New Year's Eve anymore, and I usually throw some black eyed peas and rice and hot sauce together for New Year's, but we celebrate Christmas for a week. And this Christmas, we have been celebrating since Thanksgiving, in the form of hot mulled cider. This cider has become a sort of continuous story, constantly bubbling in the crock pot, although I have drained the final 12 ounces or so, thick with sediment, into a refrigerated jar until I fell the need, maybe two days later, to take what I lovingly refer to as "the mother" out of the fridge and add fresh cider, oranges, cloves, cinnamon sticks, allspice, cardamom, and brown sugar to the starter and bring the whole thing to a soul-warming simmer again. When it is beautifully steeped and ready to drink, I ladle it into gold rimmed glass mugs with a generous dollop of Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum. Ahh, the smell, the taste, the heat of mulled cider. I owe part of this recipe to Nigella Lawson, whom I discovered first, briefly, on NPR, and then when I TiVO'd Christmas shows and was blessed with TWO Nigella specials. I immediately recognized a soul mate when she spoke of the scents of Christmas, which for her included oranges, cinnamon, cloves.....all the things that say Christmas to me. And then she described her CHRISTMAS CAKE, as we always called it in my Canadian early years, and her desire to have it as dark as possible, a goal that my mother and I had for years, but never achieved. Well Mom, wherever you are, I did it!! I made a dark, almost black, rich, moist Christmas cake that you would have loved. We are still enjoying it, thanks to the lovely Nigella, and I plan on making it for years to come. I remain an unabashed anglophile, listening to the King's College Boy's Choir singing Once in Royal David's City in pure high voice for a month leading up to Christmas Eve, but actually I think it is just attachment to English Canada that makes me so, well, not Southern, at least in December.