Friday, December 27, 2024

Three Beautiful Things 12-26-2024: I Rested and Napped, Cooking Soup for My Birthday, New Zealand Christmas Dinner

1.  It has nothing to do with whether I enjoy the company of the people I'm with. 

The fact of the matter, though, is that beginning, oh, about twenty or more years ago, I began to be fatigued by any kind of extended time with groups of people, whether family, friends, a church group or the congregation as a whole, (until June of 2014) a classroom of students, or other social situations. 

I need to pace myself -- not avoid people!  

On Christmas Day, I spent about six hours total with family. We had a gift exchange and breakfast and later in the afternoon a clam chowder dinner at Christy's.

I woke up this morning wiped out. 

Before long, I realized that if I were going to enjoy today's five o'clock New Zealand Christmas dinner, I'd have to stay home (pace myself) and not participate in the gift exchange taking place around 10 o'clock this morning when Taylor, Cosette, and Saphire arrived at the Roberts' house from Moscow. 

I rested. 

I napped. 

I got recharged and refreshed. 

It worked. 

2.. Around 3:30 or so, I performed the last step of making the pumpkin soup I cooked on Christmas Eve and added fresh squeezed orange juice to it.

When I had my most recent  blood draw on December 14th, I also shopped at Trader Joe's and bought a whole baby chicken with my birthday (Dec. 27th) in mind.

When we lived in Maryland, I often liked to use a recipe by Mandy Rivers, author of South Your Mouth, to make Tuscan Chicken Stew. 

The recipe calls for boiling a whole chicken to start. 

So I boiled the chicken this afternoon before going to our New Zealand dinner at Carol and Paul's house. 

I left it in the pot to cool while I was at the Roberts' house and, when I returned home, I took the meat off the chicken's bones, cooked a variety of vegetables in the broth made by boiling the chicken, seasoned the broth with Trader Joe's 21 Seasoning Salute and their Everything But the Bagel seasoning, and folded the chicken pieces into the soup. 

 As a result, my soup is peppery, aggressively seasoned (way beyond the recipe), and includes vegetables Mandy Rivers' recipe doesn't include and I excluded potatoes and tomatoes,  two  high potassium ingredients normally crucial to this recipe. I also drained and included a can of kidney beans and a packet of Thai Wheat Noodles -- and I might add more noodles on Friday.

Now the soup will mature through the night and into Friday. I tasted a bit of it before I stored it and I'd say I succeeded in tailoring this soup to my enjoyment of peppery soup with aggressive seasoning and noodles.

I think it'll work. 

3.  Shortly before five o'clock, I joined with our family for our annual international Christmas dinner. Every year, Carol picks a country, researches the country's Christmas traditions and foods, and assigns each of us a part of the meal to prepare.

Paul prepared a New Zealand Christmas Punch for tonight's cocktail and Taylor and Cosette fixed a batch of delicious scallops for our appetizer.

We finished our appetizers and drink. Soon all the food items were ready. We sat down and here's what we had for our New Zealand dinner:

Molly made a Christmas wreath salad, a green salad on a circular plate, that looked like a wreath, and served it with a delicious vinaigrette.

We enjoyed the salad alongside the Mum's Pumpkin Soup I made on Wednesday and completed this afternoon.

Along with the soup and salad, we helped ourselves to Zoe's air fried Maori Fry Bread.

Soon the main dish, Carol's Christmas Ham, appeared on the table with Christy's side dish, Candied Kumara (sweet potatoes) and Orange Gremolata.

We finished our meal with pieces of Zoe's Pavlova, a lemon-y meringue and whipped cream concoction that was a superb way to finish our New Zealand meal. 

The evening of family fellowship continued with photos in front of the Roberts' Christmas tree and with Christy situating Molly, Zoe, Cosette, and Saphire into poses that recreated pictures that had been taken in the past. 

I kept hearing the words "Octagon Mom" repeated, followed by peals of laughter. 

I guess in one of those past pictures they recreated tonight some one -- maybe Molly -- bore a resemblance to whom I was told was, at one time, a woman of pop culture fame, a serial baby bearer nicknamed Octagon Mom. 

Ha! 

I was totally out of it, but the others were having a blast reminiscing, posting, laughing, and recalling the good old Octagon Mom days! 


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