A recipe for a perfect Christmas Eve: "...heavy on the cinnamon, easy on the cloves..."

It's Christmas Eve at our house.

It's our first as a "married" couple, the first with Boo, and our first without Boy Wonder. We're mixing this and that, my favorite Christmas tradition, with his favorite, a new one for the boys, until we get it just right. I'm sure it's a lifelong process we'll constantly perfect, but here's what we have so far.

1. Steamed Shrimp with Old Bay
This one's from P and his family. I can't remember what my family does for dinner Christmas Eve, but I am not a shrimp eater. I'm a shrimp buyer, for sure. But this one is all P, until the boys grow up big enough to love shrimp, too. Here's the recipe P adapted from the Old Bay box:

1 lb raw shrimp
1/2 cup water
2/3 cup vinegar
Old Bay to taste

Bring the water and vinegar and spices to boil. Add shrimp. Boil no more than three minutes, or until shrimp turn from grey to pink. Voila!

2. Mulled Wine
A new one for both of us. He's not the wine drinker, so this is my equivalent to steamed shrimp. I like it. It's warm and gooey. Clarence from "It's a Wonderful Life" is the one who requests his "heavy on the cinnamon, easy on the cloves." Indeed, Angel, indeed. Here's the recipe I used (delicious....):

Clarence's Mulled Wine

A bottle of red wine
water
sugar
4 sticks cinnamon
5 whole cloves
1 orange
1 lemon

Warm for 40 minutes, but do not boil. Nummmmy.

3. New Pajamas for the whole family
Once we're in from our yearly tamale party at our favorite Anchorage family's house, there are new pajamas waiting for all of us. This is something I remember my mom doing for us the past few years...though I don't know if it was something we did "back in the day." Either way, I like it. A lot. And so does P. He had fun picking his out. Boo? He had no choice.

4. "It's a Wonderful Life"
This one we'll watch while we're wrapping the last of the presents tonight. It's my absolute favorite holiday movie and it's one of my favorite Jimmy Stewart flick. (I really do have a love of all things Jimmy Stewart. More than I love zombies, and I think that's probably a good thing.)

So Merry Christmas to all...and what are some of your Christmas Eve traditions?

A Christmas Memory: Why I Hate A Certain Holiday Song

And I mean hate with a capital F-U, Christmas Song! Really, really. It makes my skin crawl now...

In 2004, I worked at student newspaper as an advisor. In El Paso. Circulation...about 10,000. (I'm making the point that we weren't the damn New York Times or Washington Post...we were a college paper and most of the damn students there didn't even read us most weeks...true story. Jerks!)

One week, we did a bundle of Christmas stories. Most creative gifts. Best memories. Favorite holiday songs. You know...the usual.

Things were going well, it was a week before Christmas and we were done for the semester. (It was AWESOME!) I was in the office, most of the students were gone for the holidays. And then it came....the call.

I answered the phone and the voice on the other end asked, nay...demanded to speak to someone in charge. Being middle management, but not a student, I stupidly said I was. (Bad, bad move and I have since learned from my mistakes. I am never in charge...even when I am in charge.)

This woman, with a speaking voice that was shrill and tinny to begin with, launched into a tirade, demanding that we print an IMMEDIATE correction about one of our stories.

The writer (and it had slipped past me, too) had attributed "Santa Baby" to Marilyn Monroe (MM had never, in fact, recorded the song) and he had listed it as one of his favorite songs.

The silly rabbit on the other end of the line tried to point out to me that SHE, in fact, had made the song famous. In 1997. Her. It was all her. Nobody had ever heard the song before she recorded it in her basement or whatever Bush League method she'd concocted. Point was, SHE was famous, dammit, and we better recognize her. (Oh, contraire, mon frer....thought I....)

Sounding like an 80-year-old chain smoking emphysema patient, she SHRIEKED about how incompetent we were. She was calling from Hollywood. She was calling her lawyers. She was going to sue us. She demanded satisfaction. NOW. (For what? I asked. Not attributing it to Eartha Kitt? Because nobody had ever heard her name around that newsroom before...)

As she rattled on and on and on and on and on... (I kid you NOT, dear reader), I spent the time I should have been taking her seriously and I googled her. (OH, how I "heart" you Google.)

ChickyBoom had herself a nice little Web site...more like a virtual altar she'd constructed to herself to pay homage to the fact that she'd recorded a version of a stupid Christmas song that had made it into that awful movie "Party Monster." (Who freakin' cares, woman?) She peppered her bio with great big, shiny superlatives like "incredible vocalist" and "fantastically talented" and "gorgeous former hair model" (what the hell are those, anyway?) and she's got one of those names that should probably sound the way it reads. You know, how that crazy lady on the BBC show "Keeping Up Appearances" is named Bucket, but demands people pronounce it "bouquet?" Yep. She's totally one of those. *gag*

So I offered to correct the mistake and attribute the song to Eartha Kitt. No? How about Madonna? Madonna did a great version... No? Ummm...Sheryl Crow! Sheryl Crow did it, too. No?(Yes, I was trying to piss her off on purpose.)

By the end of the conversation (it lasted at least 30 minutes with this self-aggrandizing nightmare), I had her on speaker phone and had the other poor slobs at work laughing at just how ANGRY and DEMANDING and NASTY this kitten was. Shrieking and threatening and just so out of the holiday spirit.

At one point I even asked her, "How the hell did you find this article? It's from a newspaper on a college campus in the middle of the desert? Do you troll any media outlet you can find for any single mention of "Santa Baby?"

I can't remember her response, but I'm sure it was angry. And hilarious.

And so, tonight, as Boy Wonder works on his new lego set (Thanks, Nana!), we have the music channel playing holiday music and Madonna's version of "Santa Baby" came on a couple hours ago. It came on again a couple minutes ago...sung by Eartha Kitt herself.

I guess all that hard work harassing newspapers and journalists got SuperCrazy nowhere. Not even the "Sounds of the Season" channel recognizes her "major contribution to pop culture"....

Baaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaa!

PS....Yes, I fully expect to somehow recieve a pissed off e-mail from this woman. I'm quite certain she's got the words "Santa Baby" locked down on Google Alerts. And yes...I'll post her nasty letter in full here for you to enjoy it as much as I'm sure I will. :)

The Library Lion (A very good book)

Call it neo-nostalgic: This book feels like a children's classic of the '40s or '50s. A lion wanders into a library and is chided for his noisy roaring. He finds he loves story time, so he quickly learns the "Be quiet" rule. Soon he is the library's favorite visitor. But when a librarian is hurt in a fall and the lion must roar for help, he—and readers—learn that rules sometimes need to be broken.

Written by Michelle Knudsen, it's a book I randomly grabbed at Boy Wonder's book fair at school. We've read it a bazillion times already and we love it. She's got a neat Web site. You should check it out. And read the book. Do it.

Come And Play, Everything's A-OK...

If you've used google in the past 72 hours, it's likely you've seen cookie monster or big bird fitting their faces through the great big letter O in celebration of 40 years. 40 YEARS!

It's tough to believe they've been around that long, and that some of the original cast is STILL on. (I'm talking about you, Maria.) My first memories of television have Sesame Street in them, and it's amazing that despite the necessary re-vamps to keep time with SpongeBob and Dora, it's still got that same "feel" to it.

So, in honor of the big 4-0, here's my Sesame Street Top 5 of all time list. (Top 5 greatest memories, I suppose...)

5. Ernie and his Rubber Ducky Song.

I love Ernie and his little fella who is "cute, and yellow, and chuuuuuuubby."



4. Cookie Monster tells us what starts with C.

C is for Cookie, that's good enough for me....(me too, cookie monster!)

"OOH! Cookie, Cookie, Cookie starts with C..." Indeed.



3. Bert and the Pigeon Dance

Live from Peoria...I mean, what was better when we were 5?? (Full disclosure: I sort of look like that when I dance these days. I blame Bert.)



2. Grover the Waiter

It was a toss up between this big hamburger or the fly in the soup. I love, love, love GROVER. I really do. You'll see how much in a second... (P.S. Customer Man, you should have taken the LITTLE hamburger. Just sayin'.)



1. Super Grover

OH. MY. GOODNESS. I love super grover. Like, love him so much I want to bottle him up and carry him around in my purse LOVE him. Especially when he helps "Little Freddy Smith" escape the playground, so he won't be late for dinner and his mother won't be mad at him. Super grover to the rescue.



Happy Birthday, Sesame Street!

Crowded Kitchen: Gingerbread Pancakes from Omlettery West

I was thinking a lot about my mom today. Partly because of wedding stuff she's totally being awesome about...but mostly because I was being a chicken about calling in on the status of my manuscript and TOTALLY asked her to pretend to be me and bug the editorial assistant for me. She was so game for it, too...

My mom was in the food section of the newspaper once. It was the Austin American Statesman (God Bless America, that is a GREAT newspaper), and she wrote in to the food writer requesting a top secret recipe from our favorite breakfast joint.

If there was ever a poll on which city has the best food, Austin would win my vote hands down, and I didn't even live in that city very long. I actually get homesick for Texas when I think of Austin food, and I grew up (for the most part) in El Paso.

Anyhoo...

The woman responded to my mother in the Sunday edition (it was sometime in the 80s...back when newsrooms were staffed with real people who wrote real columns and loved their jobs) and gave her the coveted Gingerbread Pancake recipe. As recent as a few years back, I remember seeing that yellowed old clipping in the midst of my mom's recipe collection (no, she's not the most organized about that stuff...ahem...Mom...)

(That photo to the left is said Burnett Road Omlettery.)
In my pumpkin pancake post a couple weeks ago, she chimed in about those gingerbread pancakes and how she missed that recipe. But you know what? Google is rad. Way rad. And I found the version of the recipe from Omlettery West (which claims to be different from the one on Burnett Road, where we ate, but big deal. Someday we'll know the difference and we probably won't even care!)

So in honor of her, here is:

Debra's Gingerbread Pancakes (Totally from the Omlettery, though, ok?)

Gingerbread Pancakes
Ingredients:
3 eggs
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup brewed coffee
21/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon ginger
1 tablespoon nutmeg
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted

Method:
Cream eggs and sugar together. Stir in buttermilk, water, and coffee and set aside. In a separate bowl sift together remaining dry ingredients.
Stir egg mixture into dry ingredients, then mix in melted butter.
Add more water or buttermilk if necessary, but batter should be thick.
Cook until done on a lightly greased hot griddle or in a heavy skillet (turn once when bubbles appear on upper side and start to break).
Pancakes will be thick and cake-like in texture.

Makes 8 to 10 five-inch pancakes.

Oh, and here's a picture of my mom. She's cute. The handsome chap with her is Boy Wonder. He's rad, too. They're a lot alike.