Christmas Eve

[naomikritzer]

I found out recently that in some regions of Italy, people eat seven (or three or thirteen) kinds of fish on Christmas Eve. I have absolutely no Italian ancestry whatsoever, but I love fish, and I'm always up for a spot of cultural appropriation if it involves food, so we decided to do a big fish dinner tonight. I bought some seafood dumplings from United Noodle (a big pan-Asian grocery store not far from where I live) earlier in the week; those had two kinds of seafood in them, shrimp and squid. Then today I went over to Coastal Seafoods and bought about a half pound each of the following:

Ahi tuna (sashimi grade)
Swordfish
Grouper
Halibut
Arctic Char
Colossal Shrimp

The dumplings were a miserable failure; they were touching when I steamed them, and they stuck to each other and to the bottom of the steamer basket. Everything else was really good. I made this lemon-caper butter to go with the fish, and sliced up and served most of the tuna as sashimi. I did cook a little of it. My grandmother was joining us -- she's spending the night here, in fact -- and I wanted her to be able to have some of the tuna, and assumed she wouldn't want it raw. However, when we offered her a piece, she said she'd try it, and having tried it, she immediately wanted some more. I think she'd have happily eaten a fair amount of the raw tuna, except that the girls were begging for it and she didn't want to deprive them.

I hadn't had grouper or halibut before; I don't tend to buy white-fleshed fish very often. They were both outstandingly good. The guy at Coastal noted that the halibut today was some of the nicest he'd ever seen, and it lived up to his assessment. The grouper was "mild tasting" (I tend to mentally translate that as "bland") but had a very distinctive chewy texture. It struck me as something that would work really well in a curry.

After the girls were in bed, we started setting out presents -- nothing goes under the tree until the kids are in bed on Christmas Eve. As I was starting to set things out, I noticed a piece of paper under the tree with Molly's handwriting on it. It was her belated Christmas list for Santa -- who she knows isn't real. Here it is, reproduced with Molly's spelling:

List for crimiss tree

Books (Good ones) (1)
Dolls (Nice ones) (2)
Marks (wet) (3)
Art suplis (4)
Mikerowscop (5)
Pritty julery (6)
Pupits (Funny) (7)
Sumthing to help me lirn to wite (8)
Molly's crismiss list
for Santa

If she'd set this out earlier -- like, earlier today, even -- the markers could have easily been arranged. She does have some books under the tree, though if I'd seen this list earlier I probably would have bought her more. (To be honest, I don't prioritize books as a gift because she reads so insatiably we mostly just rely on the library.) She does have art supplies in her stocking and some "pretty jewelry" in the form of some glittery clip-on earrings I'd picked up at a rummage sale. She also has binoculars, which will hopefully be as satisfactory as a microscope. I wonder why she wants a microscope? Hell, I wonder where she heard of microscopes?

One other thing that's striking to me about it is that this is the list of a kid who doesn't watch much TV. If she watched TV, she'd want the things she saw advertised. Nothing on here is specific, or has a brand, or anything. It's all very general. My wish lists tended to be a lot more specific.

Comments

[springbok1.livejournal.com]

If I'd known she wanted a microscope, I totally would have loved to have gotten her that. :( I think she'll like the gift(s) that I got her, even though they weren't on the list. (I each niece a toy and an outfit - the outfits are as much because once a year I can't resist the cute kids clothes, particularly when they're all 40% off. :D) I'll have to start keeping my eyes out for microscopes that are decent quality and on-sale. It's my opinion that the quality of the microscope does matter, even when it's geared towards kids. While she doesn't have any present receiving occasions that are coming up anytime real soon after Christmas, a microscope is a cool enough thing for her to be able to play with that I'd probably make like her grandparents and throw one her way as a random gift. And while I don't know what, in specific, she wanted to look at under a microscope - a microscope can make even mundane seeming things like sand absolutely fascinating for a kid to look at. I think Molly would also get a total kick out of seeing and learning about single celled organisms like protozoa and amoebas.

[naomikritzer]

I'm going to try to find out what she wanted to look at with a microscope; it may be something wildly impractical, or something better looked at with a hand-held manifier like we used to use to look at snowflakes. (Better than a magnifying glass, and with a little built-in light; I found one online for $12 when I was looking to see just how much you have to pay for a functional kids' microscope these days, out of curiosity.)

[allochthon.livejournal.com]

Mikerowscop Oh, I want one too!

And here I figured she got the idea of a mikerowscop from springbok1. =)

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

I Love that store. Try pan or wok frying too, yum! Char BTW is related to both Trout and Salmon. Depending on the season I think it's better than both. The best advice on shrimp I know of is buy sea caught rather than farmed, better taste and texture.

You might find markers at a 24 Hr. Walgreens. AxMan had some great former USSR/Warsaw Pact microscopes at a really great price, bang for the buckwise I'd look at them 1st.

[naomikritzer]

I've had char before; it's my "I need salmon, but the salmon doesn't look so good" fallback.

I was not running out to Walgreens for markers at 10 p.m. AxMan for microscopes is a GREAT thought. I've always kind of wanted one...

[papersky.livejournal.com]

It's probably too late, but you could make her a token for some books -- and markers and a microscope too if you wanted. It would work best with books. "Here is a token entitling Miss Molly Kritzer to three (or ten...) books of her choice".

I instituted the custom of home-made Christmas tokens when Z was seven and I was very short of money -- he had some presents, and he had some token for "when the money comes", i.e. when I next got paid a chunk of money from the US. He actually liked it, because it spread Christmas out, and it was useful for me so I kept doing it. A few years ago when I had enough money, for once, and didn't give him any tokens, he was quite grumpy about it.

Oh, and speaking of Z, kids and books, he's just sorted his room and has a pile of books he's grown out of. What age range is Molly reading at, and would it be worth me giving some of these to Elise to pass on to her, the next time Elise is here? I can't give titles right now, because he's asleep in his room, but they're things that have survived several weedings. I think Catherine Storr's Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf is on the pile.

[naomikritzer]

She wound up with a pile of books from other relatives. This is not a book-deprived kid. And really, she doesn't need any more stuff. Even stuff with pages and words.

[naomikritzer]

(Also, to answer your question, she's reading early middle grade stuff: Boxcar Children, Babysitters' Club, Pippi Longstocking. She's halfway through Astrid Lindgren's Ronia the Robber's Daughter at the moment, which warms my heart because I loved that book as a kid. I have never heard of Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf but it sounds hilarious.)

Cultural Food Appropriations

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

I'm just impressed that you got microscope out of Mikerowscop. It would have taken my a while. And what is Pupits?

It is worth noting that there are a variety of "traditional" foods for New Years Day/Eve.

Traditional Southern Eating requires Black Eye Peas, for luck, and collards or cabbage, for money. Cuban tradition requires twelve grapes, one for each month of the new year. Both of these we've kept for many years as outlawcoon and I are southern, and sulleniguana is Cuban. However we recently learned that Swedish tradition calls for donuts on New Years and have happily added that to our food traditions as well despite being as Swedish as a camel.

Re: Cultural Food Appropriations

[naomikritzer]

Pupits = Puppets, I think.

Our traditional New Years' Day requires black eyed peas. My mother served them up straight from a can (bleah!) but I found a recipe in Moosewood where you cook the peas with rice and corn and turmeric, and then serve over them this shrimp dish where you simmer the shrimp in vast quantities of butter and wine and then add a bunch of cayenne to it. It's allegedly Cajun. We have eaten that every New Year's Day for many years now.

[dtm]

The seven fish thing is always a decent fallback story for the local news on a slow news day before Christmas. (what places in the city still have a good selection of fish, what various unfamiliar fish species are like in case you can't find your standard seven, etc.)

This is outside Philadelphia; I doubt local Twin Cities stations automatically think "Italian" when thinking "what culture's Christmas traditions should we report on to fill these five minutes?"

[naomikritzer]

I doubt local Twin Cities stations automatically think "Italian" when thinking "what culture's Christmas traditions should we report on to fill these five minutes?"

No, the answer here would be "Swedish" and the story would be "Lutefisk." (The Santa Lucia Day story would've been a filler story the previous week.)