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Christmas Eve
Dec. 24th, 2006 11:28 pmI 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.
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.
