Quieting Life

Christmas Dinner

When I was growing up, my family had roast turkey with all the trimmings twice a year – at Thanksgiving, and then a month later at Christmas. After my mother died (when we were all just becoming adults) I led a revolution and proposed that we have roast beef for Christmas dinner, and so we did for as long as my Dad and my siblings and I continued to be together for the holidays. Time and distance and marriages and resentments keep us apart these days, and my husband has a job that keeps us right here in Vermont for Christmas, so it's just us and whoever manages to come this way (this year, all of the kids and TJ's Mom).

Christmas Cookies

Putting together an assortment of Christmas cookies is like building a good cheese plate – it's all about variety. Different flavors, shapes, and textures, all in a festive mood. Christmas cookies should be a little luxurious, a few pegs up from quotidian cookie-jar treats. Chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal-raisin, snickerdoodles, hermits; I love them all, but they just don't make my Christmas cut.

I make 4 or 5 different kinds each year, holding to the same ones for a few years then moving on to something new that grabs my fancy. But I seem to have settled on a consistent palette: toasty nuts, chocolate, warm spices (cinnamon, ginger, clove, cardamom), something orange, lots of vanilla, and always plenty of butter. My current roster includes Double Gingersnaps, Mexican Wedding Cakes, chocolate-dipped Shortbread Stars, Mint 'Oreos', and Cuccidati. I won't include recipes here, just notes on what I've changed or tips for getting them right.

The Greens of Winter

One thinks of winter here as comprising every shade of brown and grey and little else, and although it's not technically winter until next week, prevailing temperatures are a good enough measure for me. Failing snow cover, the woods are yet astonishingly verdant. I could almost confuse it with early spring (and some mornings are so gentle, the air rich with the smell of earth...).

My mind is so restless these days, hard to say quite why. Sleep is a welcome relief, but hard-won – dependent on careful doses of bourbon, boring late-night reads, and focused meditative eyelid watching. My finest remedy is my daily wander in the woods, turning my attention to every little wonder. So much activity out there; I'll welcome a healthy dumping of snow when (if?) it comes, but for now all that lively beauty keeps the crazy world-out-there at a manageable distance.

Mosses abound.

Wintergreen, Foamflower foliage, lichen, and a tiny fern.

The spectrum on an old stump.

The brilliant blue sky reflected in ice.

Fresh fungus even this late in the season.

Viburnum (left) and blackberry already budded out for the spring.

And my indoor hedge against the impending bleakness: paperwhite narcissus, which will probably bloom on the day the snow flies.

Quick Preserved Lemons

When I hosted my book group here last month I decided to make a chicken tagine to serve the girls, but lacking a supply of preserved lemons, I had to improvise. It's possible to substitute sliced fresh lemons – I've done it – but the result just isn't the same. Here's my ad hoc remedy.

Select 2 lemons with nice shiny skins and scrub them clean with a paste of warm water and baking soda. This is a trick my brother's wife hipped me to years ago – nothing fancy, just dump a spoonful of baking soda in your hand, add a little water, and use both hands and a little firm pressure to scour the fruit all over, then give them a thorough rinsing. I do this whenever I'll be using the peel of any citrus (even when it's organic) – for marmalade, candied peel, whole preserved fruit.

(The French have a great little word for kitchen tricks like this: a 'truc' is any little thingie or whatsit or trick. We all have them, and sometimes they can be a revelation to others. I'm happy to share mine, and just added 'Truc' as a category. More to follow.)

Slice the lemons thinly, a little less than an eighth of an inch thick (make sure your knife is wickedly sharp).

Prick out the seeds and arrange the slices in a single layer on a flat plate. Sprinkle with about 2 teaspoons of kosher salt and half a teaspoon of sugar. (Sugar isn't generally used for long-preserved lemons, but I thought it might help with mellowing them on a tight schedule.) Add another layer of sliced lemons, then sprinkle with more salt and sugar.

Once all the slices have been arranged and sprinkled, place another plate on top, weight it, and leave to stand at room temperature for about 3 hours. Mine didn't give up enough liquid to run over, but if that's a concern, you can put the whole thing in the sink.

Before using, give them a quick cold-water rinse and drain them (or pat them lightly with a paper towel). Slice, dice, or quarter them to use in your recipe.

Duly chastened for my failure to have any of the 'real' thing on hand, I will now set about packing a jar full for future use.