I STAND (HERE) CORRECTED

I'm happy to report that today I received a very thoughtful and generous thank-you note from my married friends. The delay was apparently due to their wanting to use wedding photographs on their thank-you cards. It was a lovely gesture. My faith in (at least some) humanity is restored.

Stay tuned.

IN PERPETUUM

At this time every year I have the same dilemma. Should I send a Christmas card to the Brazilian couple I met in 1999? With three friends, I was then on a cruise in Chile, from Puerto Mont south through the Chilean fjords to the San Rafael Glacier. The scenery was glorious. But the crew on the Scorpios, a Chilean cruise line, spoke only Spanish - the foreign quality of the cruise was part of its charm -  and without Jose and Lisette, who spoke Spanish and English and were fortunately assigned to our table, we would have been in the dark at every meal. But they translated the Spanish menu into English for us, and our choices back into Spanish for the waiter. We all became friends. But as most cruise friendships go, I expected this one to fade into acquaintance once the cruise was over. But that next Christmas, I received a Christmas card from Lisette. How was I? Jose had been to a fabric fair in Frankfort. They had a daughter in Fort Lauderdale and visited her occasionally. She hoped she would see me again. We had had such a good time, hadn't we? Like me, my friends received similar messages from her. We were all surprised. And pleased.

As I approach Christmas each year, I fret over my Christmas card design. For many years, I sent the traditional card, usually purchased at a museum, ice skaters on a lake, a Wegman dog holding a candy cane, that sort of thing. But for the last 10 years or so, I've insisted my card be made of one of my photographs, from some place exotic I've visited in the world, some vista or object reminiscent of Christmas. A triangular cut-out in a Mayan temple complex, a doorway in China, a bell in Thailand, lighted houses here on 34th Street in Hampden. I'm sure part of this insistence is rooted in  my egotism, making people aware that I've been to this location, and showing off my abilities at photographic composition. I'll own up to that. But I also like to think the receiver will feel the card is special, that I took the time to make a card of my photograph, a kind of unique gift to them, a card like no other.

 I usually send these cards willy-nilly, to everyone in my address book, friends near and far and without regard to their ethnic or religious persuasion (although the cards have  recently always said "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas"). And true to my Type A personality, I keep a list of those to whom I send my cards, and I admit to a similar list of those who send cards to me. So as I approach the holidays, I wonder each year about those I haven't heard from, especially those far away. Had they moved and I'd addressed the card to the wrong location? Or worse, had they died?

In an attempt to answer this question, I once called a girlfriend I'd known since childhood, a widow now living in Florida, someone with whom I exchanged cards each year but whom I hadn't seen since 1997 when I visited her on my way to Key West and from whom I hadn't received a card that year. Was she still alive, I wondered? Yes, she was. But very cool on the phone. I could tell she wanted to end our conversation almost as soon as she realized who I was. Had something I'd said in my previous year's events letter offended her? She'd always known I was gay. Had she gotten serious religion in her elder years and decided I was sinful? I never knew. But I never heard from her again either. Sad. I'd known her since we were in grade school, when she had a pet alligator she kept in her bathtub. How could someone so grounded in the unusual decide late in her life that I was too unusual to be acceptable? And this year, I received no card from another friend I've known for close to 50 years. We even used to exchange gifts. But this year not even a card. Have I offended him? Or have we just drifted so far apart that he no longer considers us friends? I'll never know. 

I've made some efforts this past year to simplify my life. I almost didn't send cards at all. But I found a lot of what might be called leftovers in my card drawer, extra cards not sent from many years before. So I rationed them out to friends I really care about, leaving out my Jewish friends who'd never sent me cards in the past, and some of those so far away I haven't seen them in many years. I pondered over the address for Lisette and Jose, and decided to skip them this year. But yesterday, her annual card came. Bless her heart.

The thing is this. If I leave someone off my card list this year, and I receive a card from them, like I did from Lisette, I'll feel it necessary to send them a card next year. But not having heard from me this year, next year these people will cut me from their own list. And then the next year, I'll cut them, but since they heard from me the year before, they'll add me back again. And so it goes. In perpetuum. 

Stay tuned.


 

CHRISTMAS DINNER

Oh. I forgot the palmiers. They're little elephant-ear-like hors d'oeuvres, made with folded puff pastry layered with goat cheese, pesto, sun-dried tomatoes and pine nuts. I'd never made them before and I'm a little leery about puff pastry, but I remembered to thaw it, and I'd seen Ina do this many times. It looked easy. It wasn't so hard. I made two rolls, covered them with plastic wrap and put them in the fridge. I could slice them and bake them just before my guests arrived. I wanted them to be warm when served.

I made the ganache and assembled the cake. Glorious! But would the cherry jam run over the edges? Would the ganache harden properly over the wet jam? At this point, it was done. What will be, will be. Que sera and all that. I put the cake on a pretty cake stand (a wedding gift to my parents), covered it with the top and put it on top of the buffet, the only surface left open.

I still had the Oysters Rockefeller to prepare, a tenderloin to cook, the potatoes and now-infamous gorgonzola sauce to reheat, the tomatoes to bake and the palmiers to cut and bake. How to do it all? I realized I needed a time table. Not my usual casual time table I sometimes use to prepare for guests, but a complete, minute by minute schedule of how to make all this work, and including the changing oven temperatures. So, from 3 PM, when I took the meat and the gorgonzola out of the fridge to bring them to room temperature, until we sat down to dinner at 6:30, I followed my own instructions, carefully printed out from my word processor, and I kept my timer in my pocket, even after the guests came. A sample of the schedule: 4:00, heat oven to 400; 4:30 palmiers on a cookie sheet, 4:40, palmiers in the oven for 14 minutes;  4:54, palmiers out, plate, raise oven temperature to 500; gorgonzola sauce on low heat; stir. 5:00, guests arrive. You get the picture.

And eureka, it worked! Still, as might be expected, there were a few bumps. I almost spilled the (very hot) sheet pan that contained the oysters (in their shells on a bed of rock salt) when I took it out of the oven, raised the rack, and put the oysters under the broiler. Can you imagine the mess on the kitchen floor? Hot oysters, hot rock salt, a hot pan? Fortunately, I saved it just in time. I only forgot to release the timer once and had to guess at the timing, so crucial to successful medium rare beef. It came out a hair early and was a little on the rare side, but no matter. And when I heated the now cranky gorgonzola sauce, it separated. I had to whisk it like mad to get it back together. But the candles got lit, the champagne and wine got opened, the meal was served and my guests said everything was delicious. I was very pleased.

Oh, and the guests? They melded very well,  even voluntarily mixing it up at the table so they got to talk to people they hadn't met before. I pronounced the dinner a big success. But never again. It's too much work. And I'm not as spry - or as daring - as I used to be.

I'm having the leftover tenderloin in a sandwich for dinner tonight, just spread with cold gorgonzola sauce. I'm not risking put that venomous stuff back on the stove again!

Stay tuned.

THE DAY BEFORE CHIRSTMAS DINNER

Now, with seven of us for dinner, I had to think seriously about how to manage cooking seven multiple dishes in one oven all at the same time, and at different temperatures. As it turns out, that's patently impossible. I should have planned the menu more carefully. (I'm sure Ina Garten, from whom several of the recipes came, has more than one oven. After all, she's in the business. But I'm in an apartment building where most of the youngish residents eat pizza and carry-out so no extra oven space, nor for that matter much counter space, for an adventurous, Christmas-celebrating cook.) I had to go to my meal-time drawing board and use my managerial skills to figure this out.

I realized I could make the dessert - a chocolate ganache cake - the day before. Or at least I could make the cake the day before. The cherry preserves I intended to add to the top (my own little twist) and the chocolate ganache and chopped hazel nuts (also my own twist) for the top, would have to be made on Christmas day. Call it my Black Forest Chocolate Ganache Dessert. I made the cake part, wrapped it tightly in plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator. Fine. Done. Easy.

Now for the gorgonzola sauce for the tenderloin. The recipe called for boiling - yes, boiling (I should have known better, and so should Ina) - four pints of heavy cream over medium high heat for 40 minutes. I poured the cream into a saucepan, turned on the burner and turned my attention to setting the table. Remember, it's still the day before Christmas. When I pulled open the drawer to my buffet to get out the napkins, I noticed that the cream was boiling over on the stove. As a matter of fact, it had almost all boiled over. The heated cream was all over the surface of my glass top burners and the pan was sizzling at the bottom with burned cream. What a mess! Cleaning up spilled cream on a hot surface is not a lot of fun. So I used a roll of paper towels to sop up the mess, leaving the burned-on parts in a ring on the burner, turned off the stove and put the pot in the sink. But I had ruined all the cream; I had to get more. But the neighborhood 7-Eleven-kind-of-store, the only thing nearby, didn't carry heavy cream. Half and half only. That didn't constitute an acceptable substitute. So, off to Eddie's, yet again, for four more pints of cream. By the time I got home, the stove was cool, so I set about cleaning up the glass top with the special cleaner, in a chore I've always hated. The burned on parts were a bitch to get off. But after several dish towels were ruined, I once again had a clean stove. Now to go about boiling down the new cream. I put it carefully in a new saucepan and turned the heat to medium low, in contrast to Ina's instructions. Watch that stuff like the mongoose watching the cobra. But I turned away for only a moment and the cream boiled over again. Oh shit! More clean-up. More delay. Time does march on, despite my problems. I did manage to salvage the remaining cream long enough to boil it down, over very low heat, to a white sauce consistency, where it was supposed to go, and added the gorgonzola - well, it was actually Roquefort, but close enough - and parmesan, whisking like mad, off the heat, to get the cheese to melt and integrate. Once that was done, I let the gorgonzola mixture cool, covered it with plastic wrap, and put it in the refrigerator, knowing the cheese would solidify in the cold, but believing I could reconstitute it with a little heat just before Christmas dinner. Whew! What an ordeal for just a little sauce.

Then I dared to also bake the potatoes the day before. They were baby Yukon Gold ones, sliced very thinly - about 1/8 inch slices - but not all the way through. So they bake as a whole, and fan out prettily when done. A little olive oil, some salt and pepper and fresh rosemary (which I had to go to two different stores to procure). This procedure went well enough - I sliced completely through only one potato - and the potatoes were done, as predicted. Now where to keep them until tomorrow? Would they darken in the refrigerator? I finally decided not to cover them and just shoved them into my microwave. At least they were out of the way.

Let's see. What else? Well, the rest of the menu consisted of Oysters Rockefeller, baked cherry tomatoes and a whole tenderloin of beef, all of which could wait until tomorrow. The day was practically over. I sighed, and took a short nap, and realized that in all my frenzy to prepare for Christmas dinner, I hadn't thought about the night before Christmas dinner. I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And went to bed.

Stay tuned

OH, AND ONE MORE THING

Just so you know (and if you've been following all this): the now-wedded gay coupled to whom I sent (now over two months ago) the (rather expensive) Tiffany (definitely not Crate and Barrel) champagne goblets to celebrate their marriage, still has not acknowledged my gift nor thanked me for it. I got a Christmas card from them, filled with happy photographs of their wedding, including one of the two of them toasting with my gift, with the Tiffany white ribbons attached, but no thanks. Frankly, I don't get it. All that grandeur but no appreciation? Did they thank the other guests who sent them gifts? Or was I the only guest who sent them one? Out of 300 invited? I don't think so. Or do they still plan to thank me the next time we meet? Which is very infrequently, maybe twice a year.

Emily Post would not be happy.

Stay tuned.

A POSTSCRIPT TO THE POSTSCRIPT TO EMILY POST

The young couple who said they'd come for Christmas dinner if they were in town did email me by my deadline of last Sunday and said they unfortunately still didn't know if they'd be here. Some complications in their lives and the weather made being here uncertain. They apologized profusely. I emailed back to say that this was okay, that I would probably serve the same thing whether there were six of us or only four, so if they were here, please come. Five o'clock.

However (and are you ready for this?), on the Monday before Christmas, a good friend whom I'd invited and who'd said he was going to be with his family for Christmas, and then said he wasn't but that he'd committed to another friend for dinner, called to say that he and his friend, and a friend of hers, would really like to come for dinner if the invitation was still open. My table seats six comfortably but I can stretch it to seven (even though I only have six of the champagne glasses I wanted to use),  but I decided it was better to have a certain number than an uncertainty. So I told him to please come and bring his friend, and her friend. Well, he wasn't certain if the friend of the friend would come - he didn't have a definite on that yet - but he and the friend would definitely be here. Was I sure I didn't mind? No. Not at all. They'd all be welcome. Yes. Please come. Well what about the uncertain couple? How would I handle that? So, in my best Emily Post fashion, I emailed the young couple to say that a back-up couple I had previously invited suddenly said they could make it for dinner, which made my table full. If the young couple were in town, please come for drinks with us. At five. Nothing more from them. And I admit to feeling somewhat guilty but I had taken them to The Prime Rib for dinner so it wasn't as if they could think I was being totally rude.

The day before Christmas, I received an email from my friend saying that the friend of his friend would also come. So there would be seven. Okay. I can make that work. And my friend, and his friend, and her friend, didn't know the trio who were my initial, confirmed guests, so that might make the evening more interesting. You never know about inviting people who don't know each other. But I usually risk it, thinking that if some guests don't know other guests, it puts everyone on their best behavior. And as it turned out, it did.

Stay tuned.

FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION

A famous architect, perhaps Mies, once said that "form follows function." I presume he meant that the shell that contains the essence should reflect that essence. I wonder how he'd feel about the Walt Disney Hall or the Guggenheim Bilbao. I think he'd say that while they may be fine inside and unusual outside, even beautiful, one does not reflect the other. How can you understand a music hall or museum from all that curving metal?

I have some (now former) friends, one of whom became upset about something I said about her in my book, accusing me of needing - note "need," her word, not mine - to reveal what she considered a secret. I honestly had forgotten she considered it a secret - it was almost fifty years ago - or never knew. Still, I apologized profusely, several times. She could have come directly to me and we might have hashed it out, as long-time friends do, but she chose, instead, to never speak to me again and to broadcast her displeasure, thus infecting others. Now a whole segment of my old social life has calved away, and I mourn the loss, even after more than eighteen months. In the course of my normal activities, I infrequently run into one of them - we traveled in a very incestuous circle - and they invariably turn away, in order to avoid me. It seems they've become so invested in the function of displeasure that they've forgotten the essence of friendship, those qualities that drew us to each other in the first place and held us together for so many years. Oh, they will say I've changed, that I'm no longer "fun" to be with, that I depress them. And I admit to having had a bad year, with several surgeries, and the episode about my book. But since the essence of friendship is support, I would ask of those who shun me now what they have done to help me be more cheerful.

I like Pope Francis. He's eschewed many of the forms of Christianity and seems to be focused on its essence. For me, that essence - indeed the essence of any form of worship - is love, and forgiveness. I wonder why my (former) friends can't follow his example..

Stay tuned.