From Macy's to medieval music; from Scrooge to the Bolshoi

Back in the balmy days of August when we made our entertainment choices for the months ahead, Christmas looked something like this:

As I always think it's nice to incorporate some theatre and music into the Christmas rush, we went ahead and scheduled our outings and bought our tickets not really remembering that the reality of Christmas is often this:

We managed pretty well though and only had one day where the weather was unpleasant and — being in Halifax — it was more rain than snow. Rain and wind.

Ever since William was a little guy, we've tried to go to the Neptune Theatre Christmas production each year. In August, when we were getting the tickets, we had no idea where William might be during the holidays so we bought two tickets. But William is home from university and was happy to join us for the family tradition so Dan searched out a third ticket. Neptune had only two tickets left, both in the balcony, on opposite sides from each other. I said I'd be happy to go to the balcony (not!) so the ticket was bought.

They didn't make me go to the balcony though. Dan went up and William and I sat in the aisle seats of Row E. You get good seats when you buy your tickets in August.

Neptune's Production was Miracle on 34th Street. (Photo borrowed from Local Xpress.)

It was really good and we all enjoyed it. It runs until well after Christmas so you might enjoy it too.

That was indeed a busy day for us as we had two major events. We had a delightful early dinner at Brenton Persian Grill. I had Fesenjan:

A traditional Persian stew made with pomegranate molasses, walnuts & sauteed onions served with (or without) sliced chicken breast and saffron basmati rice. We recommend you have it with our Shirazi salad.

I took their advice and had it with the Shirazi salad which was finely chopped cucumber, tomato and red onion in lemon juice and mint and was delicious. I took home some leftover Fesenjan which Dan ate the next day and said my dish was probably the best of all three that we'd ordered.

Then we were off to the Cathedral Church of All Saints for A King's Christmas 2016, music from the University of King's College Chapel Choir.

The music was magnificent, the narrator was dramatic and accomplished, the stories and poems were eclectic. Some of the music was sung in Latin, in French, in olde English and in Gaelic. A lot of it was quite profound.

A very different evening was spent with the actor Rhys Bevan-John who did a one-man show of A Christmas Carol. It was nothing at all like I expected but it was great fun and it retained the message of the original story and the redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge. We're big supporters of Eastern Front Theatre whose production this was and we were pleased when the artistic producer, Jeremy Webb, told us that he had solicited support from the business community to provide a theatre experience for families who can't usually afford tickets. That will be a Christmas Eve event.

I'm very glad we were able to take in these live productions but in the end, it may turn out that the highlight of our season was on a movie screen — the filmed live performance of The Nutcracker by the Bolshoi Ballet.

What is it that makes something the "best in the world"? The Bolshoi has often been called that and from the very first movement of the dancers, you would get no argument from me.

The two principals dancing the roles of Marie and the Prince were Anna Nikulina and Denis Rodkin.

Anna was born in Moscow. In 2002, she completed her training at the Moscow State Academy of Choreography (teacher Elena Vatulya) with distinction and joined the Bolshoi Ballet Company. She rehearsed under the late Yekaterina Maximova. In 2004, at the age of 19, she danced Odette-Odile for the first time. Today her teacher-repetiteur is Nina Semizorova.

Denis was also born in Moscow. In 2009, after graduation from Moscow State Academic Dance Theatre Gzhel he joined the Bolshoi Ballet Company where he started to rehearse with Nikolai Tsiskaridze. Now his master-repetiteur is Yuri Vladimirov. In 2013, graduated from Bolshoi Ballet Academy (The Faculty of Education).

When Anna and Denis danced — alone, with other members of the company, or in their breath-taking pas de deux, it was easy to imagine that their feet were not touching the floor. I can't begin to describe the transcendence I felt while watching them.

Our host at the ballet did a short interview with Denis Rodkin at intermission. She introduced him to us as the "most beautiful man in the Bolshoi company." He's a beauty all right. He played the Prince a little shyly, a little distant, but also warm and loving. He was very appealing.

There you have it, some of our Christmas entertainment. There may be more to come; I'll keep you posted.

Blue lights, bubble lights, revolving trees — it's Christmas!

A few days ago, I told Dan I had come up with a new slogan that I hoped would catch on: "Christmas. It's all about change!"

I was reacting — immaturely, I suppose — to some annoyingly sweet reference to Christmas being all about love and family and tradition and doing it in such an over-sentimentalized, tear-jerking, exploitative way that it just rubbed me the wrong way. It was trying to take you back to where it thinks your childhood Christmas is lurking.

But I guess they're right. Christmas isn't about change. It's about doing things over and over and over, every year, in exactly the same way. Isn't it? Isn't it?

You can see that I made myself think.

In fact, every year, I look at the Canadian Tire catalogue and all the flyers and brochures from the hardware stores and the department stores and I see page after page of "new" Christmas stuff — new-style trees and wreaths and lights and ornaments — and I always wonder who's buying it? There's way too much simply to supply a young generation of people just starting out and buying their Christmas stuff. But doesn't everyone else already have all their stuff? And don't they use it making the same Christmas year after year?

It so happens that we went the other night to David Myles' Christmas show with Symphony Nova Scotia. David does put on a good show. He has so much personality and he’s funny — not to mention a good singer/musician. He sang a lot of the old familiars and some of his own Christmas compositions which turned out to be nice also.

One of the songs he sang was one I didn't know: Buck Owens' Blue Christmas Lights.

(Excuse me, Miss, but do you have any...)

Blue Christmas lights for my Christmas tree?

I want some blue Christmas lights just as blue as me

The one I love has set me free, but I still got her memory

Give me blue Christmas lights for my Christmas tree. . .

It wasn't a great song, not particularly memorable, but there must have been something evocative about it because right there, in the middle of the concert, I began to think back to my childhood and the very first tree I ever saw that was covered completely with blue lights.

In the '50s, in Chatham, NB, I lived in the NB Power Commission houses — commonly called the "hydro houses" — right on the edge of town. I often remind people that the Welcome to Chatham sign was in our backyard.

There were six houses, three on each side of the small cul-de-sac, each one across from its own mirror image. On our side, our house was closest to the road. In the middle was the Calabrese family, and next to them, the Parks family.

The Parks two oldest girls were almost my age — Edith (Edie) a little bit older, Lynn a little bit younger — and we spent a lot of childhood time together. It was always a little bit of an adventure for me because their family was very different from mine. It was a big family, four kids then, five later, and much more raucous than mine. Five kids! My family would probably be considered reserved.

When I look back now, I think the Parks parents, Anna and Howard, were very young — maybe barely out of their 20s. They were from up-river. Anna was from Whitneyville and Howard from (I'm pretty sure) Sunny Corner. Howard was robust and a great kidder.

They took great enjoyment out of life and Christmas was a time of year that they leaped into with gusto. They had spectacular decorations and it was there that I first saw a tree that was completely lit with blue lights. And now that I think about it, the blue-lit tree was only one of their Christmas trees that I remember. One year, Howard had the tree on a revolving platform that turned at the flick of an electric switch.

Of course, the tree had to be placed out into the room, away from the walls, and it had to be decorated all the way around, not just on the part that faced the room. I may be embellishing it in my own memory but I think there was music involved too. I think Christmas melodies played while the tree was revolving. It was quite a neighbourhood attraction.

Another year, the Parks' tree had these lights. Do you remember these?

I'm not sure they ever caught on in a big way. I've probably seen them a few times since that year at the Parks but I think I remember reading or hearing that they weren't very reliable and maybe were more trouble than they were worth.

Our family pretty much had these and we had them as long as I can remember.

Every year, they came out of the box and Dad would untangle them and plug them in and replace the ones that weren't lit. The only new bulbs that ever got bought at our house were the little packages of replacement bulbs.

But you can't run a consumer society on a family like ours, who used all the same Christmas stuff year after year. (I still have some of it — not the lights but the treasured old glass ornaments.) Today, Howard would have the time of his life at the Canadian Tire, changing it up every Christmas and delighting little neighbour kids with theme trees, coloured trees, and trees of all sizes for all occasions — tasteful, tacky and otherwise.

Howard would have a ball.

A little addition to our family — and how it happened

This is a very personal story. It's the story of how William joined our family and became our son. William is 21 years old now, has been working and attending Nova Scotia Community College and will be heading to university in September.

A variation on this story has been published in the no-longer-existent alternative Catholic weekly, Catholic New Times. It has also been published in the German magazine Spotlight.

It was written just before William's third Christmas. He was born November 29 so he spent quite a lot of his first Christmas as a precious gift under our tree.

This is the story much as I wrote it then. I made a couple of very small insignificant changes and I added photos. I hope you enjoy reading it.

---

I'll give you this much background: When my husband Dan and I met and married, we were both past the age where we expected to become parents. But we knew we loved and admired and respected each other, we had common life goals and cared about the same things, and we knew – as much as anyone can know such things – that, with our work and our home and our friends, we'd be a happy fulfilled family of two (plus three personable, sometimes neurotic, cats).

All that notwithstanding, one day we decided that we would take the Children's Aid Society's eight-week course called Orientation to Adoption. We felt pretty sure that we would never be able to adopt a child through an agency but we thought we would learn something and we might as well be prepared just in case something came up.

We went dutifully to our classes, listened to social workers and others involved in the world of adoption, and joined an adoptive parents' organization. We looked briefly into international adoption, read material about other alternatives, but never really turned adoption into a project that took over our lives – as we saw happen in some other families.

Whenever we mentioned our wish to raise a child, we seemed to get the same advice: tell everyone you know; tell friends and relatives, teachers and nurses, doctors and dentists. Eventually, the advice said, someone would know about a child available for adoption.

* * *

Adopting a baby has become difficult almost everywhere for reasons that most people are familiar with: more effective methods of birth control; an increasing tendency for single mothers to keep their babies; and greater access to legal abortion. So maybe it's not surprising that the first question we often get is, "how long did you have to wait?"

It's not an easy question to answer: it was 1990 when we took our CAS course, so perhaps we waited four years. But it was late October 1994 – about a month before our baby was born – when we got a telephone call from a doctor/friend who said, "I have a patient who will be giving up her baby for adoption. Are you still interested?"

We thought it over for about five minutes before we said, well, of course we are. Within a couple of days, we went to meet the mother of our baby. Together with the doctor, we had breakfast together and talked about our lives. She had two other children and a job that enabled her to raise them comfortably; she felt that a new baby would be an addition to her life that would upset a balance she'd been able to construct.

We told her about our jobs, our house, our neighbourhood and some of the values we held that we thought would be relevant to child-rearing. In fact, our values – the importance of equality for all, of alleviating poverty, of eliminating discrimination and racism – extended into our work: I was (and am) a writer and broadcaster working mainly for alternative media but I was also a regular TV and radio political panellist. Our baby's mother had seen me on TV and felt she knew something about me already. Dan is a longtime senior worker with the NDP and was much respected – as was his party – in Nova Scotia politics.

Two days after our meeting, the doctor/friend called and said, "She likes you. She wants you to adopt her baby."

There was a little confusion about the due date but it was thought that the baby would be born in about a month. So did we wait four years? Or did we wait – with some trepidation and superstition – for about 30 days?

* * *

Our baby was born in the middle of the night, November 29, 1994. We got the telephone call just after 7 a.m. Dan was already downstairs and took the call; I sneaked quietly partway down the stairs so I could hear his end of the conversation.

I'm not quite sure what I was thinking. I knew that we were committed to the baby – sight unseen, condition unknown. That was cause for a little apprehension. I knew we had respect for the mother and, although I didn't think she had changed her mind, anything was possible. I couldn't discern anything from Dan's end of the conversation: "yes", "no", "oh really." Until he hung up and I went down the stairs and he said, "It's a boy." I burst into tears, of course; I'm sure I would have burst into tears no matter what he had said.

* * *

In Nova Scotia, adoptive parents are required by law to be accompanied by someone during the first 15 days of the baby's birth. The law was enacted to protect birth mothers from being coerced into giving up their babies during a very vulnerable period. We felt no resentment at the law and Lynn was very happy to be with us as we went to get our baby from the hospital.

(We had – superstitiously – avoided filling the house with baby clothes, baby furniture, toys; we had even been careful about telling people. However, there were some things that had to be done in the month we had before the baby was born. We hired a lawyer. We notified the Community Services Department and learned the steps that would have to be taken to start the adoption process. We identified parents , friends of a neighbour, who were willing to be foster parents until the baby's mother signed the Consent to Adoption, enabling us to take him home.)

* * *

Just before one p.m. we step off the elevator onto the pre-natal floor. Donna, the baby's birth mother, and Jennifer, her three-year-old daughter, are in conversation with one of the nurses.

"Hi Sharon," Donna says, softly but quite cheerfully. She acknowledges Dan, our friend Lynn, and Liz, our lawyer. We last met her when she was eight months pregnant; today, she is tiny, slim, and doesn't look like a woman who has so recently given birth. "Donna and Jennifer will go in first," the nurse says. "I'll come back and get you."

I am nervous and shaky and don't know what to say to anyone. We all stand around reading the health posters on the walls. The nurse comes back in ten minutes and tells us we can go in.

Donna is holding the baby, bending over so Jennifer can see him. "Look at the little hands," she says. "Isn't that sweet?"

Jennifer is shy and not too interested; they're going directly from the hospital to see Santa Claus at the Mall. Donna looks at the baby affectionately and smiles. Then she passes him to me.

"I'm giving him to you now, Sharon," she says. I am so moved I can't speak, but she understands. It seems like a ritual to me, a small ceremony she's planned to make it easier. It's something that reassures me during the waiting period, that she has made her decision carefully and is unlikely to change her mind.

Getting baby dressed

Ready to go (with lawyer Liz)

Within an hour, we are hurrying across a snowy runway to board the plane for the short flight back to Halifax. I'm carrying the baby. It is December 1, 1994. The baby is 58 hours old. I am just over 50.

* * *

When we arrived back in Halifax, we took the baby directly to the foster home. For the next 15 days, Baby William Daniel (named after my father and his own new father) stayed in a small warm home with a young couple who had two children of their own and who – believe it or not – looked forward to having a newborn in the house again, if only for a few days.

I visited William several times during the 15 days and finally, we decided it would be okay to buy some baby clothes, some feeding equipment, some bedding for the beautiful antique cradle that had been lent by a friend.

William's foster parents loved taking care of him and assured us that he was an easy and good-natured baby. At the same time, for us, they looked forward to the happy day when he would go home with us – as we all did.

That day was December 16. The foster parents had everything ready for us to move him out; they had arranged a babysitter and planned a dinner out for themselves. We had the baby seat ready in the car. All day, into the evening, we waited for the phone call from the lawyer that would say everything was fine. Every half hour, we called the foster parents to say, "not just yet – but you go."

It was after nine when our lawyer called: "Go get your baby!" she said. We only heard later that she and the birth mother's lawyer had been missing each other all day to sign the final papers and had finally caught each other at a Tim Horton's. The call to go get our baby came to us from a fast-food pay phone.

And William's foster parents – in their going-out-to-dinner clothes – had waited for the call as well and were with us as William began the short journey to his new and permanent home. It was nine days before Christmas, 1994.

* * *

All of this happened almost exactly two years ago. For William's first Christmas, we had a lot of relatives and friends come over to see our beautiful tree – and a new baby. We were happy that so many of them brought books, dozens of books, for such a tiny baby!

With Alexa McDonough

That's John Holm, talking with Dan and Alexa. John got to hold the baby too.

With John Holm

With Ralph Surette

His foster parents were right. From the beginning, William was – and remains – a good sleeper, a good eater, a little fellow who seems to enjoy life. He cries only when he's hungry.

He was lovingly baptized on Easter Sunday, 1995, by Monsignor A.M. O'Driscoll, then-rector of St. Mary's Basilica in downtown Halifax, who had affectionately performed our marriage ceremony seven years before.

With Lynn, Baptism Day

* * *

Dan and I have never had any questions about whether we did the right thing. That just goes without saying. Our closest family – Dan's mother and brother, my sister, her husband and kids – all think this is a miracle for all of us.

So many of our contemporaries, sending children off to university or awaiting grandchildren, envy us this wonderful adventure – not because they're unhappy with how their children turned out; just because they think they'd do it differently now.

I too think that there are as many advantages as disadvantages in being mature parents. If we lack something in stamina, perhaps we have gained something in knowing what's really important in life. If we hate the music young people listen to, maybe we've been around long enough to know that good music (by all parents' definition, the music that we listened to) will come back. We don't feel that life is passing us by; we have friends who range from their 20s to their 80s and we know that William has something to gain from knowing all of them.

But there are still questions. For example, how do I feel when people ask (and they do!) if I'm William's grandmother? More to the point, how will William feel when they ask him if I'm his grandmother? (And they will.) And did Dan and I jump the queue? Is private adoption fair? Is international adoption positive – not only for children and families, but for societies and communities? We continue to look for answers.

But for now, we're looking forward to Christmas. Dan and I – even before William joined us – have always been Christmas people. We love to decorate, to cook, to entertain, to listen to the music, to go to Church. Last year, for the first time, we put our Christmas tree on a table to protect it from a completely unreasonable 13-month-old.

Tree on a table!

This year, I think we'll have a big tree again – bearing in mind that we still have those three cats and have always tied the tree to the wall with fishing line anyway.

We'll try to explain the birth of Baby Jesus and what that has to do with Santa Claus bringing toys. We'll teach Away in a Manger while knowing that we can't avoid those reindeer and wondering if he'll confuse them with the animals in the stable where Jesus was born.

Mostly, we'll be happy to see our own families' Christmas traditions carried on – the old stories, the old ornaments, the old recipes. And the most important – we'll teach that we should try to be together and enjoy it together and love one another.

Beyond the basics: the cookbooks that took me there

A few days ago, I wrote about vinegar — not vinegar as a cleaner or purifier as you so often see, but vinegar as an incomparable flavour agent. I mentioned one of my favourite cookbooks — Oil and Vinegar — and offered some of the ways I use vinegar.

I have lots of cookbooks, as you probably do too. I have other favourites — some that I use regularly, others that I just like to see sitting there on the shelf, looking beautiful.

I wasn't always a good cook. As a young woman, I guess I knew the basics — how to cook some veg and fry a pork chop, or bake a potato and stuff a chicken. Most people did "plain cooking" in those days — the word "foodie" hadn't been coined as far as I know and the herbs and spices and condiments that are commonplace today were probably still mostly used in the land of their origin.

I can remember almost exactly when my cooking skills changed for the better. I had been browsing in a bookstore — this was in Montreal in the late 1960s — and I was just leaving when I stopped to look through a bin of books that were marked at 99 cents. I poked around and near the bottom of the bin, I found this:

A set of four paperback cookbooks — the size of book that used to be called a "pocketbook" — in their own little cardboard case. I don't think I even pulled them out of the box. There were four books there for 99 cents and they were called The Wonderful World of Cooking. Each volume covered a different part of the world: Volume I is the Far East and Near East; Volume II is Italy, France and Spain; Volume III is Northern Europe and the British Isles; Volume IV is the Caribbean and Latin America.

I took those books home and began to read. I was enthralled. I had never considered cinnamon and cloves — Christmas baking ingredients — as spices to be used in savoury meat and poultry dishes. My days of going to Spain were still ahead of me but I came across a recipe for paella a la Valenciana long before I ate my first paella on a Spanish beach. I discovered the magic of saffron and beauty of that golden rice. I found out that in Venezuela, cabbage rolls included capers, olives, raisins.

That was only the beginning.

The apartment we lived in at that time was in an old mansion in downtown Montreal that had been divided into fairly bizarre apartments. The kitchen was, quite literally, in the bedroom. It had been, I imagine, a small closet. It really only consisted of a stove and a sink and about six inches of counter space. The fridge was right there but not in the closet. It was just outside, in the actual bedroom.

The stove had two burners and a small oven. Only two out of the three elements would work at any one time so if you were using one burner and the oven, you couldn't use the other burner until you turned the oven off.

One evening, the even-then-well-known journalist, Peter Desbarats and his then-spouse were coming over for dinner. I had already told him, in an earlier casual conversation, about the stove and when he accepted the invitation to dinner, he feigned hesitation and said he didn't know whether he should accept, knowing what he knew about my cooking circumstances. But he was good-natured about it and we set up the date.

I made a Pakistani chicken dish — all in one skillet (therefore, one burner) — full of chopped veg, bay leaves, exotic spices, served with a fragrant rice and a cucumber and yoghurt salad. The dinner was a big hit and my little set of cookbooks was the unheralded star.

Forty years on, many of the recipes are dated now but there are still some that I use regularly: one of the books taught me a no-fail pie crust recipe that I used for years. Now that I have more experience, I can add variations to that recipe but it's still my go-to. The German cookie called fruchtplätzchen that I make every Christmas comes from these books.

The books are falling apart now and have been taped up quite a few times (the photo of the books above is borrowed from Amazon) but I consider them an essential in my cookbook library. They're not as pretty as some of the others — no colour photos here — but they've played such an important part in my culinary journey that I think they've earned a safe space on my shelf.

Christmas on the Ocean Limited

In the mid-‘60s, I was a student in Montreal. One year, my schedule made it impossible for me to leave for home before December 24 so there I was, deciding whether I should spend much of Christmas in a little room in residence or whether I should spend it on the train. I decided in favour of the train.

I was very familiar with Montreal's Central Station and always looked forward to the atmosphere there in the few days leading up to Christmas. There would always be a big raucous crowd at the far end of the station. Mostly everyone would be carrying shopping bags filled with wrapped gifts; there would usually be a couple of people with guitars and there'd be lots of excited children.

When that big white-on-black sign was rolled into place listing the destinations — Trois Rivières, Québec City, Montmagny, Rivière du Loup, Rimouski, Mont Joli, Campbellton, Bathurst, Newcastle, Moncton, Amherst, Truro, Halifax and Sydney — there was a cheer and a good-natured crush as we all prepared to go down the stairs and board the Ocean Limited. These were eastern Quebecers and Maritimers going home for Christmas.

It wasn't like that on that Christmas Eve. The station was dim and quiet, the way airports are late at night. There was a straggling handful of us waiting to board; we were subdued and cheerless.

It was late evening when we got on the train but even still, most of us gravitated toward the club car and soon began to talk. We exchanged stories of who we were, where we were going, why we were travelling on Christmas Eve. Some people were in my situation — they had worked up until that afternoon. One young couple had planned to stay in Montreal for Christmas and had decided at the last minute that they couldn't bear not being home.

We talked about who would be meeting us at our various station stops and about little family traditions we were missing by not being home tonight. By the time we went off to our berths and roomettes, we were feeling quite warm and cheerful, the way you do when you've made new friends.

When we congregated in the morning — a sunny Christmas morning — in CN's dining car, we were already rolling through the impossibly white snowy Québec countryside along the St. Lawrence River.

It was then that we began to lose some of our crowd and we established an instant tradition: at each station, as someone was leaving the train, all the rest of us would gather around the door to wave to the family on the platform and to sing a rousing chorus or two of "We Wish You A Merry Christmas." We just kept waving and singing until the train pulled out.

By the time we were crossing the Gaspé peninsula, heading towards northern New Brunswick, we were having a real Christmas dinner, drinking toasts to each other and to our crew and acknowledging that so far, believe it or not, we were having a pretty good Christmas.

By mid-afternoon, our numbers had dwindled and as we approached the broad sweep of the Miramichi River valley, I began gathering my stuff together to be the next one to go. At the Newcastle station, I was waved and sung off the train by fewer people than there'd been earlier but with no less enthusiasm. My mother and father and I stood on the platform watching the train out of sight as it continued on toward Moncton.

The five-mile drive to Chatham was a merry one as I reported all the details of the trip. Everyone — including me — was surprised at the exuberance of my mood, everything considered.

There was one more surprise. Although both towns had the quiet empty streets and the unmistakeable atmosphere of Christmas Day, in our own house, the calendar had been set back. They didn't want me to miss the special feeling of Christmas eve so the presents remained wrapped under the tree, the mince pies were on the counter ready to be baked, and the turkey was still in the bottom of the fridge, ready to be roasted with all its trimmings on Boxing Day.

When I'd left Montreal the night before, I had resigned myself to having no Christmas at all. I ended up having two Christmases — which turned out to be much more satisfactory.

---

(This piece was written and published a number of years ago. When the late Peter Gzowski was hosting Morningside on CBC Radio, he asked listeners to send him something about Christmas for his Christmas Eve program. I sent this and he read it to end his program that day. Years later, I read it myself on Christmas Eve, on the CBC Radio Mainstreet program that covered the Maritimes. I was hoping to give you a link to hear me reading it but I couldn't find it so I'm afraid you'll have to read it yourself. I hope you enjoy it and I wish you all the best of the Christmas season.)

A season of mixed feelings

It would be self-indulgent of me to post photos of all the cookies. Here's a selection though:

Shortbread cookies, extreme left and extreme right; next to them on the left: ultimate ginger, top and chocolate chubbies, bottom; next to the shortbread on the right: fruchtplätzchen, top and snickerdoodles, bottom. The cookies right down the middle are orange/currant/polenta.

I made the chocolate and the fruchtplätzchen. Dan made all the rest.

I made some traditional Acadian meat pies:

And some cranberries in orange juice and bourbon;

And mince pie.

These are all good things.

A couple of days ago, in some kind of exchange with my son, I spoke sharply and impatiently.

"You don't have to be angry, Mum," he said.

"Of course I do," I said. "It's Christmas."

I made it into a little joke but it's well-known that Christmas is a hard time for many people and in many households, there's no shortage of anger. It can bring out the worst in families.

If it's a hard time for you, I hope there will be some redeeming factors and some part of it for you to enjoy.

And if there isn't — well, hang in there. By this time next week, it will all be over.

A Christmas story, almost

One day in the late Fall of 2011, I reached into the lower cupboard, next to the sink, to pull something out. In the process, I knocked the cast-iron frying pan off the upper shelf and it crashed down to the next level. I heard a discouraging sound and my heart sank. When I inspected the damage, I found the upper part — the insert — of my Pyrex double boiler was broken.

I felt so bad. I used my double boiler but also, it had been given to me by my mother way back when I was in one of my early apartments. I was quite sentimentally attached to it.

One of the first things I remember using it for was to make the pastry cream to fill my very first batch of cream puffs. Yes, I made the pâte à choux also and it turned out perfectly. The puffs looked like this:

The cream, made to perfection in my double boiler, was smooth and silky — no lumps.

I also used it to make a lovely cooked salad dressing that my mother used to make. She called it "mayonnaise" but it wasn't the classic mayo that's made from egg yolks, lemon juice, vinegar and oil added in a thin stream while you whisk until it thickens. Mum's "mayonnaise" had both vinegar and sugar and has a lovely tart/sweet taste that's very good in a potato salad.

And of course, pies: banana cream, lemon meringue, and several variations.

I needed a functional double boiler and I preferred it to be as close as possible to the one I was used to.

So Dan went to eBay on the quest. He was looking for this:

The pieces had model numbers and we specified the size and before we knew what was happening, we had identified what we were looking for. I can't remember all the details but I remember being happy to see this:

Congratulations, the item is yours!

Hi Dan,

Congratulations on winning this item! The next step is to pay the seller. Check out and pay with PayPal to get your item as soon as possible.

Vintage TOP POT ONLY of PYREX Flameware 1 1/2 Qt Double Boiler # 6283-U

Sale price: US $19.99

Estimated delivery: Varies

Shipping & Handling: USPS Parcel Post 0

USPS First Class Mail International US $10.00

Seller: acjake423 [contact seller]

Seller Information: Gail Nargiso

West Milford, NJ 07480 United States

It didn't take long to arrive and it was a perfect fit. I couldn't tell the difference from the piece that had broken and, once again, I marvelled at the world we live in. Internet, eBay, PayPal, UPS two-day-delivery — makes my head spin.

I felt grateful and I decided to write to Gail in West Milford NJ to tell her it had arrived and to explain the circumstances around my search. I told her it was a gift from my late mother and how much of what I cooked in it was what she used to cook in it. I said it was kind of a sentimental piece of cookware and I was so glad to have been able to replace it. It was this time of year so I wrote something like this: "Thank you for selling this piece and you can be sure it will be well-used during this season. If it's appropriate, I would like to wish you a 'Merry Christmas.'"

Gail wrote back, so happy to hear from me and happy the piece had arrived intact. She was glad it had found a good home as it had belonged to her late mother. Her mother had died recently and she had found the piece while clearing out her mother's house. She almost threw it away, it being part of a set and all, but at the last minute, she decided to put it on eBay. She said she felt a little teary when she read my note because her mother had used it for the same type of cooking.

She assured me that "Merry Christmas" was perfectly appropriate and she wished me and my family the same.

It was a rather sweet exchange.

And one of the latest things I made in my double boiler?

Mmmm, that was a good pie. Strawberries, eh?

Talking turkey

We always have lovely turkey at our house – Thanksgiving and Christmas – so I don't identify at all with people who always seem to have a bad experience. It's a process though.

We get our turkey from our farmer – she takes orders and we pick it up a couple of days before we need it. Her turkeys have lived a good life; they've eaten well, had some freedom, were never treated badly or cruelly. They've never had antibiotics or steroids – or any medication. They've grown up less than an hour from where we live.

It definitely makes me feel better.

The day before we're going to roast it, we brine it. If it's really big, we use the big cooler and just put the whole thing right in there. Dan does the brining and he's used different things at different times: kosher salt, brown sugar, maybe some herbs. The turkey stays in the brine overnight and in the morning, it's drained and dried.

Before the roasting begins, I like to put some nice fragrant additions into the cavity: wedges of orange or lemon, lots of onion, garlic, handfuls of mixed herbs – sage, thyme, rosemary. Sometimes, I take some of those same flavours and use them under the skin. I slide my hand between skin and breast to make a nice pocket and slip in some thin slices of lemon, garlic and whole sage leaves.

I know most people swear by butter rubbed all over the outside of the turkey and I like that too. Who wouldn't? But sometimes, if I've got the lemon fever, I rub the skin all over with olive oil, then with a cut lemon, then I zest some lemon peel all over. I sprinkle with coarse salt and roughly ground pepper and Bob's your uncle!

Then comes the roasting time – and here's one way I like:

You can see that with this barbecue, I could put the drip pan under the rack so the turkey sat directly on the rack. I liked that.

This picture is from Christmas 2009. The turkey's almost done. You can tell by its lovely colour and also by the fact that I'm already fixed up and ready for our dinner guests to arrive.

By 2011, we had a different barbecue. It was good in many ways but, as you can see, the turkey had to be placed into the pan because the rack was too close to the heat source and the pan wouldn't fit under there.

See what I mean?

This turkey still has a way to go. The skin is not yet browned the way it should be and I'm not even dressed yet!

Roasting the turkey on the barbecue is fun. It doesn't seem like as much work, it does seem to keep the turkey moist and juicy, and the drippings are always lovely and brown and make delicious gravy.

If you haven't done it yet, try it this Christmas. I recommend it.

P.S. Of course, I make dressing! I make it in a baking dish. Bread crumbs, onions, garlic, summer savoury, salt, pepper, chicken stock – and some of the turkey drippings drizzled over it for extra taste at the end.