For many of you, the year switched over. Although I now force myself for no particular reason to disregard this celebration in deference to a new year celebration that I partook of once and enjoyed much the more, I am incapable of ignoring the themes, it seems.
Starting over.
New beginnings.
And paring off what had been maladaptive.
This is all supposed to be something that one chooses. The theme of new life and resolution is just that, a conscious choice. One is supposed to identify the new desirables and curtail old rubbish of one's own accord.
But for me and this holiday and year I don't keep track of, it feels forced upon me.

Maybe by some unseen hand and mysterious device I truly understand this resolute nature as comes from within; through deep meanders and complex interactions unknowable even to myself, and understood only superficially to the great depth of character and wonder therein, and bringing about clandestine doctrine that is at the core really myself and my own will. Other than that, I don't think I really saw this all coming or understood what parts of my life were going to cycle out and in with the year. For now, on the whole, I'm coming out on the plus side of the exchange. I'll be more satisfied later when it really is my new year and my conscious choices to move along.

To explain, I'll be listing some things here that sum up a lot of what has been going on for me in the past weeks, and I give you the following warning:
Do not read on if you haven't eaten anything. Go eat some lunch or something, have a drink, get a snack, or at least be chewing on gum before or during reading the following. I am not responsible for your plowing on headlong anyway and then crying to me about how hungry you were after you read all this.
I warned you, but no one warned me.

Holidays at my parent's house (I would say "Christmas," except really it's Advent, Eve, the day of, the Second Sunday, Feast of the Virgin Mary, Feast of the Holy Family, and depending on how long you go or how traditional you are, Epiphany and Candlemas too) always have sweets therein and thereabout and therearound. Wintertime does get cold in Roanoke, and my parents want to fatten the boys up to deal with the harsh cold. This year was well overboard, because at any given time there were sweets from all corners. My father prepared and stored two kinds of fudge in the fridge. My parents packed our stockings with assorted mini chocolate treats, and hung candy canes on the tree. My mum made a cookie house (sugar instead of gingerbread and sized for rat or mouse). My first younger brother baked some cookie bars because he felt like baking. There was a large box of peppermint patties and a canister of truffles next to the large box of petit fours next to the smaller box of still more petit fours from a different supplier. One of the gifts for all the boys was other kinds of chocolate from the laughing cow company (with the red face). My first younger brother had a gumball machine and there was some coke and pepsi and hot cocoa about. With peppermint and cinnamon if you wanted it.
And I had that bit of fudge with me that Spencer had given me.
Oh, and I left with some bags of candy that only appeared later. I think that's it, but there may have been even more sweet treats that I forgot to mention in the list because I didn't make a point to try and list all the kinds and amount of sugar I had eaten while in the house. Instead I listed what my father prepared for dinner on the nights and afternoons I was there, because I wanted to make a record of them. I preface this record with the candy to give you an idea of what was going on in the background, and to point out that my palette was already spoiled with sweets all the time, and everything I ate thus naturally tasted more bitter than usual, on the whole not its best. Hence all of the following descriptions should be taken as understatement.
Saturday 22 Dec: Coq au Vin blanc, mushrooms, onions. This was served with egg noodles and went well with rice as I suspected the following afternoons for lunch and snacks. The chicken crumbled apart when cut it was so moist and perfectly done. The creamy white mushroom and onion wine sauce fell in to fit the gaps of the chicken. The onions added enough spice that there was no need for anything else in the sauce, rich and complete, almost edible in the absence of anything else. Excellent sauce as a topping for nothing at all. I couldn't tell what wine he had used for the sauce, but it was something sweet and buttery. Maybe even a champagne.
Sunday 23 Dec: Enchilada Casserole, black beans and white corn. The casserole, on the whole, is a better idea for the enchilada than the enchilada itself. This casserole had monterey jack cheese and smooth cheddar on top and throughout, red sauce inside and out in addition to the white corn and black bean salsa, the half of which my mom had prepared earlier in the summer from garden tomatoes and corn and other ingredients. Instead of pasta like most casseroles I make and eat, there were tortilla slices all over, giving structure and wholeness to the casserole. Chicken was again the meat, and once again it was fresh and moist and rich amidst the creamy and spicy casserole body.
Monday 24 Dec: Leftovers. The casserole and coq au vin left nothing to be desired of leftovers, I assure you, but being out of egg noodles I cooked some rice to help bind the universe together. This is to say nothing of the sandwiches I made.
Tuesday 25 Dec: Christmas dinner was thick Roast Beef, homemade dinner rolls, yorkshire pudding, tomato avacado black olive arugula salad with homemade vinaigrette dressing, mashed potatoes, broccoli casserole, free broccoli, and cream of mushroom soup. For lunch. And all of this was as tasty or more tasty than you imagine, I'll save time by only describing the yorkshire pudding, which I've grown up with all my life but never seen outside my parent's house. The pudding is more like a bread than anything else. It has a turfy, sometimes tough exterior, and though it has a lot of butter it doesn't get flaky. It is a rich dough of a pudding, baked to a golden brown and served in squares and rectangles cut like a brownie from the sheet you baked it in. It falls somewhere between the dinner rolls and mashed potatoes in utility. My favorite feature of the pudding is how the different brownness of the dough affects the taste, from the crisp and buttery dark brown flaky parts to the yellow-white doughy sour bready parts inside, and all places inbetween. Serve with butter or marmite.
Wednesday 26 Dec: Penne pasta with stuffed green peppers. The peppers were perfectly baked to be soft and sweet like on a cheesesteak, but still rigid enough to hold the stuffing, which was italian sausage bits, brown sauce and two mild cheeses, probably more of the jack from before and some colby. What is brown sauce? Gravy, my friend, gravy. With just a hint of the tomato base.
Thursday 27 Dec: Steak, home fried potatoes with white onions and green peppers, and broccoli. No there weren't as many sides for this meal. If you had tasted this steak, you would know as I did that there was no need. My father grilled it, and the grill is the way to go. Unseasonable warmth helped make this meal possible, although I'm pretty sure my father would have braved the freezing cold to bring us the best steak he could. This was also the first night that my older brother was in town, which was probably the reason that the steak dinner was then instead of days earlier when I first came in.
Saturday 29 Dec: Baked chicken, green beans, boiled potatoes, gravy and stuffing. Like I would imagine a small thanksgiving feast to be like. How they get chicken to do this I have no idea. Chalk it up to years of better getting to know an oven.

As for the day I left out, my father took us to see a hockey game in another state that night and so couldn't be bothered to cook. For the days after Saturday getting back, he took a trip to Texas to visit his parents for the holidays, and my mom doesn't have the same vim for cooking that he does, so most of the fare from then on was excellent leftovers, coffee, chocolate, and takeout. You ask how I found the found? I say there is no question.

Also I think coming off of that my standard fare has given me food poisoning. Out-fucking-standing.

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