Eating: Saturday (aka Christmas Eve)

If you happened to tune in yesterday, you are privy to the sketch of the menu for our week-long family celebration. It's a week-long celebration because that's how long we'll all be together in Charlotte. We being my folks, my brother and me. This celebration happens to include Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The first a meal with just the four of us, the latter a slightly bigger event including some family friends who live in the neighborhood. Nothing formal (formal as in attire, expectations or snobbyness), everything fun. The thing about our family is that we always end up putting a delicious and wonderful meal on the table, and we have a good time preparing and sharing it. However, we never really set a determined meal time, as the final hour of preparation is more of a flexible, rolling, to-be-determined sort of thing.

The tendency is for my mom to have a nice mental list of the things she would like to eat for the holiday. We exchange subject line only e-mails that read, "What would you like for Christmas dinner? <eom>" We all shoot back a slurry of responses, never sure which ones make the menu. Sometimes ingredients are sourced before we arrive (especially those coming from the farmers' market) and sometimes they are not.

So as we drove to the grocery store yesterday, I asked my mom exactly what we were preparing, and for which meal. This was all still up for debate, although she did have a shopping list. Since I end up (happily) doing most of the cooking, this makes me slightly nervous, so last night we made a list.

Here is what we have determined we will eat tonight for Christmas Eve. Roast duck, with crispy skin. Last week my mom purchased a whole young duck, about four pounds, from Windy Hill Farm. She says this is their first attempt at raising ducks. I say I am happy to be their duck guinea pig. This has inspired me to render fat, aim for cracklings and have an extremely fun epicurean adventure. Let's just hope it will work out. Brussels sprouts, cooked by my mom in the only fashion in which my dad will eat them. Kirk is protesting, but we are hoping we may convert him tonight. An arugala salad, with greens procured from the folks at Puzzle Peace Farm this morning (who I was so excited to meet in person). And scallops, scallops that will be pan cooked in duck fat. Sorry heart.

Then there is the matter of the Christmas morning breakfast. Traditionally, this is bagels, cream cheese, lox, capers and thin-sliced red onions. Ambitions has taken the lead this year, and mom wants to make bagels. This process will also start tonight, and along with the honey wheat dinner rolls for tomorrow, inspired a last-minute family adventure to Target to purchase a Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer which we have all predicted will get used in equal proportion to the number of times I come to visit. This was Kirk's commentary, not mine. We'll be attempting a recipe adapted from The Bread Bible (irony?), my favorite bread book and the closest version I could find considering I didn't schlep the real thing down south with me. 

There's nothing like trying something new for a major holiday - we are an adventurous and forgiving bunch - and this is how we ferment our best culinary traditions (and fiasco stories). And so as to not eat too late tonight, I should probably stop blabbering and start scoring this lovely duck.