The last week before Christmas. Now Camera Girl must marshal all her powers to coordinate the schedule of buying and cooking the feast. Today she came home with a ham, chopped meat, escarole and some of the other ingredients of the various courses. The roast beast won’t arrive until the end of the week. And the pies and cakes won’t be baked or bought for a few days more. I was explicit that there must be a good quality vanilla ice cream in copious quantity to complement the pies. And very good coffee to wash it down.
The mashed potatoes, corn, crescent rolls and the stuffed mushrooms are all last-minute items that won’t be started until Christmas Eve but they’ll add their dimension to the meal. And finally, I demanded chestnuts and that rope of dried figs that no one ever eats. Camera Girl, being the frugal woman that she is, complained bitterly that chestnuts now cost $8 a pound. But I was adamant. I never liked them as a kid but my father-in-law always had some out at Christmas and after trying them a few times I actually developed a taste for them. As for the dried figs, they’re so hard that they’re almost inedible but somehow it wouldn’t be Christmas without them lying around on the table so I demanded them too.
And this year I’ll show my little granddaughter the trick with the mandarin orange skin and a lighted match. The oils in the skin are flammable and she’ll be amazed to see it ignite around the match when I squeeze the skin near it. And this year I think I’ll try to get the kids to join in a penny ante poker game with me. Camera Girl has an old bucket of pennies. There must be a thousand of them and we can play for hours without any serious money changing hands.
I’ve got my favorite Christmas DVDs at the ready and several albums of Christmas music on tap. And no one should be sick this year because everyone has already been stricken with the Chinese Bioweapon recently. I don’t know that I’ve ever had a sugar plum but I’m pretty sure there’ll be all kinds of chocolates and mints on the table.
Sure, everything is about twice as expensive as normal and that old dimwit Biden keeps gassing off every few days about Ukraine or gay marriage or trans-something-or-other but I’m satisfied that this will be a good Christmas despite him and the rest of the grifters who run the crime family that fleeces us.
It’s still Christmas, friends, family and food and that’s a pretty good combination. I can no longer feel any community with the degenerates that surround us and plot bigger and uglier ways to degrade the good things in the world. But I feel kinship with the normal people that work hard and raise their kids and try to make the world go round. With them I can hope for a Merry Christmas and we’ll worry about the New Year later. Where’s that sweet potato pie?