December 2005 Archives

I talked with my cousing Hanka the other day about her Christmas. All was good and fine, but she commiserated that, once again, she didn't get to experience the type of "chamber christmas eve" she remembers from her youth. Boy, do I know what she's talking about!

I assume that her childhood christmas eve was like mine. You have hot chocolate and vánočka for lunch. You get distracted in the afternoon (in our case it was my grandmother's job to take us out) while the parents set up the tree. In the evening, you dress up for dinner and have your carp and accoutrements with your immediate family. Then one of your parents slips into the room with the tree, lights the candles and sparklers (yes indeed, the tree would have real candles and red-hot sparklers) and rings the bell, saying that Baby Jesus had just left. You go to the room and sing christmas carols before you start opening gifts. In my case, my sister might play some on her flute or recorder and I'd do one or two on my brass instrument. Pretty much up to the gift-opening-time it's all very serene.

Then the next day we'd go to our grandparents for what our family called "Providential calamity" when the whole family celebrated Christmas day with all the aunts and uncles and cousins. Very boisterous and un-serene and lots of fun!

When hosting Christmas Eve this year, we had over a dozen family over. You add in the libation and and any hope for serenity flies out the window when the Karls and Lucios are concerned. We had planned to provide sheets with caroling lyrics for our guests; alas we didn't quite make it and the whole singing thing descended into chaos. Next time we'll know better and prepare.

So yeah, our "Providential calamity" started on Christmas Eve this year, but that's cool, too. I'm still going to push for keeping the caroling tradition alive and am looking forward to teaching the songs to Magda -- no child of mine is going to grow up without knowing the basics!

As a side note: if it ain't about baby Jesus, Mary or Joseph (alegory counts, whether it's "Emmanuel" or an "E'er Blooming Rose") then it ain't a Christmas Carol! Jingle Bells, Frosty, Rudolf, and Dreams of a White Christmas are all great seasonal songs but they ain't carols.

For me, Christmas is all about Christmas Eve, and we hosted a busy one. This was the first time we'd done Christmas in Austin as opposed to traveling out of town, and it definitely has its advantages and disadvantages (the later being a still-messy kitchen).

Traditional Czech Christmas must have a carp, even though they apparently are facing some competition these days. I had pre-ordered two, so in the morning I headed to Central Market to pick up. The place was a zoo, but my fish were ready and I bought a bunch of other dinner-related stuff. Since the fish came cleaned out, I bought some couscous to substitute for the lack of eggs (probably to all my guests' relief).

Although this was a first time for me, preparing the dinner wasn't too difficult but quite time consuming. The carp I got were fully scaled (as opposed to the leather carp you often get in the CR, which usually only have a few scales) so it took a while to clean them and I'll be probably finding errant fish scales for months to come. After the cleaning things went much smoother -- cutting of the heads and tails for the soup and cuting up the bodies into steaks. The soup was pretty easy to make although I ended up putting too much couscous into it so it's a bit thick. Meredith and Diana helped me with the breading and frying of the fish (and pork cutlets that I bough as a fish alternative) and we actually were finished cooking on time and without much stress! Rita and Jennifer prepared the potato salad and that was pretty much it for dinner.

I was impressed that almost all our guests had soup and carp. And I was glad that noone got injured by all the bones in the fish. Next time I'm doing a Christmas carp, I'm going to take the easy way out and have the fish monger filet the fish for me. Much less work to prepare and, more important, to eat.

For once, we actually managed to mail out Christmas cards -- and before Christmas, no less! Maybe next year we'll start sooner and get some better quality cards and make them more personal. Although, at close to a 100 cards that's not likely to happen. But, I do admire people that manage to include a little hand written blurb in their cards.

BTW, I wanted to originally use this picture or Magda with Rose, but that was taken during Magda's teething episode and she just doesn't express the right holiday spirit. Still, they do look sickeningly cute together...

I spent the weekend without wife and doughter and am quite exhausted. I was tasked with churning out cinnamon Star and Beehive cookies, but I went above and beyond and made a batch of Linzer cookies as well. So my back's still hurting from all that standing in the kitchen.

I was looking forward to using the fancy pasta cutter on my cinnamon cookies, but the dough didn't want to cooperate and the cookies now look like some crazy amoebas -- they still taste good, though. The Linzer cookies look perfects, but making them was eye opening. The dough has a one-to-one ratio of flour and butter, so for my doubled recipe a used a whole pound of butter! Just making them I could feel my heart arteries clogging up...

Beingsans family, I managed to see a couple of movies between all the baking. The first one was Syriana whith a very different George Clooney (this ain't Ocean's 11). The movie takes a sober view on how the middle east is ruled by oil. Quite depressing, really, without much of a bright future.

The other moview I saw was King Kong. With all the hype preceding it, I was a bit disappointed. The CG was incredible and Kong really looks real and alive and has great personality and emotions -- heck he "acts" better than some of the other cast. But I felt it was overdone at times. I mean, if you put velociraptors and a T-Rex (or three) into a movie, how can it not feel like a Jurassic Park knock off? Sure, the animation has improved by leaps and bounds and a dinosaur pileup looks cool, but those parts felt long and it seemed to me that some side development scenes were cut out to make the movie a reasonable length.

And then there were those incongruencies. For example, when Kong frolicks around New York with his lady love, it's supposed to be Christmas time and she's wearing a skimpy coctail gown. The cold weather doesn't seem to affect her, even though, by the time she makes it to the top of the Empire State Building she should be working up a bad case of pneumonia.

We're officially in Christmas mode. Jfer's turned into a slavedriver and is making sure that we actually get the cookie baking done that we're planning to do. So over the last three nights, we've been making gingerbreads. And by "we" I mean mostly me (except that Jfer did a lot of the decorating, too) -- but I'm not complaining. Cookies are part of Christmas and the end result is worth it.

The gingerbreads are out of the way, Jfer's responsible for more Chocolate Clouds and Peanut Butter Blossoms, and we plan to make some Beehives together, too. I'll be working on Cinnamon Stars this weekend and, if I feel up to it, some Linzer Cookies. I'm not sure if I'll manage to make the Cocoa Balls.

I've also ordered the Christmas carps from Central Market and they promised to try to save me the egg sacks (carp "caviar") for my soup. I'm a bit apprehensive about doing the whole carp thing for the first time -- and for 10+ people, no less. But it's a tradition I'd like to revive. I did find an excellent page with information on preparing Christmas carp, so I really think I should manage.

It seems that we're taking a slow start with the holiday trappings. I only put up the lights this weekend and I'm relieved that I didn't fall off the roof (there was some NyQuil involved). I must say that they look mighty fine against our new house paint. And Jennifer's choice of green trim conveniently disguises the extension cords.

We finished our Advent Wreath just in time to light the first candle, and now have three of them burning, which means that Christmas is almost around the corner. Speaking of Advent Wreaths -- it was almost impossible to find the right candles. How hard would it be to offer some 2x3" tapers in a few different colors without them being scented?

I think we'll wait with a tree until the week of Christmas. There just isn't much time right now, and it will be nice to have Meredith help with the decorating. So most of our Christmas stuff is still in the shed. The only exception is the magnetic nativity set that we bough last time we were in Prague. It's gracing the vent above the stove, much to Magda's enjoyment.

Magda's been pretty cranky starting last Wednesday or so. We first thought it was due to some funky rash she'd developped all over her body. Kind of like a mini chickenpox, but she didn't have any other symptoms. The pediatrician said it was "just some virus stuff" and sure enough, it was gone a couple of days later. And she didn't even try prescribing gratutious meds!

But the crankyness didn't go away. We'd had one pretty bad night -- well, it was mostly Jfer having the bad night -- where Magda was on and off craying until almost three a.m. We'd had some so-so nights after that. And she didn't eat well and when I'd give her her bed time bottle -- our favorite part of the day -- she'd suck a couple of times and then reject it wailing.

We've decided that she's going through teething pains. It explains her slightly elevated temperature and oral sensitivity. Also, not too long ago two more upper teeth broke through, so she now sports a set of six teeth. I think we are over the worst of it now; she's back to eating pretty well and sucking down her bottle. But it can tak a year(!) for all the molars to come out, so I'm sure we're still in for an interesting ride.

Her crankiness has made it difficult for use to take good holiday photos. We tried one of her and Rose. But frankly, Rose has been much more cooperative than Magda in participating in a photoshoot. Oh well, we'll just have to catch her in the right moood.

We visited my cousin in Dallas this weekend to celebrate St. Nicholas Day. She's involved with the Czech emigré community there and has helped organizing St. Nicholas -- or Sv. Mikuláš -- parties ever since her daughter was a baby.

On December 6, children in the Czech Republic are visited by St. Nicholas. He arrives clad in his bishop's robe and mitre and is accompanied by an angel and a devil. He carries a big book which has info about who's been naughty and nice. When he visits, older children often have to say a poem or sing a song. He then praises the children about their good deeds and points out some thing in which they should be improving. They then get a stocking with gifts -- traditionally gingerbread, peanuts, clementines, chocolate coins and such. If they have been naughty, they may also get a lump of coal or a potato or be threatened with deportation by the devil. I can still vividly remember my Mikulášes in Prague and what impression they made on me. It's much more intense then a visit with Santa at the Mall...

The party in Dallas was pretty authentic. There was a ton of Czechs with small children and quite a few non-Czech spouses, too. St. Nicholas and his entourage looked great -- their costumes had been made by my aunt Hanka who's done a lot of work for theater and TV productions and it shows. The devil was especially scary and energetic -- so much so that you occasionally could hear mothers trying to calm him down so that their kids wouldn't freak out.

Magda enjoyed the hub hub of being at a party, but she wasn't too thrilled with St. Nic or his sidekicks. Most of the time they were there, she clung to Jennifer, holding on for dear life. But St. Nicholas had mostly good things to say to her and she received a nice little stuffed dog that she now enjoys.