Out of practice

 I'm serving Christmas dinner tonight--Christmas Eve.  Then tomorrow we'll have left overs.  That works out well because Christmas is on Sunday this year, and our church will have a 10 a.m. service.  It's not hard to throw a few sandwiches and left-overs on a paper Christmas plate if you don't get home until 11:30.

However, I'm more than a bit out of practice.  I made the potato salad yesterday and cut up some of the fruit. So this morning I've been making sweet potatoes with brown sugar glaze, mixing up the onions, red peppers, mushrooms and bacon for the green beans that are steaming, putting the rest of the fruit together, and getting the ham ready to go in the oven about 4 p.m. But the messiest thing was the scalloped corn.  I don't make it often because Bob hates, loathes, despises corn.  I need a few guests if there is even the smell of corn. But after 62 years of cooking, I've made it many times. You should have seen the kitchen!  I must have used every pan and bowl I owned, and checked the computer 5 times (couldn't find my old recipe if I even had one).  I even pulled out my Mom's red Hall's mixing bowl looking for her magic to be sure it would come together.

Yesterday I opened a can of worms, or at least a box of pictures and letters, and they were spread all over my office floor.  We decided we needed to put all our home made Christmas cards into one album.  I found an empty album, but Bob found a better one, so today he inserted all the cards we could find, beginning with 1985.  I think there are 29 in the album.  When we lived on Abington, he made silk screened cards a few years, but they are the wrong size for this album.  My college roommate Dora, who is a profession artist, made lovely cards, and we have them arranged in a frame as a piece of art. dora hsiung - fiber artist - fiber art