Boxing Day Party

Paul’s sister, Claudia and her husband, Bob have been hosting a Boxing Day Party for the past 3 years. This is an old British royalty tradition where the masters give the servants their Christmas presents the day AFTER Christmas, because the servants, of course, have to work on Christmas Day. Christmas Day is the day when all the masters-type people are having all their friends and relatives in to celebrate Christmas with their plum puddings (yecch) and egg nogs, brandies, cigars and show off their silver tea sets, and other shee-shee masters-class stuff.

The tradition has been hijacked and modified by what the British would call the tacky American, servant-less colonists who turned into a huge ‘white elephant’ party. This is NOT meant to be insulting to Bob and Claudia, because they are probably the closest people our family has to being true royalty. They just knew a fun idea when they saw it, and have now turned it into a family tradition in our lucky family.

The idea is this. Everyone who comes to the party must bring a wrapped gift with no name, either to or from, on it. You try to make your gift look as beautiful and appealing as possible to entice people to choose your present hoping that this is THE ONE with something really good inside it. All the gifts are piled on a large table.

Everyone blind-draws a number out of a hat (a high one, preferably) and this is the order that you choose your gift. After your number is called and you have your gift, you sit down and without opening your gift, wait until all the other gifts are chosen. As each person takes their turn, they can either get a gift out of the pile, OR, they may take one that someone else has already chosen. This can make for some interesting family politics to the Scroogy-delight of the other guests. Then the person who had their gift stolen, can choose another gift from the pile or another person. After all the horse-trading and gift choosing/stealing is finished, people open their gifts according to the number they’ve chosen, starting with number one.

This is the third year we have had the delight of going to this party. By now, people are keeping an eye out all year long for a good Boxing Day gift. So the loot just gets better and better as people catch on to the drill. For example, someone was lucky enough to get this.

This is a genuine, working, pink Princess Phone ala 1960. Foolish gift-giver. Imagine what this would be worth on Antique Roadshow! Anybody out there still have a land line?

Another useful present was this exquisite cow candle. It weighs maybe 5 pounds, and will burn for years. Perfect for the next hurricane, power outage, or other natural disaster involving a long-term loss of electricity!

Sometimes the gifts people end up with have a certain note of irony to them. Like our hostess, Claudia, ending up with this lovely MSU birdhouse.

Too bad that Claudia got her Masters degree from the University of Michigan – the in-state civil war rival of MSU. Oh, well.

A great gift was scored by Nathalie. This one was stolen many times by people because of the Spanish writing across the front – Te Amo – and the dangle-y tassels on the wrapping. Bueno!

Inside this gift was a set of Blessings For the Home cards. They were muy quaint, with a 1950s kind of cachet. Just what she can use when she forgets how lucky she is to live in this wonderful, wonderful world. She can pull out her blessed card deck and shuffle through it and remind herself to bless her house! ‘Put one up every day on the house message board in the kitchen as food for thought.

Uncle Ian got this lovely Disney mermaid doll in his enticingly-wrapped gift.

Which was immediately (but politely) scammed away from him by baby Parker, who was quick to recognize its true value.

Sometimes, people were super-pleased with the gift they ended up with. Uncle Colin, who works with Dolby is an example. He got what turned out to be the winning ‘best in show’ gift by popular vote, a coiled, striking rattlesnake coffee mug.

He could not believe his good fortune and planned to take it to work for his desk. He’ll be the envy of his high-tech co-workers who probably don’t have anything so fine and classy to drink their morning java from!

An unlucky party guest, Claudia’s son-in-law, Mat, got this jar of Ashes of Old Lovers.

Unfortunately, the cork lid is just sort of sitting ‘on there,’ AND it contained real ashes. When he pulled it out of the gaily-wrapped box, ashes spilled all over the front of his clothes and onto the sofa. That was definitely worth a round of laughter. Funny, in a creepy sort of way. Sorry, Mat.

I got a useful item for wearing to parties and art gallery openings. A Batman mask.

The grand kids loved it. Now if only it had come with one of those clingy, black rubber bodysuits, it would be perfect.

Pascale LOVED her present – a Cake-Pop Maker kit. She wandered around the room clutching her present, just off people’s radar, so no one would steal her gift away. She had an intuition that something really good was inside and she was right!

The buffet supper provided by Claudia and Bob was a real hit with everybody. Delicious food and wine and desserts.

And, finally, people voted for the ‘best in show’ gift for this year and the rattlesnake coffee mug won the vote.

If you want one of these, you’ll need to go to a truck stop where I found it in central Nevada last spring on our trip to Portland from Yuma. Since I was the one who brought this treasure, I got the Elephant Award Trophy, which I am suppose to decorate in some fashion and bring with me next year to be presented to next year’s prize winner.

I already have many ideas for decorating this trophy and we will all have to wait another year to see who wins it next Boxing Day. So keep your eyes peeled for good potential presents all this next year.

Happy Holidays!

Osso Buco Monday

I decided to make Osso Buco for dinner tonight. ‘None of that “Meatloaf Monday” stuff at this house! I had some veal shank (humanely raised) in the freezer that I needed to do something with. I RARELY buy veal cuz I don’t like the thought of eating baby animals. When my granddaughter, Pascale, used to tell me she loved bacon but didn’t want to eat a little pig, I would tell her that they made bacon out of very old pigs that were already dead anyway. That way, they wouldn’t waste the meat. I can’t think of any soothing story like that one that I can tell myself about eating veal.

I read through several different recipes for making Osso Buco and decided to marry them together – choosing the parts of each that sounded really good to me. Osso Buco originated in Milan, Italy and the original versions didn’t have tomatoes in them. This was because it was invented before Columbus brought tomatoes back to Europe from the New World. These days, most all Osso Buco recipes include tomatoes. Thanks, Christopher C.

Here is a list of ingredients you will need if you make it like I did tonight. By the way, it was absolutely delicious and I would make it the same way again. It isn’t really hard to cook, but the Italian moniker – Osso Buco – makes it sound exotic and sensuous – kind of like something French. Italians are molto exotic and sensuous, except they have more hair and it is darker in color than most French people I know. I also know this is a fact from reading romance novels and spending two weeks in Italy a while back.

Osso Buco

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 Tbs. butter
6 – 8 medium veal shanks (cut about 1 to 1 1/2 inch thick)
3 large carrots, peeled and chopped
2 medium onions, chopped
2 large celery ribs, chopped
6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 large can whole peeled plum tomatoes and their juice
1 6-oz. can tomato paste
1 cup chicken broth
1 cup dry white wine
2 dried bay leaves
1 Tbs. rosemary, finely chopped
1 Tbs. basil, finely chopped
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/8 tsp. ground red pepper

Gremolata

3 cloves garlic, minced
3 Tbs. fresh parsley, finely chopped
1 whole fresh lemon, zest removed with a grater

Here are the ingredients for the mirepoix:

Below are some ingredients for the sauce:

First, I patted the veal shanks dry with paper towels so they would brown and not just steam. I sautéed them in a large Le Cruseut pan in the olive oil. When they were browned, I set them aside on a platter while I sautéed the mirepoix vegetables. I sautéed the chopped garlic right along with the celery, carrots and onions.

The wine sitting in this photo is the one I used in the Osso Buco. It is one of my very favorite white wines and I was willing to part with a cup of it for this recipe.

After I removed the shanks from the pan, I added the two tablespoons of butter and then the vegetables. This is how they should look when they are properly sautéed. You don’t want to cook them to mush as they will also cook in with the veal and sauce for another two hours.

Next, I added the whole plum tomatoes along with their juice, a can of tomato paste, 1 cup white wine, 1 cup of chicken broth, and the rosemary, basil, black pepper, red pepper, and bay leaves.

Stir this until all the ingredients are blended and it comes to a boil. Then add the veal shanks to the sauce mixture, making sure they are all coated and pressed down into the cooking liquid.

Cover the pan with a tightly-fitting lid and turn the heat down to a low simmer and let them cook for about two hours. About every 1/2 hour, I checked them to be sure they weren’t sticking or burning and I gently turned them over in the sauce to help them cook evenly. They are done when they are falling-off-the-bone tender. This takes the full 2 hours, as shanks are a tough, but flavorful, cut of meat – in spite of them being off of a baby cow. sob. 😦

Traditionally, Osso Buco is served with a saffron-flavored Risotto, but who has time for that after making a homemade Osso Buco from scratch on a Monday night? So I served it over Capunti pasta that I brought back from Italy and cooked up fresh. And, no, I don’t think you’ll find this at a regular supermarket in the United States, so just cook up some linguini.

As you can see, the Gremolata is sprinkled over the top right before you serve it. I added a small piece of toasted Italian bread on the plate. Here is what the Gremolata you sprinkle on top should look like:

To top off this lovely, homemade Italian dinner, we splurged on seasonal Peppermint Stick ice cream for sundaes, and then put Mrs. Richardson’s hot fudge sauce on them to complete the decadence. It really isn’t my fault. It’s my daughter-in-law, Lisa-Marie’s fault, because she served this for dessert when I was in Iowa last Sunday, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since. And, besides, its Christmas vacation for us!

Can you guess which sundae is mine, and which is Paul’s? Paul served himself. I guess men just aren’t into ice cream and hot fudge so much.

This one was mine. It is a very SMALL bowl, so it looks like more than there really was. It was as good as it looks. Try it and you’ll see.

Next Monday, meatless maybe?