Sugarplums
 
I've never eaten a sugarplum; I don't know anyone who has.  As a child, I wondered about them, since I was confident that I was supposed to be lying abed dreaming about them on Christmas Eve.  Dancing visions of sugarplums, or perhaps visions of sugarplums, dancing.  It's rather difficult to dream about something, when you don't really know what it is, so I used to dream about the turkey, instead.

My mother used to say that she knew she was a grown-up when, the night before Christmas, she lay awake anticipating not presents under the tree but the turkey dinner that would follow.  Now, since Christmas Eve was also her birthday, perhaps the gifts that she had already opened somewhat assuaged her childhood thirst for presents.  Her family wasn’t rich, however, and certainly many of the gifts the children unwrapped were highly practical if not downright necessary, and it isn’t unheard of for children whose birthdays fall upon or around Christmas or New Year’s holidays have them somewhat lost or subsumed into the existing celebrations.
 
It certainly can’t be surprising to anyone that food is my favourite part of the holidays.  I certainly enjoy gifts, especially when they are or pertain to food, but my planning of what to cook takes precedence over gift shopping.   Small wonder that I’ve inflicted homemade food gifts on many of my friends over the years: spice mixtures, cornbread mixes, cookies-in-a-jar, that sort of thing.  This year, however, I’m out of wacky ideas, so my friends are safe, which fact will probably create a huge gust of relief that could knock over the sailboats in the harbour.
 
Palle and I had our first Christmas together before we actually started dating.  My family’s plans were in something of an uncharacteristic disarray that involved brief visits from my sister and father, and leaving me more-or-less at loose ends for Christmas itself for the first time – living on my own without roommates.  I had hosted orphan Christmases before, and when I found that Palle was pretty much in the same position as I was, it seemed quite sensible to invite him to dinner.
 
We had chicken, that first year.  I didn’t want to go overboard.  I had given Palle a list of vegetables to pick up on his way over, and had secured certain items that I didn’t trust to anyone but myself.  He came armed not only with astonishing quantities of the listed vegetables (being unfamiliar with produce shopping, or perhaps optimistic about how much two people eat) but also with wine and a bottle of Godiva’s white chocolate liqueur.
 
I remember standing in the Safeway checkout line on December 24, with my little plastic-wrapped tray of chicken, endless tinny Christmas carols swirling through the candy coated aisles and glazed-eyed shoppers humming along tunelessly.  There was that sort of air of desperation that whispered “it’s almost over” under the forced exclamations of “Merry Christmas!” clamouring from all directions.  The woman in front of my in the line up turned and asked in the sort of drippy, unpleasantly cheery yet condescending tone that is too frequently used on children, the elderly, and the infirm, “Oh, is that your itty bitty little Christmas turkey?”  I was gobsmacked.  Why did I have the feeling that I was being pitied for buying a chicken?  “It’s a chicken,” I managed to say, staring at her, a little wild-eyed.  She stared back, turned away without a word, and immediately squealed “Merry Christmas, dear!” to the checkout clerk as her purchases were rung up.  She left without a backward glance, which suited me just fine.
 
The following years we ran the full gamut of poultry – goose, duck, pheasant, cornish game hen, turkey (when we were hosting dinner for the whole family), and bourbon-glazed ham.  Last year, in an attempt to keep our holiday eating somewhat healthy, we had a spiral-stuffed turkey breast in cider gravy, which was quite delicious.
 
This year, our ninth Christmas together, we’re returning to goose.  I’m deciding on dressing options, and plan to heavily consult the D’Artagnan cookbook for ways to effectively render all of the goose fat.  There will be Brussels sprouts (crops willing) since we both like them, especially when roasted in chicken fat.  Some sort of potato is also obligatory, although I’m partial to bourbon-and-brown sugar glazed yams, and that might take pride of place, starch-wise.  With only two people, I don’t want to go completely nuts on the side-dishes, or we’ll be eating them for days.  While I can think of lots of exciting things to make with leftover poultry, leftover sprouts and yams are likely to quietly expire while I’m deliberating their fate.
 
Dessert tends to be a bit low-key for me, on the holidays.  Some of that is the abundance of sweets that appear at every party, and some of it is that I tend to over-focus on the savory elements of the meal, and feel faint at the idea of also preparing a swanky dessert.  My aunt has given me a lovely looking Christmas cake, which I plan to serve for dessert.  I may rustle up something of a brandy sauce to go with it 
 
Although chocolates and other sweets abound at Christmas time, I don’t know anyone who includes sugarplums in their festivities.   The closest I’ve come, in fact, was a brief stint as a sugar plum fairy in a grade-school Christmas play.  When I was a child, I assumed that sugarplums were some divinely quintessential Christmas treat that simply was out of our reach.  When I grew old enough to parse the name of the treat, it seemed less appetising.  Plums dipped in sugar?  What kind of dismal lives did the children have, who dreamed of such things as their biggest treat?  We have much better treats these days, thank you. The dictionary lists them simply as sugary candies in the shape of a small oval or disk, which is considerably more appealing.  Mind you, I like sugared grapes just fine, so why not plums?  If I ever try one, I’ll let you know.

December 2004