A delicious holiday

[ellen_datlow]

I ate too much--cheese and bread and some kind of smoked cod and a clammy dip on toast and incredible homemade charcutier by Sid (one of the regular guests at my friend's annual Christmas dinner). Then goose and scalloped potatoes, and brussel sprouts and I drank too much (champagne and then red wine and finally bas Armagnac).

Beforehand, my friend Donni and I exchanged gifts (birthday as well as xmas) at my place. She's decided I need things that eventually disappear--like food and drink--so she brought me an intriguing looking bottle of white wine from Oregon and a bottle of red, some chocolate mint Baileys, an olive oil dip for bread, and a wine set with corkscrew, stopper, foil cutter, and wine ring (I don't know what the latter is for)...

Previously, I'd opened gifts that came by mail: a nice bottle of shampoo/bath oil from my friend Suzi and a wondrous Bosch sculpture from Mikey and Richard (of the amazing Cougar Gold Cheddar cheese) called "The Temptation of St Anthony.

I still have a bunch of gifts to exchange over the next week and beyond: New Year's eve I'll be having dinner at my friend Ellie's where we will exchange gifts and hopefully Rob K and his fiance Gwen will be attending so we can exchange our gifts. Then a New Year's Day brunch where a whole bunch of other gifts will be exchanged.

And then I still have my friend John, who I promised to visit to his new house upstate in January and my sister...and there might be a few things still winging their way to me from out of town friends...so it's a monthly ritual this year, not a one day thingie.

Comments

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Nom-nom-nom. My favourite nom of the holiday thus far is (scandalously) my own melon-rind pickle, which I only made because I hate throwing out so much melon-rind (when I make melon & ginger jam, for gifts). I wasn't sure about it at all, but it is utterly gorgeous with cold meats.

And armagnac! I think I was armagnac, in a previous life. Either that, or I'm aspiring to it in the next. Do you know the old adage? "Cognac is the wine-drinker's brandy; Armagnac is the brandy-drinker's brandy." Actually of course I am a wine drinker too, but hey...

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Ok So what's Bas-armagnac? Armagnac from a lower region of France?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

A slightly different geographical region, yes. Bas-Armagnac is lower land (I think), and makes the better wines (for brandy-making: lower in alcohol, higher in acidity). Haut-Armagnac is chalky soil, and its wines don't fare so well in the distillation process.

Most Haut-Armagnac brandy goes into blends; much Bas-Armagnac is sold as single-domain vintages. Nom-nom-nom.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

In French, "bas" means low and "haut" means high, so that would make sense.

(I used to play an hautbois.)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, hey: that's cool. Is there actually a distinction between an hautbois and a modern oboe, or do you just like the word as much as I do...?

(Also, did you know there's a variety of strawberry called an hautbois?)

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Well, hautbois is the current French word for oboe, but a couple predecessors were called hautbois, too. I've played some of those, as well.

Yes, I knew about the strawberry -- there's another name, too, isn't there? Not alpine but something like that, I think.