Christmas Mem'ries

Season's Greetings from New Orleans, Y'all! When I was asked to guest post for Paul's blog, naturally I was flattered. I delved deep into my imagination for things to write about. I wanted it to be holiday-themed and relevant for this time of year, but I have found it very difficult to get into the Christmas Spirit so far. With the holiday itself merely days away, I find myself distracted with the reality that I have completely left everything until the last minute. I haven't bought a single gift or mailed even one Christmas card so far. I could blame the horribly unseasonable weather in New Orleans or a demanding work schedule, but what it comes down to is my own supreme laziness. At least I own that. Originally, I thought that a New Orleans Christmas Card would be nice. A post filled with images of yuletide on the river, the Festival Of The Bonfires that lights the way for Papa Noel along the levees in the Parishes farther down the Mississippi. Pictures of graceful Creole Townhouses with cast-iron balconies festooned with garlands and lights, reflecting on the wet, worn cobblestones of the Vieux Carre. That would have been nice....

Then I came up with a few stanzas inspired by Christmases' past spent with Paul as his next-door neighbor in Florida. We always had such a time! Christmas was a big deal on 7th Avenue and was indeed a celebration to last the whole year long. A few lines of poetry were very inspired while others were just too weak or vulgar to be included here. I wouldn't want Paul's blog to get flagged as inappropriate just for the sake of a few penis jokes, but some of the decent ones are too good to waste, so I render them here for you. Ahem......

"Christmas Mem'ries"

By Brandon Bergman

Christmas memories as a child were magic and all,

But the most memorable ones were with our dear Uncle Paul!

We'd arise on The Day, some with Champagne in hand,

And gaze at Paul's tree,

Oh the presents! How grand!

We would tear open gifts, paper and ribbons in piles,

Peaches and Toenisha would create ethnic hairstyles!

We would sing and we'd laugh. Even play some jazz,

"Another glass of Champagne for the Lady Shabazz?"

It all went downhill from there, sort of how the holidays themselves would just disintegrate into shameless episodes of alcohol consumption while the temperate Uncle Paul would watch in bemused horror as Kevin and I opened another case of Prosecco. Ah, the good old days. They were good. They were old. They were days....

Then I remembered the Christmas of 2006. A day that will not soon be forgotten. Our dear sister Kevin had regretfully gone to North Carolina for the holidays, leaving our Christmas table in person but certainly not in spirit(s). I had befriended a couple of New Orleans Katrina refugees, Angelique and Zak, the previous year and invited them to spend a lovely Christmastide at our table along with a friend of theirs named Steve. The weather was warm for St. Petersburg in December and a grand al fresco meal was planned. Zak had brined a turkey and brought the raw bird to roast in my well-used oven. The other side-dishes were waiting for their turns in the oven while the turkey bronzed and crisped.



Meanwhile, we had a few hours to kill, so we began drinking a lot of red wine and carried on such marvelous conversation on the balcony. Allow me to remind everyone who doesn't know, Paul does not imbibe of the grain or of the grape. As he had Christmas Joy to spread in Tampa, Paul took off to return later when dinner would be served.

He returned to find three former and one future New Orleanian rip-roaring with the "Spirit" of Christmas. Dinner was served and I believe that it was delicious. I cannot remember what was served, but with such accomplished cooks in the kitchen, how could it have been anything less? God, I wish I could remember...I remember the wine, however. And unfortunately, the next series of events... I couldn't block it out if I tried, nor would I want to, as these are the days of our lives.

A little back-story: For my birthday the previous August, Paul had gifted me with the unanticipated present of liquor. Not just any liquor, mind you, but a bottle of Absinthe. Ah yes, The Green Fairy. The stuff that Van Gogh drank that inspired him to cut his ear off and send it to a no doubt, horrified and perplexed lover. The same drink that many a Bohemian artist had lost their minds from imbibing regularly. Thanks again, Paul!

Anyway, after dessert was served and the party had been in decline for several hours, I suppose that our dear Uncle Paul craved a little after-dinner entertainment. The fact that we had no spinet to sing carols around made no difference. I was ready to bid our new friends adieu, when Paul suggested "Why don't you bring out the Absinthe?" Ever the shit-stirrer, but a wonderful idea, nonetheless. I rounded up every cordial glass that I could find, set out the appropriate number of sugar cubes and chilled ice-water for the louching of the Absinthe. What an elegant way to end such a marvelous evening! I proudly poured the Absinthe into the little glasses, carefully poured the chilled water over the sugar cubes through the little slotted spoon that came with the bottle and watched the alchemy as the liquor changed from chartreuse to a milky jade color. Magical! Such promise was held in those little glasses! I distributed them to my guests, a toast was made and I drank the contents in one shot as though it were the free Apple Pucker that they give out at the bars here in New Orleans. BOOM! The stuff hit my gut like the blow of a jackhammer and was violently expelled from my gut over the side of the balcony. My guests sat in stunned silence as I retched. And retched. Feeling the need to mark the occasion with words, I made the declaration "It is poison. Don't drink it." To which Angelique replied, "Oh no..." I mean, what else can you say? I went to the bathroom to clean myself up a bit, and returned to the table, still surrounded by my uncomfortable guests, only to have Paul point out the streak of black vomit on the left side of my shirtfront. What happened next is but a foggy memory, but none the less, a memory, unfortunately. Zak entertained us with a delightful and erotic strip-tease, exposing everything to us as if we were a team of doctors out to discover a problem within his urethra.



He even gave us a little wink to punctuate the burlesque, but not with a beaded-eyelash, if you know what I mean. I believe my lover of the time had punched the other guest in the ribs for telling an offensive joke while Zak and I ran around the courtyard in our underwear in some kind of Bacchanalian celebration of wine and revelry. I'm not sure what Angelique was doing. Counting the number of times she'd seen this behavior in the past, I guess.

We finally bid our guests "Goodnight, and Merry Christmas!", and "Let's do this again sometime!" Needless to say, that time has yet to be repeated, thank Christ! I remember waking up the next day with a strange and deep gash on my leg from a falling broken wine glass and a vague, but still painful memory of the night before. As I related that story to Kevin on his way back from North Carolina the next day, I realized that Paul had gotten up much earlier on Boxing Day, and had told him his version of the events of Christmas. I wonder to this day how they differed.

But Paul, as I gaze at the lurid red glow of my Christmas Tree here in New Orleans, I think about you. I wonder how you are spending this Christmas without the antics and melodrama that you no doubt enjoyed in previous years, in the company of myself and our dear sister Kevin. I know, for me at least, that those were the happiest Christmases of my life. So organized. So memorable. I also think of the lurid red glow that comes from my front window in the Treme and think, "Might passers-by think that this is a brothel?" One can never tell in the City of New Orleans. The history of prostitution in this city is so vague.

Brandon Bergman is the author of "Where The Sweet Olive Grows", an insightful blog, dedicated to the preservation of New Orleans culture.

From the Pantry: Food and Mosaic

I've enjoyed reading the posts from Paul's guest bloggers. Now it's my turn, and I'm glad he put me at the end. You all are a tough act to follow, but reading your wonderful observations and reminiscences gives me the courage to be creative. Here goes:

My family recently visited our good friends in Madrid over the Thanksgiving holiday. Matthew and Catherine Meacham have always had great taste in design. Their new home, designed by Barcelona architect Tonet Sunyer, is no exception. The house is clean-lined and filled with light. Thoughtful, intelligent design is the theme. Here's a view of the patio and pool. I'm enamored with the brushed bronze cabinet doors which look like a wall, but store everything one needs to host a fabulous party - out of sight.



Everything is built-in, as you would expect in a modern kitchen. What grabs you, though, is the unusual pantry. It's a walk-in galley behind the stove and sink wall.

Food styling takes on a whole new meaning when the guts of your pantry are visible 24/7. Most of us would cringe at having to keep our foodstuffs neatly organized and visually appealing. And the Marmite Heirarchy. Who can keep up? Small, medium, jumbo? Catherine is quick to point out a distinct advantage: from her vantage point at the kitchen table, she can sit and make her grocery lists just by scanning the pantry shelves. My husband rushed out to The Container Store as soon as we got back to Texas, and soon had our two daughters "tiering" the cans in our own pantry. It's still not pretty, but at least now one can find the Progresso soups behind the cannellini beans.

My favorite part of the kitchen was the built-in coffee center which makes any type of brew, from macchiato to lungo at the push of a button. Here is my daughter Kate's favorite part:

That would be the family's pet turtle, wintering in the kitchen with some fresh greens. During warmer months, he has free reign in his own Zen terrarium:

That's the interior courtyard of the home. The trees are on an "island" surrounded by a shallow trough of water. Probably takes the turtle all summer to make a lap.

And now for the holiday/food portion of our show:

Food as Mosaic. Mosaic as Food

Anyone who knows me well knows my second-favorite place to be after my mosaic studio is the kitchen. Sometimes I have trouble distinguishing between the two. Clients request mosaics shaped like food; evil friends challenge me to make absurd constructions out of food, often requiring me to cut said food into tiny, mosaic-like pieces.

A case in point: recently my friend Laura, aka "Shot Girl" (to be explained later), challenged me to create a 14-layer cake for my daughter Claire's 14th birthday. I read the blog she attached to the challenge. Easy enough. After placing the 7th layer, I started giggling uncontrollably. By myself. For three hours, which is how long it took to bake 14 individual cake layers using only three round pans. Eventually I decided I could have made large pancakes on my griddle and frosted them with chocolate.

See what I mean about pancakes? This is after nine layers, and it was starting to feel precarious.
But the end result was great. The best part of all was having Claire tell me, "Mom, all my friends thought the cake was AWEsome!"

Last summer I pre-empted Shot Girl with a challenge: bring an appetizer to our party which could be made by ingredients found at a random convenience store between her house and mine. As usual with Shot Girl, things got artsy:

The Slim Jim log cabin. Smelly. Greasy. Totally unappetizing once you've notched each log on both ends and watched in horror as orange grease oozed out of this food product all over your hands. An "A" for effort.

By now you might be suspecting that Shot Girl and I share an obsessive-compulsive trait. In case you still doubt, a few prime examples follow.

I annually drag out the Victorian gingerbread cottage mold. One year I compulsively attached candy-coated sunflower seeds (they look just like tiny Christmas lights!) to the icicles on the roofline. The candy cane trees are store bought; I won't let the kids unwrap them because I use them every year.
For a Scottie-loving neighbor, Hollydogs; left over from a Texas-themed tree decorating contest, a cactus; and I always include the Man in the Moon for our atheist guests.

One year I got carpal tunnel from decorating too many bitty stars and snowflakes. So last year I cut back and simplified the patterns. In addition to geese, I sometimes make roadrunners (again, the Texas tree leftovers). Whenever I see this goose I think of Miss Piggy and the Muppets singing, "Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat..."

People love to eat 24 k gold. It's so decadent. I dusted these with gold powder purchased from Maid of Scandinavia. It's edible, expensive, and irresistible on desserts.

Last year when my friends wanted to throw a small cocktail party for my birthday, they asked what kind of food I preferred. Tapas should be easy enough, right? I started to panic when the hostess asked to borrow my paella pan only three hours before the party. Surely she wasn't going to attempt her first paella with 20 guests hovering over her? Imagine my surprise when she and Shot Girl showed up with my birthday cake:


That's a Rice Krispie bar paella. Layered with candy seafood and candy vegetables. I suspect this is retribution for the time I brought mock sushi to Shot Girl's birthday party (gummy worms and gummy fish wrapped in Rice Krispies and rolled with green leather that looks remarkably like nori).

Mosaics as food; now food mosaics: I have a great client who has several of my works in her collection. Last year, she and her daughter opened a clothing boutique in Dallas called Betty Cupcake. Who do you call when you need mosaic cupcakes? Yours truly, natch.



I leave you with a party shot, to continue the theme of Paul's fun friends who enjoy being ridiculous with the ones they love most. Last year, we hosted a Superheroes and Villains party. "Come out, come out, whoever you are!" said the invitation. We asked folks to come as their alter-ego. Some didn't really get it. Others, they really got it.

The essential gang: King Kong; Corkscrew Man, here to save the picnic; Rolodexia, Mistress of Referrals (me); Paparazzi Scum; Shot Girl (tonight she's your friend, tomorrow she's your enemy); The Baconator (who doesn't love bacon?) and Perception Man. Wouldn't it be great if some day all of our absurd friends came to the same party?

That's it for me, Paul. I have now given up my dreams of hosting my own blog; I've given you everything I have. Happy holidays to all and a prosperous and healthy 2010.

- Julie
www.juliericheymosaics.com

A Different Point of View

Touch&Turn is concept product that Menno Kroezen designed to make cooking a simpler, safer and more satisfying experience for the blind and sight-impaired. An induction burner has raised, Braille-like dots which indicate temperature levels; the user positions the handle of the pot—which is insulated on the exterior [but not the base] to prevents burns—to the appropriate heat setting by touch.

I find it's always a good exercise in critical thinking to approach a situation from a vantage point other than the norm. That's something I try to do on my blog, kbculture, and I've noticed that the host of this blog, Paul Anater, shares a similar outlook.

Thanks, Paul, for letting me contribute once again to your site. Happy holidays to all.

—Leslie Clagett

Cookies and Sweaters and Booze, Oh My!

Season's Greetings from the Crescent City! I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to post on Paul's blog again as he enjoys a much-deserved break.

So we're ten days away from Christmas and I have to admit that I am woefully unprepared for the holiday. I currently work at the Roosevelt Hotel in downtown New Orleans, and while I have been inundated with decorations, carols and festively dressed holiday revelers since Thanksgiving, I have not been able to get into the spirit of the season. Any of you who have ever worked in the service industry know that the holidays can be one of the most profitable but work-weary times of the year. While everyone comes out to enjoy food, drink and holiday fun, you are in charge of making sure the food and beverages hit the table in a timely fashion while you support the merriment, regardless of the fact that 32 old ladies all want separate checks and need you to capture all of their fun on film while dealing with six other tables.

I was able to attend a holiday function last night as a guest, compliments of my dear friend Brandon, who invited me to accompany him to his company's Christmas party. We indulged in an elegant affair of food and drink (I LIVE for an open bar!) and had the opportunity to enjoy some jazz after dinner. The evening helped me to get in the holiday spirit and reminded me of fun times of Christmases past.


Brandon and I used to live in St. Petersburg, FL, and the two of us, along with Paul, always had a grand time around the holidays. Stopping by Brandon's house the other night for an evening of wine and holiday musicale, I saw that he put up the tree he used to display in Florida, and it reminded me of some the annual events I enjoyed so much at Christmas.

Brandon's tree in St. Petersburg

One of my favorite events was the annual Cookie Exchange and Fashion Show. Each year, one of us would host a gathering of confirmed bachelors to partake in the event that's touted in all of the Lifestyle magazines as a fun way to exchange recipes and gather holiday sweets for one's home. Being the creative types, we decided in addition to the cookies, we would all model fabulously atrocious holiday outerwear to add to the festive mood. With the exception of Paul, who doesn't drink, we also made sure to have ample supplies of hooch on hand to keep everyone well lubricated as the event progressed. I loved to show off horrendous holiday sweaters, which was easy to accomplish as I worked for HSN at the time and had access to surplus inventory from the Storybook Knits collection. Behold:

Yes, the faux strands of pearls were a hostess gift from me to all attendees of the first Cookie Exchange back in 2003, and those necklaces seemed to always make an appearance at subsequent holiday functions.

Ever the creative one, here's Brandon in his homage to Sonja Henie:

One year, we even had the honor of having "Joan Crawford" attend the fete, although why she opted to show up sans hairpiece was a question we talked about for the entire season.

I won't bore you with recipes for the treats we shared (I was usually too loaded to remember what we ate until I saw the leftovers the next day), but I encourage everyone to host a Cookie Exchange and Fashion Show. It's simple and fun, and guarantees that everyone will get into the Christmas spirit.

Paul's tree in 2004

Whatever you celebrate, I wish you all the best for happy, healthy holiday season.

Dad’s Dream: A Tale of Two Houses

Thanks so much to Paul for inviting me to guest post during his absence. The piece I’ve written is far more sentimental and estrogen-infused than his normal fare, so I’ve been second guessing the whole idea. I suppose I could have written about my specialty, Kitchen Design. But since my dad passed away thirty years ago this month I have been spending a lot of time revisiting some old memories, especially those surrounding our living spaces. So here I go, with a little Christmas tribute to my dad:


My dad, the electronics professor with the teasing wit and clip-on bow tie, had a manuscript for a college textbook to complete and three noisy rug rats underfoot. “We’ll go to the country for the summer,” he must have said to Mom. So we left the jazzy hum of multi-cultural Monterey for a taste of rural America. Mom and Dad rented a seven-bedroom, turn of the century, Dutch Colonial farmhouse in a small town nestled on the upland slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains. It was 1968.
  
The house itself was decrepit, with advanced plumbing issues. I can remember turning a squeaky faucet handle and observing the slow oozing of rusty goo into a wall-mount lavatory. It was minimally furnished, most notably for me with a record player and stack of albums which included The Ventures, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass and The Beach Boys. There were clawfoot tubs, cold linoleum floors and secret passageways. It was absolutely wonderful; and it was here that we all huddled around our black-and-white console TV to watch a grainy image of Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon.


While we kids were enamored with the house and the space to run, Dad was enamored with the close proximity of his beloved redwoods. These are graceful, velvet-barked, tilt-your-head-back-and-try-to-find-the-top kinds of trees. On many Sundays after church we would be treated to dipped cones at Foster Freeze, then a drive through the dense, moist, redwood forests of California’s Coastal Range.

Summer rolled into fall and it became clear that we weren’t ever going back to Monterey. Dad bought several acres of future paradise on a steep hillside with a lush valley view and never finished the manuscript.

For the next five years he was a man with a plan and a long commute to teach year-round plus some night classes. Our occasional vacations meant piling into the Ambassador station wagon (without seatbelts) to visit family, with stops to tour model homes: A-Framed, chalet-style mountain retreats. Dad’s enthusiasm was contagious, and we had all caught it.

So in 1974, when the framing finally went up, we were all totally engaged with the process. I think this is why even today I adore the smell of sawdust on a jobsite or in a cabinet shop. Miraculously my sister and I, as teenagers, were able to agree on one thing: our new bedroom would have lavender walls and chartreuse shag carpet. Deep shag. Life held such promise; we each had ample closet space for our bell bottoms and wrap-around skirts and plenty of wall space for our fuzzy black-light posters. Dad fashioned swinging saloon-style doors to separate the toilet space from our long, double vanity.

Dad's Dream House

All of the cabinetry was birch plywood with a simple, flat door, routed on the back side to lip over the face frame. Outfitted with the latest Harvest Gold appliances, the galley kitchen was no more than ten feet long. Mom chose sunflower gold tile for the countertops and a happy blue and yellow vinyl flooring. There was no microwave of course. We didn’t know we needed microwaves in the 70’s. 

Brew-ha-ha
There was, however, a small appliance that truly christened the kitchen of our A-framed chalet in the redwoods. On our first Christmas in the new house, Auntie Midgie and Uncle Owen presented my parents with the latest innovation: a Joe DiMaggio-endorsed, Mr. Coffee automatic drip coffeemaker that eventually gurgled and brewed to everyone’s delight. But Dad “wrote the book” on electronics, so he didn’t need directions. When his first coffee-brewing efforts were met without success, Dad proclaimed in his most professorial voice that there was obviously “too much turbulence in the scupper hole." This would become a family mantra of sorts for all future technical difficulties.

Uncle Owen admires the Mr. Coffee. (Mom & Dad are on the right)

And so just as Dad had dreamed, this A-Framed abode with its pointed nose of window glass, extensive redwood decking and mountain charm, was in harmony with its environs. And a gregarious, hard-working man realized a dream.

Less than two years later, before the new-house smell had even gone, Dad learned that he had lung cancer. Our family went into survival mode and tried to reconcile that what once felt like a shiny new beginning was now the beginning of the end. My courageous dad tried to go back to work for awhile with just one lung. He loved a few things even more than the redwoods…teaching for one, family for another.

Just before he passed on, he briefly came out of a semi-comatose state and lucidly and with a sense of urgency asked us to sing a hymn, In The Garden. My mom, Auntie Midgie and I sang it very poorly, but the look on his face told me he was hearing something more angelic. Here is the last verse:

I'd stay in the garden with Him,
Though the night around me be falling,
But He bids me go, through the voice of woe,
His voice to me is calling.
And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own,
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

He left us, there in his redwood paradise. He had pursued the things he loved. As I squeamishly approach the age my dad was when he bought that piece of property(!), I appreciate ever more deeply the lifestyle he modeled. He is still teaching. He’s teaching us to journey to discover our own unique dreams, the ones that are so divinely designed that they inspire a hope that propels us to act, and a joy that’s contagious.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Today is a gift; that’s why they call it the present.”

Merry Christmas.

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