A Very Belgian Christmas

Yesterday, in the midst of my annoying sickness, we traveled out to get our Christmas tree. My initial plan had been to get the tree on Saturday so we didn't have to go out at all on Sunday. The idea was that my normal disinterest in decorating the tree could be avoided if I didn't have to go out, cut it down, and lug it home all in the same day.



For the third year in a row we went to Maple Row Tree Farm. Jen and Fred were able to mend their broken relationship after last year's falling out.



I tied my side of the tree to the roof pretty well. Just look at how tight that twine is!



Not to pass judgment but Jen's side left a little to be desired. The guy at the farm felt so bad for us that he help us by re-tying her end.



For lunch today I used up a remaining baguette with another of Mark Bittman's Thanksgiving leftover recipes this year. It was simply a grilled cheese with Gruyere and cranberry sauce and it was quite delicious.



After lunch I discovered that the flood had damaged more strands of our Christmas lights than I'd thought. I had previously tested them but apparently they were waiting until I had the tree up to blow out completely. This lead to an I-told-you-so-filled trip to the nearby hardware store to get the last three remaining strands they had for sale.



After stringing up the lights I settled in to make carbonade flamande, a Belgian stew. I based this off of the recipe in Culinaria and made it by browning the beef stew meat in a little butter then removing it and cooking down some onions, then adding the beef back with salt, pepper, bay leaf, thyme, sage, cider vinegar, Dijon mustard, and beer.



For beer I chose to use this Leffe for added authenticity.



I served the carbonade with stoemp aux carottes which is simply boiled potatoes and carrots mashed together. I added some salt, pepper, butter and freshly ground nutmeg.



To match the theme of tonight's dinner I chose this Bush De Noël from Brasserie Dubuisson in Belgium. I've had their regular Bush beer before and it was one of the best beers I've ever had. When a friend gave me this Christmas version I was excited to give it a try.

The beer is not labeled as Bush in the United States because there is a flavorless American beer called "Busch" and they don't want to confuse the general public. Apparently there is a huge problem with people walking into the tiny import wall of fine beer stores and picking up a single 8 ounce bottle of this beer for $7.00 and thinking that they're getting a can of Busch Light.

Surely we can understand that confusion. Good on the American legal system!



I mean, look at the packaging. You can barely tell the difference between the two.



It's like one of those "Spot the Difference" puzzles where you have to figure out what's different between the two pictures. Can you spot the differences between the two beers or the two Christmas scenes?

Hint: one of the Christmas scenes is flavorless.



After decorating the tree we settled down for a nice little seasonal celebratory drink. Jen's drink of choice: hot apple cider. At the Christmas tree farm yesterday there was a woman marveling at the hot cider available. She was chasing after her children telling them: "This is amazing. You've got to check this out. It's from apples but it's hot! It's like apple juice but they serve it hot!"

The kids seemed as shocked as we were that she had never heard of this before.



I went with this egg nog from Ronnybrook Farm Dairy, a splash of brandy, and some fresh nutmeg.

With that we settled in to watch some of our growing Christmas movie collection. Tonight was the perfect night to watch the short ones: Charlie Brown Christmas, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and The Muppet Family Christmas.

All this while fumbling with ornaments around the tree and swearing.

True meaning of Christmas = discovered.

The Gnomes Hate Us For Our Freedom

In preparation for my first batch of home brew beer to be ready to drink I started off last night with another Belgian ale which will certainly be far better than mine.



For starters it's brewed in Belgium. That gave it a leg up on any Belgian style ale I could cobble together. Secondly it was another beer in a series of gnome-themed beers. This beer was the Dobbelen IPA Tripel from La Chouffe, purveyors of fine gnome-themed beers. Their website is also features the second best flash animation of gnomes after Gnomesong!, the classic song and video from Lance & Eskimo.



I got out of work late enough that I only had time to drive straight to the train to pick up Jen so I had to act fast. Luckily this dinner was made basically in the time it took to boil some water. I browned a little garlic in olive oil and butter, threw in some sweet Italian sausage removed from the casing, added some blanched broccoli rabe, sliced grape tomatoes, a little turkey stock, and some cooked cheese raviolis. Over the top I grated some Reggiano-Parmigiano.

Jen was very suspicious of doing this recipe with a ravioli instead of regular pasta. However, as she admits, she is often suspicious of just about anything I make. It turns out it was quite delicious and her fears were allayed -- just like they are every night.



With dinner we enjoyed a bottle of wine we'd picked up in Bordeaux this summer. Well, not the exact bottle we picked up. That one was kindly disposed of by the terrible American section of the Zurich airport. Since there have been planes falling out of the sky left and right from wine bottle bombs it only made sense that they discarded this bottle which was hermetically sealed in plastic encasing marked, "Zurich Airport Duty Free."

The wine was quite nice but it left a bitter taste in my mouth. I don't think it was so much the wine or the tannins but rather that taste of eroding personal freedom.

It's better to be safe than sorry! Right, kids?

Apartment Living

I love living in New York, but some days, apartment living really chafes. This morning, for example. We're leaving for Michigan tonight, so today's mission is a simple one: do some laundry, pack said laundry into some suitcases, and ready the apartment for depature, which is to say, sweep, do the dishes and take out the recycling and trash.

Our laundry facilities are in the basement and are only accessible by elevator -- an elevator which the super locks from entering the basement when it's not laundry hours (i.e., 8am to 8pm). However, some mornings he forgets, so I spent 10 minute intervals from 8:30 onward dragging my laundry bag into the elevator, pushing the basement button then swearing at the unmoving elevator. When I took the trash out, I found Fausto outside and he agreed to unlock the elevator, so I ran (literally -- my first dash on the mended knee. A worthy cause, I think you'll agree) inside, grabbed the laundry and called the elevator. Which, when it came, WAS FULL OF A GUY BRINGING HIS OWN LAUNDRY DOWN. Naturally he had precedent because he was in the elevator first, but he said we could share, so I am now stuck doing one load of laundry a time every 40 minutes for the rest of the day. Which, to be honest, really throws a monkey wrench into my plans for the day -- I cut a slit in the thumb of our only pair of rubber gloves last week, and forgot to replace them until today. So in order to tackle our dishes, I'm going to make a strategic run to Duane Reade to pick some up -- timed, of course, to make sure I don't miss a laundry cycle and get pipped out of my machine by some interloper.

Now for the food-related part of this post. (Tenuous, but it's there.) The OTHER amazing part of apartment living is that in the summer the drain on the building's electricity (I presume from AC units?) builds to a crecendo. In the past week I've managed to trip our circuit breaker no less than three times by turning on a lamp. (One lamp!) So, in order to prepare my breakfast this morning of coffee and flax waffles from the toaster, I had to turn off the overhead light so I could use the coffee machine, then turn that off so I could toast the waffles, then unplug the toaster so I could microwave the milk for my coffee. Then I could turn on the overhead light so I could assemble the dish.

Ahhh, apartment living. It's going to be good to get out of the city for a while. I'll let you know if we come back.