[Xmas] We Can't Have Anything Nice

So I'm prone to building improbable stacks, but moreso during the holidays. When my sister came over Xmas morning, she noticed a 20lb ham balanced on a stack of coffee cups — my feng shui she calls it. Last year the cat jumped onto a similar stack the day after Xmas, and sent one of my grandmother's platters flying across the room and into a thousand pieces. Not the only one, and not the best one, but still.....

A million years ago I bought a seven-piece set of Le Creuset at Macy's — lids mainly — for $199. There are issues with Le Creuset. Yes, it cooks like nothing else, and no, you can't live without it. Yes, it does last a lifetime, but unless you're a museum curator — my original pieces are now 25 years old — it looks like it's had a dioxin facial. (I once saw a friend's set which had been in heavy use for 50 years, and I'm really not sure I want the Saucepan of Dorian Gray in my kitchen cabinet.) It stains easily, and the shine wears off quickly, even using their high-price cleaning glop. The early pieces had exposed bottoms and rims, which are prone to rust, and if the enamel gets pockmarks, which it will, no matter how well you care for it, you'll be cleaning it with naval jelly. And it's surprisingly brittle. I remember picking up the skillet from Macy's a few weeks after I bought it, and it broke in two. They replaced it and all, but, wow. (That skillet had a wooden handle, which I pretty much charred in the oven, and then the screw that attached it to the metal got bent, and that gave me the excuse to upgrade a few years ago to the newer model, with one-piece construction and an enamel bottom, and an enamel interior replacing the funky French version of teflon. Actually, stopping by an outlet near Savannah, I was able to buy a slightly smaller skillet — 8 inches? — as well as a 12 incher, for what I would have probably paid for one, retail.) Oh, and as you get older, you'll need a hospice nurse who regularly works out to lift the bigger pieces for you.

Okay, so you see where this is going. This year, perched on top of 8 or 9 other things — eaach with a successively smaller footprint — was my original dutch oven — I think it's the 3.5 quart one — and when I jostled the table passing by, everything took a flying leap. Glasses, coffee cups, dishes, all intact, but the dutch oven shattered. I read the "limited" lifetime warranty, and frankly, I don't think it covers "feng shui." So I've started pricing a replacement. If I'm lucky, it will come in slightly under what I paid for the entire original set.

Xmas dinner was a resounding success. My sister had cleaned the house as my Xmas present — the cat does a poor job picking up, and I'm hopeless — and except for the almond crescents, there were almost no noticeable disasters. The 20lb regular ham from Kroger's is so loaded with water you can pretty much nuke it in an hour and have it still come out moist. The country ham, cooked according to Gail Meglitsch's specs — 1-2 days soaking, 8-14 hours simmered very slowly, 0.5 days allowed to cool in its cooking liquid, followed by an hour of baking — was the best yet. (I suspect the secret was that the country ham had not been heavily salted nor cured for very long.) A Bûche de Noël came together without incident Xmas morning, the chocolate genoise perfect and the orange buttercream as yummy as 4 sticks of butter and 8 egg yolks and a quarter pound of sugar can be. Macarooons that kept their shape, mostly. My grandmother's prune cake recipe, which is the hands-down favorite every year. Candied orange rinds. Gingerbread men. Homemade baklava. Oh, sorry, vegetables: creamed spinach, hasbrown casserole, and blackeyed peas. And very good buttermilk biscuits.

Of course, all the work, and the heartbreak of the dutch oven, melted away the next morning when I woke up and found the cat in the meat platter, curled around the hambone. "Look!" she seemed to cry out, "A new place to sleep! And It's warm and greasy and whenever you want to wake up, it's food too!" Priceless.