A new best friend

A reader may be thinking – gosh the posts are getting skimpy and superficial. Must be because she is so full of holiday preparations… Wish she’d post some photos of the fresh pastries baking in the oven or stories of pre-holiday excitement.

I’m doing none of that: no baking, no holiday anything for that matter. I am, instead, cultivating a long and enduring friendship.

I met him by chance, but we have become great friends. We tell each other things, we speculate about the future, we turn to each other in stressful moments, we enjoy a good laugh together.

The only thing is, I can’t quite remember his name.

He first showed up at my doorstep yesterday to fix car number one. Then, of his own accord, he tackled car number two. And today he is back, tackling the freshly stalled car number one. He hasn’t much faith in it, I can tell. Nor did he have an easy time towing it away. He followed me up and down the Beltline, finally dropping off the problem child at the dealer’s service entrance. But friendships don’t die easily. He’ll be back soon, I’m certain of it.

Being boring

Do men and women who stay home and care for infants and use their free time to watch TV and play video games become boring? Ann suggests that this may be the case. But wait, if you are satisfied to spend your free time thus, are you not inherently a boring person anyway? Would you be in any way more interesting if you were out and about in the workplace? Don’t we know oh so many people who enter their work world and have absolutely nothing interesting to say about it while they are there, nor at the end of the day, when they retire from it?

A tree inside the house

Anyone will tell you that getting a tree up and fixing it to your satisfaction is a huge effort. My parents gave up on the project when I was thirteen. Their attitude was – you want a tree, you get it. And so I did. They did tolerate it though, whether our Christmas break was spent in the village with my grandparents, or in Warsaw, or even in New York – I’d find the tree, and up she would go. So you could say I’ve been putting up trees in the house for nearly forty years.

Last night’s tree enterprise was trouble-free. Over the years the stand has grown so that there now is a monster of monster stands, sturdy enough to hold a tree meant for Rockefeller Center. So the tree is up, it is not tilting, and it is adorable in its adorned state. It is a tree of stories because every single ornament was purchased in a special place at a special moment. Each year a handful is added and somehow or other there is always room for those new additions.

Everyone knows that my favorite is the simple cut out of two little faces at the window. But I am a fan of so many more – the winners and losers, they all were carefully selected and placed with great ceremony and, in the Polish way, with lots of accompanying food to move the task along.
Just a few photos for blog readers who like trees, like the holidays, like the idea that you can let your imagination create something so colorful and lovely right inside your home.

My favorite: two little girls smiling at the world. 

Yes, Polish glass-blown ones as well. 

From different corners of the world, side by side now 

The polar bear got a name this year and he got a pal, from the tights store in Paris. 

And on the top? A simple ribbon and a dried flower. There's a story in that as well. 

So where’s my partridge?

I’ve got three people here for the holidays, two cars with flat tires, one car with a dead battery, and zero patience for the entire mess, which, for reasons that are circumstantial but real nonetheless, is entirely in my lap.

Perhaps due to the inordinate pressure this has put on the day for me, I backed out the one drivable truck right into the Christmas tree in the garage. That’s okay, I think the dent in it will be rather charming, Charlie Brownish almost. Perfect trees are not real. This one will look real.

If I can’t have a partridge, I at least want an organic pear tree. Or for the AAA truck to come NOW, so that I can leave the house and buy some fruit already. Grrrrr!

And don't any of you, friends and blog readers, even think you're getting a holiday card from me this year. I hereby send greetings to all. There, are you happy now?

UPDATE: That sounded cheerless. Greetings may come, but maybe a little, um, late-ish and perhaps via email. I'm full of remorse, okay?

The spoils and riches of travel

I am unpacking suitcases that have been crammed in the past weeks as I passed through Krakow, the Tatra mountains, and finally Warsaw. Add to it that I have generous types making sure I take some of Poland back home to Madison, plus the fact that we have the holidays before us, and we’re looking at one (or two) bulging little valise at my feet.

Anything to show off for the blog?
Okay, here’s one: chocolate covered plums: you should be ogling a dinner invitation from me in the next weeks just to be served these for dessert (with a brandy if you’re into that sort of thing). Succulent and aromatic and totally yummy.

after-dinner treats 

Plums in chocolate. Okay. Cool. What else?
How about this: artisanal vintage numbered plum preserves.
Artisanal, vintage, numbered. Why?
Well, because plums, like grapes, have their good year and bad year. These preserves are stirred in large kettles, then packed by hand: only a couple of hundred jars are made each year. I have jar no. 184.
Could you tell the difference if it was from the year 2002 rather than 2001?
Jam should be eaten with as much care as anything else. I bet if I paused and savored it and rolled it around on my tongue…

one small kitchen (outside of Warsaw) makes these in limited quantities  

What else?
Honey from pine forest undergrowth.
Say what?
I can’t translate it. You need to taste it to understand how the essence of the forest can make its way into a great honey. This jar is somewhat depleted not because I had a honey craving and dug in halfway through the trip, but because some of the honey exited from the jar mid-flight.

"eco" means that it meets organic production standards 

Continue!
How about these artisanal cholcolates, individually crafted? I think Belgium is going to have to share the stage pretty soon: Polish chocolate is catching up to its EU neighbor!

delicate, refined, unusual. 

Anything non-foody?
Too many holiday secrets in my suitcase. But I can show off this rooster that I now put in the kitchen: he is made of Polish hay and let me tell you, it brings the barn smell right into your home.
Is that a good thing?
Yes: I am referring to the fresh, sweet smell of hay. Okay, maybe it’s not that pungent, but if I bend down and sniff and close my eyes, I can see the haystacks before me…
That would not be a winter image now would it?
No matter: the rooster traveled straight from the holiday market in Krakow and as he sits perched on my kitchen countertop, he is my tiny reminder of who I am and where it all comes from. I am transformed again. Friends wont recognize me.
(Oh oh, are we going to see more of that Eastern European angst? The eat, drink and be merry cataclysmic personality that plunges and plunders and then writes dark brooding stories about the meaninglessness of life? )
(People have such weird ideas on what it means to be Polish.)

hej, gory, nasze gory... 

Celebrate the countdown toward summer!

It is always a relief to survive December 21st. Understanding that henceforth the days will again grow longer feels extraordinarily wonderful. Ocean is all about celebrations: cheers to the coming of summer!