Boxing Day

We had a good, quiet Christmas.



On Christmas eve, Dave and I went to my mother's to have dinner with her, my aunt Char, and older brother. We took a salad to add to my mother's bean empanadas and chile con queso. My aunt brought red chile and carne adovada and loaded mashed potatoes. My brother brought biscochitos. We all ate until we were ready to burst and then sat around chatting. (This year we had decided, group-wise, to forgo exchanging gifts, so the only presents were for my cousin's young children.)

My aunt had brought the makings for a dozen luminarias, so after dinner we set those up on my mother's balcony and lit them just as it was beginning to get dark.


On the way home, Dave and I took a quick detour through one of the neighborhoods here in the North Valley to drive around and look at the luminarias. I think they're so beautiful all lit up, the perfect New Mexican symbol of Christmas.

On Christmas day, Dave went to visit his mother and after we went to Judi and Paul's to work a bit at the studio and drop off the gifts we had for them.

In the evening, we walked Crunch around the neighborhood.

This was the sky on Christmas day, just at sunset.

Our Christmas dinner was an over-the-top one, definitely. We made a very traditional cheese fondue with emmentaler and gruyere and ate the whole batch with toasted baguette while we polished off the rest of the bottle of wine. (I was pretty tipsy.) We had a simple tomato and cucumber salad. Then we whipped up some cream and crushed some meringues and made Eton mess for dessert. Along with the dessert, we had a kind of perry (which is much like a pear cider, but sweeter). I was stuffed after several spoonfuls of the Eton mess, but Dave persevered and finished the whole bowl.

After dinner, we both lay around groaning.

This morning, we slept in a bit, then got up and headed to Santa Fe, to the Folk Art Museum to see a traveling exhibit of pottery from the Southern US.


There was also a new-ish exhibit of New Mexican wood carvings.





After looking at the exhibits, we looked around the gift shop. We bought a small travel candle and a pair of socks.

It was snowing in Santa Fe and the tiny road up to Museum Hill was slippery. (In fact, on the way back, we slid a bit off the road, which was kind of scary.)

We stopped for a very late lunch at Harry's Roadhouse. I had a smoked chicken quesadilla and Dave had a beet and pistachio orecchiette pasta and we shared a chopped salad. Again, we had way too much food.

We're home again now. Gray Kitty has gone out to enjoy the sunset from his perch on the wall near the gate. Dave is practicing scales on the clarinet. Saba is kneading a spot on my shoulder to settle into and licking my hands and patting at my face with one paw, entreating me to take my hands off the keyboard and pet her.