Early Yule at Kilmurry House
Well, its that time of year again. The one where everyone knows just exactly what everyone else in the household is going to say, before they say it. At least on some subjects. I entertained one of our house guests by predicted the usual responses to such questions as:
Question: "has anyone seen the tree stand?"
Answers: "I think someone saw it in the workshop.." followed by, "why don't you try the turf shed," and "what does it look like?"....
This year the winner (for the second year running) was: THE TURF SHED
This years usual question of Where are the Yule Tree decorations was preempted by having found them in my workroom a month ago and parking them in front of the drawing room door. A bit of a messy solution I'll admit, but it worked...Along with the decorations were other items which presented other questions such as: Where is the Yule wrapping paper? Where is the table runner? etc., etc.. so much for organization.
Today's was:
Question: "Don't we have a ham in the freezer?" followed by,
Answer: "have you looked?" I didn't get an answer, but I gather there is now a ham in the freezer after husband's afternoon shopping trip. Making the original question irrelevant. ..
And, there is the ever popular:
Question: "How can you ladies need more butter (flour, eggs, sugar, whatever) we just bought ________fill in the blank two days ago?"
Answer one: "The reason we put down 12 sticks of butter (or fill in the blank) on the number of items needed was because we meant we needed that much." The butter follies got a comment from one of the menfolk (not my husband this time, he knows how to bake) which said, "That's a scary amount of butter!" Since this person is known to eat such confections as local cupcakes with day glow icing colors so full of preservatives and fat they can sit on the shelf for years, I didn't try to argue. Just pointed out that each recipe takes a half a stick of the large size butter (about 1 cup). And if they found it scary, they didn't have to eat any of the cookies (haven't noticed it stopping them yet.).
Answer two: We're sorry, we thought we had enough eggs but the chickens just stopped laying...(or any other excuse one can think of).
Meanwhile, at least six or seven dozen cookies have been produced so far. Mostly by me and visiting lady friends taking up the kitchen for hours at a time. This cooking making spree is fun for us, but seems to have a male repellent built into it somewhere. Guys come into the kitchen, nuke a pizza and leave very quickly. Sometimes even eating in the other room. Oh well, fewer dishes to wash...
Of course, not all the cookies are for us. Which leads to the next yearly question,
Question: "Who are you planning on giving all these things to anyway?"
Answer: "List of names of all the people wife wants to give home made cookies to, and for whom, husband suggests giving a bottle of wiskey..." Surprisingly, the lucky blokes tagged for bottles of whiskey are often buddies of husband. Wife points out that buddie's wife may not be so into whiskey (unless she is). Also, cookies are cheaper....so far: Wife 1, Husband 0...to be continued (most likely for a few decades to come...)...
Since husband just got back from store with about 20 pounds of flour, I'm not going to bug him on this one just now. I get the feeling that as long as the cookies keep coming, he is happy. I saw him with a wad of them "for breakfast." At least he really does eat them for a meal. One of my cookie making cohorts watched in fascinated horror as her other half scarfed down at least two dozen of them over the course of a day. And then sat down to a full dinner. I think I know a husband who is going to be on short rations, come January. But, hey, its not my problem...I'm not a pusher, really, I'm just a supplier...
Anyway, things are more relaxed around here this week, then they probably are in most houses. That's because we don't really celebrate "Christmas" around here. We celebrate Yule, otherwise known as the Winter Solstice or the Yule Season in the North. Or rather, husband and I do. House mate, who is an avowed agnostic (or atheists depending on the day of the week) has been going around the house saying "Ba-Humbug" at various intervals (although he too, is eating cookies). House-mate reports that in the UK this year they are selling black Santa Hats with "Ba-Humbug" printed on them. I assure him that if I see one, I'll pick it up for him. Until then he will have to just keep repeating himself.
Yule, for us, is about two weeks long. Given that in the Old Days, you had to have time to get to someone's house for the party in bad weather, and were likely to be stuck there for a week or more. This was more true for Vikings than a lot of people, as most of them lived pretty far North. Since the only time our friends could get off was this past weekend, we did most of our celebrating then. Including letting the guys finally kill their pig. OK, it wasn't a very big pig. This time of year, you only get baby pigs, which is what roast suckling pig comes from. No, I didn't watch this time. One of our house guests, American farm girl married to an Irishman, was going to. But even she decided to come inside and drink hot tea with the rest of the girlies.
At this point, another predictable moment occurred. One so predictable, that another cookie making conspirator (The Fox) has drawn a cartoon of it. In this cartoon a lady in Viking dress is kneading a loaf of bread on a clean table, when a handsome man in Viking Dress comes in with a bloody deer around his neck . The caption is: "Sometimes Hunters and Gatherers need to coordinate their schduels." Now, if you substitute a pig for the deer, we not only have a cartoon of this; we have the photograph! Thanks to the Fox's new digital camera (copies are on the way) we have a photo of Disaster Cat with a bowl of half needed biscuits on one end of the table, and a bloody pig body being ripped open and gutted, on the other. Men in picture look very pleased with themselves, Disaster Cat looks like she is contemplating sending a small atomic explosion in their general direction. After a few minutes was heard from husband, another predictable holiday discussion:
Husband: "Where did you expect us to skin and gut it?"
Wife: "Outside, in the shed where your supposed to do such things..."
Husband: " But its COLD out there....(note, this may have been true this time, but this excuse is used in July as well...)
Husband's Buddy: "I thought you guys had worked out before hand who was doing what where?"
This last bit its a logical question except that The Bear almost always helps with this process. He's been doing it for years, and he knows that nothing will have been organized before hand. And yet, he never asks beforehand.....grrrrrr!
At this point The Fox (wife of Bear) always starts grabbing for garbage bags to cover the table (she is the practical one) and trying to steer any dead animals away from the just cleaned dishes. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't (see previous web blogs). This time it did, so we didn't have to wash them again.
Somehow, we girlies managed to make biscuits, eat breakfast and escape the room. When we came back, men were down for a nap, and sink was full of dead pig ear, skin and a lot of blood. We decide that maybe this is not a good time to make cookies and stage a retreat. Men have gone for their usual post slaughter nap. Women decide that the kitchen is not the place to be. At least men have put pig to roast in the oven, before leaving this time. So, there's not a lot to do.
Several hours later men re-appear and want to know:
question: What are you ladies making to go with the pig?"
Answer: "Nothing, not so long as their are dead pig parts all over the sink, floor and counter tops."
Men disappear for awhile....then surprise and relief. Husband shows up, picks up dead animal parts, does at least the guy version of washing the sink and even the guy version of moping the floor. This means all we need to do is scrub down the sink and counters a bit more and we can start cooking.
Dinner is still several hours late because pig takes longer than expected. And, distracted by it all, I forgot to put yeast in the bread rolls, so you could have used them for door stops. But otherwise, we had a great dinner and a wonderful dessert of : Guess What? Cookies!
Then it was time to drop the guests off at the train station and then the guys picked up "The Return of the King" DVD, since we'd been given a DVD player for Yule. We ended the evening settled down with various snacks and hot eggnog. Tired but glad we got it mostly over with early.
Now I can relax a bit until closer to New Years when we are having folks over. For three days before then, the men are having their annual not quite New Years Role Playing Game. I'll get to watch pizza, beer and Mars Bars gliding upstairs and into House-Mate's office. And shouldn't have to cook a thing....except for
MORE COOKIES for the Party....!
Disaster Cat...with flour up to her elbows and butter on her nose....
Happy Winter Holidays!