It's A Wicked New Year

Scituate Harbor in Ice; Charley Freiberg photo

• ·         Most people have dog snoot smears, or cat hoofprints, on their car windows. I have fat, fat squirrel prints!

• ·         I haven’t seen the 17 female turkeys that had been eating and lounging in our yard in a while, only the four males. But lately there have been 17 mourning doves chowing down on the wart railings. I have to wonder if some solstice witch turned the female turkeys into mourning doves?

• ·         Did you know that the only way to truly tell a male wild turkey from a female wild turkey is by examining its poops? Males poop a J shape, females poop something spiraly. Guess who was outside in her slippers Christmas morning staring at the ground?

• ·         The New Year’s air is brisk and fresh, so let’s all go outside and do one great, simultaneous, sustained, loud, national and international scream of frustration and despair, to clean out our heads and get it out of our systems. And then let’s pointedly ignore the ignoramus in the White House and his minions, and do what we need to do in order to do the right thing – in spite of him, despite him, to spite him, by going around him, with each other. He doesn’t really count for much if we all work together to do what’s right.

• ·         My holiday resolution was to cook and eat all the wonderful foods I associate with holidays, especially winter ones, and to make stuff I haven’t made for awhile because of lack of time: fruitcake (yes, it’s possible to make a tasty one), truffles, sour cream and onion dip, muhamarra, stilton, lamb kofta with tzatziki sauce, corton, tourtiere, pumpkin quiche, mincemeat custard...most of which are very infused with garlic, so, after two weeks, I’m a walking garlic emanation and gobbling tea mints (“fight dragon breath like a samurai warrior!”) in an attempt to avoid knocking out my not-as-well-fed patients.

• ·         I’ve been thinking a lot about Holidays during the past month, which are…well, sometimes very difficult, especially for people who have recently lost a loved one through death, or divorce, or break-up; whose friends have drifted away or died; for people who are generally so busy they haven’t had time to keep up with friends and family, or who live too far away from them for intimacy to be easy; for people recovering from severe injury or illness, or still suffering with those conditions. And for a lot of other people, for a lot of other reasons.

In our modern world, we’ve made holidays all about family and family get-togethers and fantasies of cozy family reunions where everyone is happy to see everyone else and they all get along, and bounty is comfortably presen, and love conquers all. We can blame our Victorian- and Edwardian- era forebears for that.

I think we’d be better off, all of us, if we reverted to our ancestral roots. The winter holidays then were about survival and lasting until the Light conquered the Dark – the Yule Log that burned past solstice when the sun begins to wax again and hope returns; the candles whose oil lasted impossibly until there was more; the gathering in the light, with foods to nourish and strengthen, and enough warmth for kin and kine to survive the long darkness ahead (sometimes with the kine actually in the house with the kin, to help keep everyone warm!); the stranger who arrives at the door carrying luck in the form of kindling or food. It was a time to hunker down and gather together to protect ourselves from the Wild Hunt which roared about us in the dark stormy skies; a time to tell ghost stories; a time to light and linger by candles in the dark night; a time to set an empty place at our tables, to welcome the mysterious stranger.

No one wants to be in the throes of emotional, spiritual, or physical pain at these times. But even if we are, we can lighten it, a little, by following some of the old rituals. Light a special light or a candle; eat something warm and redolent of spices; set a place for an unexpected guest. Call your friends and relatives even if you haven’t spoken for ages – take a step towards them – all you need to say is “Hi, I was thinking of you and wanted to hear your voice.” Read a ghost story (ghost story not horror  story! Think of A Christmas Carol, or High Spirits, Robertson Davies’ collection of ghost stories written for Yuletide, for examples.) – or write one. Nod at the shadows in the corner and the dust of ages creeping about our feet. Bring in a sprig of something evergreen – pine, fir, holly. Remember the last time you laughed, and laugh again, even if nothing’s funny – if you can’t laugh, then sing, loudly – both open the lungs, heart and spirit and spread the good stuff around our bodies, which is the beginning of healing and, maybe more importantly, comfort. If you can, gather with others, even if you don’t know them; if you can’t, invite someone to join you. Give someone a hug – even if it’s your mailman, or the cashier at your favorite store, or the rotten dog next door who poops in your yard regularly.

The true gift is whatever ritual works for us, that teaches us to comfort ourselves, as we all must, in the end. We use ritual to spark a light in our souls, our spirit; we nourish the body to heal it and our souls; we listen to stories that remind us of the mysteries around us; we leave space for new and old relationships, for surprise and wonder. We use ritual to remind ourselves that we’re safe in some deep and abiding way, and to bring out the beauty that sometimes hides in dark corners.

Pleasant Lake in Winter; Charley Freiberg photo

• ·         Corton (pronounced something like: cahw-toh, said through the nose, so there’s almost, but not really, an N on the end) is a French-Canadian pate of sorts, and the base for tourtiere, which is a traditional Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve meal. It’s not bad luck to eat them other days, so here’s my meme’s recipe.

P’tite Reine’s Corton and Tourtiere

For the corton, you need ground cloves, a lot of minced garlic (at least 4 cloves for a pound of meat), a little olive oil, at least a pound of either ground pork or ground beef or a combination of the two, salt, and a little water. If you want to end up with corton and  tourtiere, use a couple of pounds of meat at least.

In a saucepan – not a fry pan, you need something deeper – heat the olive oil and add the meat. Cook the meat, stirring often to keep it broken up; when nearly cooked through, add garlic, salt, and cloves to taste – be bold with the cloves. Stir it around well, then add a little water and boil it until the water evaporates (this helps get the tasty stuff into all the meat).

If you’ve used lean pork or beef, now add a big lump of butter – you need fat to hold the meat together once it cools. No, this is not a fat-free meal and don’t you dare try to make it one, you won’t like the results. Stir it all in well.

Now pack the corton into small bowls, pressing down until the juices cover the top. Cover the bowls and stick them into the frig to cool.

There’re lots of ways to eat corton: on buttered toast for breakfast is heaven on earth. You can also make a sandwich with it, on toast again (you need warm bread so the rich meat will spread well); my mother puts mustard on it. Or eat it out of the bowl with a spoon, hiding it from your spouse so they don't get the last bit. Don’t try to scrape off the fat – let it melt into the hot bread (a nice baguette is good, with some cornichons on the side to cut the unctuousness) and let yourself enjoy it, it’s good for you!

To turn Corton into Tourtiere, you need potatoes, cinnamon, onion, and the ingredients to make a 2-crust pie:

 Precook some potatoes – I nuked them this year, but you can also parboil them. Let these cool a bit while you:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Stir a little cinnamon, and some more salt (you need more salt because you’ll be adding potatoes, which essentially suck up the salt), into the cooling corton meat.

Dice some onion, about one medium for an 8- or 9- inch pie

Add the onion and chunked potatoes (bite size chunks please) to the corton meat and stir it around well.

Now make a 2-crust pie crust. Once you’ve lined the bottom of your pie plate, add the corton and potato mix; press it down, flatten it out. Top the pie with the second crust, do what you do to squoosh the edges together, and cut a vent hole or two in the top crust. If you want to decorate the top crust with cut-out pastry maple leaves or whatever, knock yourself out. You can now brush the top crust with an egg wash, or just sprinkle it a little with some water – these just make the crust a little shiny (egg) and browny (both).

Bake for about 45-minutes to an hour, ‘til the crust is nicely browned. More time for thicker pies.

Yum, yum, yum. Bon appétit, et Bonne annee!