best Boxing Day ever!

If I were to recount all the travel hassle we went through to get to Mum and Roy's for Christmas, well, this would be rather a more bitter blog than I ever intend it to be. A little snark is good, and Air Canada and Hertz especially deserve somewhat more than that. But it's over. We made it to Salmon Arm in the end. Let this not be a tale of travel ordeals but of the best Boxing Day EVER!

Skipping over Christmas - because we ultimately did - we made it to Mum's at noon on Boxing Day. For those few of you USians who read this, Boxing Day is a holiday in Canada. Nowadays it's about sales for many people, but when I was young (and when the Lord's Day Act forbade Sunday and holiday shopping), it was the day on which we would go visit people in their homes. I always liked Boxing Day for those visits, the chance to see the other decorations, the goodies that were offered in each house.

Conrad and I had checked into the hotel, unpacked presents, and changed. We regretted not having the planned three nights at the hotel as the room was handsome, and the lake views of the Shuswap were good.

We would have liked an evening or two in the room to sip a bit of wine, read, and relax.

Mum - no surprise - had much food for us. After all, she'd been baking and preparing for three of us (my sister didn't make it in the end) for three nights there. It fell to me and Conrad to eat as much as we could in order to do her honour. We did our best. We'll pay for it for some time to come. Mincemeat tarts, butter tarts, oyster tarts (the little squiggle of almond icing under the lifted top makes them look like oysters - Conrad liked these ones a lot), fruitcake (I HATE that people mock fruitcake - have some as good as my Mum's and you won't disparage it!), shortbreads, cherry loaf, sausage rolls with green tomato chutney on the side, rum balls (boozy!), and an assortment of store-bought things like cheeses, ham, chocolates, pickles, chips and dip. That was lunch.
Oh, and homemade eggnog. Nothing like the odd-tasting stuff you get in the cartons at the store. Oh no. Very rich, also boozy. I think boozy may be a theme to our Christmas eating.

After lunch, and in order not to doze right away, we did stockings and presents. Marie, Conrad, and I had done some presents in Vancouver, and I had made stockings for the two of them there when it became clear we weren't getting out on Christmas Eve. Still, we were in no way short of gifts.




And then the napping instinct kicked in. Big time. And yet, we resisted. Conrad, Mum, and I bundled up and went out for a slow saunter in the neighbourhood. More snow was falling by then; in fact, by the time we left Salmon Arm, we had 15 cm or so (6 or more inches) of new snow. A walk felt good.



Mum had made turkey dinner on Christmas, and she and Roy ate sparingly of it that night after it was clear we wouldn't be there until the next day. That made dinner prep easier on her, I'm happy to say. Mum is the one from whom I learned the technique of draping the turkey with bacon to baste it while cooking. The bonus is bacon to enjoy as part of Christmas dinner. Perfect!





For me, though, the highlight of Christmas dinner is the dessert. Christmas pudding, or plum pudding as it may be known. Mum makes her own, and this one was three years old. Yes, three years. She ages it and douses it with - you got it - booze to keep it going. No, she doesn't set it alight to serve it. Instead, it comes hot out of the steaming process and is served with brandied butter (hard sauce).
I'm happy to report that Conrad enjoyed it too.

We stayed there until 9 or so, hearing about their big cruise they took this past fall, and enjoying the post-dinner wind-down. The next morning Mum and freshly made waffles for us, and that capped the best Boxing Day ever (a day later) before we headed back to Kelowna to catch our return flight to Vancouver.