home for the holidays - well, sort of

Home for Christmas - it's a wonderful sentiment, and something to cherish, in my opinion. This year, we're at home. Home being, in this case, the second home, the condo in Vancouver.

Not quite Mum's place in Salmon Arm (which isn't home but has the sentimental value of being with Mum), and not what we had planned. By 7 last night we should have been checked in to our hotel and off to Mum and Roy's for dinner with them and Marie. Snow happens, though, and boy, did it happen in Vancouver! As you may have seen by the previous post, the mild coastal climate here was blown all to heck by three winter storms that blew through, leaving over a foot of snow in their wake. One of those storms dramatically curtailed flights in and out of Vancouver yesterday, including pretty much ALL short-haul flights. That meant no flight for us, and a re-booking to late this afternoon. With luck, it will allow us to have Christmas dinner in Salmon Arm, if a little later in the evening than my Mum would have planned.

Nevermind. This isn't a blog entry for moaning on about circumstances way beyond our control. It's about Christmas, and the cozy feeling of being at home. Because, recall, we were: our second home, a place we love. And though we hated that weather forced him to stay in Vancouver an extra night, we were delighted that Chris came over to share Christmas Eve with us.

All of which goes to say that I spent my evening in the kitchen! I made a mad dash over to T&T in Chinatown for some groceries (Marie had next to NONE in the house) and then started to work on winging a meal for four.

Chris arrived, cool holiday sweater on, and we settled in to some Hungarian sparkling wine with lavender syrup, Dutch goat gouda pennies I'd made up quickly, and smoked salmon. Things got silly in the living room as we got over the stress of the day. Chris is a sweetheart and a magnificent ham - I love that in him.

Soup was up first: parsnip and bacon soup. Bacon makes things right. It certainly can make my sister eat parsnip! We sipped a St Hubertus dry Riesling. Odd wine - very little on the nose save for a real petrol scent, but fine on the tongue.

Dinner was pork. Yes, Dad (if you read this), pork. I needed something easy to do given minimal ingredients, and pork tenderloin fit the bill. I seared them briefly, then roasted them, rested them, and sliced them into medallions. With the pork I served sauteed kabocha pumpkin, Brussels sprouts, and some caramelized onions mixed with a balsamic vinegar and quince preserves. Marie graciously allowed us to open her last bottle of a BC red called Fetish. She was worried that it had been moved and warmed and cooled and mistreated far too much over the years, but it was a gorgeous wine: very dark, chocolate and coffee and plum notes for me. Sounds pretentious, but it was just so rich. Maybe not ideal for the pork, but we loved it all the same.

After dinner we settled in the living room to watch The Polar Express. I put out some soft double cream brie, Asian pear, Raincoast Crisps, and a couple of Vosges bars. Chris left somewhere around 10:15, and Conrad and I were safely in bed by 11:15, awaiting Santa.