Boxing Day 2024

Our last full day with Marie.  I hadn't seen Merp in over a year, and here we were, almost done with her visit.  Alas.  Ah well.

It was an exceedingly lazy morning for us on Boxing Day, and that was fine.  What did we have to do, after all?  No entertaining, none of that.  We did take a late morning walk around the block in case there were good sales, but no, not really.  Nothing we wanted or needed.  So we hopped in the car and headed into DTLA.

It was surprising to me to hear from Marie last week that, despite her multiple trips down to California, she had seen relatively little in the LA area.  We weren't going to fix that on this visit (but I did book her a ticket to come down in October for her birthday and to take her to Disneyland, which she hadn't really been to as an adult), but we did at least get somewhere she hadn't been before:  Grand Central Market.  Our goal was lunch at The Oyster Gourmet,

and we accomplished that. 

Oysters

and poke

and a drink each. 

Nice and light!  We wandered the market some, tempted by things we saw, but otherwise not shopping or dining.

We poked in some other stores in Pasadena in the afternoon.  I picked up a few holiday items on sale, Marie got some bitters, Conrad got himself a mystery novel.  We came home, Conrad napped, and Marie packed.  Van came by later in the afternoon, and shortly after Maestro opened, we were seated at the bar for dinner.

We always enjoy Maestro, of course, but Boxing Day dinner was especially nice.  First, the food was great - birria tacos

and the chicken mole

among the items we shared.  Drinks, too! 

But I was happy that Marie got to sip some finer tequilas, ones that she can't find up in BC, and talk with Marco and Paul about the various ones.  Paul kindly sold her a bottle at cost, and that gave her a couple of bottles to come home with and enjoy.

Dinner done, we came back to the condo for bûche de Noël and chocolate martinis.  A treat to end the visit.  Van headed home, and the three of us repaired to the couch to watch one last romcom.  It was an earlyish night for us as we had to take Marie to the airport at 6 the next morning.

That was the holiday visit with family.  I sometimes think about how Conrad, Van, and I each have only a sister left, no parents (well, Marie and I have a stepmother, and she has a birth mother still living, and there are step and half siblings galore).  I'm glad that Marie and I have a great brother-sister relationship, and I'm grateful she could come for Christmas.

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.