Christmas Eve eve

[gurdymonkey]

Here I am, holding the fort and taking time out from mindless office housekeeping chores with my radio on louder than I ever play it at work because there's maybe five people in the whole building. The good news is that I get to bug out at 11 AM. Given that I fell asleep on the sofa two evenings in a row, I can use this afternoon to work on sewing.

Office gifts have included a bottle of a sparkling pinot noir/chardonnay blend (instead of the usual sake) and a bottle of Fire Engine Red (the label is great!) cabernet, a monolithic tin of Almond Roca (which is going to get put out at Twelfth Night), gift cards to a restaurant in San Leandro, another restaurant gift card I can use at Macaroni Grill or Chili's, a Starbucks gift card (I got a chai this morning, Peets is still better and the Beanery's better still), and a soy candle from one of the girls. Unfortunately, I hate vanilla scent, so I'll find a home for that. (I did candy and nice scented soaps for folks here.)

Purchased an ungodly amount of cheese at TJ's as I am spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with two different sets of friends. Will pick up fresh bread at Feel Good Bakery tomorrow, and maybe some fruit as well.

Found another Amazon package outside my door first thing this AM, it's got to be the shave ice grinder I ordered for Twelfth Night. I should probably do a test batch of matcha syrup and see what that's like, but the original plan was to flavor the ices with umeshu (plum wine). The Twelfth Night party menu I requested of layla_lilah was "stuff my guests can enjoy fearlessly." I recall the Japanese spread Anna Serre did for the Midsummer Feast a few years back and a number of people at my table gave several dishes the hairy eyeball (while I was squeeing "Oooh, QUAIL EGGS!!!"). Most non-Asians don't do crunchy dried fish bits or quail eggs and so forth, and a great many of the things we associate with familiar Japanese cuisine have been influenced by contact with the West or may even be relatively modern developments. We've got a good list of stuff worked out and it'll be fine.

Comments

[mochimonkey.livejournal.com]

I am still confused by those that do the whole squeamish looks of concern about food. Quail eggs are just small eggs. OMG! EXOTIC WTF! But then again, I'm Hawai'i girl of chinee & japnee ethnicity. Which means I'll eat anything, raw and cooked.

I am most jealous of your ice shave machine. My family's one that we've had since I was a little girl bit the dust this year. =(

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

It's just a cheap hand cranked one. I'll let you know how it works out.

[moira-ramsay.livejournal.com]

Is it a Snoopy Ice Shaver???? *grin*

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

It's this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Victorio-VKP1101-Snow-Maker-Shaver/dp/B002S0JYRA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324688290&sr=8-2

It comes with three molds to make ice block-lets to load the machine with. It says you can also use cubed ice, but it might be harder to crank. Which means I'm going to have to pre-freeze some blocks and load them into a cooler for the event.

[mochimonkey.livejournal.com]

I think that was the other one that my parents had, which we also had for some odd years, which also broke this last year. I think we just had ice shave machine curses thrown at us or something. haha. oy.

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

I was a picky eater as a kid, it wasn't until I was an adult that I got more adventurous.

I remember when syele and I went out for sushi and I decided to try ikura with raw quail egg. It arrived looking a bit like two big glowing red eyes staring up from the plate and she looked appalled and said, "They're ALL YOURS." Which turned out to be a good thing because the creaminess of the raw egg yolk blended beautifully with the salty roe and it was a fishy, eggy party in my mouth.