Holiday party season is fully upon us! This weekend my besties & I hit the church Christmas fair circuit. A cutthroat, old-lady-dodging competition of the fittest. Saint Mary's Sparkles! and the basement of the Foreside Community Church hold treasures to hunt every first weekend of December. Antique jewelry, furniture, hand-knit wonders—you never know what will find you. I know for a fact that Santa dropped off some of the & Sons’ gifts there for me to pick up. All followed by every Christmas tree in a 20-mile radius being ceremoniously lit. Pick your poison. I go to my Handy Boat Marina because they are the best and I’ve been in attendance since the genesis (this is only their third year). Who doesn’t love tradition?

Good: As the new gen says: What’s good! This is some of what I think is good:

Utopia Kitchen Compost Bin

Really, truly not stinky. It’s made with a replaceable charcoal filter liner in the lid. I keep it under the sink. It costs under $30. With all the stink that comes with 3 teenage boys and 2 huskies, and the guilt of loading landfills with plastic bags full of biodegradable food waste, I won’t live without it.

A Glass Rinser for the Kitchen Sink . How did I live without this? In addition to the function—no more smoothie left in the bottom of your glass or coffee cream residue in the mugs, and the freshest water bottle on the block—it’s fun and makes me feel fancy. You too can feel fancy if you have at least a two-hole sink. I bought a pull down faucet with sprayer option in the faucet head, and had Matt whip up the waterworks.

Lillies from Shaw’s Grocery Store Falmouth, ME (everyone’s most hated and frequented supermarket) floral department. They have a “Three Bouquets for $18” display. I buy a coordinated color combination and make up to six floral arrangements for the house with supplement fill from the yard (greens, berries, sticks, yard flowers in the summer . . .) This used to be $15. Oh, Shaw’s. Lillies make the whole house smell fresh and alive.

Here is one of the table centerpieces I made for my sister when she hosted Thanksgiving.

A TV in the kitchen. It only needs to be a little Insignia™ 32" Full HD Smart Fire TV or whatever. Very polarizing, especially with virtue signalers (virtue signaling). But I have never been more excited to have mine. Matt can watch his Pittsburgh Steelers while making his classic Western Pennsylvania game-day food, like sausage & peppers or chipped ham (What’s that?). I can make Christmas cookies & gifts while watching one of my absolute favorite Christmas movies: The Family Stone (2005). Or another favorite: Martha Stewart's Netflix Documentary.

Bad: I look like a dinosaur. No number of creams and potions can save my skin from the cold and wind. I have resigned to putting straight Aquaphor Healing Ointment on my face and neck. It helps! Coincidently, made of dead dinosaurs.

Also, I cannot attend any of the holiday parties this season at the Bakehouse! The way the calendar falls this year the & Sons’ birthdays and the last days of school are in the way.

We have annual traditions to host Our Lady Star of the Sea’s Advent Celebration as well as the Long Island Fire & Rescue’s Christmas Party. It is our honor and are happy to have these community gatherings at the Bakehouse.

I will still fill the bakery case with extra holiday treats, and set up the Sugared Cranberry Rosemary Mimosa, but Ron will take the reins.

Sugared Cranberries (for mimosas, for garnish, for snacking) recipe for one bag of fresh cranberries:

Make a batch of simple syrup in a saucepot, stove top. 2C sugar and 2C water. Cook until sugar is dissolved.

Soak the cranberries. Let the simple syrup cool to a little warmer than room temperature before you add the berries—if it’s too hot, they will pop and split. I like to soak them overnight. On the countertop is fine.

Mix the cranberries well in the simple syrup. Leave them there for a little bit. Then strain your cranberries from the simple syrup. Try to get as much liquid off the berries as you can. Then toss them into a bowl of sugar and single layer them on a rack to dry. Sprinkle dry sugar to give them a sparkling effect. Save your strained simple syrup! I keep it in the fridge in a mason jar to use for cooking and cocktails all holiday season.

Leave them on the rack until they are dry to the touch. Eat one! You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how sweet they are on the inside, and the pop and crunch when you bite is very satisfying.

They keep for a couple weeks in an airtight container on the counter. At holiday parties I keep bowls of them at the dinner table, the dessert table, and at the bar.

Unexpected: A delightful, impromptu Sunday-morning walk. We lured the & Sons into the car with the promise of breakfast out but bamboozled them with a mandatory walk first. Portland Trails! We have almost 100 miles of well-maintained, beautifully scenic trails all over the Greater Portland area. On the Back Cove Trail, along I295 there is a sort of “agility course.” It looks like something from basic training: ropes, walls, beams.

Well, there is nothing more alluring to adolescent boys then an opportunity to display their coordination, strength, and overall superiority over a brother. I highly recommend checking it out. Even the huskies enjoyed hunting for mince on the trailside.

We did keep our promise and reward them with breakfast at Bernie's Foreside and Bernie's Bagels | American Restaurant in Falmouth, ME. It was a tough decision about where to go—so many good choices in the area like Other Side Diner or Miss Portland Diner . I was thinking more like Ocotillo | Brunch in Portland, Maine | Mexican Brunch, but we didn’t have time for a leisurely, boozy brunch, as Matt was flying out at noon.

What I’m reading: A Christmas in Maine. It is Robert P. Tristram Coffin’s 1941 depiction of the perfect Maine Christmas. I teared up the first year I read this. It’s so good. I think we do a good job trying to embody the spirit of his celebration with our own, when the house is stuffed to the beams and everything is chaotically merry, and there are candy and sweets and roasts and drinks and gifts and friends and family everywhere we turn.

I have ambitions to read this book (poem?) aloud to the crowd on Christmas Day. Not sure which year it’ll happen—maybe this year? The & Sons and their cousins are all in their double digits now. Not sure if that means attention spans are in double digits too. I’ll definitely choke up. Maybe we can pass the book around and each read a page.

What the & Sons are asking for: Hearty meals. When are teenage boys not looking to eat? But this time of year when the thermometer won’t break 20 degrees in the afternoon sun, everyone is hungrier. Chicken soup, pork chops and chocolate banana bread to start.

**Left-over Smoked Chicken Noodle Soup.**

I had to get a chicken carcass out of my refrigerator. Matt had fired up his The Orion Cooker to smoke a whole chicken. Then & Sons Three could no longer stand the smoky meat, and I was tired of looking at it. Into a pot of water for stock. Boil down all the skeletons of dinner with a pot of water and some herbs, dried or fresh, and kitchen trimmings: celery leaves, carrot peels, onion skins, etc. Reduce until full of color and fragrant. Use immediately, as I did for this soup, or pour into gallon freezer bags and freeze for later use. If you want to make it too:

2T oil in my small stock pan, then add:

A hefty handful of baby carrots cut into disks (because that’s what was in the crisper)

2 celery stalks, diced

1 onion, diced

4 garlic cloves, minced

Cook all that until soft, about 5-7 minutes. Then add salt, pepper, a bunch of fresh thyme leaves, one sprig of rosemary, 2t paprika, and a pinch of red pepper flakes to lean into the smoky chicken.

5 cups of the homemade stock

¼ box of rigatoni

About 2C of the chicken meat, shredded

Once the pasta is cooked, I added 1C heavy cream

Sale Meat! Never do I ever walk past the sale meat section of the deli without looking. Generally it contains meat that’s about to be out of date and will have to be thrown away. Don’t be scared of the dates on the package—it will be fine. Just check for color and odor and save your pennies! Even if you don’t want to cook it that day, throw it in the freezer for later.

This time I scored with 4 pounds of pork loin chips and made a recipe that is simple and a crowd pleaser:

Rosemary Garlic Mustard Pork Chops.

Put the pork in one of those gallon freezer bags and add 2T mustard, ¼C soy sauce, some ground pepper, 1T dried or fresh minced rosemary, 2T vinegar, and 2T maple syrup (or honey or sugar). Marinate for as long as you have time for and cook on 375 for about 45 minutes or till your meat thermometer reads 160!

If I don’t make at least 4lbs of meat at my house, I usually don’t get any. It’s okay. I can always whip me up some "Girl Dinner" in a pinch.

**Double Chocolate Banana Bread** (Moist For Days!) Wow. Sally’s not joking about how moist this “bread” is. I’m going to call it cake. She calls for using hot water, and that makes the batter more cake-like. The only thing I did different to this recipe is use oil instead of butter. (I didn’t have time for melting butter.) And I added more salt. If you want people to be addicted to your baking, you always have to add a little more salt.

This week’s paper cup contains: Spicy Pork Noodle Soup with Toasted Garlic - Alison Roman. I love all the food she creates. I use her cookbook Nothing Fancy like a bible. All the recipes are full of lively flavor and not pretentious.

Again, I stuck pretty close to the written recipe, EXCEPT FOR (a big except for because what I’m about to say is important) when cooking the ground meat. I cooked it before adding any other ingredients and then strained out the fat. It doesn’t have to be all the fat, just a hearty effort. We don’t need it, and usually it will make bellies hurt or give the meal a greasy, gamey taste. I also do this for Grandma Byers’s Family Lasagna. So I toasted the garlic alone for garnish and added some minced garlic to the grease-strained pork to make sure I didn’t alter the taste of the recipe.