The turkey is roasted. (Stuffed with croûtons from home made bread, carrot shavings, celery, onion, poultry seasoning, butter and an egg to bind it, with a bit of vegetable stock to moisten). Butter under the skin, poultry seasoning on top.
We’re also having “Scalloped Corn” and candied yams and Hawaiian Sweet Rolls (that are made with a Portuguese bread recipe, go figure…) and more. A ‘red and green’ two color Jello mould made with cranberries and regular cranberry sauce and several side dishes of vegetables brought by others (including at least mashed potatoes and gravy plus 2 others or more).
All for the Christmas Eve Feast, due to start in about an hour.
I’ll be busy finishing the cooking, and then doing all the other Christmas things for the next 24 hours or so.
To everyone: Thanks for an entertaining and interesting year, and enjoy your holiday. Be it Christmas, Winter Solstice, Hanukkah, or ‘whatever’ ;-)
This is as dark as it gets for this year. From this point onward, we have more light, and we are one day closer to warmth and lazy days of summer.
So put a Yule Log on the fire, or hoist a cup of mulled wine, or just curl up with a good book and and enjoy life. “This life is not a dress rehearsal. Take BIG bites! -E.M.Smith”
May each day and year be better than the last.
The yule log is burning bright. Grandchildren are gone. Dishes are about finished. Feet up in front of the fire very soon. It’s almost cool enough here in Florida to enjoy a bright fire (had to open the window :-) ) Merry Christmast and a very Happy New Year!
We will have baked ham for Christmas dinner. As for turkey – There were five wild ones in the field yesterday afternoon. Lighting was poor (late afternoon, white snow, dark birds ) and they flew to the trees on the other side when we tried to take a picture. I took pictures a couple of summers ago with fall colors all around – and hadn’t seen them since.
Thanks for all the interesting information.
Merry Christmas.
The New York Times is using huge quantities of ink to persuade us that all this consumption is ruining the planet:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/business/adbusters-war-against-too-much-of-everything.html
Blessings to you and your family.
Merry Christmas EM and thankyou for this wonderfully informative and entertaining blog.
To fit with the times, I thought I’d share a Christmas greeting I received from Tim Andrews of the Australian Taxpayers Association.
Merry Christmas to all the E M Smith denizens
Warm seasonal greetings from across the pond, EM, with thanks for provoking much thought. (Although I’m currently starting on bringing the thoughts under control (?) with some very pleasant mulled ginger wine.)
Current weather here less “Dickensian Christmas”, more “Sea World”. Can be “mulled” into a lovely day, I’m sure. ;-)
Happy Christmas, E.M. Here’s wishing you a lovely family time. Keep up the wonderful insights and ponderings in the coming year as the light returns.
To EM and all here – thanks for the thought-provoking illumination over the year, and I hope the better prognostications are true (but Hope Is Not A Strategy…). Here in France we have a grey Christmas, and my father-in-law has gout again. Could be it’ll get fixed (or at least reduced) using Sodium Bicarbonate before he can go see the doctor tomorrow. Although he almost totally cut out beer since his last (and first) attack of gout, he’ll probably need to look a bit more carefully at what else he eats and drinks. I’ll update on this on T9 if the Bicarb Soda appears to produce some good effects. It could be useful to other people here.
http://www.icuredmygout.org/
Merry Christmas E.M. and all, hope you have a wonderful time.
E.M., Merry Christmas to you and your family and thanks for sharing the preparations for your Christmas Eve feast. We enjoyed a Christmas Eve brunch feast yesterday and will visit another part of the family for Christmas Day yummies — presents for the little ones always included. “This is the best Christmas ever” from a six-year-old and we haven’t even had the second act which includes an “actual” visit from Santa Claus on his way back to the North Pole (my Uncle has been doing his routine for 40+ years).
Thank you for your magnificent blog, the unique choice of subjects, and the inimitable discussions you lead your readers through. I also very much appreciate your latest comment on WUWT that the most egregious perpetrators of the AGW fraud do not deserve and should not enjoy a “pass”. Forgiveness might be best for those who “went along”, but those who knowingly led the way to changing raw data, historical records and launching a “climate change jihad” deserve the full measure of justice.
Dear E.M.: We are sure the New Year we will enjoy many more of your enlightening articles. You now have enough of them for several books.
gallopingcamel says:
25 December 2012 at 4:14 am
“The New York Times is using huge quantities of ink to persuade us that all this consumption is ruining the planet:”
AdBuster boss Lasn is a hypocrite:
“And Mr. Lasn says his lifestyle isn’t really sustainable. He commutes 30 minutes each way from the magazine to his home on five acres of countryside. He and his wife are occupying too much land, and his little Toyota Echo burns too much fuel for the planet’s health, he says: “What can I do? Living there helps to keep me sane.” ”
(He must be insane if he calls what he does sane.)
AdBuster fears the traditional Left may steal AdBuster’s Occupy brand. APR 2012
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/04/18/adbusters-worries-is-the-left-corrupting-occupy
AdBuster congratulates the Black Bloc for the achieved destruction. MAY 2012
http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/black-bloc-anarchist-turn.html
Soros (and Ford foundation, and Gates foundation) funds TIDES. TIDES funds AdBusters. Despite this, AdBuster’s boss Lasn says “Soros has never given us a penny. I wish he would. His ideas are good.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/14/us-wallstreet-protests-funding-idUSTRE79D01Q20111014
TIDES refuses to comment, as they don’t want to endanger their money-laundering operational principles. Given that some Occupiers wanted to low up bridges (domestic terrorism), it’s amazing that they haven’t been ransacked yet. Or maybe not so amazing at all, as the Rule Of Law is applied arbitrarily by the Obama administration.
Merry Christmas E.M. and family,
And thanks for all of the wonderful musings.
john and jan, m/v arcadian lying Marathon, FL
A short pauze before the big clashes of our time will be continued:
Like this one: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-12-25/iran-launches-week-long-straits-hormuz-naval-drill-friday-next-us-aircraft-carrier
Merry Christmas
http://sonofsoylentgreen.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/gun-christmas-tree.jpg
I hope you all had a wonderful year. Thank you for everything! (:
Enjoy the beautiful day and always take time away from the battle. Keep a weather eye to the chart on high…(:
Merry merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!
Waiting on my daughter to arrive from LAX for my Christmas. Told her not to fly over the holidays. Oh well. From sub-zero (wind chill) Kansas, wishing all a properous year , if at all possible.
EM,
Merry Christmas from sub zero Colorado. We had about 3 inches of snow on Christmas Eve, but the clouds moved off and now the skies are clear and it is beastly cold. Today the house was full with all the kids home and there were toys for all the kids, big and small, to play with.
For Christmas dinner we had ham, twice baked potatoes, candied sweet potatoes, several kinds of veggies, jello, wine, homemade dinner rolls, and then three kinds of pie to finish off the feast. The girls decided we needed peach margaritas after dinner and they sure were good. However, I now have a lifetime supply of peach schnapps left over.
Thanks for all the effort you put into your blog. It is a highlight of my day to see what you have written, and the topics are all interesting and varied. I have learned so much, not only from what you write, but from the comments as well. So much to learn, so little time…
Always interesting. Thanks for last years information. Best wishes from Tennessee for the new year.
Mr. Smith and all of you who make such interesting and thoughtful comments, best wishes to each of you.
2012 numbers too crazy to believe: http://modernsurvivalblog.com/the-economy/2012-numbers-too-crazy-to-believe/
Mukluks — the very word takes me back to the Goose, 40 deg F one day, -30 the next. The runway turned to ice and it took us most of ten thousand feet to slow down to taxi speed. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ourmanitoulin/95151862/
Anyway…
You were worried about an ice age. Let me help.
E M Smith wrote:
quote
If we are Really Really Lucky (and do some things to help keep the N. Hemisphere from freezing up, which triggers the glacial…) we have a small chance of holding off the cold plunge into the next glacial. We just barely dodged that bullet in the Little Ice Age.
unquote
Please see:
http://i39.tinypic.com/2igd1mr.jpg
My suggestion is that the WWII warming was caused by oil spill from the Kriegsmarine offensive. If that is correct:
1*10^-1 of the world’s light oil oil production would cover the oceans every week (see Benjamin Franklin, Clapham pond, 5 ml will smooth a hectare). The WWII blip was 0.5 deg C and, although I cannot find an estimate of the oil spill during the war, a rough estimate of total cover once a fortnight seems reasonable. We can warm the world, if necessary, by about 1 degree C at a not-unacceptable cost.
So, to turn back an ice age, simply start pumping, refining and dumping. Adding synthetic surfactants would, I suspect, assist the smooth. It does in my kitchen sink.
HTH
JF
Thursday night, pub night. My calculations will need to be checked.
NAS: Greenhouse effect doesn’t exist: http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=10803&linkbox=true&position=1
Dear E.M. Smith,
I’m a lurker who just reads and appreciates your posts and the comments.
My husband and I celebrated Christmas in Dunedin, New Zealand and I can tell you NZ’s south isle is as beautiful as everybody – including the director of The Lord of the Rings – says it is. It’s magic with large freshwater lakes reflecting snow-capped mountain peaks even in December, and fjords with peaks rising to over 1600 metres above sea level.
I plan to re-watch The Lord of the Rings to recognize all the wonderful scenery I reckon I’ve walked through.
Best wishes for a happy and prosperous New Year to one and all. pg