The Most Brutiful Time of the Year

The turkey has been eaten, and the Christmas tree has been chosen, cut, and forced into service in our living room. We decorated it last night and now it's twinkling merrily in our front window and filling the house with its lovely smell. The Christmas cards have been ordered but not addressed; I've brainstormed a decent amount of delightful, age-appropriate, unique gift ideas for most of the people on my list but not purchased many of them; we're fielding lots of lucky invitations for little parties here and family gatherings there but still not sure exactly when we'll celebrate Christmas with my side. All of this to say, the holiday season is upon us.

The most wonderful time of the year? Well, maybe. In the years when the girls were younger and needier and I barely had a second to eat my own food without getting up to do something, I'd be in the car in the weeks before Christmas and feel decidedly un-wonderful when that song came on. I'd be hauling two small, grouchy children to the grocery store for the 87th time, perhaps, or trying to track down one last gift with a toddler in tow, and it didn't really feel like "the hap-happiest season of allllll." In fact, I pretty much wanted to punch someone in the face when that song came on.

Even today, I don't know if I'd say it's the most wonderful. It has moments of great beauty, to be sure: the traditional tree-decorating/Elf-watching/fire-in-the-fireplace coziness; the gingerbread-scented, peanut-butter-fudge-making, sticky little hands in the kitchen projects; the delight on Christmas morning; the friends and family raising a toast to another year together. For me, it's hard to beat Christmas Eve, with its candlelight carols at church followed by a fancy fondue dinner and, eventually, tucking the girls in with their hearts full of anticipation.

But there's plenty of darkness mixed in with those twinkle lights. Lots of people face the holidays missing someone they love. I don't know a great deal about that, but I couldn't miss the cracks in my grandpa's voice as he said grace over the Thanksgiving table on Thursday. My parents are getting used to a holiday season without their mothers, and lots of other people in the world are missing loved ones, too. And the bounty of the holidays always seem to stand in such stark contrast to those in the world who are struggling to get by in difficult circumstances. Not to mention the way the list of obligations (cards! presents! a dish to pass!) seems to grow exponentially this time of year.

To borrow a Glennon word, I think it's the most brutiful time of year -- part beauty, part brutal humanity. A few years ago, at the height of wanting to punch someone in the face each time I heard the aforementioned song, I found myself in tears on Christmas night, so overwhelmed with busy obligations and frantic expectations that I had completely lost sight of the joy and light of the season. It had been so easy to let others set the agenda that I found myself at the end of what was supposed to be the best, most special time of the year feeling depleted and disappointed, bitter and exhausted. It was time to make a change.

I remembered one of my mom's best pieces of advice, something she cribbed from Ann Landers -- "No one can take advantage of you without your permission" -- and I had a stern talk with myself about priorities and pleasing others. I read the book Quiet by Susan Cain, and I remembered that being an introvert means I need to build time into my life for quiet, even (especially) in a world that wants to speed things up at the holidays. I read a blog post by Shauna Niequist called Present Over Perfect (go read it) that articulated my own thoughts and experiences almost exactly and gave me the permission I needed to say no to some things in favor of protecting myself and my family at Christmas. I took a step back and realized the saying "You can't please all of the people all of the time" applies to moms as much as to politicians. And I reminded myself that I was a grown-up, 100 percent responsible for the ways I spend my time and my life.

This is the best and worst possible news. On the one hand, being a grown-up means that when the furnace dies on the day before Thanksgiving, I'm the one who has to call the furnace guy and haggle over price on the phone. Ugh. It means I'm the one who has to get the babysitter, get the groceries, pay the bills, make the reservations, make the decisions. On the other hand, it means I'm responsible for the way I spend my time, money, and energy. It means nobody can hijack my Christmas without my permission, and it means that creating a sane holiday season is up to me, too.

Here's what our family has done since that Christmas night emotional breakdown. We've said no, thanks to a few longstanding traditions that weren't working for us. We've set aside time during Advent to find the still, small voice that reminds us why we're celebrating in the first place. We've been more intentional about seeking out opportunities with our family to give back a bit, both during the holidays and throughout the year. And we've created a few new, more meaningful traditions that work for our little family of four.

This year, we'll continue our Sunday suppers as a way to hit "pause" each week. So far, this little experiment has taught us the value of setting limits, being intentional with our time, and building more rest and connection into our life. Tomorrow, my brother and his wife are going to join us, and we're looking forward to catching up with them since we missed each other at Thanksgiving. Last week, Jason's brother and his family came for a long, lazy afternoon and a big hunk of pork. (And if you think that having a brother-in-law who owns a brewery means he brings great quantities of great beer to your house for Sunday supper, you're right.) 

This year, no matter what other craziness is going on (cocktail parties! staff celebrations! choir concert at school! cookie exchange!), Sundays will find me basking in the glow of our Christmas tree, belly and heart full of the bruty of the season, trying to tip the scales in favor of beauty.

Pork Fried Rice

I've loved Molly Wizenberg's winsome food blog, Orangette, for years, and I devoured her first book, A Homemade Life, a few years ago. I still make her banana bread regularly, and her writing voice is one I really admire. So when she came out with her second book, Delancey, (about the trials and tribulations of opening a Seattle pizza place with her husband) earlier this year, Jason got it for me for my birthday and I gobbled it up too. I liked it fine, but it really reminded me of my brother- and sister-in-law, Trevor and Lisa, who, two years ago, opened a sweet little brewery downtown Holland. I still remember the conversation we had around the table a year or so before the brewery became a reality, Trevor announcing his plans and us nodding politely, privately thinking what a terrible idea it was. I remember Lisa laughing a bit maniacally months later, her eyes wide: "We own a bar!" And so they do -- a successful, wonderful one at that. These days, I'm a fan of Our Brewing Co's coconut porter, Jason's partial to the Careless Whisper IPA, and we're pretty proud of their DIY brand of business ownership -- and their real-life example for our girls of one way to follow a dream and make it a reality. It seemed appropriate to make a Delancey recipe for Sunday supper with Trevor and Lisa, so we made Molly's sweet and sour pork, loaded with fish sauce and cooked low and slow for hours. It was good, but the star of last week's menu was actually the fried rice I made with the leftover pork for dinner a couple nights later. It's modeled after another Delancey recipe, Fried Rice with Kale, but I subbed spinach for kale and switched up the seasonings a bit too. Jason had seconds, and I'll make it again, but get ready to ruin a pan if you don't have a wok. (Deglazing immediately with water helps with the clean-up.)

• 3 T. peanut or vegetable oil, divided
• one bunch greens, such as kale, spinach, or chard, torn into bite-size pieces
• 1 T. fresh lemon juice
• 4 cups cold cooked leftover white rice
• 4 oz leftover shredded pork
• 1 dash each fish sauce, soy sauce, and sesame oil
• 1 fried egg, to top, optional

Heat 1 T. oil in wok or large skillet until very hot, then add greens and sauté until charred and wilted. Remove greens to a bowl and top with fresh lemon juice. Add remaining 2 T. oil to hot skillet and add rice, smashing it to the bottom and sides of the pan in a single layer with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula and letting cook, undisturbed, for 30 seconds to a minute. Scrape rice up, redistribute, smash it to pan again, and continue cooking until rice is fried to desired doneness. Scrape rice up, stir, and add pork and seasonings, stirring constantly, just to heat through. Add rice and pork mixture to bowl of greens, season to taste with salt and pepper, and top with a fried egg.

Table Topics

Oh, hi.

I know, I know . . . it's been a while. We have, indeed, still been reclaiming Sunday supper -- two weekends ago, around a big, long table at Jolly Pumpkin Brewery with two other families on a Sunday afternoon before a treacherous drive home through the snow and ice, and last weekend, at our house with a dear family of five. I walked in the door last Sunday at 5:45 pm, straight from a four-day weekend with my best college girlfriends and an even-more-treacherous drive home through the snow and ice from Chicago, and I've never been so grateful for a warm house, a glass of wine, and a husband who cooks. 

About that weekend with my girlfriends. It was our thirteenth one, we think (the math gets a little sketchy, though there's a journal somewhere in which we try valiantly to record details every couple of years), and though getting together is a logistical nightmare every year, it's a tradition we cling to fiercely. Some years (before we began having kids -- 17 total between the six of us), we did adventurous things: whitewater rafting in West Virginia, horse races in Kentucky, hiking in North Carolina. Then we started having more kids and getting less sleep, and the last few years, our weekends have been largely about gathering somewhere (one of our houses, maybe a spot on Lake Michigan) simply to rest and connect. Some days, we struggle to get out of our pajamas before dinner. We mean to get out into the world and have adventures, but the thing is, we have so many things to say. And last weekend was no different.

We had restaurant reservations each night, sure (and I'd strongly recommend this, this, and especially this if you're hitting the Windy City soon), but, as we told the lovely woman at the front desk when we arrived at our little condo/hotel (another A+ recommendation, by the way), "All we really need is a table."

Our room wasn't quite ready yet when we arrived on Thursday, so the four of us who had driven settled down in the library. A few trashy magazines, a bottle of wine, and a long table surrounded by walls of bookshelves while the snow fell outside? We were completely happy. Later in the weekend, when our whole party of six had finally convened, we cozied up around the coffee table in our condo with oatmeal and coffee in the morning, cocktails and cheese in the evening -- one night until two in the morning.

I love that absolutely no topic is off limits, that these women have known me since I was a college freshman, that our long, tangential conversations cover everything from parenting to fashion, from careers to church, from food to dreams. Thirteen years in, we still haven't run out of things to say when we hunker down around a table. Last weekend, we toasted to that, to our smart friend the doctor who just passed her oral boards, and to not being able to keep track of the years together.

And then, bonus: walking in the door on Sunday night from a weekend around the table with my best girls, I got to glory in one more round of around-the-table talk with my family and one other. Jason had made gourmet mac and cheese (recipe from Clarkston Union), among other things, and the girls had set the table and gotten out the Table Topics. The five kids at the table took turns reading the questions, and we laughed at some answers and were sobered a little by the sweet honesty of a five-year-old, but never ran out of things to say. We got to hear each other's stories, which is what time around the table is really always about.

The Unmentionable

Two crucial ingredients for time at the table with friends (grown-up ones, at least) are a good cocktail and a great story. Our family loves the Table Topics family cube so much that I brought along a dinner party cube to Chicago for my girls' weekend. We barely used it, and that's probably because we're all so desperate to share our most inappropriate stories with one another that basic questions don't quite do the trick. But if you're around the table with someone besides your college roommates, I recommend the cube for fun conversation. And if you're looking for a good cocktail to start off your night, I recommend The Unmentionable, which I had for the first time last winter at Mani Osteria in Ann Arbor. I went back last summer, promptly ordered it again, and planted myself at the bar to watch exactly how it was made. Then I went to Art of the Table here in town to track down the ingredients so I could make as many as I wanted at home. I made a round last weekend in Chicago and nobody was disappointed.

• 2 oz. Bulleit rye
• 1 oz. Antica Formula (vermouth)
• 1 oz. fresh lemon juice
• 4-5 dashes walnut bitters
• 1 t. apricot marmalade
• sprig of fresh thyme and slice of lemon rind, to garnish

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Pour rye, vermouth, bitters, lemon juice, and marmalade into shaker. Cover and shake for 30 seconds, until very cold and marmalade is mixed in. Pour entire mixture (ice cubes and all) into a glass, and garnish with thyme and lemon.

Old-Fashioned Conversation + New-Fashioned Brussels Sprouts

In her excellent book on writing, Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott recommends that writers who are struggling with writer's block write about their school lunches. So let's do that today, but let's write about after-church coffee instead.

After-church coffee is, I think, possibly a very West Michigan thing. My neighbor and I were talking on her front porch a week or two ago, and we agreed it may be a strange, lovely little tradition that's particular to our little corner of the world. (Are we wrong? If you're from elsewhere, jump in the comments and let me know!) But here's how it went for me, circa the 1980s in West Michigan.

After church, we'd head over to my grandparents' house -- not for dinner, but just for the hour or so between church and going home to eat whatever my mom had in the oven already. We'd walk right in, with aunts and uncles and cousins (and possibly a dog or two) right behind us. My grandparents would still be at church, but they'd be home soon, and the coffee (weak, black) would already be waiting in the carafe in the kitchen. Shoes off at the doorway, coats in the closet, and we'd gather around the dining room table in no order and with no agenda. Someone would pour coffee for the grown-ups, and my brother and I would get iced tea from a brown Tupperware pitcher in the fridge. 

There was always a little food, but not so much as to spoil our dinner: Ritz crackers with Schuler's bar cheese; maybe a little plate of Pecan Sandies or Fudge Stripes; some weeks my mom might have baked something to bring along and share. 

And for just an hour or so, we'd sit and talk. Current events, school projects, work, fishing stories, vacation photos, neighborhood dramas, weekend adventures -- nothing, really, and everything was said around that table. I remember holding my cousin as a baby around that table, and I remember bringing Jason to Sunday coffee for the first time, and I remember missing it when we moved away. But I don't really remember the details of any conversations, which is OK, because it's not the conversations but the feeling of belonging that's important. Before Facebook, before email, before texting, Sunday coffee was my family's in-person connection time. It still is, actually, and though we're a little too far away to make it a weekly event, we still pop in from time to time, and my grandpa is still making the coffee and setting out the crackers.

In the book The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age by Catherine Steiner-Adair, the author writes:

“My friend Martha remembers when she was young and visits with her grandparents and extended family included cooking together, eating together, and relaxing after the meal. In the migration from kitchen to dinner table to family room, the intergenerational conversation was continuous. The young cousins might convene a board game or maybe watch a TV show together, but family conversation wove through it all.

“We used to sit around with my aunts and my uncles and they would just talk about anything,” she says. “There was no point to it, it just went, but it had this great sort of humanizing, literary impact on you.”

The contrast between that rich conversational flow and the relatively shallow, staccato one that dominates her own household today is dramatic – and discouraging, she says. Absent the texture and cadence of old-fashioned family conversations, she believes her children are growing up in “an extremely isolated little bubble” of digital dialogue, a kind of conversational Muzak that fills the space, mimicking style but lacking substance.”

Reclaiming Sunday Supper, for me, is about trying to recapture a little bit of that kind of old-fashioned conversation (is meandering, in-person conversation truly old-fashioned?) with our own kids. Who doesn't want more "rich conversational flow" that has "this great sort of humanizing, literary impact on you"? Over the course of one meal -- or even one month of meals -- that might be a little too ambitious, but woven into the Sunday suppers and our regular weeknight dinners, I think it may be possible.

My in-laws came to eat with us on Sunday. They were freshly back from a big trip, and they'd brought pretty glass jewelry and lovely French macaroons, and we wanted the girls to hear about their travels. But one girl (who shall remain nameless) spent the majority of the meal squatting sideways on her chair like a frog, and shoved so much naan in her mouth at once that some actually fell out on the floor. It was definitely another reminder that these meals are as much about modeling good manners as they are about learning to have meaningful conversations. It was a reminder that our family needs more practice (and more patience) around the table.

After I was done shooting looks across the table, we heard some good travel stories, and we saw some beautiful travel photos, and the girls remembered to chew with their mouths closed and told stories about school projects, soccer games, and missing teeth. And by the time we were eating our apple crisp with Jeni's Salty Caramel ice cream (I'm beginning to suspect I may have dreamed up this whole Reclaiming Sunday Supper project as an excuse to bake delicious and different apple desserts every week this fall), we had, I think, captured that elusive, after-church-coffee feeling. There were no Ritz crackers, no Schuler's bar cheese, but there were three generations sitting around the table, and there were Brussels sprouts, which, in the tradition of children everywhere, the girls refused to eat.

Brussels Sprouts with Pancetta and Balsamic

These are not your grandmothers' Brussels sprouts -- or, at least, they aren't my grandmother's. I think Brussels sprouts are so universally hated because so many of us grew up eating ones that had been boiled to death and under seasoned. These are crisp, especially when a few leaves break off and toast individually, and they're full of flavor. They also play nicely with any other root vegetables you have on hand (carrots are especially good), and can be served over pureed butternut squash if you're feeling extra-fancy.

• 1 lb. Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved, or any combination of sprouts, carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli
• 2 T. olive oil
• 4 oz. diced pancetta
• salt and pepper, to taste
• balsamic vinegar, for drizzling

reheat oven to 425. Toss Brussels sprouts/vegetables with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and arrange on a sheet pan. Scatter diced pancetta over vegetables and roast, flipping vegetables occasionally with a spatula, until crisp and caramelized, about 20-25 minutes. Serve immediately, with balsamic vinegar alongside.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Sabbath

The teacher in me loves Venn diagrams, and I sketched out a quick one today. 

If you think of the left circle as "Reclaiming Sunday" and the right circle as "Sunday Supper," you can see the shaded, starred area is where the two ideas overlap, and that's where I hope to focus most of my writing: on that sweet spot in the middle, where we talk about food and recipes and the way they're so connected to hospitality and rest. But sometimes I'll want to zero in on one circle and ignore the other, and that's what I'm thinking about today.

What, in 2014, is Sabbath? When I talk about "reclaiming Sunday," what do I really mean? Does a Sabbath - a period of rest - really need to be a whole day long? Does it need to happen on a Sunday? Does it need to be religious or Christian in nature?

The answer to those last three questions, I think, is no. Sabbath doesn't need to last an entire day, doesn't need to happen on a Sunday, and doesn't need to be religious in nature. But historically, the answer to those last three questions has been yes, and that's changed in such a short period of time that I think it's worth comparing the Sabbath of my grandmother's mid-life to the Sunday of today.

I lost both my grandmothers this past year. The eldest one, my dad's mom, was 99 when she died. Her life was very little like mine: she grew up on a farm, went to school in a one-room school house and only through 8th grade, she had five children, and she lived with her family above the grocery store my grandpa ran. On the Sundays of his childhood in the 1950s, my dad remembers church, a family meal, and then church again at night. That was all. He remembers not being allowed to swim, bike, clean, play, or do anything at all except those three things. He remembers my grandmother trying to make most of the Sunday meals ahead on Saturday, so she'd just need to turn on the oven and cook what she had already prepared. 

Fast forward to my childhood in the 1980s. I remember Sundays that featured church, coffee at my grandparents', a big noon meal, naps, playing in the neighborhood and maybe some homework, and that's about it. My family didn't generally go shopping, go out to eat, or run errands, and that's largely because stores and restaurants weren't open on Sundays, but it's also because my parents didn't like the idea of supporting a culture where others had to work on Sunday. Neighbors who washed their cars and mowed their lawns on Sunday were frowned upon, and the county in which I grew up didn't sell alcohol on Sundays. We had a pool, though, and would definitely use it in the summer, and we'd ride our bikes and occasionally go to the beach for the afternoon in the summer, and my brother and dad would likely play basketball in the driveway or watch sports on TV. Throughout childhood, I played a little soccer and my brother played basketball, but I never remember either of us having Sunday games.

This morning, I found myself standing on a soccer field at 9:00 a.m. with a birthday party and a Costco trip on the schedule for the afternoon. Later, Jason mowed the lawn while I cleaned the bathrooms and did a load of laundry. The girls rode their bikes around the block and hula-hooped in the front yard. In just two generations, Sundays have become totally unrecognizable as a day of the week that used to be set apart for rest. Many people we know do go to church, but it seems that even those families have to squeeze church in among several other commitments in their Sunday: kids' sports, training for their own sporting event, birthday parties, grocery shopping, running errands, cleaning, piano lessons, social events. I get work emails all weekend long, and I know I'm not the only one. Many of our friends who travel for business have begun flying out on Sunday afternoon in order to be at their destination as expected for the 8:00 a.m. meeting on Monday morning. 

So over a period of 60 years, give or take, a day of the week that, in the Christian tradition at least, had been set aside for rest and worship for hundreds of years, has become just another one of seven weekdays, nearly as busy as the other six. And here's what I wonder: Are we OK with this? Or are we not OK with this, but we don't think we have a choice? 

Because here's the thing. I don't especially want to go back to the Sundays of the 1950s; those days of enforced church and joyless rest sound pretty grim. And having actual laws in place that forbid businesses from being open on Sundays seems like a pretty blatant flaunting of the separation of church and state. (Let's not even talk about shunning the neighbors who wash their cars and mow their lawns.) I don't presume that most of the residents of my community, my state, or my country share my faith or should have to follow any sort of religious rules. But no matter your religion or total lack thereof, don't we all want a day to just shut it down? To hang around the house in elastic waistband pants, watch mindless television, cook good food, read, hike, play? To let go of the need to be productive?

When I think about what's changed in the last few decades (and what might have caused our culture's definition of Sunday to change), a few things come to mind: more women entered the workforce, fewer people attend church, more people live in cities instead of on farms, and technology has completed changed the way we work. But I was in Paris and Vienna last summer, and those world-class European cities still close their restaurants and stores on Sundays in spite of the fact that hardly anyone in Europe cares about organized religion and the majority of women work. People sit in cafes, read the paper, walk along the Seine, play with their kids in the park -- and it's not because they're required by a priest or shamed by their mothers or neighbors. It's because they value the time away from work and school. I'm not sure why, as Americans in 2014, the voices calling for sanity in scheduling seem few and far between. I'm not sure why we aren't taking a good hard look at what we've given up since we've let Sunday become just another day of the week. I'm not sure what it's costing our kids, our health, our creativity, our relationships. But I'm curious.

Here's what I know for sure. My grandmother would never have found herself standing on a soccer field at 9:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning. 

“Am I wrong? Am I way off base? Because I want you to set me straight if you think I’m wrong. I want to know. I mean, I don’t know anything, and I’m the first one to admit it.”

— Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love