Well, it's December and I am very aware that I am still editing posts from October. I am letting October go though, and deciding if posting a photo of my Thanksgiving turkey is embarrassing or just another reminder of how time flies. For December, my family never goes back to Turkey as an option. Maybe it is because of my Gemini mother who has all these incredible ideas all of the time and does not do well with repetition in a creative world. So we change things up a lot. Then there is me, who can get incredibly sentimental over eating something once a year- for example, I will no doubt cook a turkey for Thanksgiving every year- the smell, the flavors, the tradition tug at my heart strings as soon as the bird comes out of the oven, a fragrant encore year after year. At one time I felt it necessary to start a food tradition for Christmas- everyone in our intermediate family is a seafood lover, so we started a cioppino tradition for a couple years for Christmas dinner. Big hunks of white fish, mussels, clams, crab and scallops in a decadent tomato, basil and fish broth all sopped up with crusty white bread. After culinary school though- I'm torn with Christmas dinner traditions-I'll vote to keep cream cheese and cherry blinis with Dad's coffee for Christmas morning breakfast and beef jerky and licorice caramels in my Christmas stocking -but embrace a bold Gemini presence from both my mother and two of my Gemini siblings and get creative. This year, a smaller bird --a Christmas Duck.
