Monday

Regis and I are off to a fine Christmas season. Last night we went to the Bothy to see Pop Wagner and Dakota Dave Hull. It was freezing cold and icy on the way over, freezing cold in the Eagle's Club, and the bar person was rude and not interested in helping us thaw out at all. The music was great, though.

Tonight we went over to Bob's extensive video library and checked out A Christmas Story. We're having a hot brandy and watching a goofy Christmas movie in the middle of a mess of boxes of holiday stuff and a few Halloween items. It's never like Martha Stewart makes you feel it should be. No eyelet pinafores or pine cone place cards here. No dog poop under the Christmas tree either, though, and for that we are grateful.

We decided after our ethnic cooking extravaganza this past weekend, to try Italian dishes this coming weekend. We're planning manicotti and cannoli. Cannolis require a tube form to fry them and I wasn't sure you could find such a thing in Minnesota. Joanne called from the mall after school and she found them at the kitchen store. I thought we could just put that filling into a krumkake.

Oh, funny story about the gumbo. My gumbo was pretty pale and not very spicy because I didn't watch the gumbo youtube episode until after I attempted to cook it and I made my own creole spice mix. Kind of what you'd expect Norwegian gumbo to be like. Regis works with a woman who came to Minnesota from New Orleans after Katrina so he took a bowl of gumbo to Jamella today. She looked at it and said, "It could be gumbo." Ha. What the hell. I'd like to see her make lefse.

The Scotch broth was fine but I could barely overcome my gagging aversion to lamb. I smelled it for hours and decided it's like the telltale heart. You eat lamb, you never get the smell to leave your nostrils. Regis said next time he'd make it with beef.