Merry Christmas, dear ones. May your holiday be full of love, champagne, and mercury glass.
(and, just in case you have 30 eggs and enough brown liquor to kill a horse lying around, here’s my family’s egg nog recipe, for good measure).
Thanks to the divine Miss Betsy for the bottom picture.
It’s cold and blustery and I’m having some lovely ladies over tonight for a little light Holiday Crafting (we’ve all been a little under the weather, so I think we’ll just have to hope that our ancestors were correct in prescribing whiskey for ailments and add extra honey to our hot toddys). Very colonial, very exciting! Hopefully they’ll be more helpful decorating than this guy.
ps. for those of you in the know, that is NOT Nipsey Russell, that is his ever-lovin-brother/doppelganger Mr. Peepers.
Grey and chilly in the country, today is the kind of day to make tea on the woodstove.
This is what it looks like when you’ve just eaten a raw oyster from your home waters. Very, very good. Growing up in the Virginia lowlands, of water stock, I actually never really understood the sense of place in an oyster. They just tasted like oysters. It wasn’t until I was long out of Virginia, a New York veteran of a few years, meeting McKay and Cakes at Marlow for one of those hours long dinners that meeting those girls at that place requires, that I saw a James River oyster on the menu and ordered it. Oh man. Just the taste of that dusky brine and I was immediately transported to summers on the Mobjack bay, wearing white rubber watermen’s boots and traversing the mudflats like they were my kingdom. Tidewater, in an instant, a taste. I bet the old salts around the bar in Montauk feel the same way about their super saline Long Island Blue Points, but the fact is they’re the exact same oyster species as my fat and sweet-salty Virginia half-shell, they’re just tempered differently by the water they’re in. Per usual, a parable. 
Back in Virginia, for my big birthday, I was lucky enough to have two bushels brought to me directly from the coast, just a little over 400 oysters. The plan was to roast most and shuck some. Lucky for me, my dear friend Rob came straight from the banks of the York river bearing his oyster knife, super shucking skills, and intimate knowledge of the oyster crab. 
The little yellow-orange jewel here is a tiny soft-shelled crab, a lady, who is symbiotic with the Virginia oyster. They are friends, and are only found in the best and healthiest oyster beds. The New York Times wrote two separate articles in the early 1900’s on the little buggers- here and here. The Times suggests frying them or covering them with a mayonnaise lightly colored pink with beet juice, but Rob told me to just eat it raw. Incredible. It was the first one I ever found, and I felt so lucky to have had it in Virginia, on my birthday.
Oh, My. What a time. My Jubilee birthday celebrations this past weekend were absolute perfection. Everything I could have wanted, better than I could have hoped for. Champagne, Oysters, Moonshine. Laughter, Love, Music. Nautral. Home. I seem to have misplaced my camera cord in the melee, so for now, I’ll let instagram tell the story…
So much thanks. Cakes, Anna, and Smills for their pictures and love, Rav for bringing over a pound of Mennonite butter at the last minute and for infinite other tiny graces, to Deke for the moonshine and commitment to mayhem, to the men of the 5:15’s for pickin’ and grinnin’, to Sweetheart for moving the world to be there, and to Mama and Daddy for everything, always.
Yes, those are my painted wood farmhouse floors. Yes, that is my pink poinsettia. Yes, they were both waiting for me when I returned to the country from the city this week. The floors have been here since 1890 or so, the poinsettia, since just last week, but my how I love them both. My mama has been getting me a pink poinsettia for my birthday every year, as long as I can remember, since before I wore a fur muff and a cape (like this) and took three very special friends to Richmond for a tea party and to see The Nutcracker (this was my deepest desire as a girl turning 8 and, frankly, that STILL sounds totally awesome). Also waiting for me upon my return, a parcel from dear McKay, with a new story (hers) and moon vine seeds to plant in the spring (mine), and a big ‘ole box from Jay and Katie Rose full of JARS (!! how well they know me) and, among other affirmations, this quote:
Time and tide wait for no man, but time always stands still for a woman of 30.”- Robert Frost
Now, I realize that there may be a bit of a mid-century jibe lurking here, one about lying about your age, but that literally didn’t occur to me until just now… rather, I read it as something powerful, as if, at 30, a woman has a certain hard-earned-sense and now-finally-trusted-intuition and faith-in-the-weight-of-her-own-truth to slow down from the head-long gallop of 16, the jittery glitter of 21, and the loud, mouthy, wisdom of 25 and take a deep breath, at last, and be comfortable in quiet, in time, in her own skin. 30 years of living may not magically afford us the ability to weigh what we need and want and love and craft a life of purpose and beauty out of them, but I turn 30 on Sunday, and I’ll celebrate it at Home, with wood-smoke and family, with Sweetheart and music, with friends coming down from the cities and coming in from the farther-out-country mountain hollers, and with love. And fried chicken, oysters, and champagne. So.
On my last night before returning back to the country for my own EPIC PARTY PREPARATIONS, all of my dear ones who won’t be able to make it down south for my own Jubilee birthday all got together to have a big celebratory, adventurous Sichuan dinner in Bay Ridge. After sweet peppered ginger duck, prickly hot red-oil dumplings, salt and pepper shrimp, and (my favorite) the Chengdu softshell crab— a glistening pile of shining red chiles and clovey brown peppercorns dotted with fried softshell crab omigod— we decided to go on a little adventure. After all, we were already on 86th street, just a hop and a jump away from Dyker Heights and its fabled Christmas Light EXTRAVAGANZAS. Trumpeting Angels, Two-Storey Santas, Nutcrackers riding life-size-mechanized-rearing-stallions… all with a belly full of flavor. Everything you could possibly want from a New York Christmas whirlwind. So far so great. 
This video is not happy. But, After spending the weekend being squired around Brooklyn’s finest gilded affairs (punchbowls and egg nog, champagne and candlelit dance parties) it occurs to me: New York Holiday Party Season=There is Enough Happy to Go Around. So. It makes total sense that NEXT WEEKEND some very dear friends are throwing a huge Wayne-stock style party called the “Jingle Bell Rockaway”. Live Music. Food. Beer from local breweries affected by the storm (beer unscathed, thank god). The purpose is twofold: a) raise money for Rockaway post-Sandy hurricane relief and b) throw a damn party in a place that loves to party and hasn’t had a good throwdown in a while. There are a few, true heartbreaking reasons to go to this (people STILL don’t have power or heat, where there isn’t still standing water there is now inches thick toxic mold, free food and drinks for Rockaway residents, and the Friends of Rockaway organization puts the money directly in the hands of those affected), but really, it’s going to be a great party. Buy tickets—that include transportation out there AND free drinks, wha??—or, if you’re feeling Claus-y, just donate here.
Video from here: FriendsOfRockaway.org Together We Will Rebuild from True Film Production on Vimeo.
Today, I’m off for New York! Loaded with delicious Potter’s Craft Cider, fancy local chocolates (shhhh!), and all the cheap southern gas my tank can hold. I’m picking up Miss Ann Marie (above, with hat) on the way and we’re going to be meeting the other road strippers (not to mention Sweetheart!) in the big city for a grand old reunion just in time for a big holiday season. This will be my first trip back since the great experiment began, and I simply can’t wait.
If you hadn’t noticed, my holiday plans are seriously nesty, and this year, I’m planning on gifting along those lines. If I’m trying to live simply with a focus on use and beauty, purging my scene of things that are not purposeful or graceful, then I should pay that forward, right? And, no, it’s not just because I’m currently 396 miles away from the Union Square Holiday Market mayhem. This year, that goes for the wrapping too. So, I have my stack of plain brown paper bags and farm twine ready to go, aaaaand, as if on cue: the genius ladies at DesignSponge* are offering these free printable gift tags. How Lovely.
Feather By Feather 