Randomday, and a Farewell

A fond farewell to my old laptop, which as I write this is at 50% power remaining and no way to recharge it. The clothespin that has been holding the cord into the charging port at just the right angle for the last two years is no longer doing the trick. This is possibly because I closed Magistra and put it on the floor behind the old treadle sewing machine (which is also a convenient table for displaying Tertia's pottery projects) last night for the Last Noel. Magistra has had a good life and worked hard... I feel like I need to pay tribute to it here on the blog, since, realistically, I would not have a blog presence without it. I received it as a Christmas gift in 2010, and it traveled back and forth to school with me on a daily basis until it developed this problem with the ability to charge and hold a charge, sometime in 2015 I think. I believe we have copied all essential files and photos to the main home computer or the cloud, and so I'll be able to get started again on the new laptop we plan to purchase, but it just won't be the same for a while, and please understand if you don't see a blog post from me as I navigate the frustrations of learning a new device. Change is always hard for old-school people like me!

The Last Noel itself was very nice. We had plenty of food and a good number of people from our wider circle. Quarta's friends played a kind of freeze tag/ hide and seek in the dark in the yard, and we await the spring to see the impact this had on the shrubbery. It is good that God makes plants, like people, resilient.

And so the Christmas season is officially over, and we are off to new adventures.

Randomday - in Praise of Sloppy Joes

Yesterday evening was the Last Noel.  Questions about the Last Noel?  See here.  I don't know how many people we had, because I was too tired to keep count, but it was wall-to-wall teenagers in the dining room, living room, and family room. They were playing chess, poker, the piano, and singing harmonies to Christmas carols. Secundus fell out of an upstairs window with apparently no ill effect.  For the first time ever, there was an "after party" with some of Secundus' friends having a "bro party" tacked on to the Last Noel.  They helped remove the Christmas tree and restored the living room furniture to its normal positions, then watched the Shawshank Redemption and went on a 3-mile hike along the railroad traps after midnight in a windstorm.  I'm very glad I was asleep by that time.

Julie M. showed up with an interesting hostess gift: a 15 volume set of the collected writings of Washington Irving.  Daniel, who just wrote a paper on him for American Lit, was very interested.  Tertia was overjoyed that her dance teacher showed up - otherwise it was almost entirely a group of Cedar Tree and 1st OPC.

You should never underestimate the community-building power of the humble Sloppy Joe sandwich.  I spend a lot more time baking cookies and making the pasta salad, but I'm serious.  People get nostalgic about Sloppy Joes.  They are effusive in their praise.  And all I did was brown a boatload of ground beef and onions and then heat it up with celery, ketchup, mustard, pickle relish, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce, pepper, brown sugar, vinegar, and maybe a little barbecue if the mood strikes.  There is no recipe, just general guidelines.  I guess some people use a mix to make Sloppy Joes, but I have no idea why.  There were a couple of teenage boys who came early, hung out for a bit, ran to go participate in strenuous athletic competitions, and then returned for three more sandwiches.  I had bought a selection of buns, including the new pretzel slider buns, which were very popular.  I had gluten-free crackers for the gluten-free folks, who are trending these days.  I contemplated making potato salad instead of pasta salad, but no, I'm stubbornly pro-gluten.  And a quick poll of my pasta-loving family came out in favor of the pasta salad too.  But I did consciously leave out the MSG in my dip recipe this year.

I have a guaranteed day after the Last Noel to recover.  Nothing much is expected of me.  The family and any remaining guests eat leftovers and I ignore my Latin grading and normal Randomday chores.  And by the power invested in me as hostess of the Last Noel, I declare the Christmas season officially over.

Randomday

The Last Noel has passed for another year.  I had the brilliant idea of making my filled raisin cookies with apricots instead of raisins:

They turned out very well.  We had almost 100 people show up... the house was humming:

The drinks station was popular.  Toward the end of the evening we ran out of punch ingredients and started passing out the leftover Otter Pops from last summer.  I picked up at least 20 empty ones off the floor in the girls' room last night.

Secundus' room was the site of at least 20 teenagers playing Mafia.

The littles were fairly hyper too.

We're tired today.  We had leftover sloppy Joes for dinner tonight.  There's not quite enough to take to fellowship dinner tomorrow.  But there are plenty of cookies and veggies.

I'm going to go sew for a little bit.  Quarta is watching the 4th Harry Potter movie while Tertia has her bath and the boys are at a birthday party.

The Last Noel: Q&A

I was a party hostess instead of a blogger for the last few days, so here are some of the frequently asked questions about our Last Noel party Friday night.

Q. So how long have you guys been doing the Last Noel, your fabulously popular end-of-the-holiday-season open house?
A. It started when we were newlyweds in 1992, but it was before Christmas then.  It shifted to after New Year's when we had small children and were always travelling over Christmas.  There were several years when it didn't happen at all, but it's become an annual tradition since we moved out here.

Q. How did it get to be such a cool event?
A. Honestly, we have no idea.  We do not see ourselves as the kind of people who throw the coolest party of the season.  Hungry teenage boys, sloppy joes, and word of mouth might have something to do with it.

Q. What's the menu?
A. Sloppy joes, pasta salad, veggies and dip, potato chips, coffee, tea, hot cider, punch, and assorted Christmas cookies.

Q. How much food do you buy for it every year?
A. 15 pounds ground beef, 96 buns, 2 pounds of pasta and lots of assorted vegetables, 2-3 Costco sized bags of chips, 3 gallons apple cider, 3 gallons cranberry juice, 3 2-liter bottles of lemon-lime soda, 3 2-liter bottles of flavored seltzer water.  (This is more for my own future reference than yours).

Q. How many sloppy joes does the average teenage boy eat? 
A. It appears to be 3.  Two if they are holding back, or ate before they came.

Q. Is it really true that no one is allowed to have a Christmas party after the Last Noel, until next Christmas season?
A. No, that's just something I told my 7th grade class, and they're literal enough to believe me.  I wonder how they think I'd enforce that?  But I don't think anyone would want to have a Christmas party after the first full week of January.

Q. Do you have to clean the house furiously beforehand?
A. No.  This is actually a key part of it.  We clean, but not obsessively, and the piles of papers stay pretty much in place.  The tree doesn't come down until after the last guests leave, although they may be invited to help undecorate if they wish.

Q. How many people show up for this thing?
A. It varies from year to year.  We had about 75 people this time; not as many as some years, but most of them stayed longer.

Q. Music?
A. We have about 15 hours worth of Christmas music queued up.  Steve is in charge of that.  He tends to favor Baltimore Consort and the choir of King's College Cambridge.  I like to add a little Vince Guaraldi and Mannheim Steamroller into the mix.  We both like all the Celtic Christmas albums.

Q. Was this year's Last Noel successful?
A. I'd say so.  None of the kids had nosebleeds or needed an ice pack this year.  The noise level was intense, but the crowd managed itself pretty well.  Serious conversations took place in the dining room, the boys headed upstairs to hang out with Primigenitus, younger kids in the family room, and various groupings of lively conversationalists in the kitchen and living rooms.  Muffball remained in deep hiding in the basement and poked her nose out at about 10:30 when she was sure everyone had gone.  We took the tree down and vacuumed most of the little cedar seeds and debris up before going to bed.

Q. Have you ever in your life been more tired than the Saturday after the Last Noel?
A. No, I don't think so.  I may recover in time for school tomorrow, but I am definitely not as young as I used to be.

Q. When are you going to share the recipe for those fabulous filled raisin cookies pictured above?
A. Tomorrow.  They're worth waiting for.

The Last Noel

The Last Noel started when Steve and I were newlyweds and hosted an open house in our tiny neo-Victorian townhouse in Reston, Virginia. It was before Christmas then. A few years later we lived in Colorado, had a baby and traveled over Christmas, so the party was moved to the general vicinity of New Year's. But there are always competing events on New Year's, so it made sense to move it back a little more to the week after. When we moved out here 11 years ago, we had 3 kids and found it utterly impossible to get a party together before Christmas OR New Year's. The Last Noel was born to use up the leftover Christmas cookies and candy, but it's also an excuse to enjoy all the Christmas things we never had a chance to sit and enjoy during the "official" season, and to get our overlapping circles of friends together at least once a year.

We had plenty of food, enough for leftovers. About 70 people came, most of them kids. Apparently playing hide-and-seek in the dark in our muddy backyard is the best game ever. Numerous pairs of shoes were ruined in the process, including two that I had just bought the day before. (The pink-and-white ones were successfully laundered; the owner of the black ones insisted he prefers them filthy).

It's a good time, but it's also good to take the day after and do nothing, just to recover.

Today was a cooking day...

The menu never really changes for The Last Noel. Sloppy Joes, Dairy Hollow House Pasta Salad, veggies with that amazing dip recipe I got from Fern R., potato chips, assorted Christmas cookies, punch, hot cider, coffee and tea. We will push back the kitchen table against the wall and have it be the drink station. Foods will be served from the kitchen island, except for the cookies, which will be placed strategically throughout the living room and dining room.

I bought 10 pounds of ground beef for the Sloppy Joes yesterday, then another 5 today when I started thinking about all the teenage boys who will be coming straight from racquetball. I decided to stretch it even further by adding lots of onions and celery as I was browning it today. I lost track, but I think maybe 9 onions all told, and almost a whole bunch of celery. And peppers. The fumes from the onions bother me as I chop, but then my eyeballs toughen up and everyone else is bothered by the smell as they cook, and I can't even tell. The rest of the seasonings and sauces will be added tomorrow when I plop the meat into the crock pot. I also made the pasta salad, which is a fairly big production. It's chilling in the fridge in my biggest ceramic bowl, with only the garbanzo beans and cheese to be added before serving. Steve is making yet one more batch of cookies tonight, and The Mikado is blasting on the computer.

I also made this recipe today, for today's dessert after spaghetti: banana mousse It was quite nice, and a good way to use up some bananas and Knox gelatin.

Here's that recipe for dip for veggies:
1 C. sour cream
1 C. mayonnaise
1 t. each: dried minced onion, Lawry's or McCormick's seasoned salt, Accent, dill, Worcestershire sauce
1 T. parsley flakes
11 drops Tabasco sauce

It's best to let it chill overnight for the flavors to blend. I need to go mix it up now.

There has been absolutely no knitting or quilting going on today, and not nearly as much cleaning as I'd like. I'd love to have a spotlessly clean house, but I will settle for Not Noticeably Filthy.