• As always, Santa was very good to me this year. Maybe it’s because I’m really easy to buy for (anything cooking related or Home Depot related are always safe bets) or maybe it’s because he knows I love Chrismukkah.
• It’s time to go old skool with the grilling. A new Weber One-Touch Silver Charcoal Kettle Grill will soon be filling the neighborhood with the smell of charcoal and wood smoke. I fear that I’ll have a hard time going back to a gas grill, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.
• Speaking of grilling, I was allowed to grill the Christmas Eve lobsters this year. Grilling weather on Christmas is something that I can definitely get used to.
• I got a long-coveted B-Side Lounge t-shirt. It looks like a red sox t-shirt, but instead of “BOSTON” it says “BSIDE”, and instead of a MLB logo on the back, it has the silhouette or a bow-tied bartender shaking a cocktail shaker. The B-Side is one of my favorite bars of all time.
• Only I would get excited about a salt cellar, right? But the old was was just getting nasty, and this one looks so sleek.
• I got a deep fryer! Seriously? Yes. I know it seems like we eat all super healthy all of the time, but we also enjoy a good homemade frite with our burgers or mussels. I am very excited about this. I get the feeling that I’m going to try to deep fry a lot of stuff. Pickles, olives, artichokes, Girl Scout cookies, etc.
• Everyone seems to have an opinion about baby names. Our favorite suggestions from Christmas dinner were Priscilla and Luigi. And the best quote of the night: “At what point do you look at a baby and think: Norma.”
• Let’s talk about the fact that the pregnant Lovely Suse is getting hand-me-down clothes from her 16 year old cousin.
• It wouldn’t be Christmas without a new Jamie Oliver book. Jamie’s Italy is his latest. When I see his new books in the store, I don’t even bother buying it because I know I’ll get it for Christmas. I love his books.
• I managed to install a ceiling fan in our bedroom without electrocuting myself and four days later, it still hasn’t fallen and crushed us. We also got real bedroom furniture after years of talking about it. We feel like grownups now!
• My fortune cookie from last night’s Jewish Christmas dinner told me to get up early because today will be a productive day. George waking us up crying at 3:30am took care of that. I think he’s completely overwhelmed with his first Christmas. He was approximately 4,326 toys around the house right now. On the agenda for today: stripping and starting to refinish an old dresser, laundry, grocery shopping, and another attempt at fixing our squeaky hardwood floors. We’ll see how much of that I actually get done. Apparently, I don’t understand the meaning of “vacation”.

Having been raised Jewish, the holiday season had always been a bit of a mixed bag for me growing up. Sure, we had Chanukah, latkes, dreidels, and gifts, but let’s be honest. Christmas blows Chanukah out of the water. Trees, lights, stockings, gifts, songs, cookies, a kick-ass meal, booze, and more gifts. What’s not to like? Oh, there is that whole Jesus thing and the Church thing, but let’s ignore that for a minute.

Growing up, for whatever reason, I resented Christmas. Because it represented something that we didn’t believe in, I felt like it was wrong to do anything associated with it. Singing Christmas Carols? Decorating a tree? Hey, I shouldn’t be doing this! I don’t believe in Jesus! Rudolph on TV? That’s not for me. On and on and on, everything about this season was not for me. A cashier in a store wishes us a Merry Christmas? But we don’t celebrate Christmas. I felt excluded and felt like I was missing out. This stuff looks like fun, right? Some of my earliest memories were of me going to the house of our older neighbor across the street every day so I could turn the lights of her Christmas tree on. I loved it, but it was never anything I could have in my own house. Jews don’t have Christmas trees.

Fast forward 25 years. Having married into a Christmas-celebrating family, my Christmas dreams had finally come true. I got to go buy and decorate my own Christmas tree (topped with a Star if David tree-topper), I got my own stocking, I got to admit that yes, I do enjoy Christmas music, I got to eat Christmas dinner, and I got lots and lots of gifts. It didn’t have to be a religious event, and let’s be honest. these days, very few people are thinking about the real meaning of the holiday. It’s more about family traditions and celebrations. Just like my family has always invited non-Jewish friends to our holiday festivities, it doesn’t have to be a religious experience, and you don’t have to believe in the religious aspects of it to enjoy and appreciate it.

I still hate the malls around the holidays, I still hate being assaulted with Christmas decorations starting in October, I still hate obscenely tacky Christmas decorations on people’s houses and yards, I still hate the ridiculous consumerism that goes on, but I think that feeling is shared by lots of Christmas lovers. Like it or not, Christmas is an American tradition. Just like the 4th of July or Thanksgiving, it’s a holiday that brings people together to celebrate and eat and drink and eat some more. We still celebrate Chanukah, we still light the candles and make latkes, and we still celebrate Jewish Christmas on December 26 (movies and Chinese food), but on December 25, you know where to find me: up to my elbows in wrapping paper, cookies, and Christmas ham, and loving every minute of it. Merry Chrismukkah everybody!

With this whole baby thing, the first three questions that people have are:

1) When is it due?
2) Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?
3) Have you picked a name yet?

The answers to these questions are:
1) May31
2) Nope.
3) No, and you’re not finding out until the baby is born, so don’t bother asking or offering up suggestions or likes/dislikes. Only bad things happen when this happens.

For example, a coworker of mine was discussing names at lunch one day before his first daughter was born. He offered the name Sienna, a name that his wife was pushing for. My response? “You can’t name her that. Sienna sounds like a stripper’s name.” And what did they end up naming her? Sienna. Open mouth, insert foot. It took me a solid year before I could look him in the eye again. Since then, I’ve learned to keep my opinions to myself.

It’s tough to come up with a good name for a kid. The repercussions will last a lifetime if you pick a bad one, and we don’t want to pick a popular or common or newly fashionable name for our future son or daughter. So I’ve decided to go to the best source around for interesting and different names: My Spam email folder. We will pick the name from one of the enterprising senders offering us fantastic loan rates and all sorts of fun pills.

The current contents of my spam folder includes the following names:

Felecia
Lesley
Simone
Joshua
Albert
Mark
Pharmacy
Ann
Deanne
Charles
Shane
Sonya
Dylan
Jeanette
Alan
Lizzie
Alexandra
Lucille
Rhonda
Alton
Olga
Madeleine
Rogelio
Loren
Emile
Edna
Adrian
cedric
Edwin
Margret
Lisa
Lenard
Michele
Marsha
Julio
Carmella
York
Peggy
Becky
Jukka
Concetta
Ernest
Charles
Randell
Curtis
Adrian
Bobbie
Bryan
Jody
Bonita
Edwina
list
Sherrie
Christine
Charles
Deirdre
Bobbye
Erika
Chance
Christa
Carmen
Sushila
Erika
Dolores
Tasha
Christine
Leigh
Erna
Georgette
Imogene
Lucia
Kaye
Jocelyn
Kanthan
Minnie
Rolland
Gilda
Nina
Rickey
Faustino
conway
Bjorne
Nate
peg
Jimmie
Opal
Estella
Shaun
Katherine
Jamar
Everett
Madge
Ida
Jayne
Lyman
Fran
Richie
Mable
Mortgage
wfh04
Barry
Gladys
Anargyros
Julius
Mirko
Whitten
Clare
Kirby
Jonathon
Roslyn
Gabriel
Reba
Son
Eleanor
Suzanne
Eduardo
Edytha
Doreen
Hans

So maybe Olga for a girl and Mortgage for a boy? Now, sorting through junk email will be fun! Stay tuned.

• Happy Chanukah to all of my Jewish brethren out there. Who still smells like latkes? I gotta say, I am the latke master, being allowed to make them for the third consecutive year. Nice and crispy and salty without being too greasy. But yes, my entire body and every article of clothing smells like frying potatoes and onions and I felt like I was coated with a thick coat of oil by the end of the day. Good times!
• George decided to develop some sort of separation anxiety and felt the need to wake us up crying sometime between 2:00AM and 4:00AM every day last week. Every fricking day. We went out and bought earplugs after realizing that the only way for him to get over it was to let him keep on crying until he figured out that it wouldn’t do any good. Last night, he finally slept through the night without a peep. It probably had something to do with the weekend that he had.
• We went to our first Yorkie Meetup on Saturday, where 25 Yorkies run wild in a doggie daycare room. Yes, you can actually tell them all apart, even though there was another dog there named George. What are the odds? This was followed by a visit to Polka Dog Bakery. Yes, George was in heaven. And yes, we’re fully aware that we’re crazy dog people now.
• Want to see what a 4 pound dog looks like riding on top of a 110 pound Great Pyrenees? Here it is. Max’s head is bigger than George.
• A footnote from the wedding we went to last weekend: In the middle of the event, some random (and hopefully drunk) uncle of the bride got up, grabbed the microphone, and gave the happy couple the great advice of “Never go to bed angry, and never go to bed wearing panties.” Classy.
• We still have squeaky floors. I need to work on that. I hope I don’t have to start ripping up floorboards.
• Sign #437 that I’m getting old: plain Bran Flakes are really tasty.
• If I could only get Streampad working, it would be really cool.

Now that we’re all in the holiday spirit (you are in the holiday spirit, right?), it’s time to roll out some holiday inspired dishes. Unfortunately, this isn’t one of them. This salad gained the title “Christmas Salad” based solely on the colors used in it: red, white, and green (and a little yellow, but you can ignore that). I suppose it could also be called “Italian Salad” because of the three colors, but that wouldn’t be very Chrismukkah-y, would it?

This salad is really easy to make and chock full of flavor and textures. The base of it is my favorite shaveable vegetable, shaved fennel. That would be the white(ish). Next comes the green, which in this case, is finely diced Japanese cucumbers. You obviously have some serious crunch going on here, right? Let’s add even more with some thinly sliced celery and celery leaves? Celery leaves? Yup. Celery is one of those majorly under appreciated vegetables, and the best part is usually always thrown out. The inner thin stalks and yellow leaves that are revealed when you peel the thick stalks away have amazing flavor, and do great things for a salad. Go try it. If you don’t like them, send them to me in the mail. I buy celery just for this inner part, oftentimes never getting to the outer ribs before they go bad.

Finally, the most important and fun part of the salad, the pomegranate seeds. I love pomegranates, and they’ve become popular over the past couple of years for their super health properties, not to mention how utterly cool they are. Of course, you have to deal with the bad part of them, which is the deep rain stains that they leave over your cutting board, counters, floors, shirt, pants, and underwear. Those little seeds are a big pain in the ass to get out, and you end up crushing half of them before you can even get to them. This problem has been solved thanks to an ingenious new piece of technology called a bowl of water. Yes, a bowl of water will solve all of your pomegranate prepping woes. Here’s how it works. Slice off the top and the bottom of the fruit, and then make 4 cuts in it, quartering it, but not all the way through the center, so it still stays intact. Lower the entire thing into the bowl of water (it should be big enough to submerge it and have plenty of room for you to maneuver your hands in there), and then section by section, pull it off, break it apart, and separate the seeds from the white inner membrane. Keep stripping the seeds off, they’ll sink to the bottom, and any white bits float to the top. When you finish one section, move on to the next. When you’re done, skim any white bits from the surface of the water, and then pour the whole thing through a strainer. You’ll end up with perfectly intact seeds and no mess. Brilliant! I think I discovered the pomegranite technique from a sign at Whole Foods, but if anyone asks, tell them I invented it, OK?

Toss the pomegranate seeds in with the fennel, cukes, and celery leaves, dress with olive oil, lemon, salt, and pepper, and you’re in business. It may not exactly fit into the hearty winter eating that goes on at the holidays, but there’s always room for crunchy salads in our house year round. Plus, pomegranites are only in season for a short while, so get them while you can. Merry Chrismukkah everybody!

• You know, I have pretty much every kitchen gadget that I can think of (or that I need), but sometimes, you just have to look a little harder for cool additions to make your life easier. Take, for example, the trash can. A trash can is a trash can, right? Well, we’ve been looking for a replacement for our nasty plastic can for a while, but we could never justify spending $100+ for a cool stainless steel one. Enter the Nine Stars DZR-42-1 Infrared Trash Can, otherwise known as the iTouchless Trash Can. Completely ridiculous and pure genius. You come within a few inches of the lid and it automatically pops open. A few seconds after you move away, it closes. You never have to touch it at all. It’s sleek, fits unobtrusively into the corner of our kitchen, and it’s a fricking robot, for crissakes. I think kids are going to have a lot of fun with this one.
• Congrats to Mike and Erika on getting hitched. This bring the list of unengaged/unmarried friends down to about 3. Damn, when did that happen?
• Bear quote of the week (while traversing a Hawaiian lava field): “Whoa, my boot started melting on that one!” Best show on tv.
• I got a new batch of Caputo Flour from my supplier, this time, paid for by my number 2 customer (the Lovely Suse is still my number one), who coincidentally, happens to be my supplier. I guess I never have to worry about not being able to get it.
• It’s blood orange season. I predict we’ll eat about 497 blood oranges in the next few months. We’re completely 100% in love with them.
• After refinishing our bedroom floors, it will eventually be time to attack the rest of the house. In the meantime, I’m starting to investigate solving another problem: the squeaks. It drives me absolutely bonkers, and once there’s a little baby sleeping in the house, it will become an even bigger problem. Time to fix them. I’m hoping that my Squeak-No-More kit will do the trick. I can’t wait.
• I sort of miss sleeping in the dining room.
• In a stunning turn of events, tacos made an appearance last week!!! Tacos! Tacos! Tacos!
• We heard the baby’s heartbeat for the first time last week. It was 155. He’s going to have to work on slowing that down a bit if he ever hopes to become a ninja when he grows up.

Well, after a year of talking about it, it was finally time to do something about our bedroom floors. I’m pretty sure that the back bedroom had never been refinished since they were first done 86 years ago, and over the years, judging from the scratches and patterns on them, the room had been used to cage wild animals (or two teenage boys). The front room looks like some one had attempted to refinish them in the not too distant past, but that person was apparently both blind and sufferring from terrible full-body muscle spasms. Once the dog started chewing chunks of polyurethane from them, and we found out that the back bedroom would soon have a new occupant, it was time to make the call. Three hours and $400 later, our new friends Hung and Booie had completely transformed the floors from this:

to this:

and finally this:

We are currently living in the dining room, surrounded by the contents of the bedrooms, waiting for them to completely dry. It’s a little like camping out, or living in a hotel, which is sort of cool. I can’t wait to scratch them new floors up when we move everything back in!

You may have noticed that the food postings have been a little more infrequent as of late, but there’s good reason for that. As the Lovely Suse is pregnant, our eating options have taken a bit of a hit. First, there’s all of the foods that pregnant women aren’t allowed to eat including many kinds of fish and seafoods, soft cheeses, deli meats, undercooked eggs, undercooked meats, raw fish, etc. Then, there are the the many foods that for whatever reason, just don’t appeal to her, or outright make her sick. This hs been the biggest challenge as it includes some of our favorite food: almost all mexican food including tacos and other things with fresh tortillas, the smell of cooking poultry, including our famous Sunday chicken (hence the reason I’ll be grilling chicken outdoors for as long as this lasts), most meats, all fish, lentils, overly spicy things, and a host of others. So take the list of our go-to meals, and immediately cut it in half. Then in half again. Well, this certainly limits things, huh? Well, what the hell have we been eating?

This has certainly taken some adjustment, and it’s an ongoing process of trying out different things. The biggest hits have been all sorts of Asian food, old-skool red sauce Italian classics, cold salads, and soups. Look back over the past few months of entries, and you’ll see these repeated over and over. Spaghetti and meatballs, sesame noodles, panini, more pasta, matzah ball soup. In addition, eggplant parmesan, minestrone soup, white bean soup, turkey and bean chili, and bun have made appearances. All things pickled are a hit (yes, pregnant women really do love pickles), lots and lots of various chips, pumpkin bread, and basically anything else that will stay down. Still, we’re running low on soup ideas, and we need to come up with some new ones to make. I miss tacos, I miss chicken and rice, I miss seafood, I miss lamb, I miss roast pork loin, I miss Mexican food, and I miss fish. It’s no one’s fault. It’s just the way it is. I won’t bother making two different meals in order to eat those things, so for now, we just soldier on. Come on, give me some ideas!

Update: In a stunning turn of events, tacos may soon make an appearance in our house! Stay tuned for more updates.

• Yes, the cat’s out of the bag. I’m going to be a dad. I’ve been doing lots of stuff around the house to prepare for my new role, most importantly, working on my “Dad look” in the morning: White undershirt, boxers, black socks pulled up to my knees. Instant Dad. Of course, tighty whiteys would be more appropriate, but I’m not that advanced yet. I’ll have to keep working on it.
• We’re getting the floors in our bedrooms refinished this week. By the looks of it, it looks like tigers have been spending plenty of time clawing at them over the years. They’re a mess.
• Mike is getting married this weekend. The Lovely Suse and I have been to about 20 weddings over the past four years, and unbelievably, this is the first local one we’ve been to together. New York, Connecticut, Chicago, Florida, Phoenix, Maine, Cape Cod, and New Jersey, but never in the Boston area. How is that possible?
• We got our Chrismukkah tree this weekend, and needless to say, George has some opinions about it. He goes into the living room and just starts barking at it. Sweet.
• I’ve only seen a couple of episodes, but Rob and Big is a pretty entertaining show. “In this reality buddy comedy, professional street skater Rob Dyrdek and his best friend and bodyguard, Christopher “Big Black” Boykin, share a house in the Hollywood Hills, bouncing from one ridiculous moment to the next.” By the way, I can spend about 4 seconds on the MTV website before I want to bash my head into the keyboard.
• It’s snowing right now. I’m so not ready for this. December 4, and I’m still grilling. How long do you think I can go?
• Some people call me cheap. I prefer “bargain hunter”. I refuse to pay retail for anything, just because I know you don’t have to, and I love finding deals. I may have topped myself last week finding a mismarked pair of my favorite brand of $180 jeans for $10. $10! The Lovely Suse tried to top me the following day with a pair of $4.50 sneaks. Hers are very cool, but I think I win.