I have some really good friends who love to humor me. When I was growing up, we always had clam chowder and cheese and crackers on Christmas Eve. This tradition is something that I look back on fondly and I'm always sad when I can't honor it. This year, I decided to keep the tradition but give it an update... so we invited some close friends over on NYE to enjoy homemade chowder with us. It was a great evening.
We started with a cheese plate with three types of cheese including my favorite sun-dried tomato chevre, two types of crackers, dried apricots, dried cherries, cashews, pistachios and dark chocolate chunks. For the main course, we had homemade clam chowder (recipe below) and BLT popovers (you might remember this recipe from Thanksgiving). We ended the meal with coconut cheesecake that was divine (that recipe is to come).
Clam Chowder
4 slices bacon, diced
1 medium onion, chopped
3 potatoes, diced
1-8 ounce bottle of clam juice
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt
2-6.5 ounces cans of minced clams
3 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk
2 cups half and half
Cook bacon until crisp in a Dutch oven or large, heavy saucepan. Remove bacon to paper towels with slotted spoon; drain. Add onion to bacon drippings; sauté until softened. Add potatoes and clam juice, salt, and pepper. Cover and simmer for about 15 minutes, or until potatoes are tender. Remove from heat. Add minced clams with their liquid. Whisk flour into milk; add to chowder with half-and-half. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until clam chowder thickens and bubbles, or about 3 minutes. Ladle into bowls and garnish with bacon crumbles.
If you are lucky enough to invite a fish monger to dinner, you can hope that yours will also bring fresh clams AND cook them for you to use as garnish! Really, the perfect finishing touch...
Gift giving is always a dilemma for me. Overall, I'd say that I'm a generous person. But, I'm also always trying to be more aware of my environment - both the physical and political. Obviously, consumption harms the physical environment in ways to numerous to count but what message does it send out there in other ways? If we all quit buying just for the sake of buying, would the world be a better place? I'm not sure but I decided a couple of years ago to step off the holiday gift giving merry-go-round and I have to tell you that I feel like a much better person for doing so.
At the holidays, instead of giving a gift, we make a charitable donation in the names of our closest loved ones and that's it. We really don't do more than that - even when we want to and even when someone has given us a gift. Sometimes it is hard but we are sure to send them a sincere thank you card and hope that's enough for them. Eventually, we've found, they'll stop buying us things and, sometimes, even reciprocate in kind by making a donation to the Oregon Humane Society or the Oregon Food Bank in our names. Really, that's the best gift we could receive anyway.
Like everyone else we know, we have more than enough things and we have the resources to acquire any things that we truly want or need. I tend to be a perfectionist so gift shopping was always about finding just the right thing for each person. I would spend a lot of time thinking and searching. Often, that also meant spending more money then I maybe should have. Inevitably, I'd present them with the perfect gift only to be given an indifferent shrug and no note of thanks. All that effort, time and money would feel wasted and I'd exit the holiday season feeling more deflated than fulfilled. With my new philosophy, I have more time to spend with Onya and Ty doing the fun things that we enjoy - really, isn't that what the holidays, and the whole year really, should be about??
