Heavy Holidays

It is not the food that we have planned for ourselves and bought for ourselves and eaten for our own sustenance that puts the pounds on during the holidays. Rather , it is the excess food that we find ourselves compelled to eat, because those for whom we bought it have seen fit not to eat.
Why is it that when you invite friends over for a get-together, friends you know perfectly well eat like wild boars and drink like fish, suddenly show up and have apparently joined Weight-Watchers as well as having become tea-totallers, showing an abstemious nature even beyond that of the Womens' Christian Temperance Union? I mean, exactly what am I to do with all that bloody beer they did not drink? Since I do not drink, it will be there until next Xmas. And the rum! I bought the smallest pequenino-piglet bottle of rum there is, something so small it was fit for a miniature doll house built on the theme of Little Nell, or The Drunkard's Folly; a Dickensian dollhouse like those Xmas village houses. I do not have a shot glass or jigger to measure careful drams of painful exactitude, and thus I promote a cavalier, swashbuckling approach to pouring drinks with large noggins filled to the brim!

The one confirmed Rum-and-Coke-meister was even joined by one or two other people, of whom I had never heard a propensity to drink rums and cokes, but there they were. Good. They barely put a dent in that blasted bottle! No! I looked at it when the party was winding down, and it was no more than a quarter down, even though I know there had been a constant parade to the bar area and back. It was like the goblet from which Thor drank at the giant's feast; a goblet which, unknown to Thor, was connected to the great Ocean, and try as he might, Thor could barely drain the cup.
And then the food. They ate like trenchermen and trencherwomen, but there were yet a few wheels of cheese and a jeroboam or two of rare wines, and enough of the Widow Clicquot to start a major nunnery. I am putting a dent in the cheese. She-who-must-be-obeyed suggests that I befriend a drinker or two for the winter. I warned her about this. I mean, do you actually want to be forced to purchase another refrigerator, since the one you already have is quite filled with beer, wine, and other toxic holiday fare.

At this point, I am almost ready to invite my family and relatives over just to sop things up! The only thing I truly miss is the egg nog. I use it mostly as a carrier or delivery system for nutmeg, an herb to which I am addicted. Nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon...and ginger: ginger fresh, ginger candied, ginger dried, chunks or cut thin as a gothic rose window. We used to make egg nog from the ground up back in the days before the salmonella-in-the-eggs craze. It was thickened with egg whites beaten and whipped cream of the heavy cream type, the heavy cream that could almost stand to attention before the stroke of the whisk. Heavy Holidays to one and all!