Tragic Sandwich

Category: Traditions

  • Holiday Traditions: Roundup

    I hope all of you had a very Merry Christmas–unless you don’t celebrate it, in which case I hope you had a very nice day. We can all use nice days.

    When I was a child (and a teen, and an adult), I was famous in my family for what we called my “Christmas nap.” I’ve never been one for naps, unless I’m sick. Or it’s Christmas. Apparently this dates back to my infancy, when I got tired partway through opening presents and decided to take a nap. This happened. I’ve seen a photo.

    So yesterday we woke up for what was our first Christmas morning in our own home (normally we alternate between Mr. Sandwich’s parents, who are local, and traveling to my side of the family, who are not. We had prepared by pulling out the sofa bed; we already have a developing tradition called “Saturday Night Sofa Bed,” and we decided to extend it to “Christmas Morning Sofa Bed.” I got up a little ahead of everyone to cut up ham (I had made a ham on Friday) for scrambled eggs, and we ate eggs with ham, and apple bread. Then we piled onto the sofa bed to open presents.

    Next up: Elmo. A lot of Elmo. Baguette has a cold and clearly feels terrible, so we’re letting her watch more TV than usual. Maybe this isn’t perfect, but, hey, what do you want to do when you have a cold? Curl up in bed and watch TV. She’s no different.

    After a while, though, it became clear that she was exhausted and sad (she would cry at the end of each “Elmo’s World”), so we bundled her into the car and drove about 10 feet before she fell asleep. We kept driving for a couple of miles in the hope that it would help her stay asleep. And it worked! When we got home, I piled up sofa cushions and laid her down between me and them. The dog snuggled up on my other side, and we all had a nice, relaxing afternoon as she slept for several hours and I read The Hunger Games.

    It’s worth noting here that what this means is that Baguette stole my Christmas nap. But when was the last time I got to read for two hours straight? I don’t know, either.

    Once she was up and fed and bathed and changed (into another fleecy sleeper–sick babies don’t have to dress for dinner, IMO), we headed over to Mr. Sandwich’s parents’ house for dinner. After a meal of tri-tip, mashed potatoes, carrots, and brussels sprouts, we opened more gifts and watched a renewed (if still fussy) Baguette run around the house.

    I’d like to keep the family, food, and Sofa Bed. Baguette and I both vote to skip the colds next time. But to wind everything up, here are a couple of holiday exchanges from the House of Sandwich:

    When Mr. Sandwich got home from his bike ride, I told him how crazy the process of undoing the Fisher Price Noah’s Ark packaging was making me. A moment later, he’s tossing plastic zebras over to me.

    Me: How did you do that?

    Mr. Sandwich: I think three-dimensionally.

    Me: Thanks, Captain Kirk. Now, HOW DID YOU DO THAT?

    #ThisIsWhatHappensWhenTrekkersMarry

    On whether or not it’s worth making another trip out for gifts on Christmas Eve:

    Me: You know I’m very materialistic and not all about the love.

    Mr. Sandwich: I give you my love.

    Me: I want the thing, dammit.

  • Holiday Traditions: Opening Gifts

    I’ve written about what we eat, and how we’re trying to balance different gift-giving philosophies. But what about the actual gifts?

    Mr. Sandwich’s family would get up and go for a run. If you don’t think this sounds traditional, then you don’t know the Sandwiches–and has he got some stories for you. After that they’d open presents going one in turn, have breakfast, and loll about until it was time to go to the theater and see whatever uplifting and light-hearted holiday movie had been selected for the day. (Standouts include “Platoon,” “Das Boot,” “Empire of the Sun,” and “Dune.” The year they saw “Working Girl” marked a real sea change–although not so thorough a change as to keep them from “The Crucible” years later.)

    Across the country (or halfway across, depending on when exactly we’re talking about), my brother and I would insist on a ridiculously early wake-up time, actually waking up two hours earlier, convinced that someone was breaking into the house to steal our presents. (We had a similar fear about the Thanksgiving turkey.) We would hide and play in my room until it was time to get our parents up. Then we would all head downstairs to the living room.

    We’d open stockings, each pulling out one item in turn, and then have breakfast. After that, we’d move back to the living room and open gifts one at at time, with hugs for the giver after each. The rest of the day was spent playing with toys and board games, watching movies, and reading books, followed by preparing our traditional dinner. Unlike the Sandwiches, we never left the house. It was a lovely, cocooning day with immediate family.

    Tomorrow morning will be our first real Christmas morning in our home; the others have all been spent with one or the other set of parents. We’re still figuring out what we want to do–open gifts? Save them for later when we’re at Mr. Sandwich’s parents’ home? Some of both? I don’t know if we’ll settle on something that is the start of a tradition. But that’s okay. Traditions take time.

  • Holiday Traditions: Food

    Growing up, we ate nothing in particular (well, something, not just anything specific) on Christmas Eve. Christmas morning was usually sour cream coffee cake with eggs and bacon. For Christmas dinner, though, we pulled out all the stops:

    • Roast prime rib
    • Yorkshire pudding
    • Creamed spinach
    • Baked potatoes

    Then my mom passed away, and I married Mr. Sandwich, and my dad remarried, and my brother got married. So we wound up being a completely different family. An awesome one, but completely different.

    That doesn’t mean we have to give up all of the tradition, but it does mean that it ought to reflect who we are now. Two years ago, therefore, we worked together to identify which parts of the meal were essential, and which could be changed. We wound up with:

    • Roast prime rib (alternate for those who don’t eat beef: grilled salmon)
    • Yorkshire pudding
    • Maple-glazed carrots
    • Rosemary Au Gratin Potatoes (I use less cream and add ricotta)

    No dessert. There’s no room for dessert. That tradition hasn’t changed.

  • Happy Mother’s Day

    I can’t believe this applies to me! But lots of people have been calling and sending cards and posting Facebook messages–plus there’s a baby dozing a few feet away, so clearly it does.

    A few days ago, Mr. Sandwich asked me what I wanted for Mother’s Day. My answer? “See’s Candies.” Then yesterday it expanded to “See’s Candies, and a chance to wash my hair.”

    Since it isn’t just Mother’s Day, but also my mother’s birthday, dinner was (of course) Chinese food. Since our move, we have sampled a number of nearby Chinese restaurants and found them lacking. We were therefore delighted to find that Yang Chow has, in addition to their Chinatown location, a restaurant in Canoga Park. It’s a bit of a drive, but worth the effort.

    And who took me to See’s Candies, made sure I had a block of time for washing my hair, and went to pick up dinner? Why, the always awesome Mr. Sandwich, of course.

    I’m going to have to start planning now for Father’s Day.

  • Remembrance of Black Bean Sauce Past

    All of my life, we’ve eaten a lot of Chinese food. When my brother and I were very young, our family didn’t eat out much. One of the few excursions we could afford on a semi-regular basis was dinner at a Chinese restaurant. I think there were two reasons for this. For starters, Chinese food was proportionally cheaper than it is now. And also we would only order three dishes–one for my mother, one for my father, and one for both my brother and me (that one was usually Beef with Oyster Sauce).

    Later, it turned out that we just liked Chinese food, although the restaurant name wasn’t supposed to be that all-encompassing. In my mother’s opinion, a restaurant that didn’t specify its region wasn’t going to be any good. It wasn’t enough to advertise “Chinese food,” it had to specify Szechwan, Hunan, Cantonese, etc. We liked them all, so a specific region wasn’t the deciding factor. She felt that if the restaurant didn’t have a predominant regional identification, the owners and/or cooks didn’t know enough about the food they were making. Interestingly, many of our favorite restaurants did not meet this standard.

    In Rockville, Maryland, the Far East Restaurant was our establishment of choice. Although the naming principle doesn’t seem to have held here, we always noticed that the Chinese patrons got porcelain teapots, while the European-descended patrons got plain metal teapots. These days that policy has changed, and there is equality of teapots at the Far East.

    We moved to San Antonio, where we found the Wah Kee Seafood Restaurant. After several years in San Antonio, a multiplex movie theater opened near us, and the Wah Kee opened up in the adjacent shopping center. Another favorite was the Chinatown Cafe, which we liked so much that in 2004 J and I had our wedding rehearsal dinner there.

    I found good Chinese food right away when I moved to New Jersey (good Mexican food proved more elusive). Unfortunately, several months later the restaurant burned to the ground. While that was definitely a loss, I can recommend Lotus Cafe in Hackensack and Taipei Noodle House in Teaneck.

    There is a surprising lack of good Chinese food on the Westside of Los Angeles. About the best you can do is Hop Li. It’s pretty good, but not what it could be. No doubt this is largely because the center of Chinese restaurants in the area is in the San Gabriel Valley, but it’s still surprising that so densely populated an area can’t do better. When my grandparents lived in Monterey Park, my favorite restaurant was the Dragon Regency, where one night the chef made me a special dish of lemon cod fillets. I never ordered anything else, and eventually they put it on the menu. My grandparents and I were such loyal patrons that not only did they make me special dishes, they also gave me impromptu birthday celebrations, complete with bean cakes and gifts. Prior to our wedding, J and I went to Engaged Encounter (we will never get that weekend back), and I suggested that we have dinner at the Dragon Regency on our way to the seminary. I was devastated to find that the restaurant had closed, and I have yet to find anyone who can make that perfect lemon cod. Not even the excellent NBC Seafood, where we had dinner with two of J’s friends last year, can manage that particular dish.

    So Chinese food has always played an important role in my family’s meals, although these days I haven’t got the slightest interest in Beef with Oyster Sauce. Chinese food was my brother’s comfort food when he was home sick from school, and I love it so much that one year I gave it up for Lent. And it’s one of the ways that my brother and I choose to honor my mother on her birthday. The two of them both loved Peking Duck, so that’s one of the dishes he’s sure to order. I don’t order any particular dish–but aside from the Dragon Regency’s lemon cod, I’ve never had one.

    Tonight J and I had dinner at Yang Chow, in L.A.’s Chinatown. We found it a couple of years ago with my brother and his girlfriend (now his wife), and it seemed like the right place to celebrate my mother’s birthday this year. That was a good choice, as was the Beef with Black Bean Sauce that the chef made on request (oddly, the menu does include black bean sauce–but only on squid).

    I just wish she’d been there to join us.