Christmas Eve

Lessons from Thendara Lane (while trying to cook for a Creole Christmas Eve party):

Never make Tangerine Butter in the winter. “Whisking” room-temperature butter the density of quartz is neither fun nor pretty.

Do not think you can listen to the Santa Fe Desert Chorale while baking Pecan Cornbread with dark rum and vanilla. The oven and cassette player will clearly short each other out.

Do not attempt to melt 5 Tbs. butter in a cast-iron skillet per the recipe instructions while cheering up the living room with the Christmas tree lights. The burner and the lights will clearly short each other out as well. You knew that about the burner and toaster, so shouldn’t you really have known better?

Don’t be silly. How can you imagine that you can turn on the oven and the oven timer at the same time? Turn the timer on after the oven’s safely off. This, too, will obviously overload the circuits. Where do you think this is—the Los Altos Hills? Never mind the blaze of outdoor lights on the mansion next door that makes you think of some Las Vegas casino. Like Las Vegas, it’s only a desert mirage.

Consider stationing a family member at the fusebox with a book, standing ready to turn the switch back on every five minutes or so during times of heavy cooking—such as boiling water in the teakettle for coffee.

Forget the oven. People can and do subsist quite happily on Gator Guacamole (lime and mint and black beans) and dark rum. All this new-age stuff like lights and heat is vastly overrated, after all.

image: Christmas tree in Piazza Portanova, Salerno old town, Italy. Christmas 2008., SOLOXSALERNO