Hi, SSmitee! Merry Christmas to you, too! Did you ask Santa for a subscription to Florida Gardening? I hope your garden flourishes. I'm still waiting for the jicama seed to mature. I think they must need a touch of frost. In any case, I'll send you some when they seem ready to harvest. Take care! cora

Belated Merry Christmas to all. Especially to Triciae, who was on my mind a lot this holiday and will be during future holidays. Dear Wonder Woman, I hope you are doing well, where ever you are. Thank you for showing me what courage and strength and kindness are. We drove down to the Bay Area for the holidays. Christmas Eve we had dinner with our good friends in Berkeley, raw oysters with mignonette, cracked crab, and the traditional Buche de Noel. Last night we had dinner with other good friends in Richmond, tenderloin, mashed potatoes and a warm cauliflower-brussel sprout salad. I made half of the tenderloin, cut pieces 1" thick and tied them into rounds, pan cooked, with a sauce of reduced white balsamic vinegar, Muscat wine, shallots and garlic, butter, sauteed mushroom stems, blended smooth, then simmered over whole mushroom caps. No recipe, just made it up. Our hostess roasted the rest of the tenderloin with a red wine and shallot reduction. We were supervised by a friend who is a head chef at a large hotel and, for the first time in many years, didn't have to work on Christmas day, but was nonetheless pressed into service which he did with good humour. I've been negotiating a stressful matter at work for the past few weeks. As of Dec 24, we were uncertain whether our little business unit would be shut down and I had prepared myself to be jobless come Jan 1st. That all got resolved satisfactorily at noon on Christmas Eve, final document review pending, so for the first time in a month, I was able to relax and unclench. It was nice.

We've had unusually balmy weather - just a flick or two of snow, earlier, but warm and green Christmas. When I see men walking with hands stuck into pockets, I ask them what's up with the hands in pockets - getting in practice for winter? And suggest to a number of folks that I meet in passing, that if they're in charge of ordering weather ... that they can keep doing this till March, if they like. Usually elicits a smile .. and often a comment in reply. ole joyful

My brother and I used to call them pixies. One year my brother developed a rash, right around the time he was playing with one of the pixies my grandmother had. Naturally we assumed he was allergic to pixies and my mom threw out the ones she had-more likely it was from the spray snow on the tree -you know that kind of stuff was pretty noxious back in the 60's and 70's!