Pat thank you so much for the Holiday wishes. Going right back for you also and the gorgeous pictures. I LOVE IT!!! Hope you have a wonderful 2010 and that we can share many great moments with our love to brugs, together. Lucy

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.

I should try growing microgreens - I can grow them outdoors this time of year, and so they would not be taking up space inside. I cooked an ahi tuna steak yesterday (for Christmas Eve) that weighed almost a pound, and so I have about 1/3 of it left over. I might not have bought it if I had noticed that it was $36 a pound, but I think that fish costs a bit more here in the desert. Swordfish was better priced at $25 a pound. The tuna was from Fiji, like the tuna I buy in L.A., and it was sushi grade, which meant that I could cook it rare. I bought a half young turkey breast to smoke today, and that was not expensive, and it was small enough that we won't have too many leftovers, but if we do, I will freeze half of them. We're also going to smoke some sausage while we are at it. Kevin bought a new electric smoker a few months ago, and it has WiFi capability, so that he can monitor it on his phone from indoors, which is helpful. We're having a new kitchen table delivered tomorrow, and so we have to move the old table out of the way today, but we have a dining table in the dining room. However, the kitchen table is my main prep space, since I have very limited counter space, and so I won't be doing much prep work once the old table is out of the kitchen. We're going to have to move it into the garage so that Revivals Thrift Store can pick it up. We could possibly sell it for a decent price, but we're not going to be around for that and mainly just want it out of our way. We're donating our old bar and all of the barstools as well, since they are not our taste. We kept them for a couple of years because they came with the house, but now we're definitely ready to get rid of them. I hope to start painting the upper cabinets next week. We go back to L.A. on Jan 8.

Merry Christmas to all. I hope everyone has a successful growing season in 2022!!