A day to forget

Tis the season of forgetfulness – astonishing forgetfulness in my case. On Christmas Eve, we had our little family dinner, cooked mostly by Rebecca with me giving the occasional helpful hand. My aunt joined us, and afterward Rachael sang at the evening Mass, we both sang at Midnight Mass and at the two Masses in the morning. So my focus was rather on Christmas Eve and church. On the way home from the noon Mass on Christmas Day, I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to fix dinner for Rachael and my aunt, as Rebecca was working. Unbelievably, I had not given this a thought. My aunt was going to bring scalloped potatoes (she brought raw potatoes for me to cook), and I was going to plan a meal to go with them. I had some vague idea of a squash and broccoli dish I had seen, and I had actually purchased some broccoli. However, that is as far as it went, and I served the broccoli in another dish before the big day. So no plan, no food. We went to the one store open and got the ingredients for …. I can hardly say it – green bean casserole, which was what Rachael wanted. I got some carrots to make carrot soup. The soup was good but everything else was dreadful. Another facet of my feeble excuse is that we usually have our big family dinner on Christmas Day at my other aunt’s house. She was visiting her children in Hawaii for Christmas, so that meant a major change in routine. Not much of an excuse for such a gross dereliction of duty, is it? Well, we had the big Family Event on New Year’s Day instead. My assignment was to bring scalloped potatoes and some festive bread that I would make. I woke at the crack of dawn, as scalloped potatoes are not the work of a moment, and got cracking. I was sprinkling the flour on the potatoes, and was thinking that maybe I should have used some other variety of flour than my nice unbleached bread flour. Bread? Bread? A sinking feeling. I had planned to start it the evening before, but all day I was desperately trying to finish a few long put-off tasks before the year ended. I finally finished the last one at 11:45 PM. And I hadn’t given the bread a thought since the day previous. So I had to go to the store on the way to the party and purchase some outrageously expensive and not-as-good bread and that bummed me out, as they say. I took my camera so I could show you pictures of our happy family eating scalloped potatoes, but I forgot to take any pictures. Aaargh! So here is a picture of Christmas Past. All these cute children were there this year, but they are much bigger now. Sadly, Tom and my Uncle Bill were not there.