Category — Food

Once a visit, my family piles in the rental car to head around the island of Hawaii.  On the agenda is a stop at several waterfalls, a trip to the Hilo farmers’ market, and a journey out onto the volcano.  Oh, and food – lots of food.

Kona is on the Southwest side of the island.  That’s where the condo is:  our starting point.  After a fabulous breakfast of avocado bagels and papaya, we set out in search of Akaka Falls – a fantastic waterfall on the other side of the island.  On the way, we drove through barren lava fields, lush grasslands, and tropical rainforests.  Hawaii is a feast for the eyes, as well as the mouth.  The deep red soil contrasts with the green vegetation, making agricultural fields especially beautiful.

The drive to the falls was entertaining.  We looked out the windows, sang songs and I read my book from time to time.  The first part of the trip is always entertaining…

Once at Akaka Falls State Park, we piled out in search of the bathroom.  As instructed, we checked our belongings and made sure the car was locked.

Then we headed down the trail that leads through the rain forest to the falls.

The park is truly beautiful.  The well paved paths and new handrails make the walk relatively easy, as it winds through giant bamboo, enormous banyan trees, and a thousand other exotic flora.  The foliage is so colorful and shiny that it looks like it could be part of a resort – planted specifically for our entertainment.

The park houses two sets of falls:  Kahuna falls, the smaller of the two, and Akaka Falls.

When we visited, Kahuna was virtually non-existent.  Even though it’s winter right now, the precipitation seems to be less than usual.  Mauna Kea, the “white mountain,” which usually has a bit of snow visible, is brown this year.

Akaka falls was the main event, anyway, and it was beautiful, pouring out over the cliff and dissipating – falling as mostly mist to the valley floor.

We took our pictures, and marveled at the gorgeous plants all around us.  And then we headed back up the trail to the parking lot and the truck.

Brilliant.  While we took our time along the trail, the door of the truck stood open.  Oh, it was locked, alright – just open.  We were probably suffering delusions from hunger…  Slightly aghast, we filed in and set off in search of our first snack of the day.  We’d seen a bakery on our way to the falls, in a set of little, old-west storefronts along the road in the little town of Honomu.

Most people were hoping for coffee.  I was hoping for malasadas – Portuguese donuts.  I’d been introduced to these little gems on a trip to Oahu with some of my Hawaiian friends.  They’re thick, airy, and coated in sugar – or as I like to think of it, pixie dust.

We walked inside Mr. Ed’s Bakery and found a case of fantastic looking pastries, most of which were clearly some variation on Hawaiian sweet bread.  But no malasadas.  So we picked out a good variety, including a guava bear claw, macaroons, monkey bread, and an ensaymada – something that was described as “Hawaiian sweetbread, butter and sugar.”  I thought that would translate into a butter cream frosting.  I was wrong.  It was whipped butter and sugar spiraled in a sweetbread Danish.  Amazing.

We then stepped from the bakery into another room of the shop.  The walls were lined with beautiful, colorful jars of preserves, butters, jams, fruits, all made by Mr. Ed.  (If you like this kind of thing, they ship.  The selection was incredible.)

I asked the woman behind the counter where we could find malasadas on our way to Hilo.  “Baker Tom’s.  It’s about three miles up the road on your right.”  Excellent.  Just enough time to inhale the pastry we’d bought at Mr. Ed’s.

Nobody else in the car was familiar with malasadas, but they were game to try new pastry, and my description gave them an alarming level of enthusiasm.  We climbed back into the car, and headed to the main road, checking the odometer first.  The bakery hadn’t had coffee, and we didn’t want to miss our chance for coffee and malasadas at Baker Tom’s.  We tore into the freshly purchased pastries, pulling long strips of the bread off and passing gooey handfuls of plastic wrap around the car.

At about mile 3 we’d consumed nearly everything, in a flurry of “mmmmmm”s and “yummy”s.   And by mile 4 we began to lose hope that we would find Baker Tom’s.  Maybe we’d missed it, zooming past.  Or perhaps it was the other direction.  We started rationalizing.  Oh well, we were rather full and sugared-out anyway…

And then we saw it.  “MALASADAS” the banner read, stretched across the front of a converted auto mechanic’s shop.  “MALASADAS!!!!” we all screamed as dad turned sharply into the drive.

The people sitting on the little picnic table in front of the shop must have heard us yelling or seen the insane glint in our eyes as we came hurtling through the parking lot.  At once, they all stood up from the work they had been doing, scattering to different parts of the building, and making room for us.

We were crazed.  Mom practically ran up to the register, asking frantically, “you DO have malasadas, don’t you?”  The lady behind the counter, dressed in a Hawaiian print apron, looked down at us with an expression of concern, and nodded.  She pushed her head through the swinging door that separated the small storefront from the crowded bakery, checking with someone in the other room.  She reemerged and motioned to a case.

“We’ve got lilikoi, strawberry cheesecake, and original, and then the meat filled ones.”

Our hands still sticky from Mr. Ed’s, we placed our orders and received the fried wonders with awe.

It’s possible that we got a little carried away.  But the malasadas were good.  They were chewy and sugary and good.  Even the slightly burned coffee tasted perfect to us, perched on the picnic table.

As we were brushing the last remnants of sugar from our faces, a lanky guy in a hairnet and a harlequin apron appeared.  Baker Tom wasn’t exactly what we expected, talking with Dad about a custom leather shop.

But he could have had 2 heads for all we cared.  He made a mean malasada.  And we were all high on sugar.  We yelled our thanks to the folks at Baker Tom’s as we returned to our chariot.

From there, our engines fueled, we headed toward Hilo, where we planned to have a nice lunch (heaven forbid we didn’t have a plan for eating).  But first, there were more waterfalls to see.  The spectacular Rainbow Falls, known for its horseshoe-shaped falls, was just a tiny trickle, splashing almost comically into the giant pool below.

Our tour book told us that the “boiling pots” were just a mile up the road, so we headed there.  Supposedly, the formation of the rocks is such that, during periods of high rainfall, the water rushes through the lava basins, boiling into the air.  Evidently, in periods of not-so-high rainfall, the water trickles through the pools, creating a peaceful, comfortable atmosphere, but no boiling.

The pots were definitely more than a mile up the road, but we eventually found them, just as we were getting ready to turn around.

I really liked the feeling of this park.  A wide grassy area buffered the falls from the parking lot, and the view down onto the pots was pretty spectacular, even with the low water flow.  We were almost the only people there, which added to the sense of peace and privacy.

I snapped a couple of pictures, listened to the water, and then ran around the park, still jacked up from the sugar explosion, and hoping to blow off a little of the nervous energy flooding through me.  It’s a lot harder to pile into an enclosed space with four other people when all I want to do is run around.  Still, the ride to Hilo wasn’t a long one.

Saturday is market day in Hilo.  Vendors bring their produce and baked goods, and they also bring their crafts, arts and other stuff to sell.

My favorite booth was a display of beautiful glass panels, drizzled in red or blue; capturing the fire and water of the island.  I chatted with the owner, who was very proud of the process he has developed for creating the beautiful pieces.

The food area of the market is jammed full of vendors selling their home-grown products.  Along with avocados and papayas there are more exotic purple sweet potatoes, and ferns.

And there were more pastries.  Ensaymadas, malasadas and mochi lined the little tables.

Even though it had been like an hour since we ate pastry, we held off this time.   Instead, we headed to the Pesto Café for lunch.  There was a wait, so we put our name in and walked into the little discovery center next door.  Cool.  The walls were papered in underwater pictures, with little doors opening onto video screens or aquarium tanks.  A digital screen doubling as a tabletop in the middle of the room explained the formation of the Hawaiian islands.  And, hidden in the back corner, was a mock-up of a submarine interior.

I grabbed Dad and we headed in.  There were two stations set up, each with a little round window onto an underwater salvage scene, and controls for the underwater robotic arms.  Too fun.

We played with the robots until we got the call that our table was ready.  I would have stayed longer in the little room, flipping switches, and making the metal fingers grab at the sand on the other side of the glass.

The Pesto Café is set in a high-ceilinged colonial-feeling building with slowly turning fans and big windows.  Lunch was good, consisting mostly of tasty pizzas, and overfull cappuccino.

We ate about half of what we ordered, and packed the rest with us for an afternoon snack.  Our next stop was the volcanoes, and the volcanoes always make me hungry.

The Big Island of Hawaii is my favorite island so far.  It’s striking – looking from the beach up over the high desert or the jungle to the top of the Mauna Kea observatory.  From the blast of flowery, hot air that hits me in the face when I step off the plane, to the birds that wake me in the morning, I enjoy being here.

Yesterday was a good sampler day.  We hit a beach for some sun and boogie boarding, watched whales throwing themselves into the air, had lunch in an old-school café, and looked over cliffs onto a stunning black-sand beach.

I’m staying with my parents on the Kona side of the island.  We’ve been coming here for over 15 years.  At this point, it really does feel like a home away from home.  This 3-week trip is the longest time I’ve spent in the island.  It’s a long time.  Still it’s nice to feel like I can pass on activities one day without fear of missing out.  I know we’ll go snorkeling more than once, and the beaches are always there.

After a breakfast of papaya and apple bananas from the local farmer’s market, yesterday’s Hawaiipalooza started with a trip to Hapuna State Park.  This beach, about 30 miles north of Kailua-Kona (the big city and airport on this side of the island), is awesome.  The beach itself is about half a mile long, and super wide.  There’s plenty of parking up top and a short walk to the ultra-fine white sand.  There are bathrooms, showers, covered picnic areas and a burger shack just up from the beach.  But that’s not the important part.

Hapuna is gorgeous.  The sand runs up from the turquoise water to the green bushes that grow along the coastline.  (Snorkling tip:  The leaves of the beach naupaka plant, which grows along a lot of the beaches, can be crushed and wiped on the inside snorkel masks to cut down on fogging.  It’s at least as effective as spitting.)  The bay is protected by lava outcroppings on either side that send the incoming waves crashing into the air.

Some people come for the swimming and snorkeling, but on wavy days they come for the boogie boarding.  Depending on the size of the waves and the strength of the current (marked on beach signs), the waves range from gentle for beginners, to expert only.

The past couple of days have been red flag days, meaning there’s the possibility of high surf.  With our little, drugstore boggie boards, we hit the waves until the lifeguard started announcing “advanced body surfers only” from her bullhorn.  It was pretty much great.  Dad ended up snapping a board, and I laughed like a little girl as the waves sailed me through the air and then brought me bouncing down into the surf – over and over again.

Yup, we were cool.

After a morning of such rigorous activity, we were pretty much starving.  There’s something about a combination of sun, sand and surf that makes me ravenous.

One of our favorite places on the island is the town of Hawi.  Situated in North Kohala, Hawi is a super-charming look at old Hawaii.  For sports buffs, it’s also the turnaround for the bike portion of the Ironman.  We go there to browse the shops (there’s a great crystal shop there), eat ice cream on the main strip, and for lunch at the Bamboo Restaurant & Gallery.

The place was a hotel at the turn of the last century, and has a colorful history right out of the old west, starring horses, traveling workers and “ladies of the night”.

The food is great and the service is delightful.  My favorite is the Hawaiian veggie stir-fry.  I get it with tofu, Thai coconut sauce, and this year, whole wheat noodles.

I’m not much of a fan for fried tofu, but this stuff was perfect.  Fresh and slightly crispy, it had none of the sogginess that plagues badly done tofu.

Yesterday, the table also hosted a kalua pig (cooked in a pit, not with the liqueur) sandwich with pineapple slaw and waffle-cut fries, a mon chong fish-plate, and a quesadilla.

The menu provides tons of options – almost everything can be done with pork, chicken, fish or tofu – and the food itself is really tasty.

Directly across the street, is the Kohala Coffee Mill, a little complex that serves all manor of treats.

You can get Kona coffee and mac-nut ice cream at the parlor downstairs, or fudge samples and shave ice – the real kind that they shave right in front of you – upstairs.

I need to have at least one ginormous shave ice during my trip to the island.  Yesterday was the day.  My favorite combo is two-flavor pina colada and peach.  The more traditional shops serve it with either ice cream or red beans in the bottom of the paper cone.  I like mine with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Tasty.  The flavoring melts down to make a slushy, sugary smoothie in the bottom that can be sucked out with a straw.  Yummy.

Just up from Hawi is the village of Kapa’au, and the statue of Kamehameha the Great.

The statue has a fantastical history, including the shipwreck and salvage that brought the statue here instead of Honolulu, it’s original destination.

From there, we headed up to the end of the road – literally.  The road through Hawi rings the island, except for the stretch where the Kohala mountains stretch up in great cliffs, and empty their rain-forests into the ocean.

The Pololu lookout provides exceptional views of the forest, cliffs and black-sand beach.

A trail at the end of the road leads down to the beautiful – and rugged – beach and a beautifully peacefully tree-covered area where you can listen to the crashing waves, and feel completely nestled into the island.  Yesterday we stayed at the top and watched as triumphant hikers emerged from the trailhead, grinning and sweating.

The island is pretty amazing.  Eleven of the world’s fifteen climate types can be found on the island.  Yesterday’s hour drive from Kohala to the Kona coast took us from dense rain forest that looked like it could be South America, and across high-desert that could put you in southern Idaho.  And then there’s the lava.  Great stretches of lava look like they’ve tumbled out of the earth yesterday, covering swaths of land in a black, rich blanket.  People create graffiti using pieces of coral, stark white on the lava background.  The island is simply beautiful.

Last night, after a long day of adventures, we settled in for dinner on the patio – the lanai.  Looking out over the lava and the golf courses, up into the hills around Mauna Kea and its observatories, we ate sushi, sweet potato pie, and haupia (coconut) cake.  We relived the day – and planned the next set of adventures.

Tomorrow we’re heading around the island to Hilo and the volcano.  To the jungles and waterfalls.  And I’m sure to more food.  Always more food.

After spending some time with my family in Idaho, I’m back in Portland for a bit.  You know Portland – the land of the super-yummy specialty restaurants.

Today, I had lunch with my friend Leo, who I hadn’t seen in months.  We planned to go to a deli for some grub and gab, but when we drove up to it, it was closed.  Fighting through the momentary fluster, Leo regrouped.  “How about the Red Bike?  You like fried egg sandwiches?”

Now, I’d never heard of the Little Red Bike Café but, as it so happens, I do enjoy fried egg sandwiches.  So, we made a course-correction and headed toward the smell of butter (always a safe option).

The café is cute.  Disguised as an unsophisticated walk-up counter kind of place, the café is anything but.

The first clue to this was the tea menu.  If a place has more than 10 types of tea on a special menu, it’s not unsophisticated.  If the tea comes in a tea press, it’s bordering on fancy.

We ordered a couple of sandwiches and sat down to talk about life.  (Leo and I always have a good time conspiring to find fantastic business ideas and meaningful spiritual journeys.)  But when they food arrived, I found myself totally distracted by the first bite.

I got something called the “flat tire”.  It had scrambled egg, cheese, aoli and veggie-bacon on a sesame bagel.  Super-yum.  When I ordered, I asked them to leave the bacon off.  Forgetting I was back in Portland, I was surprised when the guy behind the counter offered me veggie-bacon.  Yup, veggie-bacon.  That just about made my day, not because I like bacon, but because I was reminded of the coolness of Portland.  And, as the sandwich sat there, the aoli melted and coated the bread and egg.

Leo got something else – something with real bacon.

This bad-boy was serious.  It had a fried egg, thick bacon and was on a ciabatta roll.  I didn’t even ask how it was, I was so consumed with mine, but it looked tasty and disappeared quickly.

The staff was extra-helpful and Portland-funky.  As I walked out, I looked back on the place and mused.

Every-so-often I forget how cool Portland is.  You don’t even have to look for incredible places to eat here.  I’ve never even heard of a restaurant that specializes in fried-egg sandwiches, but now I know where to go next time I’m craving one.

A trip to see my family is a trip regulated by meals.  We’re planning lunch and dinner while eating breakfast.  My trip this Christmas was no exception.

The first meal I had with my parents was on the way back from the airport.  Dad was excited about a barbecue place, and I wasn’t so hungry, so we headed to some ranch-styled chain near the Boise mall.  I was still finding it difficult to figure out what to eat (a problem since my return to the states).  I thought a barbecue joint would probably have exactly one option for a vegetarian, which would make my choice easier, but this place had two – so I ordered both.

When we sat down at the table I laughed out loud.

Along with several bottles of bbq sauce, Each table was outfitted with its own roll of paper towels – you know, just in case.  I ate about half of the salad and side of mixed veggies I ordered, and packed the leftovers home.

The next morning’s breakfast was much more exciting.  Like Portland, Ketchum has a number of really excellent restaurants.  Eating at restaurants I knew meant ordering from familiar menus.  This morning it was “Huevos Kneadery” at “The Kneadery”, a restaurant that has been around as long as I can remember.  Eggs (over-medium), black beans, cheese, salsa, avocado and sour cream in a tortilla or two occupied me as I remembered how to eat again.

The fresh cookies on the way out helped, too.

The following days were filled with several pizzas, frequent coffee outings (my dad likes to go every Wednesday and Friday when the local paper comes out), and fantastic home-cooked meals.  The most important of those meals was, and always is, Christmas dinner, when we have my mom’s ravioli.

There is a day sometime in November that is set aside for ravioli-making.  Mom gets out the food processor, the pasta-rolling machine, and her immense Formica cutting-board.  Dad sets aside the better part of the day to assist in the folding, cutting and crimping that will ensue.

Over the years, I’ve watched them assemble the pasta, and on occasion, have been allowed to help as well.  The making of the ravioli is serious business.  Everything from the amount of flour on the cutting board to the type of fork used to crimp the edges makes a difference in the way they turn out.  Mom, who grew up watching her grandmother hand-roll the pasta dough is a master.  Dad, the heir to a distinctly non-Italian, German tradition, has proven himself a capable helper.  I, however, have proven that I can push too hard with the fork, turning a well-crimped edge into pasta fringe.  I can whip up a darn good timbalo or saffron ricotta sauce, but the ravioli is an item I’ve yet to master.  I’m hoping to take on the challenge in the next year or so.

The ravioli come in two kinds on Christmas:  cheese and meat.  The cheese version is ricotta and spinach, and the meat is ground beef and spinach (correct me if I’m off, Mom).  Both are delicious, and until last year, Mom’s ravioli was one of the few exceptions to my vegetarianism.

In addition to the ravioli, Mom makes her sauce from scratch.  She starts with a roast – or two – tomato paste and sauce and other stuff, and lets it cook all day long.  One of the great treats of going home is walking into the house in the afternoon to the smell of the sauce simmering away.  From the time she was tall enough to lift the lid, my sister has been sneaking tastes.  First it was with string-cheese dipped into the deep red sauce.  More often now, it’s with bread – my mom’s excellent rolls if they’re available.

No, the sauce is not strictly vegetarian, but I remove as much of the meat particles as I can see, and remind myself that even the Dali Lama eats meat every other day.  I might eat only the cheese ravs, but I’m not willing to give up the sauce.

About an hour before dinner is served, the grand ravioli count begins.  A complex calculation takes place.  It includes the number of people in the room, their relative hungriness, as well as an evaluation of past performance on the part of the eaters.  Some kind of an algorithm is employed to tell my mom and dad exactly how many dozen meat and cheese ravioli should be brought from the basement freezer where they have been stored, spread in single layers, in plastic bags.

The ravs are big.  The squares measure about 3-4 inches on each side.  Cooking takes a while, and is done with extreme care and delicacy.  If one bursts, the parts are fished out to be tested, or added to the leftover bin.  Not much is ever wasted.  They are too precious.

There was one year my family didn’t spend at my parent’s house.  I had surgery, and my family came to Oregon for Christmas.  Along with presents, they packed ravioli and sauce in a cooler.  And there was a fabled year when mom sent a similar care package cross-country to her sister who was spending the holiday in Massachusetts.  Nothing interrupts the ravioli.

When it is time, the ravioli are brought to the table last, after everyone is seated, and remain in the center of the table, people passing plates to those sitting closest, and calling out orders “2 meat and 3 cheese!”

When the ravioli are made, they are marked.  They are pierced one way with a fork for cheese and another for meat.  Even though they are placed on separate ends of the platter, the markings can help with identification.  And Identification is something of an art at the dinner table.  “That’s a cheese.”  “No, it’s a meat.”  “Give it here and I’ll find out.”  The cheese seem to flatten out while the meat poof up ever so slightly.  It’s more of a parlor game to see who can identify them the best.  Nobody is really disappointed if they end up with the wrong kind on their plate, and I can always find someone to take a stray meat rav off my hands.

In my mind, there are three things that must accompany the ravioli – aside from cheese, I mean that’s just a given: a great crystal bowl of sauce and meat, just in case; my mom’s rolls (they are super-tasty, but super-sticky to make); and olives.  Pitted, extra-large, black olives are always passed around the table for my mom, aunt, sister and me to put on our fingers and wave around briefly before devouring them.  There are always other things on the table for Christmas.  A ham was incorporated into the meal when my brother-in-law was incorporated into the family.  A few slices are eaten, but the main attraction is the ravioli.

We each have our own ways of eating them.  I favor a quadrant approach.  I carefully cut each rav into four, square pieces.  They are perfect bite-sizes (pretty much the size of your average store-bought ravioli).  That way each bite has the same proportion of dough to filling.  It is a tradition of rituals, and the method of eating is a deeply personal one.  (I’d never think of criticizing the way someone eats their ravioli.)  There are others, however, that are distinctly communal.

As the eating begins, so does the counting.  A close accounting is kept, and regular reports made to the table, as though the number of raviolis a person eats secretly determines whether they will get into heaven.  There are great ravioli controversies surrounding the most consumed by one person at my mother’s table.  There is a legend of a guest eating 21 in a sitting.  I was there for the alleged incidentt, as was nearly everyone else in my family, but over the years the number has become so fuzzy that none of us knows  exactly what happened that night.  (It wasn’t Christmas, so I’m pretty sure the accounting wasn’t as critical.)  I know that I, personally, have maxed out at 14 ravioli, and my aunt at 12, because we were competing one year.  (I won.)  But, in a sane year like this one, I stopped at 6 and had room for pumpkin and apple pie.

Every year someone exclaims the ultimate praise, “I think these are the best you’ve ever made!”  Most years, Mom smiles kindly and goes back to eating – the ravs are always good.  But some years, she looks down at the piece on her fork, studies it carefully, and nods her head, “they really are good this year, aren’t they.”  And then one of us will pass a plate calling out “I want that meat one right there – no there.  Thanks!” as another of us waves an olive-laden finger in the air.

Christmas in Idaho, for me, is magical.  The place where I grew up is one of those mountain locations that looks more like a postcard than anything else.  Many days have some kind of precipitation, whether it’s thunderstorms in the summer or snow flurries in the winter.  Every day, however, is marked by a beautiful clearing of the sky that is eye-watteringly blue.

There are some things that happen every year when I go home.  Christmas eve is marked by a soup-feed at my parents house (usually attended by the priest who will be celebrating evening mass), evening mass at my childhood Catholic church, hanging of stockings, a morning feast, and the crowning event, a Christmas ravioli dinner.

There are other things that are unexpected, variations that make the holidays interesting.  Yes, my sister and I will get in trouble for whispering and giggling in church, but the results vary.  We didn’t do it much as kids, when we were busy serving as altar-girls, but as adults, it seems that we can’t help ourselves.  “I’m sitting next to Kristin!” my little (30-year-old) sister demanded.  I climbed over my grandparents and mother to kneel next to her at the bend in the pew, my knees widely straddling to different kneelers.  We kept it together until my mom turned us in to my grandmother for whispering.  The resulting boxing motions made by my 89-year-old, heathen grandmother sent me into fits of stifled laughter that brought tears rolling down my cheeks.

When the mass got to the “prayers of the faithful,” a time when parishioners pray aloud their hopes for world peace, the healing of friends and family members, and the memories of lost loved ones, my sister gripped my hand tightly.  It wasn’t because she was distraught or devout in her prayers.  It was to keep me from saying anything.  As an adult, I’ve found the prayers of the faithful a nice gesture, a time to fix the positive thoughts of those in the high-ceilinged room on the betterment of all.

During a previous Christmas mass, I opened my mouth to voice a prayer for a family-friend who had suffered an accident and was undergoing a difficult recovery.  I imagined the positive energy floating to the hospital bed, and the warm feeling the family would feel knowing that people were sending love.  I didn’t hear the gasps down the pew when I said the name, but it became clear that I’d let a cat out of the bag as soon as mass was over and groups of people darted in my direction.  Apparently, the accident wasn’t public knowledge and I’d missed that piece of information.  Fortunately, my family clued me into the situation, and I was able to rapidly employ Jedi mind-tricks.  When we got home from church, the message light was already flashing on the phone, the sign of a truly small town.

From that point on, we referred to the incident as “the time Kristin ruined Christmas”.  This year, however, I kept my jaw firmly clenched and my sister and I celebrated when I made it through mass without ruining the Christmas of 2009.  I left it to the frozen, overburdened powerlines to try to do that.

As we drove down the road to my sister’s house after Christmas mass, she noted that the streetlights were out.  I watched as porch lights extinguished at the passing of our truck.  Pulling up to the house, we saw the telltale sign of jerky flashlight bursts against the inside of the window coverings that told us the power was out.  We walked Cathy to the door and told her to come to the parents’ house if it got too cold.  Her parents-in-law were visiting, and the temperature was dipping below zero (that’s Fahrenheit, people).

When we pulled into Ketchum, a 20 minute ride from Cathy’s house, we found the traffic-lights were out.  That meant it was a darn big power outage – on Christmas Eve.  Fortunately, the lights were on at my parent’s place, so I powered up my laptop and climbed into bed, ready for a Christmas ritual of my own.  Woot.com is one of my online loves.  It’s an electronics clearing house that posts a new item every night at midnight central time.  Every so often, they post something called a “Random Bag of Crap” – $3.00 for 3 pieces of random electronics (and other stuff).  Everything from blow-up tiki huts, to Nintendo wiis and insulated beer mugs for $3.00.  Hundreds of thousands of people compete for these coveted items.  Usually the BOCs are posted randomly – but Christmas is one of the few days you can plan ahead to be ready for them.

So I sat in bed with 7 minutes to go, my account loaded and my credit card at the ready.  And then the power went out.  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo!!!!  The wireless router was no longer available.  I stayed up for the next 7 minutes, hoping that the power would roar back up in time.  At about 10 after, I gave up the ghost, dug around for my headlamp, and tried to get some sleep.  Surely, the power would be on by morning.

—

When my dad bought a generator for the Y2K meltdown, I laughed at him.  We sat in front of the tv and watched the celebrations in Australia and China as nothing happened.  Fireworks went off and the lights stayed on.  No computers burst into fire and no bank accounts were lost.

The generator stayed in the garage for 10 years, next to the 5 gallon container of gas.  When we woke up this year on Christmas morning, it was 55 degrees in my sister’s house, and you could see your breath in many houses in the valley.  But, at the Flickinger house, it was a different story.  Walking up the stairs to the kitchen, I saw a funny blue light.  Candles were lit and my mom was warming water for hot drinks; the 6 gas burners of the stove were on high.

Soon there was a roaring fire in the fireplace, and the sound of my dad pull-starting the generator in the garage.

It took a while to get the 10-year-old generator going, but he had it up and humming, and powering the furnace before breakfast.  Breakfast, however was on the barbecue.  For the past 5 or 6 years (maybe longer), we’ve had the same thing for Christmas breakfast.  It’s a breakfast strada.  A what?  A breakfast strada.  Here’s how it works:  You take a box of Eggo waffles, cheese, ham (if you like), and layer them in a 13×9 baking dish.  After 2 layers of each, you pour a scrambled egg mixture (including milk and cayenne pepper) over the top.  Bake and devour.  Just for the record, you can bake it on a barbecue, though it might result in a slightly burned bottom.

By noon, we’d eaten, opened our presents, played monopoly (another Christmas ritual for my bro-in-law and me), and started setting the table for Christmas dinner.  Mom had already calculated what parts of the ravioli dinner could be cooked on the gas stove, and practically giggled when she told us we could do everything without the power.

But the Christmas gods are just, and they like ravioli as much as the rest of us.  They didn’t want to take chances.  Right on time, the power clicked on.  17,000 people had been without power for 15 hours on a really cold day.  But all was well now.  Furnaces roared to life as Mom dropped the first raviolis into the boiling water.  Nothing could ruin Christmas now.