So this year, we went to visit my lovely Aunt Kelly and her wonderful family in Las Cruces, New Mexico. We went to Las Cruces to see Kelly and Karl. It was great, except for the blasted drive. 10 hours, I think it is. The kids were really good about it, but still a pain. I haven’t been to Las Cruces since 1995, so it was fun to go back. Kelly and Karl have a lovely, spacious home, with a constant fire roaring, dogs lying on the floor, and horses out the front. Tim said it reminded him of his friend Dale Phillip’s house – a country gentleman’s home, only quite near the Mexican border.
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| Me chopping onions for the sourdough stuffing |
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| A rather large mound of potatoes |
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| Roasted and peeled chestnuts for the brussels |
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| The Thanksgiving spread! |
I made 2 of
my signature apple crumble pies, and Kelly made her New Mexico speciality of
chocolate pecan pie. Kelly and Karl live
right across the street from the biggest privately owned pecan orchard in the
world, and Kelly’s pantry is teeming with huge bags of freshly shelled
pecans. So of course pecan pie was a
must for the menu.
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| The pies ... |
Kelly and Karl
have 6 children, all in their 20’s or late teens. There are 5 boys, all of whom are of a rather
giant stature. Several of the said boys
play college baseball and/or minor league baseball. I was worried just about feeding our 8 and
Kelly’s crew. But when we arrived, there
was talk of who else was invited to dinner – including the possibility of the
New Mexico State baseball team. In the
end, only 2 players showed up, which seemed manageable, plus two other guests,
making the grand total at dinner 21. And
by a miracle, there were somehow lots of leftovers, so we got our turkey and
cranberry sandwiches the next day.
On Friday, I
got to go to Santa Fe. Manisha Thakor,
one of my best friends in the world, lives there with her huband, Randy. The last time I saw Manisha was in 2004, when
she came to visit me when we lived in Princes Risborough. Since then, it has been nigh impossible to
make our paths cross, especially with me living overseas. So when we decided to go to Las Cruces for
Thanksgiving, I immediately tried to think of how I could get up to Santa Fe.
It’s a four hour drive from Las Cruces to Santa Fe, but it was worth the
sacrifice!
Manisha and
Randy took me out to a fabulous restaurant where I had the most amazing
crab-stuffed chile relleno. Then we dropped Randy back off at the house, and
Manisha took me into Sante Fe, which is the second oldest town in the US (after
St. Augustine, in Florida). But since we
hadn’t seen in each other in so long, sightseeing just took a back seat to all
the catching up we had to do. We sat in
a beautiful cathedral, and talked. We
walked around the old streets, and the old town square, and talked.
When we were
in college, Manisha and I spent three weeks touring Europe together –the
cheapest way possible. So we had very
long train rides together, and very long walks around places like Paris, Seville,
Madrid and Florence. We talked A LOT on
that trip. And last Friday, it really was as if nothing much had changed. We just picked up right where we had left
off. The sign of a true friend, I think.
While I was in
Santa Fe, Tim and the children went with the Koepers up into the mountains to
chop down a Christmas tree. There was
snow there, apparently, which was really nice for the kids. We don’t cope so well with the wonderful
California weather, especially in the autumn or winter months.
Karl spoiled us by giving each child, plus Tim, a ride in his private plane. The lovely Kelly, always in good form, also spoiled the younger girls by giving them a morning with the horses. Eleanor, especially, was in heaven!
On our trip we also got to see the fabulous Jemma and Rob Kennedy and co in Phoenix. They always make us feel so welcome when we come, and we always have a blast. This time it was a lovely ham dinner, a Downton Abbey fest, great conversation and chili scrambled eggs for brunch.
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| Verity with Sophie and Emma Kennedy |
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| The Kennedys and the Bleakleys - next generation |
This week, it
was back to business as usual, except we have Christmas coming up, so it’s all
go. We are slowly but surely getting our
Christmas presents purchased, and this week we got our tree and Christmas
decorations put up. Our living room has
very high ceilings, so Tim and I developed some sort of delusion of grandeur
and decided to get a big tree to go with our high ceilings. I think the tree is about 9 feet high or so
–beautiful, but, admittedly, rather expensive.
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| It's Christmas, even in California. |
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| For the first time EVER, we have Christmas lights on our house! |
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| Chopping the nuts for the Christmas cake |
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| Grating the nutmeg |
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| Creaming the butter and sugar |
I made my ‘traditional mincemeat’ – meaning, mincemeat made with real mince, as they did in Tutor times, and we also made our annual gingerbread Christmas tree ornamets. On Friday we also had our annual viewing of A Christmas Story. It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and the kids are so excited.
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| Tim does the annual wrapping of the cake in a brown paper bag |
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| The cake - to be stored until Christmas! |
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| Gingerbread ornaments for the tree |
Yesterday Georgie said to me, ‘I love everything about a lot of things, but especially everything about Christmas!’ A wonderful time of year.
