On Christmas Eve, Kathy came over to our house. G and Jack made G’s mom’s traditional rosemary walnuts. G cooked a grass-fed, free range, dry aged steak, potatoes au gratin, and green beans.
G’s potatoes au gratin (made from this Jeffrey Steingarten recipe).
I made a winter vegetable chowder, blue baby potatoes with slivered garlic, and my mom’s carrot cake. We drank champagne and wine and opened presents and played with presents and configured presents and read presents.
Between dinner and dessert, G configured one of Chris’s presents, and Kathy and Jack and I watched A Charlie Brown Christmas. Then we watched the second half of It’s a Wonderful Life, which Kathy and I started together last week. G came in and joined us for the end of it.
In the morning, G and I and the kids went over to Kathy’s for Christmas brunch and more presents. Kathy made cinnamon rolls from scratch from one G’s mom’s recipes, and Bloody Marys and coffee while Jack cooked bacon.
After we opened presents, we went for a walk around the neighborhood, and then came back for a second course out in the beautiful South Pasadena sunny weather.
Kathy made Julia Child’s Coquilles Saint-Jacques a la Parisienne — another traditional Doughtie Christmas morning recipe. The scallops were perfect. We sat out in the sun, and ate, and drank, and talked about work and technology and the internet and Facebook and online versus offline communication.
[...] Eve and morning pictures with Kathy and the kids here and [...]