Heavy Cooking and Light Blogging for the next two days

I have begun the preparations for the family's Christmas feast. The latest count is 22 people, so it is a lot of work, but a whole lot of fun. To get all of my ingredients I had to go back to the Bay Area today to make a trip to the Berkeley Bowl, a grocery store that is almost a museum of food. Their produce section is the size of most stores, and coupled with a great fish counter, good meat, decent cheese and wine selections and generally great selection, Berkeley Bowl is one of my favorite places to shop outside of the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market on Saturdays.

Since Berkeley must have the highest per capita foodie population (many of whom are sad, actually, seeking what they should seek in the sacraments in food, which is a dangerous temptation for a practicing and orthodox Catholic, but becomes deadly in secularists who often seem to go between food esotericism and bizarre fad diets), the Berkeley Bowl is regularly packed to the gills. When a holiday approaches even finding a shopping cart becomes a task. The aisles are full, the lines at the meat counter long, the staff madly replenishing depleted stocks (I think they have been receiving shipments around the clock for the last few days).

However, one thing we noticed is, in spite of being full of agressive foodies, everyone is remarkably polite at the Berkeley Bowl. I have never seen a fight, people allow others to pass and even make an effort to get out of the way. It must be that being in the presence of food items that one has no idea what to do with humbles one. Every time I am there I find some item that I have never heard of, and I am a professional food writer.

Anyway, the goodies are here, the timeline is made and is being revised, and the marathon at the stove begins. Fortunately tomorrow night's dinner is at a cousin's house, so the only food I need to worry about after lunch tomorrow is Christmas dinner. I am also excited to be going to the Traditional Latin Mass for Midnight Mass!

So, after tonight, expect little to nothing on the blog until the 26th. At some point I will discuss Ravel's orchestration, but need to refer to some sources that I do not have, so we will have to wait until I can make a trip to the UC Berkeley Music Library.

Merry Christmas!