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My miracle on 34th Street

I thought it might be good to share one last dose of Christmas cheer before we usher in the new year. On New Year’s Day, my sister gave me her Christmas present. I visited her in Baltimore where she lives and she and my brother-in-law and I set out for a walk at dusk. She said she wanted to show me something. When we were nearby, she had me close my eyes and guided me the rest of the way. When I opened my eyes, this is what I saw:

Baltimore 34th Street NatGeo

Apparently, Baltimore’s 34th Street has been lighting up every house on one block since 1947. They even string lights above the street, connecting the houses and creating a canopy of light. I am usually the first to opine that we guzzle too much energy at Christmas, but this street does an amazing public service. This one hardly does it justice: you can check out more pictures here. Thousands of people come each year to see the lights and bask in their glow. These families work with their neighbors to put on a show for the rest of us out of the kindness of their hearts. Not every house needs a light display when a block like this can carry the torch for all of us. It couldn’t be more lovely, or more Slow Christmas.

It was the perfect present. I was feeling a sense of January foreboding, and not ready for the break from routine to end. I was in a decidedly un-magical place. But when I opened my eyes, I forgot all about the foreboding and the to-do-ing. It was freezing out, but I felt surrounded by beauty, cheer, and goodwill. And best of all was the feeling that my sister really “got” me. Even when scheduling got tricky, she didn’t take no for an answer, because she knew I would love it. And she was right. In a sense, it was my very own miracle on 34th Street.

And with that, Happy New Year to all! Let’s keep Slow Christmas in our hearts all year long with these 3 steps:

1. When you notice your mind racing and making lists, stop. Take ten slow breaths in a row, counting all the way to five as you inhale, taking another 5 to exhale. This is almost a cliché at this point, but believe me when I tell you, there’s a reason it’s become one.  Deep breaths actually send signals to your brain that trigger an “everything is okay now” response in your body.  This gives you an opportunity to slow down and take stock.

2. Ask yourself, is this a situation where my need for speed is legitimate, i.e. am I being pursued by bears? As the original fast American would be the first to tell you, there are some things worth breaking a sweat for:

Paul Revere galloping on horseback

Paul Revere galloping, 1775

But, if you find that you’re rushing and you feel frantic, you may want to do a spot-check on your priorities. Your friends and loved ones will understand if you can’t make it to every social engagement, be on every committee, or make the perfect meal. There are times when perfect isn’t good enough, and good enough is just great.

3.Take a look at your to-do list.  Cross 2 things off. Go on, do it.  Then, see if anyone notices that you didn’t do them this year. It’s a hard lesson to swallow for those of us who pay attention to detail, or have a perfectionist streak. But if you’re serious about slowing down your year, you have to prioritize.  Frankly, some errands are just more important than others.

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In which the spouse and I make New Orleans-style Pralines

The spouse stirs constantly.

The spouse stirs constantly.

When I was little, my mom’s one Christmas rite was to make pralines for friends and family. She would outfit each of us with a spoon, and the minute they reached the right consistency, we’d drop thick spoonfuls onto wax paper. These were not those chintzy French pralines that are just some nuts covered in sugar: these were New Orleans style pralines. Little piles of pecans covered in a fudge-like substance made from sugar and buttermilk. They are incredibly simple to make and wildly tasty. The only drawback is their uncanny resistance to fake dog poop. Seriously, they are not pretty. I’ve made batches that come out looking like fried oysters, but that’s the best case scenario. But if you can look beyond aesthetics, these are a candy well worth the making.

So last night, the spouse and I decided to make them in honor of this happy childhood memory. We’re giving them in glass tupperware with a cheerful red lid instead of the ubiquitous Christmas-themed tins. I love those Christmas tins, but they can only be used once a year and they’re a pain in the ass to store in the offseason. This way your friends and family get a durable and pretty container to take lunches in all year round. Who knows, maybe they’ll even think of you when spooning leftover spaghetti into it…

New Orleans-style Pralines

4 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
3-4 dashes salt
2 1/2 cups whole pecan halves
4 1/2 tsp butter
3 tbsp vanilla
candy thermometer (they have multiple uses, and they’re fairly cheap)

There are essentially two steps. First, combine the first 4 ingredients in a large wide pot. Cook over low heat until the sugar dissolves, stirring constantly so the bottom doesn’t crust up. Continue cooking over low heat until the candy thermometer when submerged registers around 234 degrees. Remove from heat and let stand for 5 minutes.

Stir in nuts, butter and vanilla, and beat with a wooden spoon until the mixture starts losing its shine (around 6 minutes). Drop in spoonfuls onto wax paper IMMEDIATELY. Get helpers if you can. But it’s no big deal if the last ones are a little crumbly, they’ll still taste good. And looks were never what draws us to these anyway. Let stand 20 minutes so they set. The recipe makes about 50-60 pralines if you include 2-3 nuts in each.

Turd's Eye View.

Turd’s Eye View.

And with that, Merry Christmas all! Slow Christmas is going offline for the holiday, but I hope that you all enjoy yourselves and your loved ones. See you in a few days.

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Advice column: “Does liking stuff run counter to Slow Christmas?”

Greetings all. I’d like to take a moment to answer this note from a loyal reader. I’ve never used Slow Christmas as an advice column before, and there’s a distinct possibility I have no idea what I’m talking about. But when has that ever stopped me before? Here goes…

Dear Slow Christmas,

I like this idea, but I feel torn by the “#buynothing” part. I like doing non-material things (e.g. my annual cookie bake), but I get a lot of joy out of giving people things. I like the idea of making handmade gifts, but my crafty abilities only go so far. Plus, sometimes people want something that I cannot make. This taps into a larger issue I have of whether liking “things” (i.e., material goods) is necessarily bad. I, for instance, love spending time with my family. But I also really like cool shoes. Does liking “stuff” run counter to the idea of Slow Christmas? Is it OK so long as the stuff doesn’t replace/outweigh the “non-stuff” (e.g., non-material goods)?

- Seeking the OK to Spend

Dear SOS,

I don’t think it’s wrong to get joy out of things. If anything, it’s the sheer amount of things at Christmas that gets in the way of the joy. The average American will spend $854 on Christmas presents this year, and buy 23 presents. With this much stuff, you can’t appreciate any single thing well. Recently, when I see kids plow through the enormous pile of presents under the tree and finish opening it all, they just look bored and disappointed. This is a terrible thing to do to a  child. And it’s not great for us grownups either. Each year, we’re less responsive, so the haul has to be bigger and better, which usually means more expensive and impressive. Selfishly, we’ve got to start putting our relationships first, not stuff, because the stuff isn’t making us happier.

But there’s another principle that’s harder: on a practical level, we simply can’t keep buying as many gifts as we have been. We have to consume less. Why? For starters, often excessive gifting doesn’t actually make the receiver happy. When the present is not what the receiver wants, they feel touched by the thought we put into it and guilty that it’s not what they want, so they either display it somewhere prominent or hide it in a closet until the next spring cleaning. Our friends and relatives gladly do this because they love us, but make no mistake, it is a burden.

We’ve always thought of this as fairly harmless (who doesn’t make a Goodwill run after Christmas?)  But the trouble is, the planet has stopped being able to absorb our trash. And stuff becomes trash at a frightening pace: only 1% of all the stuff in the consumer market is still being used six months after it’s bought. And if you think about it, how many of our errands are basically carting new stuff in and old stuff out? Or repairing, insuring and protecting the stuff we have? We have got to find a way to celebrate the holidays that’s not so Fall of Rome.

This doesn’t mean you have to stop exchanging gifts. But it does mean being more deliberate about what kind of gift. Don’t give one that you’re not sure they’ll like, or that may not last, or that has a really specialized purpose they won’t use often, or is an upgrade of an old thing that the receiver still thinks is perfectly serviceable.  Like it or not, these things have a higher chance of ending up in a closet, then Goodwill, and eventually the landfill.

Economists call this deadweight loss, which happens when people buying a product have more marginal cost than marginal benefit in doing so. Christmas gifts are like bridesmaids dresses: most brides think their bridesmaid dresses are the exception to the unflattering rule, and most bridesmaids ditch their bridesmaids dresses pretty quickly. You do the math. Good intentions are important, but they don’t let us off the hook.

If you get someone an experience gift or a donation, or cook their favorite food, there’s still a possibility that won’t like it. But you won’t have consumed so much in the process. I call it the Landfill Rule. If it’s something that could end up in the trash some day, make damn sure it’s exactly what they need, and if you can’t without blowing the surprise, don’t get it. Or if there’s something else they might like just as much that won’t end up in a landfill, like taking them bowling, train yourself to start giving that gift instead. If you miss the element of surprise, give them a surprise experience gift, or a Christmas scavenger hunt complete with cleverly-hidden clues.

If you need to explain yourself to family members who’ve noticed a change in your gift-giving patterns, here are some fun resources. I wouldn’t buy them as Christmas presents for reluctant family members, but they are helpful for borrowing arguments:

  • For the spiritually inclined or nature-lovers, Bill McKibben’s Hundred Dollar Holiday is a great little book. In it, he talks about his congregation in the Adirondacks, and their effort to reduce spending at Christmas while building meaningful giving traditions, from singing carols to dropping boxes of cookies at friends’ doorsteps. McKibben’s own family has a practice, borrowed from St. Francis of Assisi, of scattering seeds and nuts in a field on Christmas day, so hungry winter wildlife can enjoy a feast day just as we do.
  • For the rationalists in your family, check out Joel Waldfogel’s Scroogenomics: Why you shouldn’t buy presents for the holidays. He estimates that US holiday gift-giving destroys about $13 billion worth of value each year:  basically, all that stuff that goes into the closet. Last year, NPR’s Planet Money did an interesting experiment with children to demonstrate the concept: they gave each student in a classroom some candy. Even though the candy was free, the kid who got the Mike ‘n Ikes rated them a zero in value because he doesn’t like them. He rated it equal to not having any candy at all, but somebody still had to produce it and buy it. Two kids told stories from their real lives about getting a Power Ranger or a Barbie for Christmas from their parents, which they felt too old for or didn’t like, but they didn’t want to be ungrateful.

Good luck, SOS. Just keep reminding yourself what Christmas is all about: spending time with family and friends, being generous in our judgments when they make us crazy, and slowing down our lives for just a little bit. Let me know how it goes!

Whos down in Whoville

“But this…this sound wasn’t sad. Why…this sound sounded glad. Every Who down in Whoville, the tall and the small, was singing, without any presents at all! He hadn’t stopped Christmas from coming, it came! Somehow or other… it came just the same.”    – How the Grinch Stole Christmas, 1966

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Tofu Pot Pie

Tofu Pot PieOkay guys, it’s November. And it’s cold. That’s not all bad. It’s true, the leaves have all fallen. But the silhouettes of trees against the horizon are haunting and beautiful. It can turn the most mundane suburbia into a Romantic landscape. It makes you want to listen to Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique and run outside in the rain.

November is also a time for retreating into a warm kitchen to cook. This time of year, comfort foods call out to us, and one cup of coffee or tea becomes two. How else are we going to stay warm this winter but to put some meat on our bones?

In honor of November, this is my favorite fall comfort food recipe, and a fun one to make together. It’s a hearty meatless recipe, and you can never have enough of those. Of course, you can substitute chicken for the tofu, or add more mushrooms for a meatier texture.

For the crust, you can use half white flour and half whole wheat without suffering on texture at all. But if this is your first time making pie crust (fear not: this recipe is designed for you) I’d use mostly white flour as it’s the easiest. As you get more confident, you can add whole wheat.

Pie crust

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pie plate
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling out dough
1 teaspoon salt (optional)
1 teaspoon sugar (optional, leave out for savory pies)
7 tablespoons ice water, roughly

Cut each stick of butter into eight pieces.  Place the flour, salt, and sugar in a large mixing bowl, and mix to combine.  Add the chilled butter.  Using a pastry blender, incorporate the butter into the flour mixture.  The mixture should
resemble coarse meal with small pieces of butter, size of small peas, remaining visible.  Drizzle 2 tablespoons ice water over the flour-butter mixture, and blend.  Repeat with an additional 2 tablespoons water.  At this point, you may have to add more water. When a handful of dough squeezed together just holds its shape, you’ve added enough; if the dough crumbles, continue incorporating water, 1 tablespoon at a time, checking the consistency after each additional
tablespoon.

Divide into two pieces (one slightly larger than the other), roll into balls, and place on two separate sheets of plastic wrap.  Flatten and form 2 disks. You can wrap and refrigerate for about a half hour if it’s gotten sticky.  Lightly dust a clean, dry work surface with flour.  Place the chilled dough in the center of the work surface and dust the dough as well as the rolling pin with flour.  Position the rolling pin on the center of the disk and begin rolling the dough away from you.  Give the disk a quarter turn, and roll again.  Continue turning and rolling until you have an even 1/8-inch thickness.  Turning the dough as you roll will prevent it from sticking to the work surface.  A dry pastry brush is handy to remove any excess flour during and after the rolling process.  Lightly butter the pie plate.  To minimize stretching when moving the dough, roll it around the pin, lift up, and unroll over the buttered pie plate.  Using your fingers, gently pat the dough into place.  Trim any excess dough with a paring knife, or kitchen shears, leaving a 1-inch overhang; then fold dough under to reinforce the edge.

Yield: 2 (8-10 inch) crusts

Filling

1 block of extra firm tofu, diced
carrots, diced
frozen peas
mushrooms, diced
onions, diced
flour
water
milk
butter
tarragon
salt & pepper

Saute onions and carrots in butter, then add mushrooms and saute a little longer.  Add tofu, saute for a couple minutes.  Add tarragon, salt & pepper.  Remove mixture from the pan, and add about half a stick of butter (or margarine, but not olive oil.)  Add flour slowly to the melting butter, whisking, and keep it on a low heat.  When the flour has absorbed all the butter and it looks a little like playdoh, start adding milk slowly, whisking to prevent lumps of flour.  At some
point, you’ll have something that looks like a roux or white sauce.

Add the mixture back into the pan, and stir it into the sauce.  Add the frozen peas, maybe a cup?  Turn off the heat pretty much right away, you don’t want the peas to overcook.  Add more tarragon or salt & pepper to taste.  Fold the whole mixture into your pie crust, and place the top crust on it, sealing the edges.  Bake until the crust is
light brown and flaky.

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It’s Thanksgiving you assholes, not “Black Thursday”

Black Friday shoppersAs you know from Facebook, Black Friday has been on my mind this year. Last year, some retailers started opening on Thanksgiving day to try to extend the retail bonanza. It looks like they’re going to do it again this year, Target and Wal-Mart among them. This is wrong for at least three reasons:

First, they’re making their employees work a public holiday instead of spending time with family. Say what you will about some employees welcoming the extra pay, it’s not fair to ask people who already work Saturdays and Sundays year-round to give up their holiday.  It’s cruel and it’s un-American.

Second, Thanksgiving is about being grateful for what you have, not lusting for more. Going shopping on Thanksgiving is like doing a shift of unscheduled overtime on Labor Day.

And third, the Black Friday sales create a gruesome frenzy of competition which brings out the worst in people, turning us into mobs who trample people to death. Instead of bringing out the best in people like the holidays do, Black Friday makes us dangerous and anti-social. And it’s not even caused by something negative or unanticipated like a stock market crash or government repression or a natural disaster. It’s intended to be a celebration. How did we end up here?

And more importantly, what are we going to do about it?

Here are some ways to make your voice heard this holiday season. I personally think legislation (see federal bank holidays, 40 hour work week) is more effective than petitions, but these are a good start:

1. Support the WalMart workers who are planning to strike on Black Friday for better pay and working conditions, and you support 2.1 million workers around the world. Black Friday is a high stakes moment to strike, and the implications for working men and women and their families are huge. The Credo Action WalMart strike petition reads simply:

“Stop exploiting your workers. Meet with Walmart workers about their demands for better pay and working conditions.”

Sign it if you support their cause.

2. Sign the petition by a Target worker on Change.org asking the retailer to take the high road and save Thanksgiving.

This one speaks for itself, and at last check, they still need another 150,000 signatures to meet their, ahem, target.

3. On a positive note, the Story of Stuff Project is collecting photos for a campaign called “What’s better than shopping?”

What's better than shopping? Annie Leonard prefers baking cookiesYou can tweet about it using this sample tweet:

Fill in the blank: _____ is better than shopping #buynothing

Or if you have more time, you can print out the sign, fill it in, and take a picture like Story of Stuff founder Annie Leonard did in the photo to the right. [Stay tuned for ours!]

This kind of thing makes us feel good and allows us to express solidarity with each other, which is not to be underestimated when you read in the news about people getting trampled to death. But as Leonard points out in a new video “The Story of Change: why citizens, not shoppers, hold the key to a better world”, it’s not our consumer power that will change the world, but our power as citizens. We can’t just buy the green shampoo bottle and call it a day. We need to use less, but we also need to demand that our cities become more walkable, our coal plants clean up their messes, and our food system stops picking cheaper over safe and healthy. This is bigger than our individual choices, and we need to get organized.

And we’re going to need to win over people who were actually planning to shop on Black Thursday or Black Friday. This isn’t a club for true believers:  it affects our entire country. To fix this mess, we need a mass movement, with champions in Congress and unlikely allies speaking out. If we’re going to tackle the greed and waste we live with, we need to change a lot more than just the way Americans shop for the holidays. But you have to start somewhere, and since this is us at our ugliest, it’s not a bad place to start.

So to kick off the first of many small rebellions, let’s get out there and create some Thanksgiving memories that don’t involve excess and greed. But maybe a little sloth. Sloth is okay.

Beloved cousin and her dog

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Christmas catalogs get a Slow Christmas makeover

LandfillPiles of Christmas catalogs have been showing up in our mailbox for over a month now. So many dead trees, so much Kristmas Krap to buy. But part of me also loves them. The beautiful Christmas trees, the artfully-staged feasts. Bright-faced men and women sledding in sweaters, throwing snowballs. I know they’re hoping to use my Christmas mood to sell me stuff I wouldn’t otherwise buy. And it used to work. But that was before I had a plan. This year, I’m turning those catalogs into something better:  a Christmas wreath. Here’s how to do it:

Step 1. Put yourself on the do not mail list. Trust me, it’ll change your life, and lighten your recycling bin. It takes a few weeks to kick in, so it won’t solve your problem this year, but think how nice you’ll feel next year.

Step 2. Gather all the catalogs in one place. Cut out all the images you like. Don’t judge, just cut. If it draws your eye, it gets cut out.

Back of wreathStep 3. Grab a piece of cardboard (cutting out the side of a shipping box works), and two plates from the kitchen, one small and one large. Take a pencil and place your big plate face down on the piece of cardboard. Trace the outline of the plate. Now take the small plate and center it in the circle you’ve made. Trace its outline. You should now have something that looks like a wreath. Cut it out with some scissors. If you have trouble cutting out the center, I find it’s easier to stab a hole in the middle, then work your way out to the edge.

Step 4. Assemble the images you like around the wreath. It’s fine if they overlap. If what you like are the colors or the patterns, you don’t have to be wedded to the images themselves — cut out shapes or blocks of color that you like and use them as background, or cut them into strips and alternate to make candy-cane stripes. Go wild. With collages, there is no right answer. It just needs to make you happy.

Step 5. Glue everything into place — I used a glue stick, but regular glue applied sparingly works just fine.

Step 6. Find a piece of ribbon or string from that bag of used wrapping paper we all have stashed in the back of the closet somewhere. (In a pinch, the handle of a gift bag will do.) Cut a small length, about 4 to 6 inches. This is going to be your hook for hanging the wreath. Take some packing tape, duct tape or even scotch tape and tape the two ends of your ribbon firmly to the back of the wreath at the place you’ve decided is the top.

Step 7. Hang it up! If your door is occupied with a real wreath, hang it in a neglected corner, or better yet, give it to someone who needs some holiday cheer.

Christmas wreath

Step 8. Take a smug, masterful look at what’s left of the catalogs and dump them in the recycling bin. Who me, confuse Christmas cheer with buying Kristmas Krap? Not this year!

Note: this activity is best done with company, especially kids, and possibly a cocktail. If you make them with grownups, they will issue the disclaimer that they are not creative. Don’t you believe it — if you let them be, they’ll get really into it, and end up with proud grins on their faces.

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Falling Back into Slow Christmas

Hello again! I’ve missed you, dear Slow Christmasers. It’s been a season of changes for me — new job, new home. But one thing stays constant:  my abiding love for Christmas. I’m excited to get back in touch as we try to slow it down this year.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to start the holiday season with a lot of ambitious plans about making this the Best Christmas Ever (fruitcake that ages for a month anyone?) Not this year. I’m making a non-resolution:

Say it with me people!!!

I solemnly swear
that I will do less than last year
and enjoy it more.

I will not over-shop. I will not over-plan. I will carve to the bone the Thanksgiving turkey of my schedule to make the best feast of all:  free time. I will leave dishes in the sink to play with the cat. I will skip obsessing over baking the perfect cookies and go out for a cocktail with the spouse instead. I will sleep in.

I’m curious to hear what you did with your extra hour today. In an unusual turn of events, the spouse and I were both on deadline this weekend, and starting to get a bit stir crazy. So he proposed a walk around the neighborhood around dusk.  When we returned, I was delighted to see that there was still plenty of time to make dinner. Apparently, we’re not the only ones. People around the nation are enjoying the gift of an extra hour. Apparently, there are fewer car accidents and heart attacks the week after the clocks fall back. Researchers attribute it to all of us getting an extra hour of sleep. Think about that for a moment. We are so sleep-deprived that an extra hour actually has an appreciable impact on the number of sleep-related illnesses and accidents. Yikes.

I say it’s time we take charge of this situation. It’s time we goof off! Let’s play truant from the little things that no one notices, the leading an A+ life stuff. Let’s shoot for a respectable B this year. Call up a friend you never see and plan a Very Important Business Lunch on a Tuesday so the two of you can catch up. Send the kids to their friend’s house and curl up with a bowl of popcorn and watch the latest episode of Nashville or dork out on a classic baseball game you’ve seen a million times. Take advantage of the early darkness to leave the office early for once.

Stick around for lots of holiday cheer to follow, like what to do with all those holiday-themed catalogs you’re getting, books to read, holiday drinks, and guest posts galore.

In the meantime, what’s your non-resolution this year?

Here’s Tyrone modeling a perennial favorite.

Cats know how to relax