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For Adam and I, Christmas isn't necessarily family time. My father hates the holidays and Adam's mother works them (she's an Anglican minister). Not to mention our penchant for bucking gift exchange customs; this can make things hairy with well-meaning mothers wanting to bestow goodies on their grown children.

Still, we always celebrate in style, usually with a big friends and neighbours brunch on Christmas morning at our house or a small gift exchange with the pastiche of family members and food friends who visit around the holidays.

This year, Jeremiah, Sarah and Elspeth joined us for a very yuppie Christmas. There was shaved truffle and strip loin, Adam's rum trifle, a fridge full of microbrew, a visit to the National Archives, expensive cocktails at Blue Duck Tavern (disappointed not to see the Obamas or Bidens), a Warhol exhibit, the jungle room at the botanical gardens near the Capitol Building, sweet potato pie from Ris, cured duck salami and Cork's home made ricotta, late nights and lazy mornings, some knitting, some reading, bacon shortbread, a lunch of Bobby Flay burgers, a rainy day trip to an obscure Peruvian chicken place in VA, and crates of organic raspberries for the baby.

Pour nous, il était simplement parfait.

Canadian Bacon

Adam signed up for a holiday cookie bake-off at work (events designed by women to make their lives, and the lives of the women married to the men they work with, more complicated). As a way of endearing himself to his American colleagues and possibly setting himself apart from his competitors, he asked me to help think of a cookie that would use Canadian bacon.

I tried to think of a palatable way of putting pork in a cookie and came up with the idea of bacon shortbread. Here are three that didn't get sent to work with Adam. Can you imagine anything more delicious?

We're still here.

Since Christmas is no longer 'just around the corner,' but literally dripping from every hotel, office building and store in Foggy Bottom, I should probably catch everyone up on our fall season.

Adam was invited to work in the UK for the month of October, and I was the lucky duck to got to tag along. My parents volunteered stay in our condo while we were gone, selflessly looking after the cats once again. We set off with high expectations - fusty old art museums and black current jam and all that. Upon landing, I promptly got sick, however, and so I had to go see kindly old Doctor Campbell with his pheasant-print necktie and quaint, British euphemisms. Once I was mostly well, we got down to business, touring through London, Bath, Bristol and Cheltenham. Met some great new friends through Adam's work and even ran into old friends from Ottawa. We could have stayed in Bristol forever. The port part of town is filed with modern art, pretty water taxis, wholesome vegetarian food and flat, dry English cider. We stayed in a slick, self-contained apartment (recommended by our friend, Megan) and gorged on bowls of warm curry. What's not to like?

 

Our return to the US felt like coming home. This reminded us, once again, how difficult it will be to leave DC in a year or so. Only having just arrived in February, our short tenure here has forced us to appreciate each day like we never have before. Not an easy task when you're writing a PhD thesis (or, in Adam's case, finishing a Master's degree and working full-time). On the other hand, this is Christmas in Washington. A perfect time and place to be wealthy, healthy and madly in love.