Caponata
Mom’s family at Christmas, 1954. Mom would have been 13 in this photo.
Mom and Dad with Dad’s siblings (and Aunt LIsa’s husband, Rich). Christmas, 1968.
Dad and Mom with my Mom’s parents. Christmas, 1968.
The traditional Christmas Eve dinner at my Reed grandparents’ house. (With me and my sister in matching weirdo shiny turquoise tuxedo dresses). Mom is a babe on the far right. Also featured are my Reed grandparents and Uncle Michael and sweet Aunt Kathy.
Every year we sang carols on Christmas Eve. I’m rocking a full skirt suit of PLAID with a bowl haircut!
Here Mom shows off the harpsichord she built to some kids at a party (including my daughter just to her right). You can see Mom’s Christmas Carol books tied with red ribbon in the frame.
Mom and Dad with their granddaughters at the Carolina Meadows house all swagged out for Christmas!
Mom would drape beads on everything at the holidays. Here are some hand blown glass ornaments from West Virginia.
Tradition, Tradition! The Reeds love a good Christmas Cracker hat! I’m guessing this is because we spent time in England. Or we are just wankers.
Mom made special stockings for everyone. I wish you could see the detail. These are all made by her except for the second from the left which was made by my Aunt Kathy and the third from the left which was made by my husband’s grandmother.
A detail from the crazy quilt Mom made my sister with a digital print on fabric of our Mallette St. house decked out with embroidery for the holidays.
Another tradition! I look totally over it, but it’s probably too much dessert and not my delightful daughter reading out loud.
At the Mallette St. house, Mom used to load up the presents and wheel them into the living room in this Victorian baby carriage. Here I am (looking like a vampire) with my Nonnie.
Christmas morning crafts with the granddaughters.
Another tradition? Bowling on Christmas Day! Because you can only eat so much …..
Our last Christmas with Mom, 2017. Glad we got this photo of us and our girls with the portrait of Nonnie (Mom’s mother).
I missed posting last week because you’ll never guess what I was doing: Hosting! Like Dale. When writing, I prefer to pick a chunk of time, like an uninterrupted morning, to focus on a blog post. That chunk never arose as I was juggling parenting, holiday stuff, a few art commissions, and hosting a fundraiser for my friend, Beth Payán, who is running to be a Judge for the Texas 3rd Court of Appeals. This gathering was a small one, just drinks and snacks, which included some very Dale Reed-like customized charcuterie cones.
That said, I like that I feel confident hosting an event of any size. We’ve held many showers and parties for friends and family over the years and I always prefer to do the cooking. At one, a well meaning guest came up to me and told me that my food was so good he thought it was catered. (I guess that was supposed to be a compliment? Not where I come from!) At another, a co-host asked me how I knew how to cook for 80 people. My answer? “I’m Southern.” Well, that and I was raised by Dale Reed and helped her cook for 80 people.
When I was young, maybe 10 or so, our Mallette St. house was featured on the Chapel Hill Historic Society Holiday House Tour. That damn house tour was all the Reed family focused on for weeks! My sister and I still joke that we’ll get around to doing something “after the house tour”. (It just means that we’re busy.) We cleaned and polished, draped things in beads, swagged the staircase with greenery, baked delicacies, tread cautiously around without shoes, and ate out a lot. If I remember correctly, the tour spanned two different weekends so we had to keep things perfect for way too long for this messy kid to endure. At some point I just started shoving stuff under my bed. And, I was doing just that one night during the house tour when Bill Friday walked into my bedroom. Bill Friday was the President of University of North Carolina at the time. He was kind of famous, I guess, because for whatever reason I knew who he was. He complimented the UNC pennants on my door and graciously seemed to ignore the fact that I was mid-sock change, hiding the dirty ones beneath my mattress as we chatted. It was one of my first brushes with celebrity.
During my first grade year, North Carolina Governor, Jim Hunt, toured my school. We heard about this in advance and I remember being very excited and asking friends if I should bring a camera to take his photo. I’d never met a governor before! And I still haven’t because he toured while we were in class and I never laid eyes on the dude. That brush with celebrity was a bust. However, in the second grade we got to pick penpals and since Elvis was dead, I went with my second choice, the US President, Jimmy Carter! I would write ole Jimmy on the regular, convinced that we were having quite the conversation. My side usually went something like this:
Dear Mr. Carter,
Today I ate spaghetti and watched The Brady Bunch. How are you doing?
Sincerely,
Sarah Reed
Well, I’ll be damned if someone on his staff didn’t write personal notes back EACH time and send me photographs and keepsakes. They were clearly tracking this correspondence because I never got the same thing twice. I would come home from school and Mom would say, “You got something from Jimmy Carter today!”. They would send group family shots, Rosalynn in the Rose Garden, holiday cards, etc. I truly thought Jimmy was my friend! My husband’s aunt Victoria used to work in the LBJ White House. Once when she came to Austin we visited the LBJ Presidential Library and we were able to find her handwriting in the correspondence files. I wonder how many earnest little girls she penpalled with?
I was browsing Mom’s recipe files today, looking for a winner, and I came across her caponata recipe. It seems like a good offering for this time of year when we’re having lots of social drinks & noshes.
‘Tis the season - cheers!
CAPONATA
1 large eggplant (1 ¾ lbs)
salt
olive oil
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup celery, sliced about ¼” thick
1 can (16 oz) tomato puree
½ cup water
½ tsp oregano
½ tsp pepper
½ tsp basil
1 ¼ cup pimento stuffed green olives, halved
2 Tbsp drained capers
1 Tbsp sugar
2 tsp red wine vinegar
2 Tbsp minced parsley
Wash and dry eggplant; leave unpeeled. Cut into 1” cubes; sprinkle with salt.
In skillet, heat 2/3 cup oil; add eggplant and cook over moderate heat, stirring often, until onion is golden.
Stir in tomato puree, water, oregano, basil, pepper, celery.
Cover and simmer 30 minutes.
Add eggplant, olives, capers, sugar, vinegar, parsley. Mix well.
Cover and simmer until eggplant skin is tender (15-30 min) cool.
Serve cold on crostini. Could also be used atop pasta.
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