Conjuring Some Happy Travel Memories: Biscoff Cookies Rule!

Given the frustrations of the knee-jerk security shenanigans going on in the United States at the moment amidst the attempted bombing of an airliner, I wanted to think some "happy travel thoughts." So I dug out a few items from my travel shoebox, like the United p.s. business class menu, 1K drink "chits," boarding passes, and my iPod and the Bose QC2 noise cancelling headphones Beth gave me several years ago for Christmas.

But perhaps the best happy travel memory is evoked by a gift from Beth's mom this year: several packages of Biscoff cookies.  Just about anyone who's flown has to have had one of these crispy, cinnamony crackers at some point, and for me they really put me in the mood for flying.  Thanks to P.A.T.'s thoughtful gift, I can enjoy that bit of travel nostalgia without having to go through the hassles of airport security and weather delays!

The Terrorists Have Won: Knee-Jerk Kabuki "Security" Measures and Media Madness

The terrorists have won. Sad but true: the United States has been driven to its collective cowering knees by a mental patient who managed to light his pants on fire in an attempt to blow up a Northwest/Delta flight landing at DTW.

I hate to divert my blog away from the holidays for a post or two, but as a frequent traveler who takes 50 or more flights a year, I feel both the need and the authority to speak on the attempted bombing, or, more particularly, on the reaction by government agencies like the TSA.

We're seeing reports of draconian kabuki "security" which will do nothing but make the travel experience far more miserable than it already is. Things like requiring passengers be seated for the final hour of their flight (with taxi times, that means not going to the lavs for up to two hours--good luck finding a flight where people can hold it that long...). Or during that last hour banning all access to carry-ons. Yes, you heard me: you cannot even read a book for the last hour of a flight, according to Air Canada and American Airlines on their Web sites. (Hey, terrorists: guess that means you have to blow the plane up at 61 minutes from landing...)

Ostensibly, this is to make air travel "safer." Even a five year old could see through the illusion of the security emperor's new clothes, though. Honestly, no "air show" in-flight map display so that terrorists can't see when they're over the US? You mean terrorists are too dumb to look out the window and see that they've crossed over from water to land, or that they're approaching a city?

Stay in your seats for the last hour? Well, this dude was seated at the time he tried to blow himself up. So how's that supposed to make us safer? I guess Depends made a campaign contribution somewhere for that particular rule.

Of course, the "Ma and Pa Kettles" of the aviation world--those people who travel at most once a year and for whom the entire airline experience is something like a trip to Disney World--are already nodding their heads in typical "ditto" fashion. For example, consider the lunacy of preventing an 18 month old child from playing with toys during the last hour of a flight. Yet the parents afterward said they "understand where it's coming from and wanted to comply." Really? Keeping your 18-month-old from having a toy during the last hour of a long flight made us safer exactly how? Probably raised the chances of a passenger "going postal," if you ask me, given that meant an hour of a screaming toddler in the cabin...

And don't even start with the idiocy that these measures make us safer, that it would be "more annoying / inconvenient / whatever to be blown up." Simple statistics show stupid this knee-jerk "anything for safety" reasoning is: you are four orders of magnitude (roughly 10,000x) more likely to die of a cardiovascular illness than in an air travel disaster of any sort. You are three orders of magnitude (roughly 1000x) more likely to die in a car accident than an air travel disaster. These are pulled from CDC mortality statistics, and though you can juggle the numbers in different ways--such as factoring in distance traveled, time spent in car vs. plane, etc., the raw numbers are still telling. Given the CDC combines "water, air, and space" transportation deaths into the same category, and given that includes deaths which come about due to normal accident--and thus terrorism is a small subset thereof--clearly, your chances of dying from a terrorist attack in the air are far less than your chances of contracting and dying from TB (0.2 instances/100,000 people), much less cars (15.2 instances / 100,000 people), or cardiovascular illness (277.3 instances/100,000 people).

Yet here we are, acting like we have to force everyone to fly stripped naked, sedated, and bound to their seats all to make us "safer" in an activity which is already far safer than many everyday activities like riding in a car!

The terrorists don't even have to successfully carry out a bombing or hijacking any more; they achieve just as much terror and chaos through the abortive actions like the "shoe bomber" Richard Reid and now this moron and self-styled al-Qaeda member and his "pants bomb." Heck, groups like al-Qaeda don't even have to invest the time or effort in any meaningful training any longer, given even a failure drives government authorities and media blowhards into spasms of conniption. Get a guy onto a plane with a "bomb" that stands very little chance of actually detonating, have him light himself on fire, and sit back in some cave in Pakistan and laugh at how the world runs around like a chicken with its head cut off, led by the United States.

Knee-jerk, thy name is TSA.

(Worst thing is: the TSA doesn't deserve the blame for this moron getting on the flight, nor for his getting a potential bomb onboard; they had nothing to do with either. Yet now they're overreacting to the n^th degree, and for that, they deserve all the scorn that can possibly be heaped upon them.)

Christmas Day Is Here (and Cookies, Too!): The Many Days of Christmas, Day Four

Christmas Day is here at last--and to be honest, a few days too soon given the state of our holiday preparations (with decorations still unfinished, many a gift yet to be wrapped, and even some family presents sitting unmade and on the proverbial drawing board). But here nonetheless, and in-between visits from friends--Gina and Todd dropped off a bit of holiday cheer and had coffee--and trips over to a couple of the neighbors to deliver some edible gifts, we managed to unwrap a few more of our own presents.

We're very focused on the garden and landscape here at Chateau Papillon (a fact of which if you've read this blog from the springtime onward you're probably quite cognizant), so several of the items on my Amazon "wish list" had a garden theme to them. Books, yes, of course, and those already have Beth and I dreaming of warmer weather and the yard tasks ahead once Old Man Winter passes along his way, but also some practical tools, like the Fiskars hedge shears which filled that tall box I'm pictured with to the left, a gift from Beth's mom which will be put to great use.

I also opened another of the presents from Beth, which was beautifully wrapped in rice paper she'd been saving for years from her grandmother. Inside were many equally-beautiful gifts, all of them brassy little yard implements for the fairy-mansion-to-be, like a little picket fence; watering can; several miniature pots; and a birdhouse, bird bath, and planter all on little stakes to go around the fairies' yard.

We also finally got to the making of a batch of Christmas cookies, though using a box of vanilla sugar cookie mix via Costco instead of the scratch recipe in our family cookbook (the latter requires the dough chill for several hours before working). The Costco mix, though very tasty, isn't the best for cutting & baking shapes, but we did end up with several Papillon-shaped cookies (both dogs and butterflies), a Dachshund, Christmas trees, snowflakes, dog bones, and for the daydreams of a more tropical holiday, a palm tree and pink flamingo:

We also finally opened the gifts from Beth's brother, sister-in-law, and their kids, Ferris and Amelia, revealing two hand-decorated plates from the kids:

Also, we did at long last sit down to watch It's a Wonderful Life, a holiday tradition we both enjoy (and one which I introduced Beth to; growing up, we typically had it on while baking our cookies on Christmas Eve). I'll have to do a separate post about the film, which despite my non-religious perspective I find to be one of the most inspirational (and in fact, among the best overall) films made.

Christmas Eve & A Minor Camera Disaster: The Many Days of Christmas, Day Four

Christmas Eve is here at last, and that means a couple more presents to open for each of us as we draw out our holiday celebrations over a span of several days due to time constraints. On her lap (along with the Papillons and the blanket my parents gave her), in the photo above Beth holds up two more gifts from "her sweet Gibbie-goo." As usual, I tried to craft some interesting labels: I packaged LOST Season 1 on Blu-Ray (reusing wrapping paper and ribbon from earlier gifts!) with a label indicating it was from "philosophers and airlines"--references to the characters John Locke, Danielle Rousseau, Desmond Hume, and so forth, and of course the dramatic airline crash that started the entire series.

Continuing the theme she started with the fairy house book she gave me on our first day of Christmas, Beth gave me a set of fairy house windows--we're going to be busy in the springtime building a miniature fairy mansion out in the backyard, that's for sure! (This does make some sense, really; we're trying to build a "fairy path" in the garden, and Beth gave me a little planter and several alpine plants to create a "fairy garden" for our anniversary this past year, too.)

Amidst the Yuletide cheer, I did discover an unfortunately expensive habit from Mr. Parker, though. When I went to pick up my camera and flash, the power pack was no longer connected to the flash. That's right: Mr. Parker chewed through the cord that connects my Canon CP-E4 flash power pack to the flash, and unfortunately chewed through it right at the cord strain reliever on the side of the power pack (so no chance of soldering the cord back together for temporary use). That's a pricey piece of equipment even from big photo equipment wholesalers like Adorama and B&H, running in the neighborhood of $150 (the power pack was itself originally a Christmas gift two years ago from my mother-in-law).

The local camera shop, Penn Camera, fortunately had a replacement in stock and was open until 6:00pm despite it being Christmas Eve, but it set me back over $180 (ouch!). Problem is that I really needed that power pack to do my holiday photo shoots over the next few days, and there was no way it would get here from Amazon or any of the wholesalers in time. I'll probably order a replacement cord from Canon and repair the original, then e-Bay it to recoup some of the cost (I should be able to get $120 or so on e-Bay; used professional-grade camera gear sells for nearly the new cost most of the time--minus whatever Canon charges for the replacement cable, of course).

Mr. Parker has also apparently partially chewed through a couple of laptop power cords; he must like the low voltage shock on his gums or something (he's never tried to chew on a 120V cable, fortunately--and that's something we've got to nip in the bud right now!).

Good thing I got the replacement power pack, though, or I'd have missed this incredibly cute photo of Chance as he "breakdanced" on his pink bed with his "early," a small pink squeaky toy. I managed to get four or five photos in sequence, all of them keepers--without that flash power pack, I'd have gotten one, maybe two, as I'd have had to wait for the flash to recharge much longer between shots.

While I was out driving Beth to one of her petsitting appointments, I had time to pick up the flash power pack and even drop off a few holiday gifts for friends (Bon Bon du Papillon--I'll have to blog about those confections later...). Unfortunately, no time this evening to make Christmas cookies (sorry, Santa!), nor to watch our holiday favorite It's a Wonderful Life, but given we're spreading the holidays out, I suppose that's okay, too.

Enjoying the Gifts One At a Time: The Many Days of Christmas, Day Three

We're not yet even to Christmas Eve, but Beth and I have had three days now of opening a couple of gifts each night as we simply won't have much free time on Christmas itself. Don't get me wrong: it's not like we had truckloads of gifts which we're flaunting at the less-fortunate; we did have some overly-generous family members--you know who you are--but have been opening and savoring our gifts one at a time, rather than tearing through them all in a matter of minutes as children seem so wont to do.

Today's gifts brought a bluebird house from Beth, along with several CDs, books, and DVDs from our families. Not to mention the plush blanket from my parents to Beth, which the Papillons are certainly enjoying.

Green Is a Christmas Color: Recycling and Reusing the Wrapping

For those of us with an environmental bent, the Christmas season can pose something of a serious challenge: how to deal with the waste generated by all that pretty wrapping paper! According to this article, Americans generate 4 million tons of trash annually from shopping bags and wrapping paper. That's some serious trash! I can recall when growing up, the whole family would open gifts, and we'd fill up two large trash bags or more just with our wrapping cast-offs.

For someone like me who tries to recycle every scrap of paper--from reusing pages from the printer by virtue of the second side for things like printed coupons to tearing the plastic address windows out of junk mail and adding the envelopes to the recycling bin--all that gift wrapping does amount to a green conundrum. I love wrapping gifts, putting together just the right combination of color and accents to make the packaging as nice as the present itself--but I don't like waste, either.

We've kept ribbons and other decorations for several years now; in fact, we had two entire moving boxes full of saved (and at least once-used) ribbons in the basement, and I found another box when we cleaned out our storage unit. We also have saved away scraps of some of our favorite wrapping papers each year.

This holiday season, we've both put our saved paper and ribbon to good use, using it to wrap many of the gifts we're giving each other and our friends and families. I found several bins of decorative accoutrements like boughs of imitation holly and frost-rimed winter "berries" that we'd picked up at Boxing Day clearances at Michael's and other crafty shops--bins I want to empty out and be done with! (We've much better things to store away, after all.)

Too, spreading out our Christmas over a period of several days has allowed us to reuse the same wrapping paper on several gifts, as some are opened and others wrapped: for example, I reused the same metallic red paper (which would be tough to recycle in the bin, too) on three separate packages for Beth--a smaller one each time, yes. Scraps which are too small, are ripped, or which have too many creases end up wadded up as surrogate tissue paper to pad other presents.

Though it makes it easier to guess the contents of wrapped packages, we've also gone with more "direct wrapping," where the gift itself is wrapped without being placed into a larger box. Oddly-shaped items can be fun this way, like the Vanilla Bean Noel lotion from Bath & Body: directly wrapped, it looks a bit like a piece of cylindrical candy. For those items requiring a box, we've saved Amazon and other small cardboard boxes expressly for that purpose.

So, we're able to enjoy the holidays and keep them green; so far, I think we've filled less than 1/10th of a trash can despite unwrapping about a dozen gifts each.

Christmas Dinner (Three Days Early): The Many Days of Christmas, Day Two

Day Two of the Christmas cheer at Chateau Papillon kicked off with more presents and our traditional Christmas dinner, only three days ahead of schedule.

Since Beth is a vegetarian and I do most of the cooking at Chateau Papillon, it's not that often that I get to enjoy a holiday treat like turkey, stuffing, and gravy, so understandably I look forward to the holiday feast-days, and with them the scent of turkey in the air and dreams of days of turkey salad, turkey soup, reheated turkey and gravy, and so forth. I'm like the dad in A Christmas Story, and we even have our own "Bumpus Hounds," albeit pint-sized versions of them--Didi did manage to snag a chunk of turkey breast two years ago (she got to the turkey even though it was sitting at counter-height!).

When it comes to cooking at Chateau Papillon, Beth is my she's my sous-chef, if one who can't be trusted with typical sous-cheffery like prepping the vegetables due to my fears she'd lop off a fingertip with her knife "skills." Nonetheless, she's invaluable in providing an extra set of hands--don't let me sell her short.

Together, then, we prepared our feast. Actually, I started the day before, brining the turkey by a method based on Alton Brown's recipe. Believe me, brining makes for the absolute best turkey by far, much better (and safer) than methods like deep frying. After defrosting the bird, it goes in a cooler with a mixture of salt, vegetable broth, sugar, several seasonings (allspice, ginger, peppercorn, etc.), and this year, apple cider. This stands overnight (at a minimum!), kept well-refrigerated, then after rinsing off the brine, I stuff the turkey's cavity with apples, onions, rosemary, thyme, sage, and a cinnamon stick or two, and into the oven it goes.

After roasting, the turkey drippings come out and form the basis of a fantastic gravy--and if you know how, gravy is incredibly easy to make: you simply start with a roux of melted butter stirred and lightly cooked with an equal portion of sifted flour, then gradually whisk in the turkey drippings and cook until thickened. I like to finish the gravy with a splash of good cream sherry or perhaps some Irish whiskey, but the drippings themselves are so flavorful there's no need to add additional seasoning.

For Beth, I prepared a fillet of Chilean Sea Bass (MSC certified for the sustainable fishing folks amongst us) by pan-frying it after crusting with some panko and Parmesan cheese, then finishing it in the oven until cooked through. Yes, the vegetarian eats fish... though it took me years of wheedling and a Faustian bargain to myself eschew fois gras to accomplish that culinary upgrading. As sides, we had goat cheese and garlic mashed potatoes, fresh French-style green beans with a splash of olive oil and pepper, a sweet potato casserole I made up on the fly, and stove-top (not the brand, but the method) stuffing. Normally, I'd bake up some rolls from scratch, but due to time constraints, we went with a loaf of ciabatta from Whole Foods.

A nice muscadette from California (a fairly sweet white wine) finished things off.

Before I get into Round Two of presents, let me pause to point out the photo opening this post, which shows Beth enjoying the fimo clay owl figurine I brought back from Denver International Airport earlier this fall. Now, onto a second night of presents being unwrapped: above, you'll see me and Mr. Parker with a big, heavy package from Beth, which turned out to be a laptop stand--basically, a tray table designed for use with a laptop; quite a nice and very thoughtful gift indeed!

Beth's presents from me included an aged brass night light cut with a butterfly (or Papillon, if you will) design, which I picked up at the Elkhorn Slough gift shop out in the Monterey area earlier this year while birding. I also gave her a DVD of Point Break, a film Beth had mentioned as a favorite every time she watched Hot Fuzz (recall the many scenes where Nick Frost's character quotes American action-cop films, even reenacting the shooting-into-the-air scene from Point Break at one point...).

Onward the holidays march--what gifts might we unwrap next?