Raisin the roof

I've finally gotten into the holiday spirit. The Smelmooo and I got our tree and decorated on Saturday, and took Tucker for a picture with Santa Claws (ha, ha). Then, yesterday morning, while the Smelmooo did some last-minute shopping, I pulled up our iTunes holiday song list and sang Christmas carols while I baked for Jenny's care package to Africa and did a test run of the main course for our Christmas Eve dinner.

I'm not doing so well on shopping, still: I've somehow run into problems with every online purchase -- even on Amazon, which is unheard of, but they're telling me that all of my "usually ships in 24 hours" items will not arrive for another month -- and found wholly unhelpful associates for my in-person purchases. But I'm taking the day off from work on Wednesday to do some serious shopping, and to have a lunch date with my mom and a dinner date with Shari, so all is well in the world.

And the baking! It continues tonight. I just love it once I'm in the zone of it, and I couldn't just send Jenny and her family a bunch of bald chocolate chip cookies (this is one of the few areas where Jenny and I don't see eye-to-eye: no chocolate?! what?!). So I decided to make some oatmeal raisin cookies tonight to throw into the mix (and I learned last year that you're also supposed to put a slice of bread in when you package the cookies, to keep them fresh -- apparently, the bread will be hard as a rock when it arrives in Africa, but the cookies will be good as new. I'm easily fascinated.).

I think that Dole raisins might be the perfect food (and the box tells me that they're a "superfood." I'm not quite sure what that means, but I agree they're a super food). They are perfectly plump and just the right texture and there are very few stems mixed in with the raisins, and it fills me with joy to open a new box. But if a box has been sitting around for too long -- even unopened -- it's bad news. It's like the Diet Coke I inadvertently drank a couple of weeks ago that was several months past its expiration date (damn you, convenience store that only sells liter bottles for $2, and me, for being an unobservant junkie before my early morning train ride). Heaven when it's right; awful when it's off.

But the raisins tonight have brought me much joy, and the cookies are turning out beautifully, and it makes me so happy to think of Jenny putting them into her little pregnant belly and thinking of home.

I think part of my fondness for raisins comes from a childhood where so many other foods were off-limits because of my allergies (which, holy crap, did you see the People article on that girl in Canada who died when she kissed her boyfriend who'd eaten peanut butter nine hours earlier? I whine and whine about how deprived I was as a kid because of all my allergies, but really I was pretty lucky), but raisins were a nice sweet snack. And they were the only things that kept me quiet in church -- my best friend and I would share boxes of Sunmaid raisins (which are nice for the memories, but tend to be dry and shrivelly, especially compared to my beloved Doles).

These are the days -- when stuff is turning out well in the kitchen; when the house is decorated; when all I want to do is wrap presents; when I'm frustrated with my real job -- that I think maybe I could just toss the day job and be a scrapbooking consultant or something and mostly be a housewife, trotting along with the Smelmooo to all of his exotic work trips instead of just one or two a year. But I think I'd hate it after a couple of weeks; I still suck at cleaning; I'd be bored out of my mind; and tropical vacations get expensive even if you're not paying for airfare and hotel. But it's fun to think about it when the house smells like vanilla and brown sugar and pine and looks all twinkly and dreamy, and the fireplace is all crackly, and it's the only place in the world I want to be, just curled up with my best guys. And a little box of raisins.