The day before

Before I wish you a merry Christmas Eve, I want to give you a Knit Thing and an Eat Thing. (Click on the captions for pattern or recipe.)

This new felted bag pattern from
Lion Brand looks stylish,
useful and fun to knit.

This bacon jam –
I'm sooo not kidding –
just sounds DELICIOUS!

The open house we go to every Christmas Eve has had a time change. We used to go after church, which used to start at 7; this year the Episcopal service begins at 8, and the Presbyterian service is at 6 and since guests of all religious persuasions will be at the party, the party begins at 4:30.

Which is fine by me.

A 4:30 party seems more casual to me, and I've been fretting silently about What To Wear To An Evening Party for several days. Now I can just throw on whatever is clean and still fits and be both comfortable and presentable. And no one is going to be judging my wardrobe anyway.

Christmas dinner prep begins today. Here's the menu (items in red get done today):

• Baked ham
• Baked acorn squash
• Waldorf salad
• Sauerkraut
• Green beans or peas (haven't decided)
• Dinner rolls
• Deviled eggs
• Pecan pie
• Pumpkin pie

My mother-in-law will be our only dinner guest, so I might scale back a bit. I bought a huge, whole, semi-boneless ham simply because I wanted to get several meals from it. I'm going to chop it in half right off the bat and only cook the boneless part. The rest is going into the freezer in meal-sized portions, with a prayer that we don't lose power.

The freezer, you see, is FULL – a quarter of a cow, produce from the garden, chicken that I buy whenever it's on sale, big bags of nuts, a pork tenderloin that has been cut into one-pound pieces – there's enough food in there for a year, I think. Losing power would NOT be a Good Thing.

Back to my wardrobe for a minute. I guess all the candy- and cookie-making is my way of trying to generate Christmas spirit around here (my husband is a bit of a curmudgeon about it) but it doesn't help either of us either maintain (him) or lose (me) weight. I hate (and I don't use that word lightly) not having a closet full of clothes that I can just grab and throw on and know that I'll look good.

The painful part is that I used to.

So today, on the day before the day before, I'm thinking that if I am able to get to a reasonably healthy weight by next Christmas, I might make another batch of cookies or pan of fudge. (Or jar of bacon jam? Mmmm, bacon.)

If not, I can always make more in 2013, right? This year-end cooking frenzy hasn't been at all helpful or healthful, and if I'm deliberately doing something that in the moment is fun and happy and it's-Christmas-after-all, but in the end makes me feel bad about myself, well …

WHY WOULD I WANT TO DO THAT?

And that, my friends, is the day before the day before 25,000-calorie question.