15 thoughts on “12 Fish”

    1. Well, it looks fine covered with holiday decorations and amazing food and full of people.

      I’m sure there are some functionality issues. Plus, eventually appliances start dying. (My grandparents had to do a renovation after their circa 1959 built-in oven died and it turned out that nobody makes ovens that size anymore and they had to get a range and stick it somewhere–you get a real domino effect once one thing goes wrong.)

      If it can be done now, do it now, but if you can’t do it, it looks fine.

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      1. I agree your kitchen looks nice. If it bothers you, change it. But it looks very nice to a total stranger online. If I were looking to buy a house in your neighborhood, it wouldn’t make me say, “but the kitchen would have to be redone.” (If you wanted to sell it this month, painting the cabinets white would do the trick to “freshen up” things. But I don’t like the dead white kitchens currently in vogue. So I like it. The wall of cabinets across from the tiled counter is convenient and practical.)

        If you were to redo it, the “in” thing right now would be to take down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. But I wonder if that wouldn’t make the room too long and narrow. One functional thing that can improve the kitchen experience is to replace cabinet shelving below the counters with drawers. http://www.shelfgenie.com/kitchen

        Your tree is nicer than ours. Our tree barely has the triangular Christmas tree shape. Plus the gaping hole turned to the back is unfortunate.

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      2. Cranberry said,

        “I agree your kitchen looks nice. If it bothers you, change it. But it looks very nice to a total stranger online.”

        The lighting helps a lot. It definitely photographs well.

        There’s nothing that makes me go, “Oh my gosh, burn it with fire!”

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    1. Our Christmas tree was free! The local Lions club had bought too many, and offered them free to any takers on 23rd, and since I had been waiting for the lads to be home, well, wonderful (I did, actually, put $30 through the slot in the un-manned trailer at the site). Kids decorated it Christmas Eve, and we will have it out of the house tomorrow or the next day before it gets dry.

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      1. When I was very young, my parents were not terribly rich, and my father used to buy our Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. The cost drops dramatically as the evening wears on. Probably down to zero by midnight, although he didn’t wait quite that late. Then he and my mom would stay up and decorate it when the children were asleep.

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      2. y81 said,

        “When I was very young, my parents were not terribly rich, and my father used to buy our Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. The cost drops dramatically as the evening wears on. Probably down to zero by midnight, although he didn’t wait quite that late. Then he and my mom would stay up and decorate it when the children were asleep.”

        Our family also has a tradition of playing what I call “Christmas tree chicken,” trying to wait as long as possible to get the prices down. We’ve only lost out once and there have been some close calls, but we did once get a free tree.

        We chickened out early this year, though.

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  4. Growing up, we would cut down our own Christmas tree from a u-cut lot. I remember it was $5 for a small one and $10 for a large one. (Late 80s/early 90s prices). By the early 2000s I think the price had gone up to $10 for a smaller one and $15-20 for a large (8′ +) one. Now my mother gets her trees for free from a friend’s property. They are not Christmas tree shape, but we always preferred the rustic look. I had no idea trees were expensive in the rest of the country. #PNWprivilege. I’m in So Cal this Christmas, but we managed to get a 5′ tree for $26 on December 15th, which seems like a steal. An 8′ tree at the same lot would have been about $300, IIRC. The most expensive trees at the lot went for $700.

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  5. I’m more interested in the dinner than in the kitchen; yum. What dishes do you all make?

    It looks like your family is celebrating a version of what is sometimes called the Feast of the Seven Fishes, with different families including different numbers of fish dishes. Here’s Mario Batali’s article on it:

    https://www.epicurious.com/holidays-events/mario-batalis-feast-of-the-seven-fishes-article

    He says some families do 13 dishes for the apostles plus Jesus. Maybe 12 is for the 12 days of Christmas?

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  6. We were originally 13, when my grandfather was alive. Somehow it got dialed back to 12. Most of our dishes aren’t that authentic. We’ve been known to throw in a plate of sushi into the mix.

    The authentic dishes include my mom’s pasta sauce with tuna, capers, and olives. I make chioppino — http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/cioppino-recipe-1916710

    This year, I made it with clams, shrimp, and salmon. I added chunks of potato to the soup and subbed out fish broth for chicken broth.

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  7. Laura said,

    “We’ve been known to throw in a plate of sushi into the mix.”

    Nice.

    Our family does a version of the Polish Wigilia dinner (a similar meatless Christmas Eve dinner) and we follow my husband’s families wise substitution of salmon for the traditional Polish carp.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/polish-chrismas-dinner-carp-wigilia-borscht-barszcz-kompot-pierogi-ruskie-eastern-europe-a8118281.html

    I didn’t realize it until reading that article, but they also do 12 Christmas dishes.

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