Posted by: Becky St. Clair in Tradition on
Dec 08, 2010
I love traditions. Especially when it comes to Christmas. When I was a kid, my sisters and I started one when we got out the sleeping bags and camped out under the Christmas tree in the living room on Christmas Eve. I'd read to them: "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer," "The Night Before Christmas," and eventually, "Rudolph's Second Christmas" (as is typical with sequels, it's not as good as the first). Then we'd fall asleep in the glow of the multi-coloured Christmas lights, visions of something more akin to French toast than sugar plums dancing in our heads.
As a parent, I have every intention of starting holiday traditions with my own children (my first and only is 16 months old, so she's not quite ready for them yet). They may include attending midnight mass on Christmas Eve, putting up the Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving, making and decorating sugar cookies to give to the neighbours, or things I've yet to think of.
Every town has its own traditions as well, and Walla Walla is no exception. For instance, each year at the beginning of December hundreds of locals gather downtown to watch the Christmas tree light up for the first time that season, coupled with a brilliant display of lights and music in the annual Parade of Lights. Walla Walla University in College Place just brought back its age-old tradition of a tree-lighting ceremony, and it includes cookies and hot drinks, as well as Christmas music, all of which makes me giddy with holiday excitement like a 5-year-old on Christmas morning.
Which is only appropriate, seeing as how I still sleep under the Christmas tree with my sisters on Christmas Eve when we're at home.
Thanksgiving is around the corner and isn't it interesting that when asked what our favorite part of the dinner is, we don't always mention the turkey. Often our favorites are the ‘taters and gravy, dressing, Aunt Bessie's canned green bean casserole and most of all, the pie. Of course, I'm going to tell you that the favorite part of the meal should be the wine - and several choices, of course. It is Thanksgiving, after all and isn't this American holiday about giving thanks to our bountiful harvest?
The Walla Walla Valley just finished up a long and unpredictable crush as well as their Fall Release Weekend. Now that the crowds have thinned a bit, it's a great time to seek out some treasures to go with your Thanksgiving dinner. Check out the new releases from the area's wineries, but don't forget the older vintages as well. The older vintages will often gain complexity and tannic red wines will mellow and soften with age.
Posted by: Becky St. Clair in Tradition on
Nov 08, 2010
Last winter I wrote about my first experience choosing a Christmas tree from Klickers, a popular local farm located just east of Walla Walla Community College. As I mentioned in that blog, Christmas isn't the only time you can enjoy the farm's charms.
Autumn is a lovely time to visit Klickers, since they have a beautiful selection of pumpkins, a hay pile to climb with a slide to bring you back down, classic trucks kids can climb inside and pretend to drive, and dried corn stalks to make any front porch more festive.
Last year at this time my husband and I had a 3-month-old baby girl. Some friends of ours had a little girl who was only a day older, and we decided to take advantage of the sunny fall days and explore Klickers. The girls weren't quite old enough to smile yet, and my daughter even had a hard time holding her head up still, so we have a picture of what looks like my daughter being blessed in a pumpkin patch. Gotta love it.
This year we went back, and the good news was we had the whole place to ourselves. The bad news was that the reason for that was because it was raining pretty good and everything was muddy. We didn't care - we walked around and took pictures anyway.
Comparing photos later was a blast; our girls have grown up so much in a year! The great thing? I do believe we've started a tradition.
Posted by: Sam McLeod in Tradition, Downtown on
Mar 29, 2010
"They're not changing anything are they?"
"Don't know."
"I can't see what they're doing in there with all that brown paper in the windows. Why are they hiding what they're doing in there? Must be changing things. I'm not going in there if they change anything."
"Guess they don't want our advice."
"Shoot, I been in there every day for the past 20 years. You'd think they'd want to know what I think. I'd tell 'em if they asked. Yes, sir. I'd tell 'em not to change a thing. This place is an institution. Can't just go changing everything, you know."
"Nothing?"
"Well, they could update the bathrooms. Those need some work."
"That's all?"
"And some light upstairs. Can't see a thing up there. And the awning. It's seen better days. And I'd keep a good baker in there. I like the cinnamon rolls. You don't think they'll get rid of the cinnamon rolls, do you?"
"Don't know..."
"And they could do some repainting. And it'd be nice if they got rid of the yelling-that ‘Jack of Spades' stuff. Hurts my ears. And menus would be good. They better keep spaghetti night. I'm not going in there if they get rid of spaghetti night."
Posted by: Sam McLeod in Tradition, Food on
Jan 04, 2010
Ham is a tradition in our family-starting this year.
I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. My family ate Tennessee country ham and biscuits for breakfast on Christmas morning. The salt-cured ham was a special treat reserved for the holidays-generally a gift form one of my father's patients who couldn't pay his doctor's bill.
My mother scraped the green-blue mold off the ham, soaked it in water in a five-pound lard tin for a couple of days to remove some of the saltiness, then simmered the ham in the same tin on the stovetop starting late on Christmas Eve, letting it slow-cook all night long so we'd have a ham ready to slice on Christmas morning.
When I married Annie, we visited her family in Richmond, Virginia on Christmas every now and again. Virginia ham and rolls were part of their Christmas Eve dinner. The Virginia ham was incredibly salty and therefore sliced very thin. A little bit went a long way on a homemade yeasty roll.
And then we moved west and lost touch with the Christmas ham tradition, until this year when I happened to see a ham recipe in a magazine. The memories came streaming back. I decided to give it a try.
Posted by: Becky St. Clair in Tradition, Business on
Dec 14, 2009
It was cold, but I didn't care. That's the way it was supposed to be. I rubbed my gloved hands together and giggled quietly at the fog escaping my lips every time I breathed. I felt like I was five years old, going with Grandpa to pick out the very best Christmas tree.
I wasn't with Grandpa, and I certainly wasn't five years old. I'd been out of college a couple of years and was with my husband of only slightly longer. We were getting our very first real Christmas tree as a couple (before we'd only had the two-feet-tall potted ones from Wal-Mart), and had decided to go the route everyone was talking about: Klickers.
Before then, I'd only ever known about Klickers strawberries. People around the Walla Walla Valley love Klickers berries and buy them year-round. Turns out Klickers is so much more than berries.
