Ode to Christmas Dinner

Hello Sports Fans, it's a beautiful Wednesday morning (2:35 a.m.) and the world is as it should be; more or less. I'm sitting here with my trusty cigarette (new quit date for New Years), a Dr Pepper and that would be the caffeine free variety (all the sugar and none of the buzz) and a screaming bowl of dark chocolate puppy chow. In case you don't know what puppy chow is, it's not the Purina puppy food, it's a snack food made out of chex cereal, chocolate chips, peanut butter, butter and powdered sugar. The recipe on the side of the chex box calls it "Muddie Buddies", but my gal pal JB calls it puppy chow. Let's face facts here, they are square and about the right size, kind of brown with a powdery white coating. Looks like puppy chow, gets called puppy chow around here and at night when i am snacky and I'm writing, i eat it with chopsticks. Naturally, my kids think i'm weird for doing that and honestly Donna just stopped asking questions sometime around year ten. The reason why i eat it with chopsticks is simple enough. If i eat it with my hands, my fingers get all gookey (has to be a word) and if i eat it with chopsticks my hands stay clean and i can type without gooking (also a word) up my keyboard. Feel free to try it sometime, if you can do it in front of little kids it will drive them mad. It sure is fun though.
Well on to Christmas Dinner. So after all of the menu changes i put myself through for Christmas Dinner, it ended up that we didn't have that woman over anyway. You know, i'd say my prayers had been answered, but i was just so horribly angry at the prospect of eating with her that i really have doubts they were my prayers that were answered.
We hadn't had a big ole Pitt. type ham in a number of years so it was good, just not the duck i was wanting to fix, but the ham was really good. There is a place in Whitesboro Texas called The Old World Meat Market and i highly recommend them for anything animal related. The Stags Head, Stags Leap, or Stags Butt Pinot Noir went with the ham well enough. On that note, doesn't it seem weird that a whole bottle will go from pop to poop in a single glass around a table, if you even make it all the way around?? I mean, they need to get more wine into the damn bottle without making the bottle any bigger.
I made a bunch of gnosh type stuff and deviled eggs with dill and horseradish for my little "Bucket Face". At the very last minute, i rolled the Green Beans Almondine out of the pan and into the dish and dinner was on. Okay, now i have to tell you the best part of the whole meal was the bread. Now, yes i do make bread often. I make it multiple times a week. However, since we all got the bug that went around a month ago i threw out my three sour doughs. Yes, i had three different sour dough starters. The traditional one that's made from fermenting off a dough that is jump started with store bought yeast. The second, called Biga, is made by fermenting grapes in a flour and water solution for a couple weeks and then nurturing it until it gets enough natural yeast from the grapes to actually leaven bread and lastly, a sour dough that was made from the naturally occurring yeast in the air we breath in Garland. This is the process the San Francisco Sour Dough Company uses to make their sour dough. It was my least favorite, but it has to be due to what is in the air here. I'd probably love what would grow out of the air in Alpine or Ft Davis, but that's there. Anyway on to the bread. I made a plain ole Italian bread dough, but i did something i read about when i was doing research on the Biga sour dough. They talked at great length of letting the bread rise in a crock bowl for up to three days, naturally ensuring the dough doesn't dry out on the surface, and then baking it off in the bowl. Well now the bowl that i most often use to do the first rise in is a big old pasta bowl. The sides are shallow and wouldn't send the sides of the dough up near as much as a regular bread bowl, but i though what the heck.
You know, that morning i got out my Kitchenaid and made one of the prettiest doughs. It really was nice and smooth and very elastic. I had high hopes, but i have had high hopes before. So, i olive oiled the bowl and dropped my dough ball in to raise. A while later it had doubled and i punched it down and that's when it hit me. I thought, hey dude, just leave it in the bowl. And, so i did. When it was proofed up nice and pretty, i threw it in the oven and smiled. It looked like one of those moments of Grace, but i didn't want to get too carried away as i still had to get it baked.
Now, just so you know, every time we have a family sit down, special occasion meal i make bread. One of us, other than me ( cause it's good for kids to get the opportunity to do it too) will say grace and being the guy that made the bread, i'll tear it in half and pass it down both sides. It's just one of our little traditions. Well i hadn't given that whole bread breaking thing too much thought when i decided to bake it off in the bowl, but how was i to know.
Okay, so i take my bread out of the oven and SHAZAAM!!!!! One of the prettiest loaves i have ever seen or made. One small glitsch though, I had a loaf that was 14 inches across and 12 inches high!!! TILT!!!! I turned it out on a towel and kept it covered for the fifteen minutes until we ate. It was massive. In the past, i have made three pounds of bread for a meal like this but it's always been a ring or a braid or something you could manage. This was like one of those medicine balls from gym class. I put it on my plate, still covered in a towel and my glasses had to be moved back to give it room. Now imagine this, i have two Darin Mcgavin's and they are junkies for homemade bread and i had a couple sneakers trying to get into the bread. Suffice it to say that we ate soon after that. My big boy said Grace and then all eyes were on me and my bread. When some jackass said, "What's this bread called??" I was a little horrified. In all that time i had never heard or read a name for the practice of cooking it in the bowl. So, i did what any good English guy would do, i pulled out my Latin and named it. Caput Di Bellum!!! Sorry to do this to ya, but try to keep up, it's sort of a joke. Caput Di Bellum is literally Head Of War/Battle, okay, so is that War Head Bread?? Well, i think it's more like Hot Head bread. Seriously, the damn thing was like handling a bread basketball. If i could go back and say something different, i'd call it Turks head after the knot, but it's out there now and they want me to do it again. I will, but i think i'll give it a few days first. It sure was nice eating off of Donna's new dinnerware. Yeah Yeah, i know you aren't supposed to give dishes as Christmas, but she dug it. If you doubt me, guess what i got. I got what every housewife dreams of getting, a 6qt crock pot with a latching lid so you can transport it. I have split pea soup in it now for later today. The only thing i'm left with that's not been covered is why, why on earth did her new dishes come with coffee cups that hold a half a litre??? Two cups the percolator is gone, but we fixed that. I'll tell you next time how that worked.
You guys take care of yourselves and the ones you love. None of us belong to anyone, we're simply on loan for a while. I bid you Safety, Peace, and Hope D