Christmas shopping

DH has the best system for doing his Christmas shopping for me. He takes me with him! After the Saturday night party, we slept in on Sunday, then got up, grabbed a cup of tea, and hit an estate sale. Actually, it was more like a clearance sale for a bunch of guys who do estate sales. Or maybe they have been buying the contents of abandoned storage lockers. What ever their resource, they had shelves and tables and pretty much half a warehouse full of stuff. Dusty treasures. And since it was Sunday, everything was half off the already deeply reduced prices. DH could barely carry our $19.25 worth of treasures. Six crystal long-stemmed Bordeaux balloons, five pretty china plates, four china cups and saucers, three vintage cookbooks, two china teapots (I do NOT need more teapots, but one was a charming single cup Limoges pot for one dollar, and one was a funny pink petunia adorned pot with a petunia forming the spout - for fifty cents. If nothing else, I can knit a pretty pink tea cozy and give it away as a set.) and a big iron basket to hang on the side of the house and fill with flowers.

Then we crossed to the chichi Northwest neighborhood for brunch at Kornblatt's Deli. Their matzah ball soup is a nearly religious experience for me. DH swears by their pastrami. The tables are crowded together, and the service is cheerfully efficient. It's a bright, bustling, popular place.

Since we were then so close, we stopped at Lush and I got some more bubble bath. The we strolled on to Salt and Straw, the ice cream parlor. Yes, it was a cold and rainy day, but the tastes, the favors - I think I would stop by Salt and Straw during an ice age. I had mulled wine sorbet. Clove, cinnamon, sweet red wine, oh, it was delicious! In a waffle one, of course. That's an essential part of the experience.

A final stop at a little South American import shop where I found a pair o cotton slacks and a matching jacket that actually fit!

Back to the east side of the river to Sherridan's market which has one of the best butcher shops in the city. Four different kinds of sausage (I chose Daffy's Delight, with duck and mushrooms) a stuffed game hen for Christmas dinner, some fabulous beef raviolis, . . . Well, I won't bore you with our full shopping list, but it cost considerably more than twenty dollars. We do love good charcuterie!

A final stop at Whole Foods for a selection of cheeses. They have gotten the brilliant idea of packaging and selling the littl chunks and bits of the ends o expensive cheeses, so customers can find out if the really LIKE the smoked Gouda before they spend fourteen dollars for half a pound of it. We love shopping in specialty markets. It's so often a surprise. Vegan dog food? Mother's Milk nursing tea? Santa's Butt beer? You never know what you might find.

So that was our big, excellent, day before the day before Christmas adventure. We came home, I fixed us a pot of tea and some cheese and crackers, and killed my laptop. Got a lot of knitting done, though.