Went to 7 AM Mass this morning at St. Catherine’s, in a gray, steadily growing colder morning, to enter the church ablaze with lit Christmas trees, poinsettias and the creche. Realized with a jolt this morning we’re going to have a hard freeze today, dipping to 29 degrees, with a steady North wind. So I came home, covered most of the plants and carried the big schefflera into the foyer with the salmon-colored geranium.
Decided yesterday, and that was fortuitous given the weather we’re about to have, to make a pot of chicken and sausage gumbo today–that’s slowly bubbling on the stove now. Going to have to stop soon because I’ve been standing almost non stop since 5:30 AM not counting the minutes sitting in church and my back is providing its torture freeze, so I will cook the New Year’s cabbage and smattering of black eye peas tomorrow. But, I have created the chicken liver, bacon and onion pate and it’s delicious. Cooked bacon and onion together, then added the chicken livers until they were cooked in a splash of white wine, to which, when they were cooked, added 2 tablespoons of sherry and a splash of Jack Daniels. A little cream, a little thyme and pepper, and into the food processor they went. Came out like velvet and I smeared a little on a piece of French bread; it’s wonderful. Since it’s so rich, I wonder if one can freeze any leftover pate?
Yesterday I taped, “Gone Girl.” Now, let me preface this with something: I have never been a fan of Ben Affleck, in fact, I can’t stand him. Couldn’t stand him the first time I saw him in “Good Will Hunting,” promotions. He always impressed me as a sneak, a lout and a phony. Something about him. But I thought I would watch this because I heard good things about it. But I made it no further than the point when his character and his wife to be are at a press gathering for her mother and he tells her in front of everyone, to the laughter of everyone, include his wife to be, “I hear you have an awesome v—-a. That just tripped off of his tongue too perfectly and I could picture him saying that publicly in real life. I switched to a programming guide and saw that EWTN was broadcasting, “In Concert,” a Christmas program sung by the choir of the Catholic University in Washington, in the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. It was exquisite, and they even sang my old, “Gaudete.”
I just want to say about all the “feminists” and women’s righters in Hollywood, or New York, or wherever who are the first to cry foul when I woman is sexually demeaned, for heaven’s sakes when you choose to be in films like this, appear nude, have explicit sex scenes, talk about your private parts and laugh in such a way, what in hell do you think you’re doing if it’s not demeaning women? That’s art. And all of them with their self-righteous preaching to the rest of us how we are to live and think, they are the biggest collection of trash assembled.
Right now, watching with one eye from the kitchen, or at least before I came to the Ernest Hemingway room, “The Great Escape.” Back in the day when stories were really stories.