I just got in after driving through our first yearly snowfall, a useless but ceremonial trip. Took the dogs down to Saugatuck to walk around for awhile, two poorly trained but very nice pitbulls who could drag a garbage truck up a hill with ease.
Then an Aldi run for a few bottles of wine and needed supplies for a holiday that really isn’t coming. Two more stores as well…as though…
It seems the older one gets the more one lives in the past. Christmas in Detroit, the 1950s, I remember a slew of those. With an ethnic German family, Christmas is everything. If you haven’t done Christmas in Germany, you can never know. Getting off the subject, this would have been my plan for this year. COVID and nutty politics has poisoned the US for nearly all of us. I suspect we should start putting lithium in the water supply.
I would also order everyone off the internet for an unspecified time. COVID taught us we could work without offices. It should teach us to live without devices. Put them all in a drawer and walk away.
Take down the flag as well…it needs a rest, it has been smooched a bit too much by the unclean.
Anyway, I remember one Christmas in Berlin. Stayed in the cheap Holiday Inn near Checkpoint Charlie…free parking and great breakfast. Right behind the hotel a Nazi bunker and next door the old Anhalter Bahnhof where so many drowned in the final hours of the taking of Berlin.
The East hadn’t been open that long…and big stretches of Berlin were still wreckage, bunkers, rubble fields and they still are to this day. My first visit to Alexanderplatz, the center of East Berlin was a trip. Berlin was endless miles of freezing walking, horrible food and atmosphere so thick it was like pudding.
From there, drove to Krakow, a quite wonderful walled Polish city. Day trip to Auschwitz. This is a horrible place in winter, worse if you are being starved to death I imagine. Then down through Slovakia…hassled by local police. An entire nation of superfund sites.
Then to Austria, Vienna where I pulled in to the Ring Road best western where I hustled a penthouse suite for $80 Euros. I remember stringing my homemade WiFi antenna and searching for a signal…successfully…about a minute after WiFi was invented.
From Vienna into Hungary, Tatabanya, where we stayed with family in a state built workers housing complex where local fake Stasi followed our every move. It was hilarious.
Then we weaved our way back into Austria though Graz where we stayed a night, meeting friends there. The fortress there was blown up by Napoleon…as it was constructed on what was the basalt core of volcano towering over the city.
Then into Italy through Hitler’s Austria, the poor part, which connects to the Italian Dolomites…and down to Vento where the US has a base, Aviano with a Chili’s restaurant. It was weeks late for “burger time.” Then down to Verona and to the Brenner Pass and back into Innsbruck and up the Reutte pass into Germany, around the Zugspitze and into Garmisch to the old Patton Hotel and our favorite piano player and the best schnitzel in town. That’s gone to, replaced with a Disneyesque monstrosity.
We all loved the Patton Hotel.
Normally I am in Bernkastel, working the Christmas market, selling wine and tourist crap. Trier is only a short drive away and they have a much better Christmas Market where the food…Kartoffelpuffer und apfulmus…potato pancakes and apple sauce served on newspaper with hot oil dripping on your clothing….a perfect meal.
Normally I pick up turkeys at Spangdahlem AFB and do a meal for part of the town. Ah…the Alsatian sauce…here’s the recipe:
5 plus containers of the best sour cream available or more…
pounds of butter…more than 3
Turkey (S)
Riesling…which we produce…lots of it available or any white wine…
Minors chicken stock (Gordon’s Food Service) or College Inn Organic chicken stock
Remove neck and giblets from Turkey. Place them in a large saucepan with some carrots…not to many (overpowering), celery, onion, bay leaves, sage, pepper water and cheap white wine. Salt (minimum) Vegeta optional…
Bring to a simmer and cover…for two plus hours.
Separate very large dutch oven or equivalent, start dumping in sour cream, container after container. For each pound start with 1 stick of butter. Based on quality of sour cream, more butter may be added later. This is a chemistry ratio thing, but you aren’t going to screw it up. If you get too much butter, it can be spooned out.
Bring to simmer.
Stir regularly…until most of the moisture is gone and you begin to see a “mayonnaise” reaction…up to 2 hours. Watch this very carefully.
Prepare a roux. Use 3 cups of flour and an oil (not canola or quality olive oil…corn oil works). Mix flour and enough oil to make a paste (real roux uses butter and can be made very dark…do that if you want)…like lava…which you cook, stirring continually until you see an almond color. You will have to ‘tune up’ the blend so it can “fry”.
Set this aside, this is a thickener. It can be stored, frozen or simply thrown out if it all isn’t used. (Throw the extra away).
Make the Turkey…I don’t tell people how to make Turkey.
When Turkey is done…and removed from roaster, juices remain…too often not that much with modern Turkeys. Pour that into a separate container where fat can be removed and debris from the Turkey. This goes into the gravy/sauce.
Make sure the pan is big enough.
The butter sour cream base is added first or use that pan if you chose correctly. Then add the Turkey drippings with all fat removed.
Then remove the giblets and neck with other material from that pan. Taste what is left. If it is good, and it should be, strain it and pour it into the sour cream/butter mix as well.
Bring this monstrosity to a simmer, whipping with a whisk or whatever you have.
Add roux a tablespoon at a time. This will thicken as it boils. Very thick is good. Don’t add it all.
OK, now the engineering starts, deciding how to turn an Alsatian sauce into “to die for” Turkey gravy.
Start tasting..with care…do not get burned.
Then add, if needed, Minors Chicken (paste) or College Inn. Bring to simmer and add more roux for thickening if needed and it will be needed.
Tuning up….you have these options which you add to taste:
Minors (nothing else) beef stock paste…(Gordons Food Service) or Green Mountain Soy Sauce…added in small increments with care to give a stronger Turkey rather than chicken flavor and a desired color.
Or…don’t do this at all.
Consider a cup of white wine..Riesling or Cabernet Sauvignon…or Chardonnay…(NO Pinot Grigio)
More butter may help at this time…a judgment call…but this is low risk. Butter is never bad.
Simmer the alcohol out of the mix….5 minutes only. Taste again.
Salt with great care….never never over salt things.
You will find yourself with over a gallon of this stuff which freezes in bags very well. If you have a big crowd, it will all be gone. Germans and French seem to love this stuff…which they call “Gordon’s sauce.” This was a staple on the Queen Mary. My Aunt Jean brought the recipe back in 1956 after her trip to Russia, another strange story.
This will make a bad turkey good and works very well when mixed with German noodles or on potatoes or whatever. This will define the meal.
It is also the real base for most stroganoff dishes…boeuf bourguignon…etc (think mushrooms and cheap red wine)
Anyway, its 1955 and we spent the day at a UAW activity at the Ford Rotunda, now gone. We might have walked through Greenfield Village as well…but in reality we never did that.
The Saturday before would have been spent at the Eastern Market, buying things at Hirts…now closed after well over 100 years. I was there last weekend…OK maybe.
Whatever our lives were then, those of us who were lucky, even poor and lucky, had parents that understood Christmas.
This Christmas…no grandchildren. Kids won’t be here. The VT gang, Michael, Kadir, Jim, Kevin, Jimmie…and families…
So, we are cooking food nobody will eat, Carol is baking cakes which will go elsewhere as well. What can we do? What have we forgotten?
Christmas movies? Scrooge/Christmas Carol? If I see Jimmie Stewart again I will explode.
Love Actually? Maybe the best Christmas movie. Home Alone. Die Hard? Recommend The Bishop’s Wife…but check the very dated dialog..even for then. My list ends here.
I did 2 Christmases in the Marine Corps, one of them in Vietnam…spent on Charlie Ridge “protecting” Bob Hope from rockets. It was fine…I was with my friends. No whining there.
The next few years were in East Lansing, then Ann Arbor, with a motley collection of friends, some veterans, girlfriends and former girlfriends, a gang of throwaways. I still talk to a few, fewer each year, but many have been missing since…so many decades ago.
Throwaways….nobody had a family, we certainly didn’t have money. I remember I always look at the Vietnam War as safety valve…if I couldn’t stand it anymore, I could always go back, the Marine Corps was keeping a commission for me. When the war ended….it was like a friend dying…a door closing. 51 years later, it feels like Vietnam was the last time anything felt real.
We stop here…
Best to you and yours from us, such as we are…
Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.
Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.
Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.
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My brother in law’s father, who was a cook in the army, swore by cooking turkeys breast side down. Bless your soul, Sgt. Dick Marchetti.
Seasons greetings to all.
Hey Gordon,
Do you stand by your reporting of the assassination of the Mossad chief or do you think you were played by your source in Tel Aviv. Keep up the good fight and God Bless.
Happy Christmas everyone on the VT trench 🙂
Gordon; ” … encouraging me not to publish” has a sinister implication. I would never suggest you place yourself and your family in jeopardy. Nonetheless I’ll always hope you will find a way to do it because with all of the countless books out there on the Vietnam war, I don’t believe anyone can put it across like you. That being said, f_ck the Dept. of “Just-Us” and Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to you and yours and the staff at VT.
Happy Catholic Christmas everyone! We celebrate Christmas in Russia on January 7th. I was also a child in eastern Germany: Eberswalde, Finof, Potsdam. We lived in a military town and since childhood I have a love for the roar of jet fighters. Some people here know that my father was a high-altitude interceptor pilot. But I really liked the New Year holidays themselves and my childhood was absolutely happy and wonderful! I wish you all happiness, good luck and good health!
Meandering of substance, and real food, other one a while back also. Best, G.
My memory of Germany brief, there short time, and due difficult circumstance so somewhat stifled. Was in GrosHadern, more rural-ish near Austria, good food, access to smaller scale semi local. Small food trucks would pull up on sidewalk in front of hotel one afternnon a week, small owner home type, good stuff, cured or smoked meats, cheeses, etc. Interesting all, wish could have stayed longer.
cont., hotel small, only fifty or so rooms, and sidewalk in front not like those here, around fifteen feet wide or so and was old hand laid stone, the various small trucks that came by mid-week would be there all afternoon, and were how locals bought meat and cheese staples for the week. Different way of things. Surrounding sort of modern still had older or traditional sense about it, people also. The details more point than the food, though food also unique ~
Never heard any German say they celebrated”Christmas” — they always spoke of “Weihnacten” (Holy nightes) in my remembrance, (Anyhow, “Silwester” at New Year appears much more of the grater feast in Baden and in Elsass-Lothringen.) Where they use pinot noir in several meat and drink recepies (or p. blanc — but never pino geggio!)
Why ever call it something with the name of (Jesus) Christ in it? In the Nordic countries (including Suomi Finland and Greenland) it is Jûl/Joula/Jol, just like in English “Yule-tide”.Then those other tribesmen could happily leave out their barbaric Honnuka and join the gluttony with the rest of us. Not necessarily Sau/Schweinebraten, but cod, smoked and dried sheep and goat ribs — and fat-soaked Sauerkraut. (But inYerushalaïm/Al-Quds we always drove with those other Russians to the butcher’s shop in Bethlehem where they sold organic pork ribs.)
As poor students, we always returned home to the countryside for Yule/X-mas to see who amongst us managed to fatten up the most.
“Towards the No-el, that morte saison
I heat in my cup that chill short beer
Such as I drink to my fashion!!”
Never heard any German say they celebrated”Christmas” — they always spoke of “Weihnacten” (Holy nightes) in my remembrance, (Anyhow, “Silwester” at New Year appears much more of the grater feast in Baden and in Elsass-Lothringen.) Where they use pinot noir in several meat and drink recepies (or p. blanc — but never pino geggio!)
Why ever call it something with the name of (Jesus) Christ in it? In the Nordic countries (including Suomi Finland and Greenland) it is Jûl/Joula/Jol, just like in English “Yule-tide”.Then those other tribesmen could happily leave out their barbaric Honnuka and join the gluttony with the rest of us. Not necessarily Sau/Schweinebraten, but cod, smoked and dried sheep and goat ribs — and fat-soaked Sauerkraut. (But inYerushalaïm/Al-Quds we always drove with those other Russians to the butcher’s shop in Bethlehem where they sold organic pork ribs.)
As poor students, we always returned home to the countryside for Yule/X-mas to see who amongst us managed to fatten up the most.
“Towards the Noel, that morte saison
I heat in my cup that chill short beer
Such as I drink to my fashion!!”
Pinot Noir is Spat Burgunder in Germany, “late burgundy”…ususally produced a bit south off the deutche wein strasse, a hitler project from 1935 starting around Frankenstein and heading south. Thin stuff reinforced with dornfelder, a black grape with a bit too much character.
Gordon; When are you going to come out with your hard copy book on Vietnam? It will rank with the very best.
Oddly, the DOJ seems to be encouraging me not to publish for some reason. You guess why.
I probably speak for many wishing you would write and publish a novel/book on Vietnam. If only I could procure a first edition/signed.
Fav Xmas show is Scrooge (1970), a musical starring Albert Finney as Scrooge and Alec Guinness as Marley’s Ghost. We have it recorded, and watch every year… Xmas is everything, if you had been born in my farming Canadian family in the 50s. No money for gifts, but who cared? We all went to the grandparents’ house after Mass, and stayed til late evening with the cousins. After potluck lunch, we split up by age. Parents and grandparents played whist on the main floor, teens went into the basement with guitars, and the children went upstairs for a radio dance party. I recall 1 year that someone screamed up the stairs, “Hey, the plaster is falling off the ceiling!” No TV needed.
We have a Zoom call Xmas morning with my husband’s family. We will all open the boxes of cookies and candy that his aged mother sent us. Zoom and her care package projects has kept her sane and healthy this year.
I forgot to mention the food at Xmas. We always had a mix of French-Canadian and Polish-Ukrainian foods, both Xmas eve and Xmas day. Plus 1 bottle of brandy for the card players, and good homemade red wine and beer… Today, I had planned to buy a box of Mrs. T’s Pierogies, but I forgot. Oh well, lots of changes this year. Hubby and I have not seen family on ANY major holidays for the entire year. When it comes to CV19 spreading, I don’t actually blame other people for wanting to see their families on the holidays, though. I DO blame the hypocrite politicians who tell people to stay home, but then they get caught breaking their own laws. Like the Mayor of Austin, who told his citizens not to travel. But it turns out that he had recorded his message while sitting in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Most people (not me) will follow what the politicians do, so they are travelling to see family. Very sad, as both infections and deaths will go up for a while.
We have a Polish community in Grand Rapids…which means I can get sausage…either from SOBIE market or Franks…though off the shelf Kowalski from Hamtramack is ok. Stan’s Market down there closed maybe 3 years ago. Hamtramack is now largely Islamic. Make sure you have garlic sauce…Islamic market stuff for the pierogis. Kraut is easy to make, simply salt. Buying the Krakaus brand is best…..if you can find it. Family is from Posen…which though German was really always Polish. All Jewish deli food is really Polish…including the twice baked rye bed which is still available ONLY at Star on Twelve Mile at Telegraph…best takeout deli in the world. Idiots say “Zingermans.” Nice place but fake food.
Watched Leonard B. thrust Beethoven at a sixteen year old Anne Sophie Mutter on Arte. Checking in with friends, some last met a decade ago, some who’s wife just left with their kid. So it goes. No Christmas markets this year, no Glühwein or Gløgg. Potato salad with delish fresh white brats, in honor of my grandfather. At least my sis was able to visit from France. Fröhliche Weihnachten!
Ah…Gluhwein…there’s the Aldi bottled stuff and the stuff out of buckets sold by the church in Nuremberg…where it stays down for 10 minutes then the run for somewhere to throw up. Been years since I have been there…but always went. Nuremberg at Christmas was always the best party in Europe.
Favorite version of “A Christmas Carol”…1951 version, with Alastair Sim and Kathleen Harrison.
Fröhliche Weihnachten!
Agreed
Lawrence Olivier, 1953 is the best A Christmas Carol. I listened to it today on wtmd., which broadcasts on the internet, if you like good music.
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