Boxing Day

The day after Christmas is sacrosanct in our family: we generally refuse to leave the house for any functional reason, preferring to hunker down with movies, leftovers, and perhaps the odd healthy walk. It is a tradition dating back to our time in Jolly Old, where Boxing Day (as December 26th is known) is seen as an antidote to all the holiday brouhaha - a time for a bit of quiet, reflection, and much-needed digesting.

Having cooked more or less non-stop for the last few days, I consider the Boxing Day moniker to be an especially appropriate one, since I steadfastly refuse to prepare meals for the duration and Sir and the Kid Squid must scavenge through the fridge on their own (a pastime they quite enjoy, it must be said). I spend happy hours (when not out on the aforementioned walks - or shovelling snow, which looks increasingly likely today) in front of the tube or curled up on a chair with my Kindle, boxes of my favorite sweets conveniently at hand. Get it? Boxing Day? Boxes of candy?  It can't be a mere coincidence.

My stash (which this year includes chocolate-dipped apricots, cordial cherries, pecan turtles, beautiful marzipan fruits, and something called Figaro fudge) is the result of taking out a second mortgage on the house for the annual trip to our local family-owned candy business, an Allentown outfit that has been doling out a wide range of traditional chocolate and fruit-filled confectionery delights for, like, forever. You know the cut-glass candy-dishes nice old ladies used to put on their coffee tables, filled with nonpareils, fruit slices, Dutch mints, and vanilla caramels? Chances are, said matriarch bought them somewhere just like this place, staffed entirely by sweet elderly women with blue hair and frequented mostly by grandmas buying foil-covered Santas and Christmas trees. There is no cinnamon, cayenne, lavender, or any other newfangled bon-bon component to be found anywhere on the premises. The Squid, a hulking teenager with otherwise sophisticated tastes, would be outraged if his Yule-tide stocking failed to contain at least two bouquets of their gaily-wrapped milk-chocolate lollipops, which he has been receiving regularly since he was four years old. Such is the power of traditional holiday sweets.

For me, the annual pilgrimage must include the acquisition of a fourteen-ounce tub of Jordan almonds enrobed in festive seasonal colors. Inside each crispy outer shell may be found one perfect whole almond, sweet and delicious, tooth-shatteringly crunchy at first but with a satisfying, sugary nougat-like yielding at the finish.  My passion for these confections is amplified greatly by the fact that I ration myself to one purchase per calendar year, to which I look forward in the same way one anticipates the first strawberries in June or the commencement of soft-shell crab season.

They are heaven. And since I am the only one in the family that actually likes these treats, they are all mine!

Until now. You would think that at this point, over three months into my gluten-free career, I would read labels as a matter of course. In fact, I'm pretty sure I did read all the labels at the shop as insurance against unwanted cereal-consumption over the hols. Somehow, however, the almonds got by me and it wasn't until yesterday (maybe the day before - it's all a blur) that in my casual perusal of the packaging the words 'wheat flour' leaped out at me, the fourth item on the ingredients list. I'd already eaten quite a few of the tainted nuts, so this probably counts as the worst infraction yet (more serious by far than September's spaghetti-tasting episode and possibly even direr than the Twizzler incident at Halloween). All the guilt that accompanies the over-indulgence of the season is compounded by this disastrous turn of events - and multiplied by its repetition over several days.

Normally, I would be depressed and demoralized by such a state of affairs and, in penance, eat nothing but brown rice and broccoli for twenty-four hours. Not today! There are two factors contributing to my ataraxy in the face of this latest mischance. The first is the joy and good feeling that inevitably accompany the holidays and my utter inability to be downhearted at this time of year. The second is a most thoughtful Christmas present from Sir - a wonderful and thoroughly practical how-to reference entitled Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income, which has given me a whole new outlook on my inevitable future financial triumph. 

A girl has to think ahead. After all, without a little bit of gluten enlivening my daily life and supplying angst-ridden blogging fodder, how will I ever be able to afford my yacht on the Riviera?