Twice in the last couple of days Chef David and I have observed aloud how lucky we are, and grateful to be sure. This Christmas we also managed to wrangle precisely the same days off somehow, to celebrate quietly at home, surrounded by warmth and love (in three dimensions and through the ether) and one sweet-smelling old canine who stood patiently for his bath a few days ago. Today is the third and final day of our break and we’re feeling the most relaxed by now, but also have ambitious plans for the day, each of us. Together we’ll take a long bike ride later on.

Yesterday we made pasta from scratch. In a perfect world, where time is unlimited, we’d always eat scratch-made pasta. We’ve achieved the scratch-made benchmark in our bread, at least. Pasta requires a tad more patience, and precious time, so we planned our pasta making knowing we’d have enough of that commodity at our disposal this week.

I got out the camera and snapped a few photos during the making of.

Christmas dinner was pan-seared salmon besmeared with an embarrassment of dill, roasted acorn squash (a puddle of butter, brown sugar, and maple syrup makes it almost-dessert), and our linguine tossed simply in butter and garlic:

I leave you with one slightly messy, unedited video I made for a young friend who was curious about the process.

All the best from us to you in 2025.