Marlene’s had hot-as-hell pickled chillies in it. Eggs, cream, cheese, vegetables (such as cooked pumpkin or leeks), sometimes sausage or bacon, and often bread (it gives a bit of structure) – all baked in a broad dish. I think of a casserole as braised meat, but in the US a breakfast casserole is like the filling you might put in a quiche, though more robust. There was also a dish that was entirely new to me, a ‘breakfast casserole’. He drilled holes in the frozen lake nearby and exercised patience, then hot-smoked his catch in a hut in the garden. There was even trout one day, caught by Marlene’s long-suffering husband, Calvin. Out of the small kitchen came pumpkin and cranberry bread, buttermilk biscuits with sausages, a Finnish porridge (riisipuuro, made from rice and finished with cinnamon and a little pat of melting, salty butter) and dried-fruit compotes. We were stuck in the middle of nowhere, so brunch had to set us up for the day. We ate communally, and it was hard to negotiate our way round the food as perky little snowmen, branches of pine and ribboned bundles of cinnamon competed for space. She landscaped the table and served a different flavour of jam five days in a row. I don’t know what she was like at Easter, but Marlene could certainly do Christmas. She was straight out of The Golden Girls, her strawberry-blonde hair beautifully coiffed and her Christmas jumper protected by a Christmas pinny. I spent the post-Christmas period in Marlene’s B&B in Nevada one year and she put on a brunch that would have felled a lumberjack. Nobody does brunch better than the Americans, which got me thinking about Marlene. My dad used to get them in Dublin and this tradition continues – sausages and soda bread and champagne on the hoof as we peel vegetables and make cranberry sauce – but I’ve managed to argue for a post-Christmas brunch this year. No matter how many times I’ve discussed doing a special Christmas Day breakfast, it’s always sausages. This is a still, quiet time, and of course I keep cooking.
Now I sit with my head in a new book, watch the occasional Netflix movie and try to keep the fire going.
I looked at the sweet tins, full of wrappers like drums of little multicoloured fish, and the piles of presents, many thrown aside, and wondered what the baby Jesus would think of all this. From the age of nine, this bit of Christmas used to make me feel guilty. We have entered the time of year I used to hate as a child – the period between Christmas and New Year – and which I now love.
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