Sea What You Can Eat

I've been engaged in a bit of a pitched battle with picture-manipulation software here lately, holding up several projects that were slow out of the gate to begin with, given all the events of the last few months.  Some but not all of you know that in the wake of my father's death, my father-in-law Albin also died late in January.

It was already an emotionally turbulent year prior to those two unfortunate watershed events.  Ever-so-many of us will miss those two admirable paterfamilias.

After the fourth try or so (seems like tenth) I seem tonight to possibly have the working pieces together for a mostly sapien-free Christmas post.  I'm featuring our Ballard version of what I take to be an Italian holiday tradition courtesy of the inimitable Ms. Jean B, namely the seven-seafood Eve dinner.  Not only were she and Bob the hosts, they also (if I can overcome my innumeracy) I believe provided the majority of the seven.

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Of course, reconstructing the gala dinner's many dishes at this point is quite a challenge, given that I didn't dare spend too much time behind the camera and don't have anything like complete coverage.  Okay, yes, there is that memory thing, too.  Bob had some excellent oysters on the half-shell.  Eric mastered yet another winning crab recipe, these sort of in the fritter category festooned with decorative seaweed.  Donna had shrimp in her classic aspic.  Jean did a remarkably colorful salmon with cream-sauce.  And there was that calamari.  I had smoked some cod seasoned in a Moroccan fashion and garnished with green olives.

I think there might also have been some pickled herring, a nod to the Scandihoovians in the crowd.  Believe me, we got our iodine that night (among other RDA's)!

Somewhat remarkably, Christmas Day featured pretty glorious weather.  The prior dinner notwithstanding, we also have a routine elaborate Christmas breakfast (eggs, links, scones and fresh fruit the main dishes).  I am memorializing the morn here with classic West Seattle Olympic skyline panorama photos taken from the deck, with only absolutely essential photo rework here, apologies for warts and blemishes.