A REAL heartwarming Christmas story!

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Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2007 10:27 am

So I was up in the mountains for a week-long ski trip over Christmas. It's a pretty small ski-resort town in a remote area of the high Sierras, with no other real civilization for many miles. I had my whole family with me as well as a few guests - daughter's boyfriend, my brother, a childhood friend of mine -- full house at the mountain cabin. I had a fabulous Christmas dinner planned - peppercorn-encrusted prime rib, yorkshire pudding, herb-roasted baby potatoes, steamed veggies, and finished off with individual chocolate souffles with raspberry-brandy sauce. (Can ya tell I like to cook?)

There's one and ONLY one grocery store in the whole town, although it's a major-name supermarket. I figured I'd do some of the last-minute grocery shopping on Christmas morning, as I knew from experience that the store would be mobbed the night before (the town's population swells 1000-fold over the holidays, of course, especially when there's been a fat snowfall beforehand to lure all us skiers up there, as was the case this year).

I headed over there at about 11 on Xmas morning, after all the gifts had been ripped open and suitably cooed over. Just as I'd hoped, the parking lot was practically empty, and inside the store were mostly locals. Shopping was unremarkable...until I hit the dairy section and discovered there were...no eggs. What? NO EGGS? What about my yorkies? I'd been planning this menu for weeks! You mean I couldn't make my...<gulp> chocolate souffles, that I'd brought up all the special ingredients for? DISASTER! Shocked

I stood there staring at the empty egg racks, apparently looking rather distraught. The nice young man who worked in the dairy section gingerly approached me and asked if he could help. I said, "no eggs?" and he apologetically confirmed that, yes, there were in fact no eggs to be found in the entire town, not at the supermarket, or at the 7-11 down the street, or at the little convenience store next to the gas station. Evidently a big egg shipment just didn't make it up the mountain that week, and all the stores had been out of eggs for days.

He looked a bit shell-shocked (sorry for the bad pun) Laughing

so I figured that he'd been raked over the coals by customers all week. I sorta commiserated with him that it must have been rough on him, and then I jokingly asked if he had any suggestions for a chocolate dessert that doesn't involve eggs. A woman overheard us and stopped to chat, and we got to sharing ideas for menu items that don't require eggs. A few more locals came by, and we were all sharing recipes, and joking about how the all the "city folk" had been freaking out in the store over the lack of eggs. One man said that it was nice to see a tourist (me) NOT throwing tantrums and going berserk and threatening to sick a slick LA lawyer on the store for spoiling their holiday by rendering it eggless.

As our little crowd was breaking up, that man pulled me aside and said, "So, are you staying in town?" I confirmed I was. "You have any more shopping to do?" he asked. I said I did. He said, "Well I'm just about done here. I work at the Angels restaurant just off the main road into town. When you're through, swing by there. We'll just be opening. How many eggs do you need? A dozen or so?"

I couldn't believe it! I just about fell over myself thanking him, and he just laughed and said it was no problem. I finished up my shopping and headed over there... and when I got there, he opened the door to the restaurant and invited me in, announcing to the other workers there, "Here's the egg lady!" He handed me a dozen eggs. I tried to pay him for it, but the owner waved me off and just said, "Have a great Christmas!"

And lemme tell ya, we did. My prime rib came out perfect - rare in the center for the folks like me who like it red, and well-cooked on the outside for those like my hubby who like it a bit more done. The yorkies were puffy and tender, and I have never gotten my veggies to be more perfectly tender-crisp before. Oh, but the dessert - now that was sublime, and I can only attribute it to the eggs, because frankly I am just not THAT masterful a chef. It had to have been the eggs.

But it doesn't stop there. My teenagers didn't bicker at the dinner table - in fact, they were making jokes and laughing! And my husband actually managed to let out a few compliments - something that doesn't come easily for him. Nobody said a cross word all through dinner - or the rest of the evening. The laughter was flying, the warmth was intoxicating, and by the end of our looong evening I found myself in tears. Then everyone started teasing me -- "Oh god there goes Mom again...she'll cry over anything! Gee, look, the napkins are folded so perfectly...boohoohoo!" which got me to laughing hysterically through my tears...

It was the best Christmas ever.

It had to have been the eggs.

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2007 10:39 am

WOW, perfect Christmas's do happen. I have never been that lucky. From the sounds of it though Cachuma you deserved it.

edited for content . . . dont want to turn your thread into a religion debate. Sorry.

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2007 11:19 am

Now that is eggsactly the sort of story you want to hear about Christmas time.

For me I had 3 Christmas parties in 4 days at my place including guests staying for a couple of days and didn't have time to scratch myself neither during or in between the parties.

The lazy bastards made mess and watched my wife and I clean up after them for days on end.

Christmas day presents were opened, rubbish was thrown, food was eaten and mess was made, then those going left us with the mess, those staying the night made more mess.

The bright note of that time was a 10 year old girl that my parents know from Vanuatu who they paid for to spend 3 weeks here.

The way her eyes lit up when she was given the most basic of presents, she loved the attention and really did appreciate what she was given.

Our kids on the other hand would be getting gift after gift, rip off the paper and move onto the next one.

Last year I was working away from home and spending lots of time in hotels, during that time I ended up with a few of those little bottles of shampoo and conditioner and the hotel soap and shower cap, I gave the little girl one of each to take home and you would have thought I had given her her first car with the smile on her face.

It was nice for my oldest son, 12 years old to see how good he actually has things.

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