This is my first Christmas without my father. Although we hadn’t spent Christmas together in years, we always exchanged gifts and a barrage of cell phone calls during the holidays. He always sent Amazon.com gift certificates, and this is the first year we won’t be seeing any in our email in-boxes. The real loss was felt last night, though, since we celebrate in the German tradition, where Christmas Eve is the big deal. In any event, our small 
family unit produced a delightful prime rib dinner today. We had toyed with sirloin of beef, and even went back and forth in the meat section of Costco with large pieces of beast until we finally said, “the hell with it, you only live once, we could be dead next year,” and carted the immense sirloin back to its section in favor of the boneless prime rib. That is not to say there wasn’t a “bone-in” versus “boneless” conversation beforehand. We roasted it at low heat to an internal temperature of ~130 degrees F., which is RARE, the only way to eat prime rib, really. Since I wanted the full flavor of the meat to shine through, I rubbed only salt and pepper into the meat before cooking. Happy Christmas!
This is what I have planned for V-day this year: surf & turf. I’m not sure how I’ll prepare the lobster tails — most likely some sauté pan action and then butter and lemon. The oh-so-flavorful ribeyes will be done in a grill pan. Salt and pepper. That’s it. I can’t haul out the Weber so the grill pan will have to do. Add twice-baked spuds and some spring mix and we’re there. Hope he likes the iPod. Hope he doesn’t look at the website today. Hope his coworkers do and laugh their asses off. Oh, one more thing: please don’t rag on me about the feedlot beef. My back is still bothering me and one-stop shopping at Costco was, to quote an excellent episode of The Twilight Zone, “what was needed.”