Quaintrelle Weekender
Three ways, and 12 Ideas, to a better holiday.
Welcome to Quaintrelle Weekender.
This is a short list of things I am currently loving to make eating, drinking, and hosting easier and a lot more interesting.
Join us, won’t you?
All Is Calm, All Is Bright…
I feel the need to boast. Not very Christmas-y, but I’m hoping it’s too late to get knocked off the nice list.
I am writing this on December 20th and all of my Christmas shopping is done. Food, booze, presents… finito. I will not have to set foot in a store again until the new year. Perhaps some vegetables for my own personal needs during the week between the 25th and 31st, but truly, everything is locked and loaded.
Today I begin the prepping and cooking for the Christmas meals; one or two things a day for the next three or four days, and my holiday break is as relaxed as a nutcracker’s. (As opposed to the one sweating it out over their nut about to be cracked.)
My perishables are chilling on the balcony, my wine lined up like good soldiers ready for duty on the bar, and my gifts are under the tree.
Tonight, will be calm and bright, with a glass of Côtes du Rhône and a movie – The Man Who Invented Christmas starring Christopher Plummer is the feature.
Your holiday shopping is likely (hopefully) (mostly) done, so there’s really no need for another gift guide or menu idea. So this week’s holiday edition of Quaintrelle Weekender offers up some of my favourite ways to spend these festive days.
I’d love to know your Christmas traditions!
Movies
This is my Christmas confessional: I’m a bit sick of the popular holiday movies played on repeat right now. Yes, yes, the ones you know and love and quote at the office party. I think I overdid it, watching those Top 10 Most Loved Christmas movies each and every year, and some of them more than once in a season. I mean, if they’re on, I’ll still watch, and laugh, if its appropriate (hopefully), but I don’t seek them out. However there are still a few that I do actively look up:
This 1995 movie, directed by Jodie Foster and starring a laundry list of incredible actors including Robert Downey Jr., Holly Hunter, and Anne Bancroft, never gets a mention for a great Christmas movie, and I can’t understand why. It’s a stunningly fabulous story that’s as funny as it is touching, with loads of character. Seek it out, it’s worth the hunt.
This is a 1985 flick that I adored as a child and still adore it now. Just like Home for the Holidays, it’s faded from the Christmas collective of watchable movies, but don’t miss it. It stars Harry Dean Stanton as a Christmas angel sent to help the acerbic and world-weary Ginny Grainger, played by Mary Steenburgen, believe in Santa once again. It’s a tear jerker and heart sweller and I love it. It was also filmed in Meaford, Ontario, so if you’re familiar with the area you’ll have fun recognizing the sights.
My dad loves the the 1951 version starring Alastair Sim, and I think that is a very, very good movie. But I love the Disney animated version that came out in 2009 starring Jim Carrey as Ebenezer Scrooge. I’m not normally an animation girl, but Disney made this story wondrous and magical and exhilarating. I won’t tell you how it ends.
I’m not sure what it is about Christmas and the theme of “this is/could be your life” but I am here for it. Nicolas Cage stars as a self centred, loveless, money-hungry tycoon and after taking a magical cab ride (driven by Don Cheadle) finds himself smack-dab in the middle of the hard-working, middle-class life he could have had if he pursued the love of his life, played by Téa Leoni. Of course, it starts as a heart-sinking disaster of blue collar drudgery and dirty diapers, but when he gets to go back to his old, gleaming, city sky-rise and high powered ways … well, you’ll just have to watch it and see.
What are you watching this year?
Games
We’re a medium-game playing family in my house. We don’t roll the dice every night, but on holidays, we’re eager to take one another down or destroy someone’s fortune.
I mean, c’mon. Who doesn’t love a brisk round of intelligent superiority? Usually my dad wins. It’s highly annoying.
This is the reigning family fave. It’s super fun, even though how I’m about to explain it makes it sound tediously boring: players have to build train routes between two cities, which are assigned on playing cards. Along the way, you need to try and figure out the routes your opponents are hoping to build, lest they lay valuable track before you get a chance.
What’s old is new again, and my nephew got us playing Monopoly after years of having it sit in the box. I don’t want to brag, but I’ve developed a no-fail strategy, of squirrelling away your money in a private stash (under your leg or something) so opponents think you have less than what you do and therefore get over confident. I also always buy all the properties I can in the strip after Go, but I’m less bullish on Boardwalk. No one ever lands there, so the squeeze isn’t worth the juice. And while this isn’t technically allowed, in my house we allow for mergers and partnerships on various properties because we’re wheelers and dealers.
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Books
I’ve read a lot of bad books this year. Maybe it’s me. It’s probably me. I read a laundry list (or at least tried to) of the popular books everyone was publicly gushing about out. I thought at best they were worth a yawn, and at worst, I was actually angry for having wasted my time. Many I didn’t even finish. Life’s too short. Hopefully 2025 will bring better content my way.
It wasn’t all bleak. There were some books, either new, or new to me, that I am happy to recommend. They are as follows:
I listened to this on audio at the cottage last summer, and it remains one of my top reads (listens) of the year. An insightful, glaring, and not-always-flattering look at the Swans who surrounded the famous – and famously catty – writer.
This was also a top summer read for me, and, as I predicted then, a top read for all of 2025. Based on the true life of the first British cookery writer this is strangely both a feminist rallying cry and an urge to bury oneself in the kitchen.
Salman Rushdie’s recount of the horrific attack on his life is gripping, strange, baffling, and terrifying. It’s also amazing the calm consideration the execrated author has in the wake of this ghastly day.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
I loved this book.
Written by therapist Lori Gottlieb after her heart wrenching breakup with the man she thought she’d marry, she chronicles her own experience with therapy trying to piece back together a broken heart while also listening to the troubles of her own patients.
This one gets an honourable mention, because, while I didn’t exactly read it this year, Peter Mayle’s 1989 memoir of moving to Provence form Britain in the 1980’s is a book I often revisit, and have taken adapted a few ideas for my own living. I love his chapter about enjoying a luxurious New Year’s Eve lunch at a charming country restaurant, long and languishing and cozy. I’ve eagerly his words as my permission slip to celebrate the changing calendar in the daylight, so as to check into dreamland hours before the clock strikes midnight.
What can you recommend?
Thank you for reading Quaintrelle.
This newsletter is written by me, Erin Henderson, journalist-turned-sommelier-turned-entrepreneur. I literally drink and throw parties for a living, and every Saturday, I share some of my favourite finds for better weekends.
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We are watching The Family Man tonight! Haven't seen it in years, but I think my teen is finally old enough to appreciate the message so we're going to make a movie night of it.
Happy holidays Erin. I’m pretty ready, just got the big clean to do. 🎄🎄