I had thought it had to be a somewhat abbreviated breakfast/lunch thing yesterday, because of the holiday, or more specifically, our holiday schedule: The idea was to serve the main meal of the day much earlier than we did, and I had also not yet decided how I would prepare the featured venison – or what I would prepare to go with it. In the end however it was to be at least 6 more hours before we sat down to dinner.

• four eggs from Millport Dairy Farm; chopped parsley from Alex’s Tomato Farm, Carlisle, NY, at Chelsea’s Down to Earth Farmers Market (now closed until spring); pea shoots from Windfall Farms; Maldon salt; freshly-ground black pepper; 2 Backyard Farms Maine ‘cocktail tomatoes’ from Whole Foods; toasts of a ‘baguette sarasin’ (buckwheat flour bread) from Eric Kayser; and the aromatic seasoning blend called L’eKama (served on the side)
• the music was Heinrich Schütz, ‘Weihnachtshistorie’, Hans-Christoph Rademann directing the Dresden Baroque Orchestra and 

the Dresdner Kammerchor, first performed in 1660, in Dresden