Okay, we don’t have a Christmas Eve gnocchi tradition. Until now.

We’re having Christmas on the 19th floor of one of Vancouver’s finest apartment towers. Although when Iris saw it, she said, “That can’t be our skyscraper; it’s not the tallest one.”

Yesterday we took the Aquabus to Granville Island and got many provisions. I stopped at Oyama Sausage, which was a complete zoo. Everybody had to have their Christmas pâtés and salamis and the like. I was standing on the fresh sausage side of the case, so I ended up with some Italian sausage and one piece of duck confit, which will soon become duck hash. Oyama’s Italian sausage is very salty but very good. I do wonder whether there is such a thing as Italian sausage that would really knock you out with its deliciousness. I would guess not (I imagine it lying on a spectrum from pretty good to really good), but that’s what I would have guessed about chili, too, until I tasted Steve Smrstik’s chili.

Aunt Wendy and Aunt Nicole are also here. They contributed a big bag of gnocchi from the fresh pasta place and some gorgonzola sauce. So for Christmas Eve dinner we had gnocchi with your choice of sauce. It was noted that this is exactly how they do things at the Olive Garden. Iris likes to eat her gnocchi with a toothpick. Actually, she learned this technique after I once (okay, twice) let her eat meatballs by spearing them with one of those pumpkin-carving saws, which I later destroyed while carving Trogdor.

Now there’s pannetone for dessert. Then again, there are also Aero Mousse Cones.

The 19th floor is awesome. Right outside our window is an HSBC bank building with a glowing HSBC logo that turns off for the day during dinner. On the next block there’s a Tim Hortons, and it’s also near where they’re building a new hotel and condo tower (the Shangri-La) that will be Vancouver’s tallest at 61 stories. It won’t be the tallest for long, however, because apparently they’ll be building a 62-story tower across the street from it. For some reason, the 19th floor seems fine to me, but the 62nd floor sounds weird. Some units in our building have balconies. To me, the whole point of having a balcony is so that you can sit out on it and yell at people you know as they walk by, and sometimes yell at people you don’t know, thinking they’re people you know. I guess you could just grow plants.

The kitchen didn’t come particularly well-stocked: the only food item here when we arrived was a single Coors Light. We outfitted the place with butter, sugar, pepper, salt, eggs, bacon, and so on, but it got me wondering: what are the best things to cook when you have absolutely no staples (other than Coors Light) on hand?