Chaos Attraction

Insane Cooking

2011-12-25, 4:40 p.m.

So, there's not a whole lot of restaurants open in my town on Christmas. This seems to be a case of "uh, maybe one is for sure" as far as I could tell from the Internet. Not even the Chinese ones, what the hell? Thus leaving Mom and I to uh... cooking. Like you might have seen yesterday, this gives me pause.

She brought all kinds of food up here and then went and bought a lot more at Safeway yesterday. She brought a ham, bought a lot of stuff at Harry and David, got the fixins for corn, stuffing, broccoli salad, wonton appetizers, cole slaw... I got fruit dip fixins and mimosa fixins. And while I was out getting the last one, Mom found some butternut squash pasta sauce that she wanted.

I warned her before coming that any pot or pan or special cooking gadget that she wants, I probably don't have it (or have one that she LIKES), so she'd better bring her own. Naturally on Friday night she brought some AND then had to go out and buy more pans. And then last night she spent 2 hours obsessively cleaning the kitchen before she even began and kept going around asking me for special cooking gadgets that I don't own. And she's really precise about How Things Should Be Done Properly, which gets on my nerves. I read the Myers-Briggs Pumpkin Soup Recipe (warning: PDF link) at a work class years ago. It's a recipe written out to the different personalities. For example, the Sensing person (which my mom probably is) version is very nitpicky and exact about following the directions, and would use a carpenter's level to make sure that the ingredients were absolutely perfectly level with the top of the cup. The Intuitive person version (which I have mostly come out as) is all "Eh, you could put pumpkin in the soup, after all, it is CALLED pumpkin soup...but you don't like, absolutely HAVE to..." This is pretty much our issue with cooking right there.

But after the like, 2 hours of house cleaning went down, it was nearing 8 p.m. and we were wanting dinner (in between her mixing stuff for broccoli salad and wontons and cole slaw). She looked over at her butternut squash pasta sauce and was all, "Hey, we could make some butternut squash soup."

For the record, if one looks at butternut squash soup recipes on the Internet--yeah, we pretty much did not do any of that. (And oddly enough, the recipes on allrecipes.com were really varied as to what the basic soup was.) She had me look them up and then I was all, "I have no idea how to adapt that to what we have here, and I don't have a food processor or blender or whatever so we can't puree anything." So we found the chicken noodle soup mix in the house, poured that in with the sauce, chopped up an apple, and (her idea) threw in some random chunks of cream cheese. I pointed out that the recipe with the cream cheese was more of a "you're supposed to puree that" thing, but she didn't care.

It was pretty good, actually. We ate it all. Unusual but delicious. I told her afterward that making up that kind of dish was something I would be likely to do.

We spent the rest of the night watching Glee episodes. I mostly enjoyed "Extraordinary Merry Christmas" for the surreal insanity of the Glee TV Christmas Special (though really, if you're gonna claim you want Star Wars in it, put in a little more Star Wars than two dudes in costume and one elf named Itchy) spoofing Judy Garland. It's in black and white and takes place at Blaine and Kurt's Swiss chalet -- OF COURSE IT DOES. I about died laughing at the reference to Blaine as Kurt's uh... "special friend and holiday roommate!" BWAH. And the random references to the Internet, and global warming, and the end times slipped in between the perky. Cracked me up. I could have done without Sue Sylvester, advocate to the homeless ("don't you call them urban campers?") bits though. Makes sense for Sam to do that sort of thing given his plotline, and I will say that the Glee version of "Do You Know It's Christmas" improves that turd so much that I don't even realize what song they are singing until they get to the Africa line every time...but I just find it kinda irritating that only at Christmas, we have to plug working in a homeless shelter and feel guilty about stuff like that. And the whole "let's forget there's two Jewish characters on this show" thing, but I said that last year.

For Christmas very late morning, I made mimosas. I don't think Mom was too thrilled about the drinking before eating. I was all "eh, it's not like we're driving anywhere." I got more Glee merchandise, some books--all ones I wanted, awesome!, slippers, and...a bunch of fancy-ass cookery items I have no idea how to use. Mostly of the sort that we could have used last night. I don't even know what to say to it, really.

As for the Minnie Mouse hats, I think she was quietly horrified (oh well), but it gave her a laugh, which was good. I told her she'd have to pose for a photo in 'em and that's all she'd have to wear it for. Oh well. God knows I'm not good at presents unless someone picks them out in front of me, and she did that for everything else she got, so oh well. (Though apparently she forgot ever getting some of them already...)

Then she spent the rest of the day obsessively cleaning and reorganizing the kitchen and yelling at me, constantly asking where such-and-such is and where did I get this from and do I have a-- no, whatever it is, I don't have it. I guess that's great fun for her, but not for me. But...I can't stop her, so what can I do.


And now, for a special announcement. Since I am going to Disneyland/California Adventure/Knotts Berry Farm this upcoming week-- and all of those parks are open EXTREMELY LATE, like DANG, midnight?!-- odds are I probably won't get around to updating Holidailies for a week for the first time ever. And assuming we spend New Year's at my mom's where her damn computer is half broken (basically, anything you have to log into will NOT work, and she won't get someone in to fix it), I literally won't be able to get online there. So...I may be doing a lot of catchup entries with photos come January 3 or so. But hey, it goes till the 9th now, so what the hell. See you all then!


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