Thursday, November 24, 2011

Lest you get too comfortable....

At the end of this glorious day, I am always reminded of the words of my immortal grandmother...."It's disGUSTing how we eat like gluttons like this every year!!" Thanks grandma, now not only am I physically uncomfortable, I'm emotionaly uncomfortable.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Let me tell you what you can do with that gravy...

I’ve said this before, but I feel like saying it again. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. No gifts. Well, kind of no gifts. I spend more on Thanksgiving than I do on Christmas (dried cherries are expensive and oddly, cranberries aren’t cranberries without cherries) but I’m also more confident that people will like what I’ve spent the money on.

If you haven’t made a turkey before, you wouldn’t believe how easy it is. That’s what the advertisers are counting on; that you think it’s hard so you’ll buy all this specialized crap to go with preparing this one bird this one day of the year. All you really need is salt, butter, some oranges and something that can be used to tie two knobby legs together.

The only thing that is tricky is the timing and that will depend on how much extra stuff you want to make and your day job. I go absolutely ape-shit over side dishes. I have no less than seven sides that I feel must accompany the caged, injected, oiled-up bird. I’m not going to tell you what they are because I want you to be surprised if you ever come over.

Other highlights of the holiday include football and then football…and pie.

The one thing I hate about this holiday is gravy. I HATE GRAVY. Always have, always will. I hate eating it, I hate smelling it, I hate looking at it, and I most certainly hate making it. I hate the stupid custom dish it has to be in. That stupid dish never fits into the hutch just right, you always have to move other dishes around and then the aesthestics are all off. Gravy ruins fung shui.

Gravy has stupid sayings too, like “It’s all gravy”. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN??? Are they implying that gravy is easy? It’s not. You have to remember to add all this crap to the bottom of the roasting pan and then pour that little amount of liquid out of that big, heavy roasting pan into another one of the advertisers specialized pieces of crap to skim the fat off of the top which is replaced with more fat and some flour and then wisked in back in the huge roasting pan and then it has to be poured into the stupid fung shui-ruining dish and served right away because it sucks if it gets cold.

My potatoes are so stunning that they don’t need gravy. None of my life needs gravy. I have worked everything out so that I never have to utter the words “please pass the gravy”. I am the 1% that doesn’t need any goddamn gravy.

You can join me. We can increase to 2% and then maybe 10%. Take that first step, refuse to buy the fat skimmer. Next, throw out the gizzard and neck. Then, when you’ve gotten the proper amount of rest and have eaten three nutritious meals, bypass the package of gravy mix and the ready-to-eat gravy in a jar. You have to be at your peak condition to master this last step. This involves not only passing up a few food items, this involves changing the precepts of society.

You can do it. I believe in you. Just keep saying to yourself “NO FUCKING GRAVY!” Put gouda and heavy cream in the potatoes instead. You’ll thank me for it. Colors start to look brighter, aromas are more intense, laughter of children is more enjoyable with no gravy in your life. We can have a world with no gravy; a world with balanced china hutches and no stains on the table clothes (It’s always the gravy). It’s a glorious world I can see and I want you to join me in it. We’ll procreate and raise an entire community that knows nothing of gravy! Gravy-devouring countries will bow before us. WE SHALL RULE THE WORLD!

Okay, I gotta go boil the wild rice…

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

When I was young, we had to sit there and hold our broken bone until it healed...

So Dominique Barber broke his foot and the technical term is Lisfranc fracture where all the metatarsals are displaced from the tarsus and I know that’s right because it’s on Wikipedia and it reminds me of my friend Linda’s fracture but anyway I was noticing that Mr. Barber had a red cast on but then allegedly changed it to blue and white which I have to admit left me speechless for a moment as I pondered how that could be possible since a cast is supposed to be super protective and should then be not easily taken off OR CHANGE COLORS so where does he get off being able to change colors like that or even get to HAVE colors in the FIRST PLACE unlike his predecessors like me who have broken my foot although not the tarsus unless my tarsus is located on the side of my foot where that bump is which it is not so it was my talus bone that I broke which is close to tarsus but only in spelling and which my doctor at the time gleefully referred to as my “foot bone!” and put a plain white plaster cast on it leaving only my toe nails poking out thank goodness because I could at least still paint my nails and impress my seemingly easily-impressed doctor but by not telling me the correct medical term I was forced to say that I broke my "foot bone!” instead of getting to say “talus” but that wouldn’t have changed the color of my cast but it does lead me to wonder if a red cast itches a lot because a white one sure does and I know my doctor told me not to stick anything down there to scratch no matter how much it itched but I think it had been some time since he had his own plain white cast on and forgot how absolutely annoying that little itch can be so when no one was looking I grabbed my mom’s canister of knitting needles where there were a ton to choose from and I first reached for the pretty pink metal ones but then I felt a little bad about using the pretty ones because she used those all the time so I grabbed the ugly plastic ones and rammed one of them down there where I was able to get really close to my itchy “foot bone!” but I got a little carried away with the motion and all of a sudden out of nowhere it broke WHILE STILL IN MY CAST which is just what my doctor told me would happen and I didn’t believe him but now there was evidence that he was right but I was still stuck with one broken plastic knitting needle in my cast and I began to panic has I imagined my foot turning gangrene just like my doctor said would happen if I stuck anything down there and then I imagined the look on my mother’s face when the cast came off yelling OH MY GOD and then THAT’S WHERE THAT NEEDLE WENT as the broken needle fell to the cold hard hospital floor and the doctor turning to grab the skill saw to saw off my foot since it was gangrene and just as I got to this point in my imagination I managed to grab hold of the little flat top edge of the stuck needle with its free partner and yank it out but not without leaving what felt like a long wide scratch on my leg that I was certain would turn gangrene so I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t but all was well when the cast finally did come off and there was no yelling or sawing or gangrene. Just a stupid white cast on the floor.