Vegetarianism For Dummies
Published February 9, 2011 | Last weekend I made a beautiful roast beef dinner with Yorkshire pudding. It is, without a doubt, one of my favourite meals of all time. After slaving over a hot stove for hours, I served it to my family and asked my husband how everything tasted.
His response? “I think we need to eat more salad.”
Before you start hating on the Serb, I must admit that he has a point. We are not a family that immerses itself in veggies. I don’t shove hot dogs and Wonder Bread down my kids’ throats, but they’re also not particularly well-acquainted with the wonderful world of lettuce.
It wasn’t always this way. Before we had kids, the Serb and I ate very sensibly. When my first child was a baby, I was a stay-at-home-mom making his food and it was rife with kale, spinach and asparagus.
By the time my daughter got here, I was working full-time and she had to settle for the jarred stuff. To this day, my son still scarfs broccoli while my daughter wouldn’t eat a green bean if I held a gun to her Barbie’s head.
I tried being vegetarian once when I was in my twenties and for the first dinner, my sister pointed out that I’d made – and devoured – beef tortellini (I then proceeded to polish it off with a ham sandwich). Where my husband grew up in Serbia, vegetables were never taken seriously as a food group, especially when compared to their dietary building blocks of cheese, meat and more cheese.
I’m determined to put more emphasis on flora over fauna. Who knows – I may even be some sort of vegetarian phenom. Hopefully this time I’ll make it past dinner.
My new mantra.
Nothing Says “Christmas” Like a Bed Full of Barf
Published December 27, 2010 | The night before Christmas started out in such a promising way: we’d just returned from a cool new Korean barbecue place where you grill your own food at the table and come home to a Toblerone fondue. The kids were in their new jammies, had willingly posed for a cheesy in-front-of-the-tree photo and were begging to go to bed so that Santa could do his thing. I should’ve known it was too good to be true.
I was cleaning up the kitchen while my husband wrapped some presents downstairs when my son came stumbling around the corner in tears. My eyes darted to the now-empty plate of cookies and half-drained cup of eggnog on the coffee table beside the tree in our living room, but he was so upset that he didn’t even notice mommy had scarfed Santa’s treats.
“MOMMMMY!” he wailed. “I P-P-P-PUUUUUUKED!”
Did he ever. His new jammies were covered – and I mean shoulder-to-ankle – in barf. I’ve already documented that my son is a horrible puker; it’s like an epileptic exorcism when he’s sick.
Needless to say, his room was a disaster. The entire bed, comforter and pillows were covered in his dinner. Did I mention it’s a queen-size bed? And that we forgot to put his mattress-protector-thingy under the fitted sheet? And that we’d let him cook his own shrimp and mussels at the restaurant? We should’ve been surprised that he wasn’t sick on the car ride home.
The devil's mollusk
My husband grabbed our son and stuck him in the shower while I grabbed Santa’s my eggnog and topped it up with a few ounces of rum. Fortified, I went to work on the dirty bed, lamenting my lack of hazmet suit. Thankfully I had a container of detergent that I’d used in my triathlon days – it gets any smell out of anything – and by Christmas morning he was back to his old self in his newly-laundered jammies.
The silver lining of this fiasco? That my three-year-old daughter had slept in her room for the first time all week. Otherwise, she would’ve been beside him and likely lost in a sea of seafood chunks.
I would do a commercial for these dudes (actually, I think I just did).
17 CommentsDeck the Halls with MSG
Published December 20, 2010 | The Christmas Eve tradition of my childhood began the way many things in my life do: with dumb luck and poor planning. As a child, the night before Christmas was just something to get through until the big show the next morning. A token gift could be opened that evening, which only made waiting for present-palooza that much more interminable.
Then one year when I was about eight-years-old, we were out doing errands on Christmas Eve and my mother (most likely in an attempt to avoid another hash meal) suggested that we stop for dinner at a restaurant. And by “restaurant”, I mean McDonald’s.
The golden arches were closed that night (this was back when malls were closed on Sundays…and telephones had cords), so we set out for Chinatown, reasoning that someone had to be feeding heathens such as ourselves who weren’t in church.
Sure enough, the Silver Dragon was packed. We saw some of my Jewish friends from school – and more than a few shifty-eyed WASPs – digging into some noodley goodness. We had such a good time that my family still goes there over thirty years later (zip it with your math). I’ve even transported this Christmas Eve custom to my new home, although it morphed to include sushi or Korean barbecue followed by chocolate fondue.
And that is how, while searching desperately through the cold streets for a warm meal, a tradition was born; not unlike the story of Mary and Joseph looking for a place to birth the Son of God, only with egg rolls.
Nothing says Merry Christmas like Moo Goo Gai Pan
23 CommentsThe Secret to Great Hash*
Published December 15, 2010 | I scour online recipes looking for dinner ideas because, baking calamities aside, I really enjoy cooking and have been told by people other than my husband that I’m pretty good at it.
There have been some scrumptious successes (my rib sauce recipe is in a time capsule) and disgusting defeats (the words “warm”, “apple” and “salad” cause the Serb to weep uncontrollably). But nothing in recent memory has tickled my family’s fancy quite like my mom’s recipe for hash.
Hash is something I grew up with in the 70’s, along with SPAM and tuna casserole. I remember my mom making it often, but I never craved it (unlike her banana cream pie – I would consider selling one of my kids for a piece of that Dream Whip-covered goodness).
My mom made hash during her last trip out here and my family lost their minds for it. So now, in the spirit of giving – and who doesn’t love a meal that can be made in under ten minutes for less than ten dollars? – I now present to you: Hash.
The ingredients are deceptively simple:
Notice the bottle of wine in the background.
The method is equally effortless: cook noodles, then add cheese packet, but no milk; brown meat, then add soup; mix it all together with a bit of milk, squirt some organic ketchup on top (cuz I’m all fancy n’ sh*t); put it on the table and watch your family turn into a pack of feral dogs trying to get the biggest helping.
I almost lost a finger taking this.
Despite the misleading name and unsavoury presentation, this stuff is like crack to my family (turns out this is a drug post after all):
I know what you’re thinking: Nigella Lawson must be sh*tting herself.
To accompany this homage to 1978, may I suggest a side salad of iceberg lettuce with Thousand Island dressing and a can of creamed corn? Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go set the mood with some Captain & Tennille…
*My sincere apologies to those drug users who’ve landed here expecting helpful hookah tips…although this is pretty great if you have the munchies.
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