fandomnumbergenerator | Entries tagged with holidays

Because of the accumulation of eating restrictions in my extended family, I am always looking for festive vegan and gluten free dishes.

The one recipe that has stood the test of time become a holiday tradition is fruit crisp. It is based on a Deborah Madison recipe but has undergone so many transformation that it’s really not the same recipe. Also, my mother and I make it pretty differently (I hate the filling to be gummy, and she hates the filling to be runny) and this is my version. The recipe is very forgiving so these measurements are approximate.
( recipe behind the cut )

This year I made this chocolate almond cake (I made it in an 8” springform pan instead of a loaf pan and added an extra tablespoon of vanilla extract) with a vegan version of this amazing ice cream recipe from the Silver Spoon for Children. I substituted 1/2 cup coconut manna plus 3/4 cups water for the 1 1/4 cups heavy cream, and it kind of worked. The ice cream was too hard straight out of the freezer and was a little gritty. But the flavor was good and the texture issues were less of a problem when it was served on top of almond cake.

Another recent holiday tradition is making Deborah Madison’s All-Bean Chili (essentially this recipe without the masa) with pulled-pork on the side for the night everyone arrives at my mother’s house. I leave out the cayenne pepper and the chipotle from the chili and puree a can of chipotle in adobo and serve it on the side (along with sour cream, cheese, corn chips and store bought pico de gallo and guacamole). It lets everyone assemble the dinner they want, and a double recipe gave us enough left-overs for lunch on the 23rd.

This week, I passed my ASCP certification, and got through my annual review.

In January, I am going to start in earnest to look for a new job.

But first, Christmas, family, motherhood, daughterhood. And my mother-in-law's plan that we are all going to sing Christmas carols around the fire while my sister-in-law plays the ukulele.

Christmas is seriously one of the worst things about being sober. I used to be so good about avoiding all the drama. No, sorry, I can’t do [totally unnecessary family thing that LITERALLY EVERYONE HATES], I’m too busy being the black sheep of the family.

Don’t mind me. I just got back from Thanksgiving.

Is this situation going to be as bad as my gut feeling is telling me?

Can I find a way to tell the person how miserable they are making me?

If I cannot find a way to talk to the person, what can I do to make myself feel better in the moment?

Sometimes other people really are acting like jerks

Pay attention to when I am trying to pretend that things aren’t upsetting me. Do not let my temper surprise me.

I am not responsible for other people’s drama

It is not my responsibility to make people like someone I care about (husband, brother, friend) unless that person asks for my help

Do not get emotionally invested in arguments with people who enjoy arguing for its own sake.

I am always looking for things my mother and I can talk about without it being an emotional mine field.

She wants to talk about my daughter all the time, but that tends to turn into my mother grieving that my daughter isn’t girly enough, and her conviction that my daughter will never be interested in dolls and fancy dresses or anything else that my mother cares about.

When we moved to the suburbs 6 years ago and found out the soil was too full of lead to plant vegetables, I got into perennial gardening for a while. Which was safe. Particularly since my mother will always be better at it than me. Though, I actually kind of think perennials are boring (mostly because you can’t eat them).

I’ve tried talking about antiques, but there are so many issues about class and status and taste, that that’s not really safe.

We talked about genealogy for a while, and I don’t have to tell you how much of disaster that was. She had zero interest in any part of her mother’s or my father’s genealogy (weirdly, they were 10th cousins) because they weren’t from the fancy part of the family. And my mother (like her father) had always looked down on her mother’s background.

I was kind of hoping we could talk about Sherlock, because it’s on BBC. But when I brought it up, she was really vague about why she didn’t like it. Probably because she thought it was too gay. So I dropped that too. Because I don’t want to actually have to listen to her try to be polite when she talks about how uncomfortable gay subtext makes her.

I’m not going to lie. I kind of hate Christmas, but Tobias says he’s going to try to do all the organizing this year, and I just need to try not to get caught up in mediating/ trying to make everybody happy. And Thanksgiving was fine. My stepmother is in kind of poor health and did not have the energy to be as full of piss and vinegar as usual. And I had some grand plan to tell my father to quit it with the inappropriate hugs, but just gave up. But San Francisco was amazing. I spent the whole time eating or hiding in our room or trying to meet up with old friends and lovers, and half-flirting with everyone (I blame the pregnancy hormones). And everyone was really supportive if my being pregnant (except my one friend the environmentalist, who was like, WTF, two kids!?!?!?)

San Francisco was amazing. So many compliments on my hair and my boots. Everyone half-flirting all the time. (The guy at the aquarium flirting with Tobias, and Tobias being clueless because he was actually just really interested in how anchovies school, was priceless.)

And I remembered, Oh yeah, this is the place where people think I’m attractive. Which is incredibly shallow but maybe actually enough to make me want to move back.

Steeling myself for Thanksgiving with my father and his wife and her family. Despite how terrified I was of my father as I teenager, I actually get along with him pretty well now. As my brother said a few years ago, he’s like this smart guy with cool interests and a weird sense of humor, and you sort of forget he’s the same guy from our childhood. And I try to like his wife. She’s smart and driven and not at all like the kind of second wife that a lot of my father’s friends found. But she’s also abrasive and argumentative and likes to pick stupid fights, and can’t turn it off for holidays. And it pushes all my buttons. Around her, you need to just bite your tongue and be sure that nothing you’re saying sounds like a complaint. (There’s a story about her younger son, who ran into some problem during his PhD and ended up living in a storage unit and eating food straight out of the can, and he wouldn’t tell her, presumably because that would be too much like complaining, and when she found out, he just asked her to get hims some canned peaches.)

But she also seems to have calmed down my father a lot, so I guess that’s good. We had kind of a weird interaction about ten years ago, when I was still living in San Francisco. It was Christmas and everyone had had too much to drink. Or maybe it was just me, and of course, my father. Somehow, me, my brother and my father got into an argument about who was taller than whom, so the three of us had to take turns standing back to back to figure it out. And when I was standing back to back with my father, he reached back and goosed my ass. Which I ignored, because, honestly, he seems kind of harmless now that I’m an adult and don’t live with him. But his wife got really upset at him and gave me this look like, “Aren’t you going to stop him?" And I just wanted to say, "I’ve been dealing with him being grabby since I was 13, when it was terrifying, and now it’s just mildly annoying. And, anyway, don’t you dare make this about me." But I didn’t say anything.

I kind of hate holidays.

We’re going to San Francisco on Saturday to see my father and my brother for Thanksgiving, and I’m super excited. I love being in San Francisco, even if, as many people have pointed out, it is cold and dirty. I want to move back to the Bay Area so badly, and it is a semi-plausible plan since there are so many bio-techs there, but I really question why I want I move back. Everybody who’s still living out there is being constantly oppressed by the rich douche bags, and I worry that I am letting nostalgia for some long gone San Francisco get the better of me. And I would be living in the suburbs anyway, because, seriously, who can afford to live in San Francisco?

I am getting really stressed out about the holidays. There are so many things that need to happen, and I am the one who does them. Because I seem to be the only one who knows how to plan, though maybe I am just the only one who needs a plan.

I need to finish the holiday card, and figure out how Tobias’s family is getting up to my mom’s house from New York. Presents and food for ten people (one vegan, one gluten-free, one dairy-free). Two different and not totally compatible sets of Christmas traditions (and both Tobias and my mother sad that I don’t really like Christmas). Trying to figure out how to keep my Mother from crying, or at least convincing myself that it is not my job to keep my mother from crying. (When did I become The Good Daughter? And how can I stop?)

Last night I told Tobias I was starting to feel overwhelmed, and he gave me this disappointed look, like, oh no, here we go again. He is not very good at hiding what he’s thinking. And I am too good at reading people.