Maybe it's naive, but everytime I go home, I imagine that maybe by now we're all grown enough to get along. This year, that little fantasy got shredded pretty quickly. Maybe that's good. Whatever. We're all frikkin emotional chess grandmasters, my parents and sister and I. It's arguably better than real chess, because you never have to suffer the humiliation of surrendering a game. It's kind of a neverending thing.
Ideally we'd have a really cool family dojo, with lanterns, and bamboo, and zen fountains, and swooshing silk curtains, and like this wicked cool wall full of weapons, and for the first few days of xmas, we'd hang out there, sharpening blades, and retying grips, and stabbing dummies, and practising all these cool moves. It'd be nice if there was some evil xmas orc horde that we could unite against, but ever since Frodo cast the Ring into the crack of Doom, Evil just ain't what it used to be.
So instead, we just turn on each other. I made the mistake of trying to make a tomato salad for myself, the first evening. Here's the recipe:
Here's the recipe:6 tomatoes, well sliced. Shred those mfers. Cutting tomatoes is pretty entertaining, easiest with a serrated blade, like a steak knife. One aspect which makes cutting tomatoes interesting is that the texture of tomato flesh is quite similar to human flesh - it's pretty easy to draw blood.
So...dice the tomatoes, and then start looting. My parents have a way better-stocked fridge then I do. Goat cheese and ginger vodka and stuff. So it's fun to do gourmet rampages. Here we go.
Hunk of fresh ginger, cut fine, stir in 3 garlic cloves, diced fine, and 1 medium-sized diced onion, put in a cup or bowl..
Add the juice from 1/2 a lemon, balsamic and ricewine vinegar, maple syrup, until the vegetables are covered by the liquids. Microwave for 33 seconds, stir, taste, microwave again for 33 secs. Repeat if ncessary. Microwaving is the quick way to take the bite out of raw onion, softens it up.
To the tomatoes, add 2 dollops of hungarian mustard, 1 dollop slowenian horseradish, a generous drizzling of lime blossom honey, a pour of soy sauce, and olive oil. Stir in the microwaved onion, once it's mellowed.
And, the final ingredient;
Absurd amounts of mockery, disdain and contempt.
Despite the fact that I have successfully fed myself for almost a decade, I've been pigeon-holed into the special-ed section of cooking, by my family. It's one step above being considered incapable of cooking. But actually, that's usually the realm I inhabit, when I'm visitting my family - relegated to washing dirty dishes, and chopping vegetables, with oversight.
So this year, I brought a bit of my special sauce. Here's the recipe...
-keep drinking
-"You know what? If you don't want any of this, that's fine. But keep your frickin mouths shut."
-"Darling, all I'm doing is chopping up some fricking tomatoes, stand down honeybunch."
-keep drinking
-"No, this isn't playful, all of you all are mocking me. I'm just making a flipping salad. I'm not making you eat it."
-"You know what, that's fine. I thought that my diverse and sophisticated palate had evolved from you people. But you're about as intolerant as toddlers. I'm not making you eat this. I'm allowed to like this. It's not such a big deal."
-drink more
-"Fine. This sucks. I'm a lunatic idiot. Can you at least shut the crap up?"
-break open another bottle. fucken maniacs. Jesus flipping christ but they won't even let me cut some tomatoes up, without spawning some loopy storm of criticism. Well, if it's on, it's ON! Flipping sonsabitches.
Tomato salad is served! Sit down and enjoy.