Chestnuts roasting, and all that jazz….

 I am gonna get SO fat this holiday season.

To clarify- I am now the lady in charge of the holiday shenanigans since my mom passed this past January. So, to follow in her most mighty footsteps(since I’m the only one who can pull off her fruitcake) I get to do the cooking for Thanksgiving, the baking for both TG and Christmas, and somehow manage to get my entire house cleared out so that we can begin to move my dad in after the holidays.

(Yes, my delightful father will be probably be taking over our spare bedroom and turning the sunporch into a smoking lounge. I’m ok with this. He gets to heckle folks and I get to keep an eye on the old goat.)

The problem right now being that I have to taste everything I cook/bake. And I cook /bake like my most-very-German mother, meaning lots of butter, oil, shortening, sugar, salt, and love go into every dish that finds its way out of her recipe box. I’ve managed to escape some of the bad habits she taught me(I use more turkey/chicken than beef, cut out the butter and salt, etc.), but there are times I still cook like I’m trying to give everyone in the room an MI.

She also cooked by feel, with statements like, "Stir it until it looks right." or, "Throw a handful of that in and taste it."

Her measurements traveled the gamut between a pinch and a handful. She estimated, she guessed, she improvised, so trying to cook/bake like Mom has always been an adventure. I’m getting good at adventures.

I’m also gonna get fat. Anyone wanna go to the gym with me?

-Rebecca

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November 21, 2010

I cook like that, too. I have never been able to follow a recipe to the letter–I end up putting in a pinch of this, a tad of that. If someone asks me for my recipe for something, I am at a total loss as to how to write it out for them. Your holidays sound like they will be hectic, but I hope they are also good. I am sorry about your Mother–I didn’t know she was gone. 🙁

Looks like you’ve got a “handfull” this holiday season. Although, it’s gratifying after said Olympic cooking event to know that you did a good job and everyone loved it! Also, thank you for the (multiple) messages, they were most helpful. I usually don’t judge a relationship based on sex, but I have found that sex is right up there with compatibility, and maybe I need to reevaluate things.