Sunday, December 7, 2008

Family dinner, the MasterCard style, Director's cut

Time needed to prepare dinner for seven: 2 days with prep time.

Time available: 6 hours.

Cooking time for that one side dish that you inevitably forget to serve (inevitably family favorite): 2 hours.

Number of times freaked out due to various reasons: let's not go there.

Number of "Thank you, L-rd" said over your family's tardiness: 1 per each minute of lateness.

Forcing your younger single brother to listen to your parenting challenges: Priceless.

Feeling vindicated after your younger brother (probably under the influence of alcohol, which in turn was consumed in excess to drown your oversharing of parenting challenges) confesses that you were treated much stricter than him due to your more advanced age and supposedly higher wisdom that comes with it: Even more priceless.

Observing your mother's reaction to his confession: Heh, heh, priceless!

Realizing a few hours later that you are repeating the pattern: Also priceless, but in a different sort of way.

P.S.

Calling Mom and commiserating together on the challenges of parenting and ungrateful kids: Yep, truly and honestly priceless.

11 comments:

  1. I'm lazy so I only make stuff that takes, at most, 10 minutes to prep.

    Though I'm also paranoid and always make too much of everything.

    A very annoying result of my paranoia is that for the last several years my nightmares, 99% of the time, are about it being 20 minutes before shabbat, the stores are closed/closing, there are guests coming and there's no food. Variations include different stores, bus/subway stopping in wrong place, even planes for some reason...

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  2. Moshe,

    I rarely cook anything requiring a lot of labor, I got over it after getting pregnant with DD. However, some things are better prepped in advance, like roast, if you have time, of course... Then unmarinated in advance roast is better than no food. Overall, I love having family over: even if you screw up, they will still love you and come back again. And probably bring some take out next time.

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  3. Get a rotisserie, it's awesome. Can make BBQ chicken, duck, turkey breast, roasts, steaks. Though cleaning the basket's a bitch.

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  4. Hate cleaning greasy things. That is precisely the reason why we haven't bought it yet. My roasts come out ok, I think. SubHub doesn't complain at least. I just like marinating them in advance, but I haven't actually done it in years... Too much brain power required to prepare anything in advance.

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  5. The not disgusting Moroccan version of chulent.
    I use lamb riblets/breast from Glatt Mart, yams, rice, bulgur, honey, eggs, cummin, salt, cayenne, hot paprika, curry spices, chestnuts and hotdogs or tongue.

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  6. Funny. I have been doing this (well, my version) for years, just didn't know that that's how it's called. We call it "hamin" (not exactly Moroccan), and hubby gets slightly offended when someone calls it "chulent".

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  7. Yeah, chulent is beans, with beans, with more beans, and a quarter pound of beef.

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  8. You forgot about kugel on the side! (Actually, I find parve chulent with sour cream quite refreshing in the summer. But only as an exception, and usually in someone else's house.)

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  9. I make meat with meat, with meat on the side. Salads and parve stuff only take away room from meat.
    I once had a vegetarian over so I made stir fry with tofu. Was good but too much work and lacking meat.

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