Food

Can anything make you feel better than Planet Earth on Animal Planet and browsing through food blogs for holiday dinner ideas? 

I've been in a terrible life slump.  Getting that C in Biology is enough to make me want to spend my entire break in bed.  I have no Christmas cheer this year, which means that I don't buy gifts or attend social events.  With the exception of a small get-together between VV, EJ and JG, I am done with organizing get-togethers for the season.  VV has been going through hard times, struggling with depression, anxiety and side-effects of medication, and with her birthday on the 21st, it seems right to make an exception for her.  But that's it!  I feel like I'm always the one to arrange friends getting together, and this season, I just want to sit it out and let somebody else do the work.  Will anyone?  Maybe, maybe not, and if not, I'll just rest and recuperate in prepration for Winter Quarter.  I'm tired thinking about it.

On Thanksgiving I spent a few days arguing and haranging my Mother to let me make a few recipes for our dinner: sweet potato coins with salad toppings, a harvest salad, and a craneberry cake.  Up to the last hour of cooking she was still giving me a hard time, repeating over and over again that I had just wasted $40 on an experiment that was too American to taste good.  End result?  Everyone loved every single bite, and my sister and her husband came back the next day to pick up some of that craneberry cake (which my father and I brought to a cafe for our morning rituals before I returned to school, and left the entire container there).  As they congratulated me I mentally raged at my Mother for being unsupportive, for never having faith in me, ever.  Ever.  Not only do I have to fight my self-doubts, I have to fight her's, too.  A few days later I got an apology, which may be the first I can remember, and now everyone is praising me as some amazing cook and want my contributions to the Christmas dinner.  Thinking back, I'm still ready to wring some necks, but I'm surfing food blogs for holiday ideas.

This Christmas the main dish will be garu, a stew heavy in chicken, carrots and potatos, accompanied by slices of french bread.  This is actually pretty standard dinner fare that my Mother makes year round, and it's my job to figure out what to make around it.  There's a yule log cake for dessert, so no need there.  With my family, I have to decrease the cholesterol, carbohydrates and citrus, while increasing the greens and flavors.  Since it's winter, I'll be looking for warm, mushy stuff (buttered, boiled spinach?  Quiches (eggs = cholesterol)?), and diversify my family's palate.  Suddenly I'm yearning for more pomegranates and carrots.  And leeks.  I've been meaning to try something with leeks.

Let's watch Black Swan and do more looking tomorrow.