humour

Flying Food

/ Diane Henders / 25 Comments

Last week’s post reminded me that I’m no stranger to flying food.  In fact, it may have contributed to my lifelong antipathy toward dressing up and attending formal functions.

First, a bit of background:  I grew up on a farm ‘way out in the sticks.  We dressed up for church, weddings, and funerals, and the rest of the time I ran wild outside.  So dress-up occasions came with considerable tension and discomfort: “Don’t do anything to get your good clothes dirty” meant ignoring my most fundamental personality traits.

When I was a teenager, my cousin’s wedding reception was held in the Fort Garry Hotel, the grandest historic hotel in Winnipeg.  There was a buffet, and I was on my best behaviour in my best dress.  We were working our way through the buffet line and my dad was ahead of me, chatting to whoever was ahead of him.

Remember the restaurant scene in Pretty Woman where the snail shoots off her plate only to be fielded by a deadpan waiter?

Yep, you guessed it.  Not versed in buffet etiquette, I had just taken a piece of pineapple with my fingers.  As I moved the slippery morsel toward my plate, my dad gestured animatedly.  (Apparently it runs in the family.)  His hand smacked mine, and the pineapple sailed across the fancy ballroom to disappear under one of the white-skirted tables.

I envied it at that moment.  I felt like vanishing under one of the tables, too.

Fast-forward to my first year of living in residence at the University of Manitoba.

Thanks to Chris K., a mature student who took this wide-eyed country bumpkin under his (platonic) wing, I finally learned some basic table manners such as holding my fork between my fingers instead of clenched in my fist like a weapon.  My image makeover continued while I observed and copied the fashion choices of my oh-so-sophisticated interior design classmates.

By the time I went on my first date (!) to a fancy restaurant (The Keg – hey, it was a whole lot fancier than anywhere I’d ever been), I was prepared.  I wore fashionable clothes; I knew how to hold my fork; I even successfully identified the bread-and-butter plate.  It was winter, so I was wearing my best (okay, my only) full-length coat.

Dinner went without a hitch and the bill was uneventfully paid.  When we finally rose from the table I turned to leave, swinging my coat dramatically over my shoulders… and it caught a full pitcher of ice water on a nearby ledge.

I didn’t look back to see whether it had landed on the floor or the neighbouring diners.  Head high, I swept out of the restaurant in my dramatic coat, the clattering of ice cubes and cries of dismay fading behind me.

It was a long time before I felt even remotely comfortable in a nice restaurant.  And I’m still VERY careful when donning my outerwear near other diners.

Anybody else have food-flinging tendencies?  (Remember the snail scene from Pretty Woman?  It runs from 1:50 to 2:35 in the video).

Training Cookies

/ Diane Henders / 40 Comments

I was chatting with my step-mom last week when she reminded me of a memory that made me smile:  the year I got my training cookies.

If you’re scratching your head right now, I don’t blame you.  Most people would agree that a bit of training is helpful before tackling some of the more complex foods, but everyone knows how to eat cookies.

Unless they’re me.

I can dismantle and gobble down a steamed lobster in record time.  Sushi?  No problem; I can handle chopsticks, and I’m such a food-geek that I actually know obscure sushi etiquette like never mixing the wasabi into the soya sauce and always eating nigiri so the fish contacts your tongue first.

But cookies?  Well… apparently they’re trickier.

It all started years ago when my dad and step-mom came to visit me in Calgary, bringing my step-mom’s famous ginger-molasses cookies.

We had been driving around enjoying the sights on a nice spring day, and we stopped at a convenience store to get some cold drinks.  Parked comfortably in the shade, we were sitting in the car with the windows open while enjoying our refreshments and some of the fateful cookies.  As usual, I was talking volubly with my hands.  I was also holding a cookie at the time.

I made one particularly emphatic gesture and the cookie flew out of my hand, out the open window to land with a plop on the asphalt beside the car.

Mouth gaping, eyes wide, I sat there in shocked silence.

I had wasted a cookie!  For a food-worshipper like me, it was sacrilege!  Worse, I had wasted a delicious cookie that had travelled 800 miles just to tickle my tastebuds!

The silence lasted only a second or two before my companions burst into uproarious laughter.  And sure enough, when next Christmas rolled around, guess what I found under the tree?

Remember the children’s mittens that were joined together with a cord that went up one sleeve, around the neck and down the other sleeve so the mittens never parted company with the jacket?  (And theoretically, with the child?)

Yep, I’d gotten training cookies:  Two tender and tasty ginger-molasses cookies, each with a neat hole in the middle.  A festive ribbon joined the two cookies at exactly the length required to fit around my neck while holding a cookie in each hand.

Ever since then, that recipe has been known as “Training Cookies” in our household.  The cookies themselves are yummy, but the memory is sweeter than any baked goods could ever be.

I’m probably the only person in the world who needs training cookies, but if you’re in the market for a chewy and delicious ginger-molasses cookie recipe, here it is:

Training Cookies

¾ cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
4 tablespoons dark molasses
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Beat the butter and sugar together until fluffy, then add the egg and molasses and beat.  Mix in dry ingredients.  Roll into balls, dip in sugar, and flatten with a fork.  Bake at 350 degrees approximately 10 – 12 minutes until just beginning to brown at the edges.  Happy memories can be baked in, or added later!

Anybody else have a family recipe with special memories?

Squared Lasagna And Numeric Tea

/ Diane Henders / 25 Comments

It’s getting a little crazy around here…

Okay, fine; I’ll admit it:  We’ve zoomed past ‘a little crazy’ and are rapidly approaching chaos and madness.

The packers and movers arrive tomorrow, and we’re scrambling to get the last of our pre-packing done.  The house looks as if it’s occupied by hyperactive children with Attention Deficit Disorder:  There are little heaps everywhere because we rarely get a block of time uninterrupted by some crisis or another.

Here are just a few of the highlights:

  • Our ancient water heater wasn’t supplying enough hot water so we hired a plumber to replace it, only to find that all that was needed was a $2.00 part… but we had to pay $800 to replace the tank anyway because the old tank was already pulled out.

Time lost:  2.5 hours.
Equanimity lost:  98%

  • The furnace blower motor seized. Hubby fixed it.

Time lost:  2 hours.
Knuckle skin lost:  50%

  • The dishwasher died. (It’s the newest appliance in the house.)  Hubby fixed it.

Time lost:  2 hours.
Appreciation for irony lost:  92%

  • The builder needed an HVAC design for our new house, and we only had a half-assed sketch from the heating contractor. I figured out the heating and return air drops, modified the plan to accommodate them, and provided an annotated drawing.

Time lost:  5 hours.
Brainpower lost:  95%

  • We still can’t find insurance for our shipping container once it arrives on the Island.

Time lost:  Several days and counting.
Peace of mind lost:  89%

  • My brand-new Ford Escape refused to start… and then, just to make diagnosis virtually impossible, it started up and ran as though nothing had ever been wrong. It goes into the shop on Friday, and we want to hit the road in a week.

Time lost:  God only knows.
Sanity lost:  100%

At least we’ve still got a sense of humour.  (Yes, that’s one sense of humour between the two of us.)

To wit:  One evening I’d made a giant pan of lasagna.  We’d finished eating, but the pan was on the table and the cheese was still warm and melty.  Hubby and I each idly picked up a spatula and nudged the cut edges of the lasagna into a perfect square from opposite sides… and then burst out laughing at our anal-retentiveness.  At least our quirks are compatible.

And speaking of anal-retentive quirks, my sister and I had a good giggle, too.  She had sent me a yummy Christmas gift:  24 Days Of Tea, with the little samples randomly numbered.  So I did what any self-respecting geek would do:  I rearranged them in numeric order.

“They’re supposed to be like that,” she informed me through her laughter.  “If you turn the boxes around they make a picture.”

Seriously, why would you waste time hunting for the next number?

Seriously, why would you waste time hunting for the next number?

(I also didn’t realize I was supposed to wait until December 1 to start sampling the tea.  Who knew tea could be so complicated?  It should have come with instructions.)

Anyhow, I’m taking deep breaths and reminding myself that one way or another this move will happen.  It won’t be smooth or stress-free; but, hey, at least our lasagna is squared off and our tea is correctly numbered.

At this point, I’ll take any illusion of control I can get!

Pavlov Would Be Proud

/ Diane Henders / 60 Comments

We sold our house this week (hooray!) and now we’ve plunged into the bazillion details that go with closing down a household in one place and recreating it a thousand kilometres away.  That has left me with very little brainpower to spare, so my conditioned reflexes are taking over while my conscious mind is occupied.

That isn’t as helpful as you might think.

The strongest reflex is my reaction to the ring of my cell phone.  Before this all started I usually didn’t keep my cell phone with me, and the ringtone was silenced so I rarely noticed even if it did vibrate (much to the annoyance of my text-happy friends).

But for the past three months I’ve had an audible ringtone, and I’m so conditioned to answer it that I twitch even when I hear the same ringtone from someone else’s phone.  I’m afraid to speculate on how long it’ll take to overcome that, since habits tend to stay with me long after they’ve ceased to be relevant.

Take, for instance, my habit of looking into the oven before I turn it on.

‘Waaaaaay back in 1986, my apartment didn’t have a dishwasher.  I had cats and I didn’t always have time to do dishes; and I’d worked hard to train the cats to stay off the kitchen counter.  Part of that process was to never leave out anything tempting.  Dirty dishes are a kitty magnet, so if I was in a hurry I’d load the dishes into my dishpan and put it in the oven before leaving.  I never turned on the oven without first checking to make sure the dishpan wasn’t in it.

Fast-forward 30 years.  I’ve owned a home with a dishwasher since 1990, but I still open the oven before I turn it on.  A couple of years ago I caught myself doing that and resolved to not bother anymore.  After all, the habit had outlived its usefulness by a couple of decades.

But in spite of my new resolution, the next time I was baking I reflexively opened the oven before turning it on… only to discover that Hubby had left some parts in there (don’t ask me why).  That’s it; I’m doomed to open the oven before turning it on for the rest of my life.

I still think I’m seeing cats in my house, too.  Our last beloved cat died 12 years ago, but sometimes I’ll see an out-of-place object from the corner of my eye and think, “Cat!” before I realize what it actually is.  And when we visit cat-owning households, my foot automatically goes out to block feline access to the exterior door when coming and going.

But the worst is my Pavlovian response to the television.  The only times I ever watch TV are for major sporting events like the Grey Cup and Superbowl, or occasionally when Hubby and I watch a movie together.  The sports parties are giant junk-food-fests; and the movies always include hot buttered popcorn.  I start to salivate just walking by the TV.

Yep, Pavlov would be proud.

Anybody else have conditioned reflexes that won’t go away no matter how outdated they are?

Fanatics vs. Funlovers: It’s A Tie

/ Diane Henders / 25 Comments

This past weekend was the CFL Grey Cup, which is a tradition at our house (if by ‘tradition’ you mean ‘excuse to invite the gang over and consume far too much junk food and beer’).

We’re a mixed bag of sports fans, from serious to superficial.  Our living room is small, so we seat the Fanatics up front to give them an unobstructed view while the Funlovers sit behind to heckle enjoy the game in their own way.  Needless to say, the conversations vary quite a bit between the front row and the peanut gallery.

I’m in the midrange of the fandom scale so I get to eavesdrop on both the Fanatics and the Funlovers.  It’s almost as entertaining as the game itself.

It starts before our butts even hit the seats:  Hubby records the game on his PVR, and we start watching about half an hour later so he can fast-forward through the commercials.

But that means the Fanatics are twitching with the knowledge that the game has already started and they don’t know what’s happening!  Meanwhile, the Funlovers are just glad they don’t have to sit through a bunch of commercials.

Here’s how the game usually unfolds:

TV:  “…and that’s an offside pass…”

Fanatics:  *on the edges of their seats* “What the hell were they thinking?!?”

Funlovers:  *glancing up from the chip-and-dip bowl*  “Um… off the side of what…?”

 

TV:  “…that play has been challenged and will be reviewed by the Command Centre…”

Fanatics:  “It was as plain as day!  Are those refs blind?”

Funlovers: *tipping up their beer bottles*  “Oooh, the Command Centre.  What is this, Star Trek?  This must be the fifteenth time they’ve said ‘Command Centre’… hey, that could be a drinking game!  Whenever they say ‘Command Centre’, everybody take a drink…”

 

TV:  *zooms in on a 3,000-pound dogpile of struggling manflesh*

Fanatics:  *vibrating with tension*  “OMG!  Did they get it?  Did they get it?!?”

Funlovers:  “Bahahaha!!! Did you see that guy on the left?  He did a complete somersault!  Oh, man, more of them are piling on!  Wouldn’t it suck to be the bottom guy?”

 

TV:  “…there’s the slotback…”

Funlovers:  “Is that like the band ‘Nickelback’?”

Fanatics:  “No, a slotback is like the NFL’s tight end position.”

Funlovers:  *eyeing the posterior of a player or cheerleader*  “We like tight ends…”

 

Fanatics:  “Hey, that was a horse collar!”

TV:  “That’ll be a 15-yard penalty…”

Funlovers:  “They give penalties just because the caller was hoarse?”

 

TV:  “…and there’s the Cup!  Right here, these are your 104th Grey Cup champions!”

Funlovers:  “Look at them all kissing the cup!  They’re basically swapping spit with the whole team.  And think about how many dirty hands have been on that cup before their lips touch it.  Blech!  Penicillin, anyone?”

Fanatics: *falling back in their seats, limp with happiness or despair depending on the outcome*  “Wow, what a game!”

The Gang:  “That was fun!  Let’s do it again next year!”

* * *

Anybody else watch the Grey Cup this year?

Worshipping The Real Estate Gods

/ Diane Henders / 51 Comments

This is the first time I’ve used a real estate agent to sell a house and it’s been… interesting.  In fact, it’s startlingly similar to joining a religious cult.

First comes the proselytizing:  We can’t possibly achieve salvation (oops, ‘sale’) without the divine intervention of a home stager and real estate agent.

Chastened by our mortal interior-design sins, we allow the home stager to show us the Holy Way.  The most heinous of our furniture is banished to the outer darkness (the garage), while the remaining pieces are rearranged and sanctified by the addition of area rugs, cushions, throws, table lamps, and fresh flowers.

We are admonished to go forth and sin no more, and assured that if we adhere faithfully to the Holy Way we may merit admission to real estate heaven:  a profitable sale.

Accordingly, after the home stager departs we walk through the house snapping photos so we can correctly recreate each detail, in case (gods forbid) anything should get accidentally moved.

The beds must have brand new slightly off-white (not white) duvet covers, with so many pillows, cushions, and throws that the bed itself is mostly invisible and completely unusable.  Each time the house is shown, the giant heap of bedding must be reassembled precisely as shown in the Holy Photos.

There’s only one upholstered chair where I can sit, and I use an old cushion for back support.  Before showing the house, the cushion that has been defiled by my body is returned to the garage and replaced with a designer-consecrated one.  All other furniture is off limits, since using it would leave footprints on the area rug and/or disturb the designer’s arrangement of cushions and throws; which would then take half an hour to re-fluff and rearrange correctly.

The Articles of Faith (the designer’s tchotchkes) must be arranged just so.  The fruit bowl must contain oranges, green apples, and red apples.  Bananas are strictly verboten:  Only spherical brightly-coloured fruits are pleasing to the real estate gods.

We have to comply with dietary restrictions, too:  only bland odourless foods are allowed.

For each showing, the gods must be propitiated with music and delightful scents.  Since I can’t bear the smell of chemical air fresheners, I have to pop a couple of pieces of apple cinnamon cake in the oven half an hour before each showing.  Then the oven is opened to distribute the tasty aromas, while I walk around swinging the baking tin into all corners of the house like a censer.

We carefully check to be sure we’ve complied with each commandment, as though one misplaced pillow will cause all potential buyers to leave in disgust and cast our house into eternal ‘Days On Market’ damnation.

Finally, we turn on every light to welcome the gods, and humbly depart lest our presence offend them during the showing.

I’m doing my best in all this; but I suspect the gods can see into my sinful heart, where I’m secretly planning to reinstate all our tacky-but-comfortable furniture and indulge in a Bacchanalian orgy of roasting garlic as soon as the house is sold.

‘Scuse me; I have to go and remake the beds as penance now…

* * *

P.S. I’m poking fun at our situation, but I don’t mean to ridicule the home stager – she was great, and the results are amazing!  Her accessories make it look as though we actually have taste, and the new furniture arrangements make the interior look bigger and better.  And we aren’t really forbidden from using the furniture – it’s just that we’re too lazy to redo the designer stuff every time.  🙂

P.P.S. This may look normal to most people, but for us it’s the height of designer fashion!

living-room

The only things that are actually ours are the loveseat, dining table and chairs, and the painting. And, of course, the giant fern. We may have to sell that with the house…

Slipping Through The Crack(s)

/ Diane Henders / 13 Comments

Every now and then when life gets too stressful, my friends and I head for the mountains.  Our day trips always include good food, window-shopping, a soak in the mineral hot springs, and, of course, gut-busting laughter.

A couple of weeks ago we made another jaunt to Banff, a day I cherished since I know I’ll miss my friends and our road trips after Hubby and I move to the coast.  We managed to complete the hour-and-a-half drive acting like actual adults:  Chatting and exclaiming over the scenery that remains spectacular no matter how often we visit.

But then (as it frequently seems to happen when I’m involved) we reverted to the mental age of thirteen.  To protect the guilty, I’ll identify my companions only as J, L, and Swamp Butt.  Yes, there’s a good reason for that nickname.

Here’s how it started:  In the restaurant at lunch, Swamp Butt and I claimed the banquette seat with our backs to the wall while J and L chose chairs across from us.  I had just settled in when a sudden movement made me glance over toward Swamp Butt… who was canted away from me at a steep angle, ass pointing in my direction while she muttered something about ‘the crack’.

Apparently the look on my face was priceless, because J and L burst into uproarious laughter.  By the time Swamp Butt managed to explain that she was only scooting over on the bench because she’d been sitting on ‘the crack’ between the banquette cushions, we were all in tears of hilarity.

Which primed us nicely for what happened later.

After a lunch of rich food and beer followed later by a gigantic dinner and more beer, Swamp Butt was living up to her nickname.  We managed to maintain a semblance of composure while she walked along crop dusting the streets of Banff, but just as we got into J’s vehicle for the drive home she cracked off another fart that clung like a vile cloak when she got into the vehicle.

Gasping, gagging, and giggling, we all powered down our windows and rode out the stink.

It was late, and we subsided into tired but happy silence on the drive home… until halfway back to Calgary when the quiet was broken by the sound of Swamp Butt’s window powering down.

In the next instant the rest of us simultaneously slammed our windows open, causing another paroxysm of laughter; especially when the sudden burst of highway-speed turbulence sucked an unsecured shopping bag up from the floor.  I snagged it just before it soared out the window, generating a volley of badinage about what a ‘crack’ team we are.

Swamp Butt didn’t let any more slip and we all made it home unscathed, but it’s a testament to the power of aversive conditioning how quickly our reflexes developed.

And it’s a testament to the power of friendship that our day will become yet another funny shared memory that binds us together regardless of geographic distance.

These precious friendships will never slip through the cracks… despite anything else that may slip through ‘the crack’!

Crazy Plant Lady

/ Diane Henders / 49 Comments

I’ve mentioned before that I have a major addiction to houseplants; and like most addicts, I didn’t realize how bad it was until I started to recover.

(Okay, that’s a lie.  I’m not recovering; it’s just that the realtor has staged an intervention and I’m pretending to go along with it.  Shhh, don’t tell.)

I was actually feeling proud of myself because I’d gotten rid of my really big plants last year.  The nine-foot fig tree and the Norfolk Island pine had gone off to good homes, so the plants we dragged out to the Island last month were only in the four-to-five-foot range.

Our house seemed so empty without them – the place echoed.

But like any other addict, I still had an emergency stash.  I’d kept some smaller plants here, reasoning that they’d be a nice decorating touch when we spruced up the house to sell it.

Fast-forward to a couple of days ago when we were discussing home staging with the real estate agent, who assured us that renting new furniture and a truckload of tchotchkes will make a big difference in selling our house.

We haven’t had any staging consultants in yet, and the realtor gave us some examples of changes they might suggest.  After a few moments I spoke up cautiously.  “What about plants?”

“They’d all have to go.”

Go?

And exactly what did she mean by “all”?

I mean, really; I hardly have any plants left in here.  There’s only a Christmas cactus and a couple of anthuriums and a jade plant and nine African violets…

A little palm tree and a peperomia and a shamrock…

A sword plant and a Chinese evergreen…

A heartleaf philodendron and a couple of variegated corn plants and a few pothos vines…

Oh, and the big Boston fern, but it’s up high so it doesn’t count, right?

And I guess there are the four new hibiscus shrubs that we started from the trimmings of the bigger ones…

Yep, this is after we’ve moved out “most of the plants”.  I’m beginning to understand how much of a problem I have.

I can only imagine what an ugly scene it’ll be when the home stager tries to confiscate my last scrap of greenery:  Like an alcoholic who’s down to her final bottle, I’ll be alternately defensive, confrontational, and weepy.

Friends who live on the Island have assured me that I’ll begin to recover out there; that the ability to garden outdoors almost year-round will slowly cure me of my need to live in a jungle of houseplants.

I hope that’s true.

Meanwhile, can anybody hide an inch-plant for me, just for a little while?  It’s tiny, I promise…

* * *

P.S. The Never Say Spy audiobook is finally available – hooray!  It’s available through Amazon, Audible, and iTunes.

Screen Crud

/ Diane Henders / 45 Comments

I was typing merrily away when I saw it:  a renegade period in the middle of my sentence.  I backspaced to delete it but even after my cursor passed by, it remained impudently in place.

What the…?

Closer examination revealed that it was actually a bit of crud stuck to my computer screen.  When I cleaned it off, though, I realized exactly how much more crud there was.

It looked like tiny splatters of… something.  I have no idea what.  I don’t eat while I’m typing, so it can’t be food.  (Although if I had a third hand I probably would eat at the same time.  Maybe our children’s children’s children will evolve a convenient third appendage after generations of keyboarding.)

Anyway, I don’t have a third hand, so the crudfest isn’t food.

Even though I’ve come close to spewing a mouthful of tea over my screen when I run across something particularly funny, it’s never actually happened.  So it can’t be beverage droplets.

If I’m going to cough or sneeze I contain it.  The crud definitely isn’t snot.  (Which is a comforting thought, because, eeuw.)

We don’t have kids and Hubby has his own laptop, so it’s not someone else’s crud.

Back in the days when cats shared our house I could have pointed the finger of blame at kitty noses, but the last of our elderly felines departed this world over ten years ago and my laptop is much newer; so that theory’s shot.

If I used voice-to-text I might suspect aerosolized spit, which, to my own embarrassment, I discovered we all emit while talking despite our best efforts.  But I don’t talk while I’m working.  Not even unintelligible muttering, which would theoretically reduce the spray range.

But if I’ve eliminated all the likely suspects, what is the screen crud?

I’m stumped.

I suppose it could be deliberately flung there by evil relatives of the sock imps:  Computer imps that reside in the cracks between the keys.

I’m imagining something like our university dining hall a couple of eons ago, where the meal wasn’t complete until at least one person had catapulted a spoonful of Jello onto the ceiling and made it stick.  By the end of the term that ceiling looked like a stained-glass window designed by a lunatic.

So maybe when I close the laptop at night, the laptop imps creep out and fling imp-Jello up at the screen.

Or it might be the invisible ghosts of long-dead copyeditors who are trying to change the punctuation in my work, only to be frustrated when I continue to type and the text scrolls down.

Maybe it’s a squadron of microscopic incontinent flying insects on organized strafing runs.

Or maybe it’s tiny spiders hanging from the ceiling, taking a dump on me as a comment on the quality of my work.  (Spiders are a tough audience.)

I dunno; but if you see me hunched under an umbrella while typing away on my laptop, you’ll know why.

Anybody else have theory as to the origin of screen crud?  Please tell me I’m not the only one getting dumped on by spider-critics!

* * *

New topic over at the Virtual Backyard Book Club:  Life-Changing Fiction — What book(s) changed your worldview?  Click here to have your say!

(Note:  I’ve just discovered that the WordPress theme I’m using for the VBBC has a weird glitch:  If your browser window isn’t wide enough, it doesn’t show the comment box.  If you’ve been unable to comment, I’m so sorry!  Please expand your browser window and the comment box should appear.)

Flipping The Bird

/ Diane Henders / 23 Comments

It’s a tradition; a universal gesture of fellowship and goodwill that never fails to cause indigestion at the very least and a full-blown coronary at the worst.  I’m referring, of course, to the practice of “flipping the bird”, and it’s something I offer my family and friends at least twice a year; sometimes more frequently.

But they don’t seem to mind…

This past weekend we celebrated Thanksgiving Day here in Canada, a holiday that centres around eating far more turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie than is healthy or even comfortable.  (But some things are good for the body while others are good for the soul; and a giant feast with friends and family is definitely good for the soul.)

Turkey dinner is a tradition that always gives me a giggle, partly because of the connotations of “flipping the bird”.  When I was growing up in a more innocent time, we always referred to the turkey as “the bird”:  E.g. “I want to get the bird stuffed and into the oven before ten” or “Is it time to flip the bird yet?”

“Flipping the bird” only meant turning the turkey from its front (where it began roasting to conserve the juices in the white meat) to its back (to create that perfect golden-brown crispy skin during the last bit of cooking time).  Imagine my amusement when I got old enough to realize that phrase could mean something else entirely.

And here’s another funny thing about a turkey-and-pumpkin-pie dinner:  The aromas of both turkey and pumpkin pie are instantly recognizable by anyone who’s ever eaten the traditional meal… but the smells that make everyone’s mouths water aren’t even turkey or pumpkin.

So many times I’ve heard people remark, “Oh, that turkey smells so good!” just a short time after the bird (yes, I said it) goes into the oven.  But you can’t even smell turkey until it’s been roasting for two or three hours.  Before that, all you can smell is the sage and thyme and onions in the stuffing.

Same with pumpkin pie.  The flavour and scent of the actual pumpkin are completely disguised by cinnamon and nutmeg and other yummies.  After smelling the pie, a taste of plain old pumpkin would be terribly disappointing.

But despite the fact that the staples of the feast aren’t exactly as advertised, it’s still nice to have a holiday whose sole purpose is to express gratitude for our good fortune.  For instance, I’m thankful for the fact that, unlike our neighbours in the United States, our Thanksgiving is early enough to allow us time to recover from the turkey stupor so we can enjoy it again at Christmas.

Seriously, though, I’m immensely grateful to live in a warm comfortable house with a loving husband in a safe neighbourhood in a safe country.  To have the luxury of complaining that I’ve eaten too much.  To have family and friends who love me despite my oddities.  To be able to pursue a career I enjoy.

And I’m grateful to all of you, my faithful readers, who brighten my days with your witty comments and kind support.  Thank you, everyone!

(And I promise not to flip you the bird… unless it’s a roasting turkey.)  😉

Happy Thanksgiving!

* * *

New discussion over the Virtual Backyard Book Club:  What Makes You Stop Reading?  What unforgivable storytelling sin will make you chuck a book?  Click here to have your say!