which_chick (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
which_chick) wrote2004-12-25 11:54 pm
which_chick) wrote2004-12-25 11:54 pm
(no subject)
Happy Yule.
It turns out that the 35 min. pie was at the low (but NON LIQUID) end of done. I'd say forty minutes total was a good cooking time. Also, grandma (who was not feeling well) shared the following tip: Insert a knife in the center. If it comes out clean (strict definition of clean), the pie is done. So. 10 min at 425, the remaining 30 min at 350. That should do you. EVERYONE said the spicing was just right, so take that as it was set forth yesterday. And I am now official pie maker for the holidays. Go me!
Generally, the holiday went well. The family was reasonably polite, the food was good, and the level of sniping was lower than usual. Also, all the little kids were very well-behaved *and* Joe and Stacey let me play with Gwen (the bottle thing, the putting her to sleep thing) without telling me I was doing it wrong. Fortunately, Gwen is a pretty tolerant kid and put up with my lame and pathetic attempts at these parental-type skillz.
Sue's niece R. was able to come for the first time in a couple of years. She's in her early twenties and has been in jail for heroin these last couple of years. She's out now, living in a treatment/halfway house, so could come to the holiday dinner this year. I'm kind of cheering for her to make a go of it this time. Hope springs eternal, and I feel that while she was young and dumb, that shouldn't mean she never gets to have a life. However, it's going to be an uphill battle for her, which is a damn shame. She's a nice kid, aside from the heroin thing.
R. brought her boyfriend person to dinner. I'd guess he didn't have anywhere else to go and if I were a betting woman, I'd say he was no stranger to heroin addiction. Just had the look about him... very Trainspotting.
Anyway, that brings us to today's etiquette hint. If you are going to spend xmas dinner with your girlfriend's people at her aunt's house -- accept their hospitality, eat their bread, drink their wine, and share their holiday table (including pie, damn it) -- it is then VERY BAD MANNERS to steal the portable mp3 player and power supply from right next to the CD player in the living room. If you are dumb enough to try something like that, do not try feed us a cock and bull story about how these items got in your coat pocket and cargo-pants pocket, you fucking piece of trash, you.
Be glad we did not shoot you down in cold blood like the fucking mannerless dog you so clearly are. You came into our home. You accepted our hospitality. You ate our food and drank our drink and supped at our fucking table and then you had the god damn gall to TRY TO STEAL FROM US UNDER OUR OWN ROOF ON CHRISTMAS DAY.
Heroin -- it's the gift that keeps on giving.
It turns out that the 35 min. pie was at the low (but NON LIQUID) end of done. I'd say forty minutes total was a good cooking time. Also, grandma (who was not feeling well) shared the following tip: Insert a knife in the center. If it comes out clean (strict definition of clean), the pie is done. So. 10 min at 425, the remaining 30 min at 350. That should do you. EVERYONE said the spicing was just right, so take that as it was set forth yesterday. And I am now official pie maker for the holidays. Go me!
Generally, the holiday went well. The family was reasonably polite, the food was good, and the level of sniping was lower than usual. Also, all the little kids were very well-behaved *and* Joe and Stacey let me play with Gwen (the bottle thing, the putting her to sleep thing) without telling me I was doing it wrong. Fortunately, Gwen is a pretty tolerant kid and put up with my lame and pathetic attempts at these parental-type skillz.
Sue's niece R. was able to come for the first time in a couple of years. She's in her early twenties and has been in jail for heroin these last couple of years. She's out now, living in a treatment/halfway house, so could come to the holiday dinner this year. I'm kind of cheering for her to make a go of it this time. Hope springs eternal, and I feel that while she was young and dumb, that shouldn't mean she never gets to have a life. However, it's going to be an uphill battle for her, which is a damn shame. She's a nice kid, aside from the heroin thing.
R. brought her boyfriend person to dinner. I'd guess he didn't have anywhere else to go and if I were a betting woman, I'd say he was no stranger to heroin addiction. Just had the look about him... very Trainspotting.
Anyway, that brings us to today's etiquette hint. If you are going to spend xmas dinner with your girlfriend's people at her aunt's house -- accept their hospitality, eat their bread, drink their wine, and share their holiday table (including pie, damn it) -- it is then VERY BAD MANNERS to steal the portable mp3 player and power supply from right next to the CD player in the living room. If you are dumb enough to try something like that, do not try feed us a cock and bull story about how these items got in your coat pocket and cargo-pants pocket, you fucking piece of trash, you.
Be glad we did not shoot you down in cold blood like the fucking mannerless dog you so clearly are. You came into our home. You accepted our hospitality. You ate our food and drank our drink and supped at our fucking table and then you had the god damn gall to TRY TO STEAL FROM US UNDER OUR OWN ROOF ON CHRISTMAS DAY.
Heroin -- it's the gift that keeps on giving.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2004-12-26 05:02 am (UTC)(link)Oh, and congrats on the pie! They can be difficult.
--mattH
no subject
The things that drugs can do to the people who use them are terrible indeed (need some proof (http://www.crackcocaineincamden.co.uk/pages/drugs/what%20crack%20can%20do%20for%20you/the%20results%20of%20crack.htm)?) but what addiction does to the families and friends of addicts is awe-inspiring. No man is an island, after all, and in the wonderful world of collateral damage, stuff like heroin really shines.
Sue's sister (R's mother) does not want to cut off her daughter. She wants to offer support, to offer help, to get her off the damn shit. R works that and I can't ever be sure if it's really that she wants help or that she's gaming her mother for money for drugs. She loves her daughter. She wants to get her daughter help. She is happy to have R home again for the holidays, but worried that something she does could lead to R going back on heroin. She brings R's young man along because she wants to make R happy, because she wants to get along, to be a better mother, to somehow *fix* whatever went so horribly wrong four or five years ago that they've wound up here. And R's young man tries to steal shit, at the first xmas R has had with her family in three or four years.
Do you see how it shines?
Incidentally, R was absolutely shattered, in tears. I believe she's a good kid... but she's a twenty-something heroin addict who's been in and out of rehab about six times now, plus the jail thing. It is very hard for me to believe wholeheartedly anymore, even though I still want to believe. I want to believe she didn't know he would do that. I want to believe that she was shocked, horrified, that he'd steal stuff. I want that to be the truth, and maybe it is.
The thing is, heroin gets people to play. It's like Lucy Van Pelt with the football, and you get to be Charlie Brown. You hate to see yourself doing it... you run and you kick and you fall flat on your back and you swear you will NOT fall for that again, but she says it'll be different this time, it really will, and she's gonna get clean and stay that way and you run to kick the football because maybe, just maybe, it's for real this time.
Oh, how it shines!
On pie: Yeah, pie is sometimes a pain. Fortunately I have a good handle on the crust, which is the part most people find difficult. Interestingly, I was the only person irritated about the overdone-ness of the one pie. Everyone else ate it without complaint. Probably I worry too much about this sort of thing. I'm reasonably certain that everyone else is evaluating the pie on the free pie that I did not have to make scale, and it is therefore judged accordingly. (House rules are that free pie that I did not have to make is awarded automatic +5 on a scale of 1-10.) I've got an apple pie to make for La's boy Ash and then I'm done with pies for the season.