Holiday 2018 Post Redeux

This was originally posted on my Wix blog, under the title "Turkeys, Elves and the Definition of Insanity":

Almost every year, I find myself hosting Christmas for my large, extended family. Either by my own hand or by my husband generously electing me to the post of party queen, every December plays out like the last. Part of my problem is that I hate uncomfortable silences and when the question of who will be hosting Christmas starts to get thrown around in the months leading up to December, the silence of the response is usually deafening. I find myself twisting uncomfortably in the silence and when I no longer take the cricket-song that I hear through the hollow void of replies, I blurt out my bid for it. This has resulted in me winning 27 out of 27times, uncontested. Tell them what I won Johnny: Announcer voice: You've won five days of cleaning, seven trips to the grocery store, nine hours of cooking, three days of decorating, two trips to the liquor store, a beer run, a trip to the party store and two insanely swollen feet!

Luckily, the same does not hold true with Thanksgiving. My sister-in-law loves to do Thanksgiving and I would go as far as to say that she has a lock on the holiday. Thanksgiving is the one holiday of the year that I can guarantee that I can be a guest and that my feet won't swell and throb like two Smithfield hams at the end of the day. It's a holiday where I get a job or a few jobs and I am joyful in the execution of these jobs. You want a sweet potato casserole? I'm your girl. What's that you say? A Chocolate Cream pie? Why of course and I'll throw in a Lemon Pound Cake for good measure.

This year, I was so blissful in my guesting duties that I made a pie, a cake, the Serious Eats Hassleback Potato Gratin (you MUST! Really!) and I had energy leftover to throw together a spur of the moment cranberry sauce. It's easy to be a sport when you haven't been washing floors, scrubbing toilets, vacuuming, dusting and pulling the gizzards out of the ass-end of a giant bird for the last 48 hours.

The burden of hosting is something that is not completely understood by my husband, who seems to think that hosting consists of making a beer run and having the freedom to start cocktail hour earlier than would be socially acceptable on any other day of the year. Every year he looks at me on the morning after a Christmas soiree in almost complete confusion, as I sit with my feet up, on the verge of tears, with a combination of bewilderment and exhaustion on my face over having survived the hosting of another family Christmas celebration. Every year, it pushes me to the brink and every year (like the definition of insanity), I do it again, expecting a different result. The need for change is clearly on me.

So this year, I will wait in discomfort for someone to throw their Santa hat into the ring. I am not going to volunteer, no matter how deafening the silence becomes. I will duct tape my own mouth closed, if need be. I will be resolute in my decision to stand down. But...you might want to check my feet on December 26th. If they are spilling out of my shoes and pulsating like a defective neon sign, then my resolution wasn't worth the Christmas wrapping it was written on.

March 17 2019 P.S. - I did not cave. Man, my feet feel good!

Channeling my Inner Nonna

You ever have one of those days where everything aches for no reason and you walk slow, deliberate and a little like you have a poop in your pants?  Think Fred Sanford, but less elegant.  No? Just me?

OK, whatever.

When I have those kind of days, I think of it as coming down with a case of "The Grandmas".  When you get a case of The Grandmas, everything aches, it takes forever to walk from one side of the house to the other and you forget how to use all your electronic devices.

But sometimes, instead of a case of The Grandmas, you get a case of "The Nonnas".  When you get a case of The Nonnas, you become an elderly superwoman.  You put on your housecoat, cook all day and all night, wash and fold 40 loads of laundry and pick vegetables from your beautiful backyard garden (even if you have neither a back yard or a vegetable garden, when you get The Nonna's they magically appear).

Last weekend, I got a wicked case of The Christmas Nonnas.  I was posessed by the impulse to make Struffoli.  For those of you that don't know what Struffoli are, they are little round balls of fried dough, soaked in a honey syrup and covered with non-pareils.  If you grew up with at least one Italian grandmother, you know what they are and you have warm memories of being shooed away from pots of hot oil, being covered in honey from head to toe and not being able to put anything down after you pick it up because everything sticks to your fingers.

My Nonna did not leave me a recipe for these delightful treats and honestly, I have not ever wanted to make them before because I hate frying.  I hate the smell it leaves in the house, I hate the mess and I hate spatter burns.  But, when the spirit of Christmas mixes with the spirit of Nonna, the compulsion for struffoli can outrun my more neurotic, Felix Unger-type tendencies. Being that I did not have a recipe from my own Nonna, I did what any red blooded Italian Grandmother would do...I used the Internet.

What I found is that there are no shortage of recipes for Struffoli.  Everyone who calls themself an Italian cook has a version - Giada DeLarentiis, Lidia Bastianich, Mario Batali.  They all look pretty good and the recipes are similar...flour, eggs, a splash of alcohol, honey, etc.  But since I was overcome with the spirit of Nonna, I went to the source, Cooking with Nonna.

If you have not seen this adorable series, a young Italian American woman, Rossella Rago, cooks traditional Italian and Italian American recipes with grandmothers.  Yours, hers, any Italian nonna that will sit still long enough to teach her a recipe.  It's quite charming and sweet and it spreads the joy of having an Italian grandmother to everyone.  The recipe that I used, along with a "how to" video can be found here.  Enjoy and Buon Natale!