my day

[kcobweb]

My sweetie has a job this weekend, and so I am entirely on my own. He is sort of an on-call stage hand for the local theater - when big shows come (the traveling shows especially), and they need extra people, they call him. So he worked 8:45-5ish yesterday, 10 a.m. till 11 p.m.-ish tonight, and will probably be there tomorrow from 1-ish till 7 or 8. Lots of hours, but they pay vaguely decently. It's for the Nutcracker - he'll come home, I predict, singing one piece of that or another. Anyway, it's fun for him - he says the manual labor is a good change for him, and totally different from his desk job. And he always comes home with an injury - yesterday it was a smashed finger. (Last winter he ran over his toe one time and lost a toenail.... It was so gross.)

So, anyway, as I was saying... on my own. I went to a memorial service this morning for my step-grandmother who died at 96 a week or so ago. Afterwards there was a potluck lunch in the church basement, and it was a totally typical Lutheran lunch. There were six kinds of jello, so my mother was just beside herself. I think jello is a comfort food that reminds her of her childhood - I teased her that she should have been born Lutheran. :)

After the service, I went over to Mom's and helped her make one of our most traditional Christmas hors d'oeuvres: a feta/cream cheese mixture wrapped in phyllo triangles. After we were done with that (it's a finicky job, so took a while), she piled a stack of recipes in front of me to go through to pick out good things for Christmas. Yes, the preparations are beginning in full force. We always have an open house on Christmas afternoon, and invite everyone we know - we typically get anywhere from 25 to 40 people, plus family. So, we need to start getting ready now. I found some good cookie possibilities. She'll be calling me up regularly for the next four weeks to get me to come over to help her cook/bake something.

She also fed me turkey matzo ball soup today, so the world is good. Mmmm. My mom makes the best matzo balls ever, even if she is a shiksa. No one can beat hers.

She's going to call me tomorrow to make cookies, but I think I'm going to stay home and do laundry and make soup and putter.

One thing about being pregnant - if I am out and about doing anything, the one thing I really really want to do is go home and put on sweatpants or pajamas. I have comfy maternity pants and stuff, so that's not the issue - I just want my house. Or something.

Comments

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

I'm on my own, too, with yaoobruni gone for a few weeks...

Turkey matzo ball soup sounds glorious. Yum.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

Turkey matzo ball soup sounds glorious

It may be one of my favorite things about the post-holiday wrapup. Thursday we feast. Friday we eat leftovers. Saturday it turns into soup. Every year now, I end up at my mother's for most of my meals for the Thanksgiving weekend (she can hardly eat it all by herself, so she needs me, clearly).

Info please!

[trope.livejournal.com]

1) At my uncle-in-law's funeral recently, his wife said something about a good Lutheran service with good Lutheran food. What is "Lutheran food"? Does it refer to the quantity, quality, or type of food? Is it something like kosher is to Jewish people?

2) What's a shiksa?

Thanks :)

A Lutheran and a Jew walked into a bar....

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

1) Lutheran food, to me, implies lots of jello, as said above. I've also heard people refer to lots of salads that involve mayonnaise, whether pasta salads, or otherwise.... No spices stronger than salt and pepper. Perhaps this is typical of all church potlucks regardless of denomination - but in Montana we have lots of Lutherans, so that's what I hear the jokes about. I had friends from North Dakota who said pretty much the same thing about food in general there (again, they are all Germanic Lutherans).

2) A shiksa is a non-Jewish girl/woman... often who steals away the Nice Jewish Boy. My father is Jewish, and my mother wasn't originally but unofficially converted, and they raised us Jewish - and my mother is now more Jewish in some ways than my father, who is completely non-religious (even though they are divorced). My mother still celebrates certain Jewish holidays just because she likes them, and is a wonderful Jewish cook - matzo ball soup being one of her specialties. But I like to tease her that she's technically not Jewish (of course, by that token, neither am I - because it's passed through your mother).

Re: A Lutheran and a Jew walked into a bar....

[trope.livejournal.com]

Thank you much! (FWIW, Anyone who knows the lingo counts as Jewish in my book.) There was no jello that I remember at the funeral... but there was lots and lots of mayo. I guess that's what she meant.

further research shows....

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

So I got curious what I might turn up if I googled "Lutheran food" - and mostly I turned up food banks. But also, this thread of blog comments:

http://www.cockahoop.com/article/2002/7/16/1

Although personally, when I think "Lutheran food", I think marshmallows and Jell-O, Durkee fried onions and green beans, and other lackluster potluck fare. Oh, and the one guy who always brought a bucket of fried chicken, bless him.

But maybe Texan Lutherans are slackers.

******

What Lutheran food means to me:

Anything with Mayonnaise
White Bread
Swedish Meatballs
Deviled Eggs
Liverwurst
Finger Sandwiches
Waffles
Pot Roast