Ruling The Holidays With An Iron Fist

Being the daughter of a June Cleaver/Martha Stewart/Leona Helmsley clone is a thankless job. The threshold is too high. I've decided that I can't compete. My carpets will never have the permanent vacuum tracks from obsessive-compulsive vacuuming at 5am. My shelves will never pass the random white-glove spot-check. And quite frankly, I hate pearls.

My mother has always been the coordinator of holiday parties. Mostly because she is the most Type-A among her 8 siblings. Her holiday parties have always been perfect. Immaculate centerpieces, my great-grandmother's vintage china, elegant stemware, artfully folded real linen napkins, place cards at each table setting, and a perfectly orchestrated menu (each dish designed to compliment the next). Come party day, it was my brothers' and my jobs to keep our heads low, stay the hell out of the line of fire, and don't fuck anything up.

Each year, she assigns dishes for guests to bring to contribute to the meal, but god help you if you deviate from the plan. I still remember the year that my aunt Joan (the hippie sibling; the pot stirrer; the troublemaker) brought a different dish than the Potatoes Au Gratin my mother had assigned her. My mother was livid! It simply did not compliment the rest of the menu! (*Gasp* The apocalypse might ensue from an uncomplimented menu!)

The following year, my mother assigned my aunt Joan a dish, then sent me to her house with a recipe for the dish, complete with a grocery bag filled with the precise ingredients to make it.
Message sent: Don't fuck with my menu. And if you fuck with my menu, next year you'll be wearing cement shoes.
I had been turned into Guido, the holiday mafia thug.

My mother is an amazing pastry/dessert chef. She actually used to sell her desserts for "spare money". Volumes of them. So many that our kitchen was remodeled to be turned into a more efficient pastry production line, complete with slave labor (my brothers and I). Child labor laws did not exist in my mother's kitchen. We "lovingly" referred to the kitchen as "The Sweatshop".

But her imagination for confections does not extend to normal cooking. It's the one area that the woman has no imagination. Growing up, my friends used to joke about the "5 basic meal plan". My mother had 5 dishes that were recycled over and over and over without fail. No strange herbs. No spice. Nothing weird. Mr. Meat will never touch Mr. Potatoes. No breaking the rules.
I think in my own passive aggressive rebellion, I became (what my husband calls) "The Experimental Chef". I grow my own herbs and use as many of them as creatively as possible. I like to try new things. I rarely use recipes. I rarely measure.
Take THAT, Mom! Oh yeah, I'm a rebel now!

What does this have to do with anything?
Keep your panties on, I'm getting there!

So, as of this last year, I've been officially banned from making the stuffing.

I knew the rules. (Party Rule #109; code c: Official Thanksgiving stuffing should only be "pre-packaged" stuffing mix, made with chicken broth instead of water [to make it fancy]). Yeah I bucked the rule. I gave the rule the finger. I gave the "stuffing equivalent" of flipping my mom the double bird. I made home made stuffing. Not just home made stuffing, I made chipotle cornbread stuffing with craisins, pecans, celery, and fresh herbs.

I'm not sure what I was thinking. I thought it would be fun to step outside the box a little (no pun intended). Thought it might be fun to mix things up a little. But the moment my mom lifted the foil off my proud creation, I knew I had screwed the pooch! I had fucked with the menu!
"What the hell is this?!" she whispered in her squinty eyed glare that my dad dubbed "The Laser Eyes".
Gulp. "Stuffing," I replied in a voice foreign to my own, at least 5 octaves higher than my natural tone.
"Is this homemade stuffing?!" She says this sniffing at it like I had brought a dead rodent and splayed it at her feet.
"Just try it Mom, it's really good!"
She takes a fork and nibbles at it, scrunching her nose like it's the most god forsaken thing she's ever tasted. Then, she shakes her head, giving me the same look of contempt and dissapointment that she gave me when I wrecked her car on my highschool graduation day; the same look I got when I brought home an A in 4th year French on the same report card that I brought home an F in English (she still occasionally reminds me of the absurdity of me acing a foreign language, while bombing my own naturally-spoken language). She grabs a large pot and puts it on to boil, then disappears into the pantry (pausing only to give me one last head shaking eye roll, with a disapproving tsk tsk), emerging with a ginormous box of Stove Top stuffing and an industrial sized can of chicken broth. Then announces to everyone that dinner will be delayed by 15 minutes. I take that as my cue to tuck my tail and duck shamefully out of the kitchen.

As I was leaving that night, she mutters under her breath as she says her goodbyes, "Next year, you're making the salad. You can't screw that up."

The good news? This year my salad passed under the radar. Even the passive aggressive homemade White Balsamic Vinaigrette that I was a little worried about. I'm already plotting my rogue Christmas salad. Goat cheese and caramelized pecans, anyone?
It's not easy being the family rebel.

<3,
~Jane