SIMCHA FISHER

What’s for supper? I thought you’d never ask!

Every Friday, I do a weekly menu round-up, sharing my dinner successes and failures, new recipes, cooking tips, and general chatter about food. I’d love to hear the food news from your household, too, so please share in the comments, or leave a link to your blog with the InLinkz button at the end.

As you can see, this is vol. 14. You can still find the other 13 posts in this series at Patheos (my archives will be here with me at Aleteia eventually. And yes, I know the image still says “Patheos” on it. It’s on my list). Here’s the introduction from the first post:

We’re busy people. I work from home, I have two pre-schoolers and eight other kids in three different schools, my husband works late most nights and has a long commute, the kids all have clubs and activities and jobs, and I spend two hours in the van on an easy driving day.  I don’t expect myself to cook like someone who’s home all afternoon, or someone who has leisure in the evening, or someone who cares deeply and intensely about optimal diets. We can’t afford the farmer’s market, and our garden stinks.

I stay within a certain budget, but I no longer have to shop as cheaply as possible. It’s worth it to me to pay a little more for convenience or variety. We now have an Aldi nearby, which means that foods that used to be luxuries are now staples.

I don’t have a crock pot or a microwave, because I’m stubborn and I enjoy suffering.

I started making a weekly menu several years ago, planning and listing and buying only exactly what we needed to eat, because we were super broke and I had to make, say, $30 stretch for seven days. The menu habit stuck after our situation improved, and I’m glad it did. I hate hate hate grinding out the menu on Saturday morning, but I love always knowing what’s for dinner each night, and always having all the ingredients on hand.

General goals:

-I try not to make any main dish more than twice a month.

-I try not to serve chips more than twice a week.

-I try to serve a vegetable with each meal. I am for produce in season, but frozen veggies are still veggies.

-I try to serve three things at dinner, but two happens a lot.

-I try to provide a balanced diet over the course of the week, rather than over the course of a day.

-I try to make sure there’s always yogurt, cheese, pretzels, fresh fruit, and fresh vegetables in the house, so the kids can get themselves healthy snacks. This is especially important for kids who are picky about dinner, because I refuse to stress out about everybody eating dinner. 

-I try to serve meals that at least half the family enjoys eating.

-I try to get the kids involved with cooking when possible, even if it’s just peeling carrots or measuring out water for rice.

-I let them have straight-up dessert, plus candy and maybe soda, on weekends, but loosely limit sugar during the week.

-I try to make at least a few actual homemade-from-scratch meals each week, but don’t beat myself up for filling in the rest with semi-homemade or box-and-bag food.

-I fail in each of these things repeatedly, but I try again next week, or next next week. It’s a constant slide and correction, slide and correction.

-I try to remember that it’s just food.

Okay, now for vol. 14.

I took last week off, because it included Thanksgiving, and the internet was already awash with blurry photos of cranberry sauce. But I am happy to report that we had a very lovely day. My parents and two of my brothers and their nice little dog Davy came over. I completely ruined the gravy — really, you couldn’t even pour it, much less eat it — and boiled the artichokes into oblivion, but the rest was great. Even though the door fell off the oven (if this happens, just put it back on).

For a successful Thanksgiving day, I recommend two things: encourage your father and your husband to agree not to talk about Donald Trump; and have three teenage daughters.

Our menu this year:

-Turkey, of course. Ours was 25 pounds, same as the baby. My husband injected the turkey with some kind of tequila mixture, and spent all day basting it with gallons of butter. Succulent and wonderful. And the turkey wasn’t bad, either, ha.
-“Gravy”

-Stuffing with mushrooms and onions
–Cranberry nut bread (made by my 16-year-old-daughter)
-Stuffed, braided mushroom, onion and cheese bread (made by my 15-year-old daughter from this Hobbit cookbook)
–Sweet potatoes stuffed with gorgonzola, walnuts, and dates (made by my 17-year-old daughter)
–Parmesan garlic mashed potatoes (brought by my parents)
-aforementioned oblivionated artichokes
-Olives, cranberry sauce, mulled cider, hard cider, beer and wine

[img attachment=”81456″ size=”large” caption=”As an adult in the Faith, I exercised moderation and only had one portion of each thing. I think I will wither away.” align=”alignnone”]

Dessert:

[img attachment=”81455″ size=”large” alt=”food blog thanksgiving pies” align=”alignnone”]
-Pumpkin pie from the recipe on the can
–Salted bourbon pecan pie (this recipe has you making pecan pie on top of pumpkin pie, which I thought was -ridiculous, so I just made extra of the pecan layer)
-Apple Pie with pretty crusts
-and vanilla ice cream and whipped cream

This year, I finally tried that trick of freezing the butter and grating it into the flour mixture for pie crust dough (actually I made my daughter do the grating), and it turned out wonderful. It came right together and was soft and pliable but not too fra-gee-lay.

Whew, that’s Thanksgiving. Now for this past week:

SATURDAY

Giant hamburgers, chips

I always called cash “the gift from the heart,” but now I think the best gift of all is five+ pounds of local beef received as a thank-you from a cattle farmer whose granddaughter we’ve been driving to school. Fantastic. Juicy, flavorful, and just . . . I don’t know, extra meaty. Nothing like local granddaughter. HA. Gonna keep telling that joke ’til it’s funny.

SUNDAY

Ham and oven-roasted potatoes

This was the day I spent all day at the top of the stairs turning this

[img attachment=”81449″ size=”large” alt=”food blog landing mess” align=”alignnone”]

into this

[img attachment=”81450″ size=”large” alt=”food blog landing halfway done” align=”alignnone”]

while my husband made supper. I think it was eight pounds of ham and ten pounds of potatoes. He chopped the potatoes (skin on), drizzled them with olive oil, added salt and pepper, and then tossed in a bunch of whole garlic cloves, which turned into little packets of heavenly garlic cream. The kids fished them out of their portions in horror, and I ate them all.

MONDAY

Pulled pork sandwiches, red onions, cole slaw

As you can see, we crept right up to the verge of serving a green vegetable on Monday, but then retreated again, confused by quantities of mayonnaise and barbecue sauce.

For the pulled pork, I just threw the pork on a shallow pan, poured a bottle of hard cider over it, sprinkled it with salt and pepper, covered it with foil, and put it in a low oven for a few hours. I think I’ve been cooking it too high, and this time it really fell apart like it’s supposed to.

TUESDAY

Hot dogs, chips, leftover pie

Tuesday is the days known as “I can’t believe it’s only Tuesday” at our house. It goes straight from “I need a note because we’re running late” to “WHY IS IT DARK ALREADY???” Therefore, hot dogs.

WEDNESDAY

Honey garlic chicken with red potatoes and broccoli

This is one of those one-pan recipes from Damn Delicious, and I would qualify this particular recipe more as “Reasonably Tasty” rather than Damn Delicious. The kids loved it, and my husband and I thought it tasted fine. I did like the charred broccoli, and I thought the sauce was pretty good.

[img attachment=”81451″ size=”large” alt=”food blog honey chicken” align=”alignnone”]

So, we’ve been using a pepper grinder, and it’s fun, and some family members claim they can taste a difference over pre-ground pepper. Fine. So Aldi then started selling pink Himalayan salt in a grinder for $1.99, which I bought because I have been asking for pink Himalayan salt for a birthday present for years, now, and nobody will get it for me. I saw one of those pink salt lamps for sale at the Salvation Army and I almost got it because it looks so cool, but then I was afraid the cashier would think I was falling for those bogus “wellness” claims, where you install this salt lamp by your bedside and in the morning, your joints will be more mindful or something. And I’m too smart for that! So I didn’t get the lamp.

Anyway, I’m telling you this because you may find yourself whipping together a quick honey garlic sauce for your chicken, and you may find yourself absentmindedly grinding and grinding and grinding away while you think about something else, and then suddenly you realize . . . . crap, that was salt, not pepper.

“Where’s your mindfulness now?” she asked derisively, hoping there would be an Edward G. Robinson joke in there somewhere.

This may only be funny if you are my therapist, and probably not even then. That guy needs a raise.

THURSDAY

Giant chocolate pancake, scrambled eggs, acorn squash

[img attachment=”81452″ size=”large” alt=”food blog giant pancake” align=”alignnone”]

This is the ideal dinner, as it incorporates all four food groups: grain, protein, vegetable, and giant pancake.

FRIDAY

Macaroni and cheese; frozen brussels sprouts

Good old Fannie Farmer recipe for mac and cheese. I may use crumbled Ritz crackers for a topping instead of buttered bread crumbs. Then again, I may not.

***

Oh my gosh, that was a long post. They aren’t usually this long! It took me far too long to get the photos to show up, so if the InLinkz code doesn’t work, I’m just going to inject myself with tequila.

By now, my fellow Christians, you will have seen the newspaper headline that screams, GOD ISN’T FIXING THIS.

You mad?

First, please remember that the people who pass that headline around are scared and angry, and feeling helpless makes it worse. Why not blame Christians? If the only Christians I knew were politicians who use God as a tasty bit of voter bait, I’d be angry at them, too. If the only Christians I knew were verse-quoters  whose lips constantly moved in prayer as they stockpiled ammo, I’d be angry at them, too.  If the only Christians I knew were the ones who say that Starbucks hates Jesus, and who then call for assassination, I’d be angry at Christians, too. If these are God’s true spokesmen, then I’d be disgusted with religious sentiment, too.

Second, let’s acknowledge this one more time: no, prayer doesn’t “fix” things – not directly or obviously, not most of the time, and not right now. When we pray, we don’t expect God to prick His ears up and go, “Yessir! I’ll make the gun violence stop ASAP. Gosh, I thought you’d never ask.” If “God isn’t fixing this,” — well, He never said He would, not yet. He gave us free will, which we may use for good or for ill. He gave us free will, and He Himself personally suffered because of it.

God won’t “fix” gun violence by fiat. If we expected that, we could also reasonably expect that He’d fix AIDS and starvation and weevils in my vegetable garden. But we do tolerate many kinds of evil, large and small, because we understand that it is humans who bring it into the world voluntarily. If we believe that God gave us genuine free will, we have to accept that people are free to abuse it.

But isn’t it true that we shouldn’t be content to just pray? That we should take action of some kind?

Of course it is. “Ora et Labora,” wise St. Benedict told his monks: “Pray and work.” We have the duty to work and we have the duty to pray, neglecting neither one.

What does “work” look like in the face of a massacre, though? That’s the real question. Many of those who are now “prayer shaming” think that the only meaningful work or action at this moment is more gun control. I don’t know enough about current law to express an opinion on legislation. I do see a grotesque fixation on guns in some quarters, and I see an equally grotesque trust in the power of government in other quarters, and both fixations lead to their own kind of murderous disaster. I don’t know what the legislative solution is. Fortunately, that’s not up to me.

So what other kind of work or action can we take, besides legislative action?

When someone asked Mother Teresa what we can do to promote world peace, she said, “Go home and love your family.” This from a woman who left her own home, who emptied herself out for people who had no home. This from a woman who did promote world peace in a tangible way, working with John Paul II to bring down Communism. She was not given to speaking in platitudes.

So how will it help to go home and love our families? How will that prevent gun violence?

Again: not by fiat. It is true that people who were raised with love are less likely to fit the profile of mass murderers, who have in common a burning desire for stability and meaning in their lives. It is true that people from stable, loving families are more likely to have the strength of character and confidence to sacrifice themselves for other people, both victims and perpetrators. People who are fluent in love do sometimes disarm the violent, talking them down from harming anyone, or using their own bodies as shields. These are actions that can only come from love. There is no evolutionary reason to behave this way.

But again: free will. People can come from the stablest, lovingest family in the world and still succumb to mental illness, or they can be perfectly sane and simply choose evil. People do this every day and then some.

Honestly? I don’t even know if I’ve said anything here. I do know that my job is the same as it was yesterday and the same as it will be tomorrow: to go home and love my family. If we go home and love our families, we will be doing what we can in our small, personal worlds, for the sake of the world as a whole. The only sensible way to behave is to go home and teach love. Increase love. Model love for your children. Pray for love. This is the only thing we can do. This is the one thing we must do.

A family praying together is like the marrow deep inside a bone, working away to produce red and white blood cells. It may seem like the hands and the brain and the muscles are doing all the work, but there in the marrow – there is where the necessary work is done.

Prayer  gives us the courage to act in the face of panic. Pray gives us the wisdom to stay calm in the face of fear. Prayer gives us the strength to love in the face of evil.  Prayer binds us to Christ so that, no matter if we live or die, we will find our way to Him, and to our true home in the end.

This is why we pray in the face of massacre. Never doubt that it is what we must do.

I’m not going to pretend that it’s easy to figure out how to respond to the refugee crisis. We have real reason to be afraid of terror attacks from radicalized Muslims, and one of the basic functions of government is to keep our country peaceful and safe. I’m not in favor of just opening the flood gates and welcoming in anyone who can tell a sad story.

But we cannot say what Ben Carson has said, especially as pro-lifers. We cannot. There has to be some middle ground between “Come one, come all” and “Too bad for you – you go die now.”

Read the rest at the National Catholic Register.

***

photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr

But I got it anyway, because I have a 13-year-old son who is practiced in the art of Jedi towel tricks. Check it out:

That’s my boy. We now return you to Advent.

Most years, we hear our priests gently (or irritably) reminding us that it’s still Advent! Not Christmas! Not Christmas yet! Stop with the “Merry Christmas,” because the Baby hasn’t been born yet!

So we’ve tried hard to keep Advent as a separate season: joyous anticipation rather than celebratory blow-out. It’s hard to hold off when the rest of the country is already whooping it up, but the restraint feels worthwhile when Christmas finally dawns.

So it landed with a bit of a thud when our bishop, Peter Libasci, issued a letter asking the Diocese of Manchester (NH) to make some changes in how we spend our Advent.

He encourages lively decorations that suggest life and hope, and calls for an emphasis on warm, personal hospitality, especially toward the poor; he exhorts us to “avoid whatever may encumber you during this time,” and invites us to make a pilgrimage through Holy Doors.

These things are not too much different from what we already attempt (other than the Holy Door thing – must read up on that!), but this part is new:

Beginning with the FIRST Sunday of Advent, in every rectory, convent, Catholic school, diocesan institution and Catholic home, display the image of the Christ Child in a suitably decorated place of prominence and approachability. Not the crèche, just the infant.

and

Beginning with the FIRST Sunday of Advent and throughout the Advent Season, the music at Mass should include Christmas carols that enjoy the quality of a lullaby and center on the great mystery of the Incarnation and birth that did occur in history. (Away in a Manger, O Come Little Children, The First Noel, Little Town of Bethlehem.)

Huh! Really? Usually we stick to Advent music as much as possible, and if we put up a crèche, we keep the Baby Jesus packed away in tissue paper until Christmas morning. But I’m delighted to have a bishop who actually asks us to do stuff, so I’m game.

I thought of the Roots of Empathy program, which has teachers in poor, tough neighborhoods welcoming babies into their classrooms. They believe these visits, and subsequent discussions, teach the school kids empathy, rather than the lesson of “survival at any cost,” which is what they’re learning everywhere else they go. This story from the Washington Post says:

Roots pairs each classroom with a baby, who visits nine times throughout the year with his or her mom or dad, a volunteer recruited from the community. Each child has a chance to look the baby in the eye, squeeze its toe and say hello before the class settles into a circle around a green blanket.

They watch the baby respond to songs and games, and they talk about what he’s feeling and why he behaves as he does. The kids and the teachers have noticed a great change in the classroom: more peace, more respect, and better learning, too.

 The idea is that recognizing and caring about a baby’s emotions can open a gateway for children to learn bigger lessons about taking care of one another, considering others’ feelings, having patience.

Our bishop is looking for a similar transformation in his flock, putting the Baby right in front of us before the altar, and having us sing lullabies before we head back out to the world on Sunday morning. In his letter, he says:

during the Advent season, we take the INFANT as our centerpiece, remembering that He came as one of us. When an infant is in the house, everyone must be conscious of that presence and speak more softly, be more attentive, welcome family and visitors, exercise patience, accept inconvenience—even in the extreme, for the sake of the fragile life entrusted to our care.

Okay, but . . . the Church demands a bit more than being caring and considerate, yes? The Incarnation was not some kind of inner city niceness project, and “considering others’ feelings” is not one of the Ten Commandments. Can we not, as a millennia-old institution, set the bar a little higher?

No. We can’t.

Don’t you roll your eyes at me! The older I get, the more I realize that God usually wants us to do very basic, mundane things — and the more I realize how hard it is to do those mundane things well, with my whole heart.

And here’s the main part: The older I get, the more I realize that the whole point of the Incarnation is that the divine and the mundane are now inextricably linked. There cannot be a meaningless act of service, because of the incomprehensibly great service God has performed for us. There is no longer any such thing as a small act of love, since God, who is love, became small and asked us to care for Him. There is literally nothing greater, more meaningful, or more transcendent we can do than to care for each other for His sake. All acts of love are great. All acts of love make us more like Him.

In his letter, Bishop Libasci says,

To be judged as having achieved a fuller awareness of human fragility and potential, is to be judged as growing more closely to “the full stature of Christ.”

Anyone can blaze with righteous glory for a moment. Anyone can get wrapped up in an exquisitely arcane theological puzzle. But just treating each other well, day after day, in and out of season, whether they deserve it or not? That’s hard, hard, hard. As hard as caring for a baby who won’t stop crying no matter what you do. As hard as being that Baby, when you didn’t have to be.

Step beyond your duty and be actively generous. Be gentle when you could justifiably be harsh. Acknowledge that you are “disadvantaged,” that you think too much of your own survival and not enough about the unreasonable needs of the helpless people around you. Fight down the battle cry and substitute a lullaby.

The Baby’s needs are simple and basic. Start with those before you consider yourself ready to move on to higher things. There are no higher things. Start with the Baby, because that’s what God did.

Have I mentioned lately that I’m on the radio? Okay, not quite Lester the Nightfly. I’m Mark Shea’s co-host on his show, Connecting the Dots, every Monday from 5-6:00 PM Eastern. You can listen live here, and if you’d like to call in, we’d love to chat! The number is 1-573-4BREAD4  or Tweet us @Breadboxmedia.

We talk about all manner of things, and if you listen hard enough, you can definitely hear someone barking (the three-year-old) or someone crying (the dog) on my end. One time, I even threw up on the air! But that was when I was pregnant, so you can’t count on that happening every week. 

You can also listen to podcasts of previous shows here.

This year, there’s no time to recover from Thanksgiving before it’s time to dive into Advent. Luckily, the thing about celebrating Advent is that, by definition, you have to keep it simple.  A lush, lavish, complicated Advent makes about as much sense as a simple, understated fireworks display on the Fourth of July.

There are lots of wonderful ideas out there for how to observe the season, but it’s not only impossible to do it all, it would be contrary to the spirit of the season to go overboard! Score one for the busy, the lazy, the disorganized, the overwhelmed.

THE MINIMUM

We do two things without fail every Advent. If these are the only two things we do, I consider it a successful Advent.

The first is to make and light an Advent wreath, which we attempt to light every night while singing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” (adding two verses each week). Some years, we only manage to do it on Sundays or weekends.  I just bought a cheapo twisted twig wreath at the dollar store, and I send the kids out to gather greenery from the yard. Use about forty yards of thread or wire and strap those suckers down.

If I can’t find purple and pink candles, I just use white, and tie on bows made of ribbon or cloth in the right colors.  Oh, and after a lifetime of trying to attach candle holders to a wreath, I just gave up, and now use (again, cheapo dollar store) glass candle holders, which I set inside the wreath.  I put the whole thing on a pizza pan, so I can easily move it off the table and store it in a safe, unpunchable place when it’s not in direct use.  Some years we have little golden balls and berries and doves, but other years, it’s just the greenery.

Some people do paper Advent wreaths. I would be sad not to include actual flames and actual greenery (the evergreens remind us of everlasting life; the flames remind us of Christ, the light of the world); but for goodness’ sake, if you just had a baby, or if the idea of flames in the home makes you grind your teeth, do what makes sense for you.

Here are prayers for each Sunday, and here are all the verses to “O Come Emmanuel.”  Print them out and tape it to your pizza pan or something.

Remember:  Advent is dark.  Lights out.  Once you have candlelight and acapella singing, it’s just as magical and luminous and mysterious as whatever the Vatican is doing on that same day. The child pictured above is utterly failing to think, “Tippy candle?  No pinecones?  This Advent is not impressive at all!”

The second thing we do for Advent is we all go to confession once or twice before Christmas. Here are various examinations of conscience for adults, kids, and others; “Confession” is a $1.99 app with a customizable examination of conscience; Mea Culpa is a free app; and here is a very good book which prepares kids for their first confession (and is a great way to brush up your own understanding of the sacrament.) And while we’re at it, this short, enormously encouraging essay about confession from a priest’s point of view deserves another read.

That’s it: light the wreath, sing, go to confession.  That’s the bare minimum, and some years, it’s also the maximum we can manage. There are plenty of wonderful Advent ideas.  But please remember, KEEP IT SIMPLE.  Don’t go overboard.  Pick one or two, and don’t make it elaborate.  And make sure you get to confession!

ADVENT CHAINS

If you want a hands-on project for your kids but aren’t feeling very crafty, here is a free printable chain from Life Made Lovely.  (It’s designed for a different year, when Advent starts on Dec. 1, but if you’re like me, you can roll with these things. Just correct the dates and start a few days late, no big deal.) This particular one just has a short description and a Bible verse to look up and read, and is designed for little kids; but if you Google “advent chain 2015,” you will find other styles, some more elaborate that others.

Print it out, cut the days into separate strips, and staple or tape them into a long chain.  (If you like, you can print them on purple and pink paper, or tape the strips to colored paper.) You can hang the chain on your Christmas tree if you have one already, or anywhere in the house (hang it high, to avoid punching).  Each day (or the night before each day. Look, I’m confused about the dates. You figure it out!), you cut off one link each day and read what’s inside.

You can also just make a plain paper chain out of strips of purple and pink paper, one link for each day of Advent, and clip off one link every day. The idea is that it helps the kids visualize how much of Advent is left, and they can see the chain getting shorter and shorter as Christmas approaches. Explain that it reminds us of the chains of sin, which get weaker and weaker until our Savior arrives — and then the chain is gone.

Another option: Here is a printable Advent chain you can print out, designed by my sister, Abby Tardiff. These have complete short Bible verses on them, with little pictures to color.

If you do do an advent chain that has pictures on it, you could also level up to a . . .

JESSE TREE

Lacking space for a free-standing Jesse Tree, I just clip a branch from a bare tree and bolt it to the wall.  It looks good and weird, like a Catholic home should.

Some families have reusable Jesse Tree ornaments, but temporary ones are fine, too, and you can use the opened Advent chain strips as ornaments. Read the verse, have a kid color the picture, and hang it on the Jesse tree. Done.

We have a tradition of making Jesse tree ornaments each year on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I find a list of ornament ideas (there is no official list!), read them off, and the kids dibs them. There’s usually something for everyone, rainbows to daggers. We dump all the craft materials which we have carefully kept organized and . . . sorted . . .

on the table, and the kids go to work while I go hide for a couple of hours, repeating the phrase “it’s only once a year” to myself, and with the firm understanding that glitter on the floor doesn’t count as a mess unless it actually impedes your walking.

A (VERY LITTLE) LITTLE LENT

Some people keep Advent as a “little Lent” — not as stringent as actual Lent, but still a season of preparation and penance, as we anticipate Christmas day.  I can’t hack this, at least not as a family. It’s too hard to do all the baking and shopping and decorating that really has to be done in December, and also practice self-denial and penance. If I manage to prepare for Christmas without making life miserable for the family, I’ll count that as a spiritual win.

One thing we do manage is to “fast” from dessert on Saturdays (we only have dessert on the weekend) and use that money to buy an extra item for the Vincent de Paul food pantry. Don’t forget, poor people appreciate treats, too especially if they have kids.  It’s very important to donate staples (dried milk, tuna, pasta), but consider adding a box of cookies, a few chocolate bars, or some spices. Non-essentials in the kitchen help poor people feel more human.

***

What does Advent look like at your house? Traditions, great ideas, horrible disasters? Share ’em if you got ’em!

Like many cooks, I love to share my best kitchen strategies. Here are a few tips for making a successful Thanksgiving meal:

1. Don’t be stingy with the baster, and your little butterball will all but make its own gravy.

[img attachment=”79336″ size=”full” alt=”corrie baster” align=”alignnone”]

2. Fresh ingredients are best, but sometimes, if it’s been a long day, there’s no shame in opting for canned:

[img attachment=”79338″ size=”full” alt=”corrie can” align=”alignnone”]

3. Even great chefs make substitutions from time to time. If, for instance, the baby has had about enough of your Anne Geddes nonsense, you can keep the oversized stock pot but maybe go with a tougher cut of meat:

[img attachment=”79345″ align=”alignnone” size=”medium” alt=”lucy in pot” /]

4. These seem to be all jokes about eating my children. Hey, look at the time:

[img attachment=”79354″ size=”medium” alt=”Wall_clock” align=”alignnone”]

Happy Thanksgiving, dear readers, if any! I’m grateful to be here at Aleteia.

***
clock image via Wikimedia Commons

If you’re anything like me, you will feel terrible if your family spends Thanksgiving gorging on heavy food and then slouching in front of the TV. But you also have no intention of going outside and exerting yourself, because you definitely want to gorge on heavy food. What to do?

I’m hoping to nudge my family into playing some games after the big meal — nice games, easy games, with no running around or sitting entirely upright. Here are a few of our favorites:

Jebrahamadiah and Balthazar (also called “Master and Servant”)

I am not sure why my kids call this one “Jebrahamadiah and Balthazar,” except that (a) it has something to do with the Jeb! flyers we kept getting in the mail, and (b) they are weirdos.

THE RULES: One person gives orders, the other person explains why he can’t carry them out. The answer has to be part of a consistent narrative — you can’t just make up a new excuse for each command.

Here is an abbreviated example. The longer you can draw it out, the funnier it gets:

Jebrahamadiah! Go get me a glass of water.
I would, but I just broke the last glass.
Then go get me a cup of water.
I would, but when I broke the glass, I cut my finger, and I can’t use my hand.
Well, use your other hand.
I would, but when I was searching for a Band-aid for my one hand, I slammed the medicine chest door on my finger, and now both hands are useless.
Then call an ambulance.
I can’t, because, if you’ll recall, my hands don’t work.
Then use the speaker phone.
I would, but when I slammed the medicine chest door, some nail polish remover fell on my phone and now the speaker doesn’t work.
Then just shout out the window for help.
I would, but the neighbors saw me wrecking my phone, and he’s a big jerk, and laughed so hard that he drove off the road and now he’s in a coma.
Well, shout out the other window on the other side of the house.
I would, but when the other neighbor drove off the road, he knocked a utility pole down, and a live wire landed on the house on the other side and now it’s on fire, so I don’t want to bother them.
Well . . . okay, fine, I’ll get my own water.

Shatner!

This one can be played all day long, while cooking, while setting the table, during the meal, and so on, until you put your foot down and tell them to knock it off or you’re going to strangle somebody.

THE RULES: Life goes on as normal, until someone shouts, “Shatner!” — and then everyone has to do what they’re doing as William Shatner.

I actually stink at this game, but my kids are horrifyingly good at it.

Companion game: Duchovny

Pretty much the opposite of Shatner. You respond in such an understated way that people have to fight the urge to check your vital signs.

Greg

This one benefits more than others from either having a few glasses of wine in you, or being eleven years old (I cannot recommend both).

THE RULES: You sing songs, but instead of “I,” “me,” or “mine,” you say “Greg.”

There’s “With or Without Greg” by U2; “Amazing Grace” (How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like Greg); and who can forget that sentimental ballad from The Music Man, “Till There Was Greg.”

Extra points if one of your guests is actually named Greg.

One Syllable Off

This one is either much easier or much harder to do when you’ve had a few drinks, depending on what kind of “had a few drinks” person you are.

THE DECEPTIVELY SIMPLE RULES: All you do is sing a song with the normal lyrics, but you start singing the first syllable on the second note:

So instead of :

Take . . .ME-out-to-the-BALL . . . game . . .
Take . . . ME-out-with-the-crowd . . . .
BUY-me-some-peanuts-and-CRACK . . . er-jacks . . .
I . . . don’t-care-if-we-NE-ver-get-back . . .
So-it’s-root . . . root-root-for-the-home . . . team . . .

you sing:

[beat] TAKE-me-out-to-THE . . . ball . . .
Game . . . TAKE-me-out-with-the . . .
CROWD-buy-me-some-pea-nuts-AND . . . crack-er . . .
Jacks . . . I-don’t-care-if-WE-never-get . . .
Back . . . so-IT’S-root-root-root . . .

and so on. I think I got mixed up in there somewhere. If you find this confusing, you’re in the right frame of mind for this game.

In the manner of the adverb

Okay, this one has a little bit of getting up and doing stuff, but if you’re smart, you can keep it pretty tame.

THE RULES: One person thinks of an adverb, and everyone else has to guess what it is, by watching him do things in the manner of that adverb.

For instance, say I’m thinking about “bitterly.” The other shout, “Make some biscuits in the manner of the adverb!” so you commence muttering resentfully about the stupid butter not being cold enough, and how everybody else has a pastry blender, but you have to get along with two pathetic butter knives, and how you certainly hope they appreciate how much trouble you went to, but it doesn’t seem likely, and so on. And they shout out words like “Resentfully?” or “Angrily?” until someone guesses it.

In other news, I definitely need to get the baking started. Humph. Where’s my butter knives?