DivaMom and I live about 1 hour drive from the rest of the family, so we make the drive down to my aunt's house for the major holidays (Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas). I told you all about Thanksgiving (waiving to my cousin that reads my blog), and Christmas wasn't much different. Same menu, for the most part. But I'm getting ahead of myself...
DivaMom and I drive down to my grandparent's house and arrive about 6:00pm to pick them up to take them to my Aunt's house. When we arrived, Grandma tells us that my Aunt called her to find out when we were coming. Ok...so my Aunt knows that DivaMom is driving all of us...why didn't she call either DivaMom, or I? DivaMom and I had no idea what time we were suppose to come to dinner, we just decided to leave home around 5 because we got tired of sitting around waiting. We gather my grandparents, get them in the car, get to my Aunt's house and my Aunt says "Everything is ready, you could have come whenever you wanted" (remember the "Everything is ready" part). We do the required sitting around starring at each other in the living room, then my Uncle says the blessing so we can start eating whenever we want.
DivaMom is the first to head into the kitchen, making a brief detour into the dining room to grab a plate (shockingly the table was set this time, sort of...the silverware was still jumbled in a Ziploc bag) with my Aunt hot on her tail. DivaMom makes her plate and the food is cold. Not room temperature cold, REFRIGERATOR cold! How are you going to tell people to help themselves to food that is ready when the food is ice cold? That isn't ready food! A normal person would warm the food up then tell us when it's really ready to eat, not my Aunt. She has us microwave our food, one plate at a time, in the world's oldest microwave. I'm sure I will end up with brain cancer from standing in front of it waiting for my food to warm up. 20 minutes later, my mother sits down at the dining room table (My cousin's boyfriend (aka CBF), my cousin and I gave up standing in the doorway of the kitchen to make our plates and sat down at the table to wait) and eats. Then cousin, CBF and I went and made our plates. The food was good, just cold.
After what seemed like a couple hours, we all ate (except Grandma, but that's another story), we opened presents, and then it was time for dessert. As usual DivaMom and I picked up cakes from OliverT's (a pumpkin roll and strawberry shortcake cake) and my aunt made a cream cheese pound cake, and a German chocolate cake. My aunt asked my cousin to set out the desserts, and cousin was doing a perfect job of it, despite having to clear the dining room table as her mother sat on the couch barking at her to hurry up. In between barks, my aunt was also telling my mother (and me since I was standing right there) about how she *thinks* she perfected the pound cake. First of all...pound cake sucks. Sorry. Second...cream cheese pound cake sucks more than butter pound cake. Third...pound cake with nothing to top it sucks the most. Forth...when feeding guests, even if they are family, feed them items you know are good, don't treat them like Guinea pigs! My aunt had a plain cream cheese pound cake. No toppings, just plain. My mother is a good sport though, once cousin finished setting up the cakes DivaMom cut a slice of the pound cake, OK, it wasn't really a cut. It was more like sawing. This cake was DRY, but DivaMom made the best of it and cut a piece of Strawberry Shortcake cake and used the topping from that to give the pound cake some moisture. I had a slice of pumpkin roll that was fantastic, and a slice of the homemade German chocolate cake. I have to give my Aunt credit...the German chocolate cake was great! It was moist, flavorful, fresh, just perfection! I would have been happy if she had only made the German chocolate cake (but CBF has a nut allergy so she had to make something he could eat, but CBF knows I always have his back in the dessert department).
Holidays with family are always interesting (I didn't even tell you about the non-food related stuff that happened!), but there are always lessons to be learned:
1.Let your guests know what time they should arrive.
2. If you cook food the day before, make sure you warm it up before declaring it's ready for everyone to eat.
3. Set the table (learned at thanksgiving). At least take everything out of the storage containers (aka Ziploc bags) so it's easy for your guests to serve themselves.
4. Don't serve pound cake with nothing to top it (or just don't serve pound cake).
5. Don't use your guests as Guinea pigs.
6. Have lots of booze on hand. Everyone will be thankful especially when dealing with family.
These simple things can make any get together much more enjoyable for everyone involved.
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