Scary Mommy's Guide to Surviving the Holidays (8 page)

22

CHEESE & SOME MAC

by Anna Gebert

A
re you interested in a slow death by caloric consumption? Of course you are! This recipe for macaroni and cheese, which truthfully should be called cheese and some mac, was lovingly modified from a recipe a dear friend shared with me—probably out of pity. He brought his mac and cheese to the first Thanksgiving I ever hosted . . . and my guests kept exclaiming how the only thing I didn't cook was the best dish on the table. It's so good that every time I make it as a party contribution, my husband gets jealous that I'm giving it away. He also requested it for his birthday this year, and ate nearly a whole tray in one sitting. Isn't it wonderful how many calories he can consume without repercussion?

1.5 pounds (1 ½ boxes) macaroni or shells

8 ounces sharp cheddar

8 ounces medium cheddar

4 ounces regular cream cheese (about half a package)

½ cup sour cream

1 cup cottage cheese

(Additional cheeses can be added to taste, such as Parmesan or very small amounts of blue.)

stick of butter, divided

1 cup whole milk

5 Tablespoons flour

1 Tablespoon dry mustard

salt and pepper

sleeve of Ritz Crackers

small onion, minced

Cook the noodles to 2–3 minutes short of al dente (whatever it says on the box) and set aside. If you're like me, you only have one huge pot, so you'll be repurposing that.

In the meantime, freshly grate all the cheddar cheese. You can buy the preshredded stuff, but it has chemicals to keep it separated and both the taste and consistency is improved when you do it the hard way. Try not to grate your knuckles. Reserve about a cup for the topping.

Sauté the onion in one tablespoon of butter until translucent and set aside.

Grease a 9-by-13-inch glass baking dish and crumble
1
⁄
3
of the Ritz Crackers evenly over the bottom of the dish. Stop eating the crackers or you'll have to open another sleeve.

Get your big pot heated to medium and add 5 tablespoons of butter to melt. Start whisking in the 5 tablespoons of flour to make a roux (I feel so fancy using that word!) until it's a light golden paste.

Add your dry mustard to the roux, and some salt and pepper.

Slowly pour in the milk to incorporate—you may need a little more or less depending on how creamy you like it. Get it nice and warm.

Stir in the cheddar cheeses (except the reserved cup), the sour cream, and the cream cheese. Add salt and pepper to taste. In this case, salt is your friend—the noodles will mellow the flavor.

Incorporate the onion and the noodles, followed by the cottage cheese, and pour the mixture into your glass pan.

Crumble the rest of the Ritz Crackers all over the top of the tray, and spread the rest of the shredded cheese liberally on top as well. Melt any remaining butter you have and spread that too. Exclaim, “I just don't understand how I keep putting on weight!”

Bake for 20–25 minutes. Beware the pitfall of “trying a little corner to make sure it turned out well” as you will probably cannibalize
1
⁄
8
of it and be forced to create another tray.

Bake for about 10 minutes or just until the top starts to have a crackled appearance. Don't overbake!

Let it sit on cookie sheet until cooled and then hide it until ready to serve.

23

THE HOLIDAY CARD PHOTO SESSION: A SURVIVOR'S TALE

by Tarja Parssinen

M
y story starts with greed.

I wanted an amazing photograph of my family, with my extended family, with everyone's eyes open, that I could shove in a cream-colored envelope of heavy paper stock to be delivered to your mailbox on approximately December 12. To achieve this, I endured the eighth circle of hell, known as “the holiday card photo session.”

My multigenerational holiday card photo session was like walking over burning coals very slowly, fifty-seven times, until everyone's mouths were stretched in grimaces that were less
Hitchcockian and more Disney—and this was once we actually found the photographer, which took a good half hour because he was busy photographing two hundred other families on the beach at the exact same time.

It was
Where's Waldo? The White and Khaki Edition
and that's when it dawned on me, as I awaited the return of my husband from the brave photographer search-and-recovery mission, that my family—COLLECTIVE GASP!—was also dressed in white and khaki!

Under normal circumstances, I would cackle like a hyena—it was so brownie troop leader, so mid-1990s tech company!—but these were not normal circumstances. These were circumstances in which my family was trying to painstakingly follow photo session clothing ordinances. We didn't want to—God forbid—disrupt the nesting sea turtles with our brash colors and patterns! And also, these photographs needed to be a testament to my family's superiority for decades—nay, centuries—to come! We'd tried so hard to be the Fresh Prince of the Family Photo Session, but alas, we were just another Carlton in a sea of Carltons.

It was too late for regrets. There was nothing ahead but sand in my poor choice of high heels. Once the photographer had been spotted, we moved as one clumsy, sweating mass to his nook near the cattails and there, I made the fatal error. The miscalculation that elevated the next thirty minutes from Code Red to Code Asteroid-Inferno-Apocalypse.

“Honey, watch where you put your feet; there are ants on the sand,” I told my five-year-old, having sustained several bites myself.

ANTS ON THE SAND!

ANTS ON THE SAND!

ANTSANTSANTSANTS! SCREAMING! HYSTERIA!

I had to get the situation under control! Which was difficult to do when my husband was hissing to me in low tones of accusation and distress. “Survival,” I muttered, keeping my eye on the prize! The holiday card! The holiday card! With the whimpering five-year-old at last raised high in Papa's arms above the ants, I felt very final-season
Jon & Kate Plus 8
as I steadied myself for the flash of the camera.

And that's when the photographer requested that the ladies, THE WOMENFOLK-MINUS-NANA, sit down on the sand. On the sand filled with thousands of biting ants. In our dresses. With sweaty legs. While the dudes stood proprietarily behind, dapper, jovial, their asses not part of the ant al fresco. In a scene reminiscent of that high school drill team pep rally where I was forced to smile while wearing a unitard and doing the splits as the marching band played the school song, I plastered a smile that only the contestants of
Survivor
would recognize.

After seemingly hundreds of takes and choruses of “Look here, look here, open your eyes, stop squinting, look here, look up, ignore the seagull, open your eyes, stop crying,” we were instructed to hold hands and walk through the waves, in search of the elusive image of three generations perfectly reflected in the ocean. Please pause and imagine that moment in the movie
Anchorman
where the news team tries to turn around at the same time and look coyly at the camera, but can't do it.

Despite the aurora borealis of frizz haloing my head, there were no ants in the water, so my smile was slightly more genuine in those photos. Also, the end was near. Families were leaving,
the beach was becoming less khakied, I could almost taste the margarita that my contract requires at the end of modeling sessions!

But the luck, it had to be pushed. (As stated in the bylaws of life.)

Nana and Papa wanted a photo of themselves with all the grandchildren. Can you believe it? The sheer audacity! The gall! To want images of their grandchildren to treasure! (By the way, the key to treasured photographic memories of children is to ask everyone to look directly into the sun while eardrums are being lacerated by an inconsolable toddler.)

And then suddenly, it was done. The photographer never yelled, “Fin!” or threw his camera to his invisible assistant behind him or kissed me on both cheeks, but he started talking about proofs and muttering, “I hope I got the reflections,” and I got the strange feeling he didn't want to see any of us ever again.

After taking a slow look around and assessing the damage—both physical and emotional—the family tumbleweed rolled back to the boardwalk, white shirts dingy, khakis resembling army fatigues. The PTSD hit later, but at that moment we were giddy! Elated! Thrilled to live another day!

I was greedy and I payed for it dearly, but as the great thinker Kim Kardashian once said, “You must go through Kris Humphries to get to Kanye West.” But who knew that Kris Humphries was code for flesh-eating ants, blinding sun, and screaming children? And was Kanye West really worth it? Was it really worth a near-death experience so that glorious images of flaxen-haired angels frolicking on a beach could be magnetized to the fridges of friends and family and coworkers of my husband's that I've
never met?

I'm pretty sure Nana would say yes.

24

HANUKKAH WINS

by Deborah Goldstein

W
alking to the bus stop, we pass house after house decorated with lights and reindeer, and my six-year-old son cannot resist the magnetic force of Santa on his friend's lawn, who sits on an enormous forklift hauling presents. He counts the oversized ornaments hanging off the small tree in the middle of the lawn, and while he doesn't say it, I know that he is just as envious as he is fascinated because our house is not accessorized at all, being the simple Jews that we are. Not even a string of blue lights around the front door to say, “Hey, we're festive, but we're just not into Jesus.” The truth is, I can't be bothered.

My son, thankfully, is less impressed with the decorations across the street from our house that our neighbors install on their front porch every year: the life-sized plastic nativity scene lit up from within by light bulbs emanating 120 watts of divinity as Mary cradles the little plastic Jesus to her synthetic bosom. Baby Jesus shines the brightest of all three figures, not only lit from inside his tummy and the breasts of his virgin mother but
also from the spotlight planted in front of the porch that usually lights up their political lawn sign—one that displays a picture of a round-faced, baby and reads, “FACE IT. ABORTION KILLS A PERSON.” But during the Christmas season, the judging, shaming baby has to share his light with plastic, glowing baby Jesus. It's a time of giving, after all, isn't it?

We pass another house and can see the trampoline in the backyard. It is the size of our garage, and it is surrounded by lights. I remember the first time I knew that people could own trampolines that size. I was babysitting for a new family—a referral in a neighboring town. The mom gave me a tour of the house and when we ended up back in the living room, she showed me a framed family portrait. All four members of the dimpled, blond-haired, blue-eyed family, wearing canary-yellow sweaters on top of khaki pants, jumping and laughing on the family trampoline. She told me that they all love to jump on it all the time. They just loved the outdoors and all things athletic and sporty. At the age of fourteen, I understood how very different I was, and I understood what it meant to be gentile.

“What is Christmas?” my kid asks on our walk to the bus as a veiled way of finding out why we don't have lights or reindeer or a bedazzled trampoline.

I see the Christmas explanation options in front of me, ranging from superficially vague to historical overshare. The issue with superficially vague is that if I don't provide a good explanation about why we have the darkest, dullest house in all the land, then he will surely grow up to become a resentful, self-hating Jew who marries a Seventh-day Adventist just to spite me.

I tell him about this Jewish man who became the leader of
another religion. I tell him he was born on December 25 (that date being the subject of much debate, but I skip that part) and I tell him that people celebrate his birthday on that day—which is Christmas. Then I tell him there are lots of religions, and I start to ramble on about how wonderful it is that we can all believe different things and celebrate different holidays and I realize I've lost him to the candy canes on the window of the next house and probably to his future Seventh-day Adventist spouse.

“I wish we had lights,” he confesses.

“But who has it better than we do?” I say. “Our neighbors across the street can't even
see
their lights from their house. They have to walk outside to see their own lights. We can look at their decorations from our house whenever we want! We don't even have to go outside!”

“I don't like the people,” he says, meaning the glowing plastic Jewish couple with their messiah baby. “But I like all the lights,” he adds. “They're like stars.”

I panic. Clearly, Christmas is winning. I mean, of course it's winning. Lights on houses, sparkling Christmas trees set in the middle of a Christmas present moat, some jolly old man taking requests without actually considering if you've been naughty or nice—all compared to a B-list Jewish consolation holiday.

On balance, Hanukkah sucks.

I add in a moment of panic: “You know, Christmas only lasts one day, and you'll get EIGHT DAYS of presents for Hanukkah!”

He gives me a smile, and I know that I've scored points even if I scored off of a foul.

And then we are at the bus stop, and I kiss him good-bye.

He calls back to me from the top of the bus stop steps, “I
can't wait until EIGHT days of Hanukkah presents!!” And the little gentile children turn to him with envy in their clear, blue Whoville eyes.