The Grinch Who Lives in Our House

 I’ve gone back to re-read my Christmas blog posts for several years. 

 Christmas Past - Blog Posts

About having conflicted feelings about the holiday, about religion, about doing traditional foods and customs, about commercialism, about Christmas cards (Ugh!) etc. The themes seem to repeat almost every year.

I’ve not specifically mentioned that the holiday often triggers depression in me for some reason.

I don’t know if it is the inner conflict, the stress of the holiday preparations, an undiagnosed Seasonal Affective Disorder or, more likely a combination of the three.

(I’d been seeing a therapist for about a year or more until recently. We had discussed meds, but I’ve had disastrous results with psych poison in the past, thus my reluctance to go there again.) 

Most people don’t see that side of me. Mostly I’m friendly and have a good sense of humor around others. In private I’m rather contemplative and a bit obsessive about doing things like dinner for guests which is an activity that gives me both pleasure and angst.

My current obsession is over Christmas dinner for six. My mom always made lasagne or manicotti. I decided on lasagne “from scratch”- 2/3flour and 1/3semolina. I made one batch and rolled it by hand, which is fun, takes effort, but is time consuming; made the second batch with the pasta machine - much easier.

I also made the tomato sauce with pork and sausage and tiny meat balls (Polpettine di Carne) the way my mom used to make. I will also make a non-authentic Italian dish for the “secondo”. One of our guests has been saying how much he LOVES chicken parmesan. So I’ll make "pollo alla parmigiana” the way we used to make veal before it became 1) politically incorrect to slaughter cute little calves and 2) outrageously expensive.

I will likely serve both courses together because people are so used to the way Olive Garden serves meals all on one plate.

We will certainly have left-overs which will go into the freezer and will save me from cooking at least one more meal in the coming weeks. Guests are bringing salad and dessert.

I made cookies of course - the one time of the year I bake cookies. But the cookies didn’t come out that great this year…I’m losing my touch. The colored frosting got real funky and the chocolate frosting which is suppose to be smooth and shiny, came out thick and dull.

Oh well, I will be glad when Christmas is behind us for another year. No conflicted feelings about celebrating a religious holiday, no angst about how cheap and stingy I am or guilt about not sending EVERYONE a greeting card.

I’m sure Christmas dinner will be good, barring any disaster. Cooking is the one thing (cookies excluded) that I do well.