This is my first Thanksgiving with my future in-laws and my fiancee's extended family. Since 10am, I have been in the kitchen, watching over my meringue, making sure the potatoes were all peeled, sorting vegetables, and intermittently watching the Godfather marathon on television.
Frank and I are staying at his sister's house. She and her family are in Georgia for a hi-youge family Thanksgiving with the in-laws (siblings, kids and spouses, I think something around 40 people will be there) so we are using her house and kitchen for the festivities. While I won't say that this is 'my' kitchen, we are the ones responsible for seeing that it gets back to the way Marianna left it, so my urge to clean is compounded by the 'someone else's house' thing.
Every year, mom and I would spend the day before Thanksgiving in the kitchen, making pies and preparing things for the big day so all we would have to do was throw stuff in the oven/boiler/microwave/etc and sling it on the table and it would be done. This was usually accomplished without great strife and with only one or two trips to the grocery.
FOUR trips to the grocery have been made so far by Frank, his mother, his sister and nephew. At the moment, I think there are three jars of mayonaise in the fridge, three boxes of dark brown sugar, and who knows how many bottles of white zinfandel. The turkey is almost done, the pies are cooling on the rack, and my future mother-in-law simply will NOT sit down and stay out of the kitchen so I can clean. Perhaps this is truly my Hindrichs showing through, but my family always did the 'clean as you go' method so when you sat down to dinner, nothing gross would be congealing in the sink and you would be able to enjoy your coffee and pie without fretting over the saucepans and nine million spoons used to prepare this meal.
I'm getting married in five weeks and I know that I marry the family. But my question is this:
even if I marry the family, do I have to marry their kitchen or worse, clean it?
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
'tis the season
To get hitched, that is.
One of my oldest friends is getting married tomorrow. As I spoke to my dressmaker the other day about a pickup date I realized that the one-month mark is drawing nigh. Family members are sending in their arrival dates, we're trying to pick a location for a rehearsal dinner, but all I can think about is that in thirty-eight days, I will be the proud owner of a new last name. This is, of course, a matter of some semantic debate because I'll have to stay a Hindrichs on stage and in academia if one or more of the following things happens this year:
1. I get hired by Boston Lyric Opera.
2. One of my articles gets published in a musicology journal.
3. I get accepted into a major summer opera program.
I wouldn't be concerned about the name-changing thing if I hadn't just sent out a big batch of audition applications with 'Hindrichs' on them, but changing my name preemptively seemed weird so there we are. Still having questions as to how Dr. Pesci would look on paper versus Dr. Hindrichs. So far, the only Dr. P in the family is my future father-in-law and I don't know how the rest of the family would take to me becoming the second...
We're heading down to DC tomorrow morning to spend turkey day with the family. In a pre-celebratory endeavor, Dr. Lois Leventhal came to Boston for the NASM convention (BORING!) with her husband and we spent most of the day yesterday gallavanting about the city and shopping and drinking new beers and enjoying each other's company. For those of you who do not know, Dr. Leventhal is the person for whom this blog is named. A good Jewish girl from Boston herself, she refers to me as the Divine Miss Em and I refer to her as the Divine Dr. L and she keeps me up to date on my Yiddish. One must keep their CSE (continuing shiksa education) up to date. Perhaps sometime in the future I will tell the story of my shiksa induction.
I hope everyone has a marvelous Thanksgiving and eats lots of turkey. Alas in vain, we aren't frying one this year but I will be hard at work in the kitchen making my famous fabulous bourbon pecan pie. Wedding diet be damned, I'm gonna eat pie and turkey and cranberry like nobody's business!
One of my oldest friends is getting married tomorrow. As I spoke to my dressmaker the other day about a pickup date I realized that the one-month mark is drawing nigh. Family members are sending in their arrival dates, we're trying to pick a location for a rehearsal dinner, but all I can think about is that in thirty-eight days, I will be the proud owner of a new last name. This is, of course, a matter of some semantic debate because I'll have to stay a Hindrichs on stage and in academia if one or more of the following things happens this year:
1. I get hired by Boston Lyric Opera.
2. One of my articles gets published in a musicology journal.
3. I get accepted into a major summer opera program.
I wouldn't be concerned about the name-changing thing if I hadn't just sent out a big batch of audition applications with 'Hindrichs' on them, but changing my name preemptively seemed weird so there we are. Still having questions as to how Dr. Pesci would look on paper versus Dr. Hindrichs. So far, the only Dr. P in the family is my future father-in-law and I don't know how the rest of the family would take to me becoming the second...
We're heading down to DC tomorrow morning to spend turkey day with the family. In a pre-celebratory endeavor, Dr. Lois Leventhal came to Boston for the NASM convention (BORING!) with her husband and we spent most of the day yesterday gallavanting about the city and shopping and drinking new beers and enjoying each other's company. For those of you who do not know, Dr. Leventhal is the person for whom this blog is named. A good Jewish girl from Boston herself, she refers to me as the Divine Miss Em and I refer to her as the Divine Dr. L and she keeps me up to date on my Yiddish. One must keep their CSE (continuing shiksa education) up to date. Perhaps sometime in the future I will tell the story of my shiksa induction.
I hope everyone has a marvelous Thanksgiving and eats lots of turkey. Alas in vain, we aren't frying one this year but I will be hard at work in the kitchen making my famous fabulous bourbon pecan pie. Wedding diet be damned, I'm gonna eat pie and turkey and cranberry like nobody's business!
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