blog of things

me: “The entrance of my hometown has a shrimp boat sitting in the main street. At Christmas theres a shrimper Santa and alligators pulling him instead of reindeer.”

others: “what?!”

me:

volume IS very much a part of the american hospitality tradition, and Nobody Leaves Hungry is important. but you have to recognize that it’s not how we cook for ourselves, it’s how we welcome guests and strengthen community ties.

so in order to give you a celebratory experience and make you feel welcomed, family restaurants make the portions big enough that even if you’re a teenage boy celebrating a hard win on the basketball court, you’re still going to be comfortably full when you leave.

of course, that means that for your average person with a sit-down job, who ate a decent lunch that day, it’s twice as much as they want or more. that’s ok. as mentioned above, taking home leftovers is absolutely encouraged. that, too, is part of american hospitality tradition; it’s meant to invoke fond memories of grandma loading you down with covered dishes so you can have hearty celebration food all week. pot luck church basement get-togethers where the whole town makes sure everybody has enough. that sort of thing. it’s about sharing. it’s about celebrating Plenty.

Some other Winter Things:

If you think there’s going to be an exceptionally deep freeze, you open up all the cabinets in the house to warm the air in there and keep the pipes from freezing/bursting.

If you’re going to be away for a while in winter, it’s adviseable to turn your water off to avoid the same.

Putting an electric Blanket between your topcover and bedsheet and pre-heating your bed for half an hour so you don’t get a chill going to bed.

Applying literal vasaline to your lips if you’re going to be in the cold for an extended time (more than 10-20 min, depending on latitude), becuase chapstick won’t cut it and your lips will split and bleed and HURT

Doing the same to your nose

Your tears go from liquid to gooey trying to produce a similar protection for your eyes.  You can also feel the water freeze on your eyes if you step directly out into the cold.

Also since I know you’re a socal person- in the far north you can get as little as eight hours of daylight. 7AM to 3 PM.  You need to by the most obnoxiously bright light possible and sit beside it or you will actually literally develop psychosis in some cases.  It’s 4:30 and you need to take the dog out? it’s pitch black out.

Everything is covered in ice, which will alternately cause you to slip and break something, burn, or actually tear off your skin.