a few good things

i just got my monthly martha. so many things i want to cook. so many things for thanksgiving. i love the holidays, if only in theory. i always look at all the wonderful recipes and ideas that are around and plan this crazy fabulous menu. and then it turns out i'm not hosting a big family meal..i'm always someone else's guest. that's the difficulty of holidays in your 20's, you have no control when it comes to holiday meal planning. it's hard if you're on a diet, or you're vegetarian, or if you're just really OCD like i am.

i want the creative control but i'm not certain i'll want the responsibility of doing it every year. that's a lot of turkeys. the one saving factor for me is that matt doesn't care at all about holidays. if we never celebrated thanksgiving or christmas it wouldn't bother him a bit. we could easily get away with staying home and making spaghetti, whether his family would forgive us i don't know.

but i have dreams. dreams of setting a martha table of antiques and serving a gorgeous dinner and all the side dishes and desserts that make you drool on the page. the mini cranberry meringue pies in particular would look lovely on my yardsale bought table. but it's not a great idea. i'd be better served to indulge my need for finery on the boyfriend alone, or when my nearest and dearest visit from lands afar. i would rather put my heart into cooking for people i love being with than because it's required of me on the last thursday of the 11th month and everything else is closed.

i've been a lazy cook lately, making blt's for matt and eating a lot of high fiber* cereal for dinner. the stupid thing is that i like to cook. i just have to re-think it. take my enthusiasm for holiday dishes and use it whenever i want to. set the table like someone who actually eats at a table and use the right silverware instead of the clean silverware. and maybe then i'll really understand what matt means when he says he'd rather enjoy an ordinary day instead of being expected to rejoice on demand.


*trying to stress the good carb thing there with too much detail, does it work?