I pray for a stress-free day. Haha, you say? Yeah, I know.
The Polish Princess and Bat-Shit Aunty M hauled me at of bed at the ungodly hour of 7:00 in the morning to inform me that it will be cabbage roll (golabki) making day! Awesome! I love homemade cabbage rolls. Mmm good! I had asked my mom previously if we could make them at some point, but she had laughed at me. I guess Bat-Shit Aunty M overheard my pleas for sustenance and took pity on me. Thank god for small mercies!
As an aside, I was going to link to a Polish cabbage roll recipe but they were all wrong. All of them called for ground beef and when making cabbage rolls, one should never use ground beef - it makes them too tough. Only ground pork should be used, which makes the cabbage rolls soft and succulent. End of sermon and back to our regular pogramming.
So off we went to the supermarket. I love this supermarket, The Real Canadian Superstore. It has everything you could ever want plus some stuff that you would never want. Books, blenders, cheese plates, beds-in-a-bag, televisions, digital photo printing, pharmacy stuff, ethnic groceries, and tofu - it's got it all. And I love it unabashedly. Anyhow, before I get carried away in my enthusiasm, let me just say that for all of that, it was still a painful experience.
We walked there, amazingly enough. Seems the Dynamic Duo was in the mood for some fresh air. Fine with me, maybe there'd be no complaining about buses in the meanwhile. As soon as we stepped into the store, the Duo's eyes grew three sizes too big. I could see them mentally calculating all the stuff they could buy; calculating so quickly that I swear I saw small wisps of smoke escaping from their ears. They tear through the store, flinging things into the basket from every angle: reading glasses (two pair), moisturizer, sunscreen, make-up mirror, hair pins, coffee mugs, underwear, foundation, and flip-flops. My arms begin to sag and the bottom of the basket starts to scrape the bottom of the floor, making an unholy noise in the process. I knew I should have taken a cart instead.
Lo and behold, we reach the purse section. And wonder of wonders, there's a small, plain, black, acceptable purse hanging off a shelf. That gets tossed onto the leaning mountain of random sundry items as well.
I eventually manage to drag them over to the food part of the store. The Dynamic Duo picks up two heads of cabbage (after subjecting my ears to an argument over how many leaves each head contains; Bat-Shit Aunty M won, by the way), a baggie of rice, and some mushrooms. They agonize over the ground pork and dismiss it as too fatty. They try to badger the butcher into grinding them up some fresh pork, but the butcher steadfastly refuses in the wake of their collective tantrum. Go, butcher-man, go! In a moment of weakness, I suggest another store nearby. I must hate myself.
Aunty M finally snaps over the bus idea and demands we take a taxi. And she wants to visit the liquor store. She thinks she needs liquor? So we make a stop at the MLCC, where I wait in the sweltering taxi and they take 15 minutes to pick up a bottle of gin. Later I find out that they also managed to sneak a quick peek around the mall to see what else they could buy. Luckily they only came back with the gin. Then we head over to the Safeway, where they only take 10 minutes to grab some ground pork, and thoughtfully enough, some wings and potato salad for lunch. Thank god there are no stores in that mall or who knows what they would have dragged home.
We get home and the cabbage roll making begins! Except they make fun of my kitchen, my pride and joy. I love my kitchen and think it's very well organized. They beg to differ, of course. They make fun of my salt container, which is, you know, a regular salt shaker. They make fun of my pots and the size of my pots, which were a gift from my mother-in-law, so I'm not even going there. And they make fun of my cutting board, not to speak of where I store my cutting board. Which just happens to be in a cupboard. Strange storage spot, isn't it? Aunty M insists it should be placed behind the kitchen faucet so it's always handy. And she puts it there. So for the duration of their stay and every time they come over there after, I have to haul out my cutting board and place it behind the faucet. I think an eye-roll escaped me at that point. But they're making me cabbage rolls, so how annoyed could I comfortably get?
As the cabbage rolls are cooking and the Dynamic Duo is busy chatting up the gin bottle, I manage to escape to read some blogs. Ah, five whole minutes of solace. My mother wanders in and starts talking about her trip to Cuba. Somehow, and don't ask me how, we get on the topic of how there wasn't that much to do when citrusboy and I were there.
And she says: There's lots to do for you! You can leave the beach for a little while and go back to your room and make love. All said with a straight face while sporting a Polish accent.
I hurry out of the room and stick my head into the pot of boiling cabbage rolls, hoping they scald my eyeballs and if I'm really lucky, my ears too. My mother trails out behind me, saying: What? What's the problem? You could, you know. I stick my head deeper into the pot.
After I take my head out of the pot and bandage my 3rd-degree burns, I find citrusboy is home and we can eat the yummy cabbage rolls. The Dynamic Duo giggles throughout the meal (well to be perfectly honest, hyenas throughout the meal), and I can only pray that that's a result of the empty gin bottle I spotted on the counter.
After dinner, drunk off their asses, they stumble to their (our) room and pass out. Never have such loud snores brought so much comfort.
As an aside, I was going to link to a Polish cabbage roll recipe but they were all wrong. All of them called for ground beef and when making cabbage rolls, one should never use ground beef - it makes them too tough. Only ground pork should be used, which makes the cabbage rolls soft and succulent. End of sermon and back to our regular pogramming.
So off we went to the supermarket. I love this supermarket, The Real Canadian Superstore. It has everything you could ever want plus some stuff that you would never want. Books, blenders, cheese plates, beds-in-a-bag, televisions, digital photo printing, pharmacy stuff, ethnic groceries, and tofu - it's got it all. And I love it unabashedly. Anyhow, before I get carried away in my enthusiasm, let me just say that for all of that, it was still a painful experience.
We walked there, amazingly enough. Seems the Dynamic Duo was in the mood for some fresh air. Fine with me, maybe there'd be no complaining about buses in the meanwhile. As soon as we stepped into the store, the Duo's eyes grew three sizes too big. I could see them mentally calculating all the stuff they could buy; calculating so quickly that I swear I saw small wisps of smoke escaping from their ears. They tear through the store, flinging things into the basket from every angle: reading glasses (two pair), moisturizer, sunscreen, make-up mirror, hair pins, coffee mugs, underwear, foundation, and flip-flops. My arms begin to sag and the bottom of the basket starts to scrape the bottom of the floor, making an unholy noise in the process. I knew I should have taken a cart instead.
Lo and behold, we reach the purse section. And wonder of wonders, there's a small, plain, black, acceptable purse hanging off a shelf. That gets tossed onto the leaning mountain of random sundry items as well.
I eventually manage to drag them over to the food part of the store. The Dynamic Duo picks up two heads of cabbage (after subjecting my ears to an argument over how many leaves each head contains; Bat-Shit Aunty M won, by the way), a baggie of rice, and some mushrooms. They agonize over the ground pork and dismiss it as too fatty. They try to badger the butcher into grinding them up some fresh pork, but the butcher steadfastly refuses in the wake of their collective tantrum. Go, butcher-man, go! In a moment of weakness, I suggest another store nearby. I must hate myself.
Aunty M finally snaps over the bus idea and demands we take a taxi. And she wants to visit the liquor store. She thinks she needs liquor? So we make a stop at the MLCC, where I wait in the sweltering taxi and they take 15 minutes to pick up a bottle of gin. Later I find out that they also managed to sneak a quick peek around the mall to see what else they could buy. Luckily they only came back with the gin. Then we head over to the Safeway, where they only take 10 minutes to grab some ground pork, and thoughtfully enough, some wings and potato salad for lunch. Thank god there are no stores in that mall or who knows what they would have dragged home.
We get home and the cabbage roll making begins! Except they make fun of my kitchen, my pride and joy. I love my kitchen and think it's very well organized. They beg to differ, of course. They make fun of my salt container, which is, you know, a regular salt shaker. They make fun of my pots and the size of my pots, which were a gift from my mother-in-law, so I'm not even going there. And they make fun of my cutting board, not to speak of where I store my cutting board. Which just happens to be in a cupboard. Strange storage spot, isn't it? Aunty M insists it should be placed behind the kitchen faucet so it's always handy. And she puts it there. So for the duration of their stay and every time they come over there after, I have to haul out my cutting board and place it behind the faucet. I think an eye-roll escaped me at that point. But they're making me cabbage rolls, so how annoyed could I comfortably get?
As the cabbage rolls are cooking and the Dynamic Duo is busy chatting up the gin bottle, I manage to escape to read some blogs. Ah, five whole minutes of solace. My mother wanders in and starts talking about her trip to Cuba. Somehow, and don't ask me how, we get on the topic of how there wasn't that much to do when citrusboy and I were there.
And she says: There's lots to do for you! You can leave the beach for a little while and go back to your room and make love. All said with a straight face while sporting a Polish accent.
I have been properly scarred for life. I guess she thought my childhood wasn't enough, she just had to twist the knife into my brain some more. *pop* Lost a couple more brain cells there.
I hurry out of the room and stick my head into the pot of boiling cabbage rolls, hoping they scald my eyeballs and if I'm really lucky, my ears too. My mother trails out behind me, saying: What? What's the problem? You could, you know. I stick my head deeper into the pot.
After I take my head out of the pot and bandage my 3rd-degree burns, I find citrusboy is home and we can eat the yummy cabbage rolls. The Dynamic Duo giggles throughout the meal (well to be perfectly honest, hyenas throughout the meal), and I can only pray that that's a result of the empty gin bottle I spotted on the counter.
After dinner, drunk off their asses, they stumble to their (our) room and pass out. Never have such loud snores brought so much comfort.
3 comments:
But if you leave the cutting board directly behind the faucet, if your faucet leaks, the cutting board will stay wet forever, and get midlew/mold on it. Just saying.
I know, I know, but you just can't argue these things...
Oh yeah, the freezer is full. Mmm...now if I could just figure out how to make the sauce properly....
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