A Snore-ibble Night

As my hillbilly relatives have pretty much no houses among them, my grandmother invited my mom, sister and I to stay in her one-bedroom, two-room apartment for the night. My sister and I slept head-to-head on blow-up mattresses that were crammed into the kitchen.



My grandmother, thinking she was sparing us, slept on the couch. It was all good until like eleven o' clock.



Suddenly, this horrible noise began emitting from my grandmother's mouth. This is a woman who has pretty much been fortified on chicken-fried vegetables and bad meat her whole life, so her farts are colossal and sound like they're forming words, so it shouldn't have come as surprise that she snored like the dickens. It sounded like she was simultaneously dying, choking, and snorting Campbell's Chunky soup through her nose.



It went on like this for a couple hours, till about 1:00. My sister and I tossed and turned uncomfortably, trying to get comfortable on mattresses which incidentally also
made farting noises every time you rolled over. My grandmother snored on, oblivious and happily asleep, with her nostrils and lips flapping and emitting train-whistles and ship foghorns.



We lay like this for what seemed like forever. Time was sucked into an unfathomable loop of oblivion. It was as if we were Odysseus in the time of the sirens and we had to find some way to avoid the horrible keening animal-death noises. I tried stuffing my own hair in my ear, and, when that predictably failed, curling up my head in the blanket like a burrito. My mom, blissfully asleep, was using a noisemaker, but to me the noisemaker sounded like someone peeing off a cliff.

And then, around 2 or 3, Father Time decided to screw with us more. The couple upstairs was apparently young (although really? young people in a quaint country suburb named Whispering Woods?), because all of a sudden sexytime was happening. It sounded like an Irish jig coming from the ceiling. Also bad rap music.



My sister, who doesn't like my music, turned to me and pleaded for my iPod to spare her from the horribleness.



I suddenly felt this grim knowledge burst within me. Like I had discovered my meaning of life. I had been granted this iPod full of druggie songs, and, by God, I was going to use it like the weapon of awesomeness it was. I alone could save my sister and I, and in turn, save China. And Atlantis.



I went through the entire discography of Sufjan Stevens, Fleet Foxes, Mando Diao, Sigur Ros, and Blind Pilot, trying to find the trippiest, most calming music I could to lull my sister and I to sleep. We certainly felt high. But Gram's snores punctuated the music. She even snored to the beat, as if mocking us.

At fourish or so in the morning, I curled into a fetal ball and meekly accepted defeat.

Classy-Ass Grilled Cheese Sandwich (also a hillbilly one)

Hello boys and girls. Today I bring you a cooking challenge so excellent and delicious it will make all of your stuffy english grandparents swoon. I like this recipe a lot because it makes me feel like I have grown-up taste buds. If you are as galactorically bored as I am, you can make this! Woo! Cooking is fun!

Seriously, this is how classy it is:









Here's what you need:


whole wheat bread (or just bread. whatever.)
butter
aged white cheddar cheese (it is fancy and irish)
Dijon mustard
Granny Smith apple, thinly sliced
onion chutney (see below!)
if you're feeling damn fancy, watercress and mayo

Butter one side of each bread slice. On the unbuttered side of half of the slices, spread Dijon mustard. If you're feeling fancy, chop up the watercress (I think there's something else you do with it, but I dunno. Use the google.) and mix with mayo, then spread on the other bread slice. Slice some cheese really thin or else it won't melt and just be awkward. Put that and some thinly sliced apples on top of the Dijon and mayo. While you're cooking, you can eat the remaining green apple and feel like Barbossa. That is basically how I eat all of my greens.




Now it's time for the chutney. If you're having junior-year flashbacks to english finals, don't. It's gewd. It's like, dessert salsa, but with CARMELIZED ONIONS.

Onion Chutney

2 tbsp butter
2 yellow onions, diced
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp red chile flakes
1 tsp ground coriander (you can omit this if you're not high-class enough)
1 tsp brown sugar
4 tbsp apple cider vinegar (do not smell this directly from the bottle. it is potent. it's like cooking chloroform)
1/4 tsp cracked pepper

Heat butter in a pan over medium heat and add onions. Saute until translucent. Add salt, chile flakes and coriander and continue to cook for 15 minutes. Add remaining ingredients and cook until the onions are very soft and creamy.

Damn that's fancy! Too fancy you say? Well I better balance it out with a hillbilly recipe that is essentially also a grilled cheese.

Hillbilly Garlic Cheese Bread

I recommend eating nothing but raw vegetables for days after this. Also, you might destroy your family's gastrointestinal systems. But it's worth it.

3 1/2 cups grated Cheddar cheese
3/4 cups Monterey Jack cheese, grated
1/2 cups grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cups mayonnaise
4 green onions, minced (I used fresh chives, they goooood)
1 loaf crusty French bread
4 cloves garlic, finely minced
some butter

Preheat oven to 425.

Mix cheeses with the mayonnaise and the green onions/chives and garlic until it's nice and mashy. Mmmm, mashy.

Cut loaf of bread in slices. Butter each one with only a bit of butter! Spread mashy-cheese mixture until there's a good wallop on each slice. Seriously, there should be like a baby-sized amount on this bread.

Bake in a 425F oven until cheese is hot and bubbly, about 10 minutes.

Michigan Clan 2011: Memorial Day Edition

MOSTLY WORDS BECAUSE SERIOUSLY GAIZ, I SHOULD BE STUDYING.
THIS POST RATED 'H' FOR HILLBILLY.


On Friday, I walked into my house to find it totally changed.








Yes. That is when I knew...the Clan had arrived.

Only parts of the Clan came...two of my uncles, my aunts, and four chilluns ranging from 6 months to 4 years. Also my grandma. My mom, in preparation, had gone to Costco with me on an ENTIRELY separate trip and bought over 400$ worth of meat for them.

No seriously. There were dino chicken nuggets, steak, turkey, fish, fish sticks, normal chicken...and on last night we ordered take-out Olive Garden (where they know my mom as the Party Lady):

24 breadsticks
a vat of alfredo sauce
a jumbo salad with 'extra toppings' (to which we added three tomatoes, an onion, a jar of olives, and a bag of croutons)
a small mountain of parmasean cheese
three bottles of dressing

and 3 large deep dish Supreme Lou Malnati's pizzas.

In the wake of the Clan (they left the 'Food Corner' p. much behind), there are two large ice cream cakes, two large boxes of juice pops, one batch of 'homemade' (they came from a magical Michigan thing called a 'cookie kube') cookies, two boxes of gram crackers and three hershey's bars and two bags of marshmallows, 23 boxes of Girl Scouts cookies (from Samoas to Peanut Butter), a mysterious chocolate egg-thing, a bag of chocolate chips the size of my torso, five two-liter bottles of soda, and various boxes of Froot Loops.

Seriously, there is so much food here. My kitchen, used to spare amounts of vegetables and 'foodless fridays', doesn't know what to do. I try to describe it, but honestly there is SO MUCH FOOD I can't even tell you. We are cramming it into corners at the moment. The Girl Scout cookies, lacking a place, are stacked on a counter in a formation that could prevent a nuclear bomb.

But enough about the food. You will understand the sheer amount that we have when I roll to school tomorrow.

As hillbillies, there is always something that happens that is passed down through generations. Generally, I hear about these stories late at night, after the copious beers. But this time, during the car rides to Chicago (we classy!), I heard about it (and experienced it) through much guffawing, snorting, and reeinactments of farts.

We had dropped my uncles off on Saturday at 'the game' while we went 'shopping' (We really didn't buy anything') and they came tottering out of a bar when it was time to go home. Whenever they talked, their breath was, as Sister put it, 'a rancid odour of doom' that richocheted around the car. Nothing like the smell of old cigarettes (I used to think it was the smell of food when I was little in Michigan) and many different types of liquour radiating off rain-soaked sweaty man-bodies. But it got worse.

We were on the highway, when uncle Doug decided he suddenly had to pee. Too bad we were on a highway, my mom said. But nooo! There's always a solution!




At first my mom wasn't going to do it. No relative of hers was going to pee in a forest, she said.
But they did.

We pulled over, and both of my fine esteemed uncles ran into the trees, past the sign that said clearly in red bold 'NO DUMPING' (my grandma had a guffaw over that), and didn't come back for like ten minutes.

In that ten-minute period, my aunt told us a similar tale in which my uncle had, in this act, tripped over his pants and snapped a tree in half.
It is a good life, the Michigan clan.

Michigan Family Clan Christmas 2010

Once a year, the family is drawn as if by magical, beer-enhancing moonlight to a place far out in the boondock fields of Michigan. We all go there, pulled by an invisible force, to renew our magic and begin the new year frolicking and hay-dancing under the harvest moon in the fields amongst gossiping hillbillies, uncles with babysitter-wives, and 65 babies.

Since we’re the only ones who live far away, generally events are planned around us. So that means a 7 to 14 hour car ride usually. And since no one has a big enough house to let us stay, we usually end up in a motel. This year we stayed with my mom’s friend and her husband on a 76-acre farm. They’re quiet, sort of quaint people, and thus begun our adventure.




They also had horses, so that was fun. I smelled like fire and horse poop for the entire time. (Ily horses, but seriously, you have a poopload of poop.)

Upon getting into Michigan, thus began the Dubious Vegetarianism portion of my trip. Generally when I get into Michigan, I try to just stock up on the cheesy potatoes and cheesy broccoli and stay away from the cheesy beef and the cheesy bacon/venison lard dip (both of which were hits at Christmas dinner).

So when we get to Christmas (at my aunt’s house: only house big enough. Actually, only house.), it is already chaotic. As said, there are like 65 children-babies under 5. The new one (we were trying to guess her name on the way over. Rodney? Quigley?) is named Sydney, probably a boy’s name since no one can seem to have a boy in this family.




Present opening, even with everyone messily ripping open their presents at the same time, takes six hours. From two till eight. Presents are usually stacked not only under the tree, but under the dining room table, chairs, in the kitchen, bedrooms, lined along the walls of the family room and dining room, and also in the rafters in the garage. I have never heard anyone ever say in disgust, ‘There’s more presents under the chair.’ And I have never heard a two year old say ‘We have a LOT of presents, mommy.’

Last year my uncle got a roll of ‘poop’ smeared toilet paper as a gift (it was chocolate actually).

Speaking of poop, that’s pretty much what our family talks about. Poop, farts, butts, you name it. It is all ridiculously hilarious. Especially when we all sit down to play poker and most everyone’s had a few. And swears of course just make every story a gem.





Sitting around the poker table is the best time to listen to everyone. My grandma sits quietly in a corner, farts, and then laughs, my aunt screams ‘Scooby dooby dooby, I want bigger boobies’, and my uncles are…well…






yeah.

At one or two in the morning my sister, mom and Doug and I leave. Two in the morning is not the best time to be driving around the boondocks and to get lost and have to pull over onto a scary dirt road with trees that have signs on them that say ‘Property of the Gun Club'. Especially when your family looks like this:




Sister was overtired and, somewhere out there, there is a chart where her smartassosity goes up with her tiredness. My mom, on the other hand, has enriched vocabulary when she’s overtired. It is all a very interesting and impressive combination of ‘ass’, ‘stupid’, ‘hat’, ‘smart’, ‘jerk’, ‘shit’, 'dork', and ‘f***’.

I, on the other hand, was just thinking about how in Jurassic Park, this was where we were going to get eaten by a T rex.

All in all, a very eventful year. I can’t wait until next year: more babies, poop, swearing, beer, sweat, cheesy beef, and love. 2011 here I come.