Culture Shock: mostly culinary
Last year, I was with my brother-in-law's family in Minnesota, and the culture shock was pretty severe. This year, I'm with my parents-in-law in Alabama, where, surprisingly perhaps, the culture shock is not so extreme-Boston-to-Alabama is, perhaps, but in terms of the church service, Methodists are a lot more familiar than evangelicals. (I did have to get up and walk around outside the sanctuary during communion, because it felt too awkward to just sit there. It gave me a chance to look at some lovely, and only slightly homoerotic, portraits of Jesus and the apostles.)
On the other hand, my mother-in-law and I have...somewhat different ideas about cooking. I offered to cook Christmas dinner-in part, I feel like it's a nice gesture to relieve her of having to cook on the holiday, and in part, last year's turkey was kind of a little awful. (This was as much my wife's opinion as mine; she was the one who asked me if I wanted to cook the turkey this year.) So we sent along a shopping list, and tonight I started a little bit of preparation: mixing the spice rub for the turkey, and cubing the several-day-old French bread for the bread pudding.
Now, of course, that bread was going to be for both the bread pudding and the stuffing. But my mother-in-law had bought a bag of Pepperidge Farm cornbread stuffing mix, and it seemed wrong not to use it.
Culture shock does come in many guises.
This entry was originally posted at http://tahnan.dreamwidth.org/216316.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
On the other hand, my mother-in-law and I have...somewhat different ideas about cooking. I offered to cook Christmas dinner-in part, I feel like it's a nice gesture to relieve her of having to cook on the holiday, and in part, last year's turkey was kind of a little awful. (This was as much my wife's opinion as mine; she was the one who asked me if I wanted to cook the turkey this year.) So we sent along a shopping list, and tonight I started a little bit of preparation: mixing the spice rub for the turkey, and cubing the several-day-old French bread for the bread pudding.
Now, of course, that bread was going to be for both the bread pudding and the stuffing. But my mother-in-law had bought a bag of Pepperidge Farm cornbread stuffing mix, and it seemed wrong not to use it.
Culture shock does come in many guises.
This entry was originally posted at http://tahnan.dreamwidth.org/216316.html. Please comment there using OpenID.