filet o' dinner

pierogie-making-day (PMD) is quickly approaching. with less than a week away, i started to stockpile the xanax.

(i just realized that by the time that PMD is upon us, i won't be in class anymore. hmmm, if you are interested in my freak life, i plan on continuing this blog, although it will probably be on a new url. leave a comment with your email address if you want me to notify you of its new url.)

but in writing about my dreaded day, i forgot to give the reason WHY we undergo the insanity in the first place. an explanation for the family tradition.

it's filet o'dinner, the traditional polish christmas eve dinner that packs us into my mother-in-law's completely cramped and utterly cluttered kitchen.

filet o'dinner (not really how it's spelled but with the polish language it's easier to write it phonetically that listen to the butchering that occurs when letters that normally aren't used together -- d's, c's, j's and z's -- appear in most words) is the polish version of my italian 7-fishes dinner. still with fish but missing about 4 other courses. and pierogies, lots of pierogies.

if i were an atkins-addicted, carb-counting person, my heart would stop pumping as a result of this dinner. long underused fat cells would dance on my thighs with glee over the pounds of pierogies (potato & cheese or sauerkraut stuffed dumplings for the uninformed), the pounds of boiled potatoes cooked to add thickness to an always watery mushroom soup, the italian bread served -- i think as a way to remind me that i'm NOT with my family for their dinner (as if the italian bread served up by acme is any equal...) and the dessert of chris-chickies (again the phonetic way) which are -- you guessed it -- strips of dough, fried and sprinkled with sugar.

the only slightly healthful thing is the mushroom soup. but with most things polish, there's something backwards about it. the soup is made with vegetable broth, some light cream and poisonous mushrooms. at first when i heard family members speak of it, i thought they were kidding. ha ha, play a joke on the non-polish one. real funny.

then i thought about it some more and thought, this is how my m-i-l plans to get rid of me! she's going to off me with poisonous mushrooms and make it look like its my lack of tolerance to the polish stuff that killed me. after i told my husband (then boyfriend) he laughed and called me cute. bleah! i don't want to be cute, i want to live, dammit!

after carefully explaining that the mushrooms won't kill me, it's just a nickname for some of the more exotic ones used, i calmed down. only slightly, though.

that still didn't answer why after each filet o' dinner, i would drive home in gastric distress. with white-knuckles and rolling stomach cramps, i'd drive to my house, praying that i wouldn't:

a) poop in my pants, or
b) blow chunks all over the steering wheel.

neither of which you should have to clean up on christmas eve.

the reason for my beanie belly (as my husband calls it) was the sauerkraut pierogies. as a vegetarian, i haven't eaten anything with a face in more than a decade. the sauerkraut (cabbage cooked in beer and other accoutrements) used to make the pierogies was precooked when we got there to make them on PMD. so i would have never known that part of the seasoning used to cook the sauerkraut was friggin' BACON FAT.

my belly never knew what hit it. the annual crisis it suffered on christmas eve finally had an explanation. it was so unaccustomed to consuming animal products - bleech - it reacted the only way it knew how - "abort, abort! all hands abandon ship, abandon ship".

and my m-i-l said she didn't know that was it would cause a problem. i thought i was dying each christmas eve. over and over again. gurgle, gurgle.

i bet she figured if she couldn't kill me with the poison mushrooms she would just send me to the emergency room to get fluids 'cause i was pooping myself inside out.

so no, filet o'dinner is not my family tradition. it's not even a fun tradition.

and even though i know there is less carbo-riffic things for me to eat, my fat cells still get excited. there's always the acme-brand italian bread to scarf!