Ultimate Family Fight Apple Sausage Stuffing

Dear Reader,

Get out your boxing gloves, put on your cloak of indignation and get ready to hurl some insults and air some grievances.  Thanksgiving is coming!  Here's a delicious stuffing to serve to your ungrateful and insensitive family.  Enjoy!

Ultimate Family Fight Apple Sausage Stuffing

You will need:

Pencil

Paper

2 Tbs. olive oil

1 lb. sausage

2 celery stalks, chopped

1 onion, diced

2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and chopped

1 shallot, diced

1 Tbs. chopped parsley

2 tsp. fresh sage, minced

1 bay leaf

1 lb. loaf French bread

1 cup milk

1 cup chicken broth

3 Tbs. butter, melted

3 eggs, beaten

1 cup cooked chestnuts

Escape plan

The day before Thanksgiving, make a list of guests who will be dining with you.  Included should be the usual unpleasant cast of characters, but their spouses and children as well.  Leave plenty of room between each name to write down the myriad ways they have belittled, embarrassed and taken advantage of you over the past year.

Heat oil in a large skillet and brown sausage.  Transfer sausage to another plate and consider asking for a transfer at work so that next year you can have a nice holiday spent either alone or with friends rather than family.  Note how sausage smells exactly like your cousin Jared, and plan to sit at other end of table from him this year.  Add celery, onions, apples, shallots and herbs to pan and cook until vegetables soften like the jowls on your manic depressive sister who totally denied putting a huge dent in the side of your car even though she was the only one driving it because your other sister was, once again, too drunk and needed a safe ride home, and neither of them have a job and so can't afford a car of their own.  Add sausage to vegetables.

Remembering the fistfight that broke out between your father and your brother at your high school graduation, tear bread into cubes with your bare hands and your anger.  Throw it in with the sausage like your mom threw out all of your old yearbooks and everything else that ever mattered to you in the whole world when she selfishly moved into that condo.  Crumble in the chestnuts, recalling that in the sixth grade your brother used to refer to your burgeoning breasts as "chestnuts" in front of the whole school bus.

Heat milk, butter and broth in a pot and pour over stuffing.  Crack eggs like you would the skulls of your idiot cousins who prank call you at work every day and mix it into the stuffing.  Season with salt and pepper.

Smear butter all over a large baking dish, the way your drunken sister apparently did with your Marc Jacobs pants she borrowed when she said she was going on a job interview but really was just going out with the guy who sells cell phones at the kiosk in the mall.  The guy that you saw first.

Throw everything in the pan and cook at 350 degrees for about 50 minutes or until golden brown.  Remove from oven and realize that the best part of Thanksgiving is the stuffing. The ultimate revenge would be to not bring it to dinner and eat it all yourself.  Turn off phone, lights and oven.  Enjoy stuffing with peace and quiet.

Survival Guide

Dear Reader,

Many of you will be forced in the coming months to endure one of the most difficult trials of a person’s life. Events so tragic and memories so horrific that will be burned forever onto your psyche and require years of therapy and prescription drugs to absorb. I am speaking of course of the dreaded Family Reunion. These procedures are fraught with tension and conflict; it helps to have low expectations and to know what you are getting into beforehand. Don’t make the mistake of thinking the reunion is going to be a vacation, a party, or indeed, any fun at all. Oh, no. It will be none of these, my friend. I have created a sample timeline of a day in the life of a family reunion to help you arm yourself for the event.

The Family Reunion: Day 1

7:30 AM Wake to niece and nephew dive bombing you and screaming something about a canoe.

8:00 AM Depart for worst canoe trip ever. Niece and nephew scream and fight over who gets to help paddle, causing the canoe to tip over and you to dive in and rescue drowning children under the scornful watch of older sister who didn’t trust you to take them canoeing in the first place.

9:00 AM Suddenly get urge to take up jogging just to get out of the house for a bit. Run four miles or until you throw up.

11:00 AM Dementia-addled Grandma doesn’t know your name. Tell her that you are the lesbian lover of your brother’s wife. When she asks who your brother is, tell her that he is Charles Lindbergh.

12:00 LUNCH! Finally. Make sure to provide only vegetarian food so that everyone will stay home next year.

1:45 PM Accidentally walk in on awkward tween cousin Bart holding a photo of Hannah Montana with his pants down in the bathroom. Mutter something – anything! And get out quick.

2:00 PM Uncle Fred leaves to go “find things in the garage from last year.” Do NOT, under any circumstances, go with him.

2:45 PM Catch Tara, your 13 year-old second cousin (or something) reading Breaking Dawn. Bond with her over Edward Cullen obsession. Try on her t-shirt with the Cullen Family Crest on it. Show her the photos of Robert Pattinson you have downloaded to your iPhone. Catch glimpse of yourself in the mirror. Next to her taut and dewy face, yours looks like an old leather bag.

3:30 PM Start drinking. Drinking at a family reunion can be a steady all day event that passes totally unnoticed if planned right. The older folks probably start earlier as they go to bed early, so have a cocktail when they do. Your parents will start with a drink around dinner, so switch to whatever they are drinking at that time. After dinner everyone has a drink, so you’re safe then. When the others go to bed, the teenagers will be shot gunning beers in the basement. As long as you promise to buy them more tomorrow, they won’t mind you joining in.

6:00 PM Dinner. Without making eye contact, be sure Bart has washed his hands. Gorge yourself on potato salad, cole slaw and hot dogs. If you are challenged to a hot dog eating contest, have on hand plenty of water to dunk the buns in. Disgusting, yes, but it gets them down faster.

7:00 PM Your father’s cousin Teddy confronts you in the kitchen about your lack of faith in the lord and how it will send you to a fiery hell for all eternity. Calmly remind him that if it isn’t your lack of faith that does it, surely it’s the slutty drunken blur that was your twenties. Not to mention the car you stole on spring break in the Bahamas.

8:00 PM Bart is in the bathroom again. Use the other one, or just go in the woods. He’s going to be awhile.

9:00 PM Someone will want to play charades. Just go along with it because a fight is going to break out soon anyway.

9:30 PM Loud arguing from the porch draws your attention. It’s up to you if you want to investigate because your father is getting in a fist fight with his Jesus-loving cousin Teddy, and your father rolling around in a headlock will be a memory hard to get rid of without the use of painful and costly electric shock therapy. If you do choose to watch, don’t get involved. Teddy’s daughter weighs in at an easy 250 and can crush you with just one of her massive arms should the row evolve into tag-team.

10:30 PM Now that you’re pretty drunk, it’s a good time to air your grievances with your siblings. Some topics for spewing might include:

• The PTSD you suffer as a result of your brother playing his favorite childhood game “Close Call” which involved hurtling toward you on his bike at top speed, only to veer off at the last minute.
• In tenth grade your tramp sister stole your boyfriend because she was willing to go all the way with him and you weren’t.
• Your sister in law’s need to constantly correct your grammar. That is not something with which it is easy to deal. Hah!
• Chastise brother for having a career in banking, proving that he a selfish, greedy, no-talent materialist. (*Note: do not open this can of worms if you will be needing a loan any time soon)
• Tell boorish brother-in-law that he scared off your last boyfriend by constantly farting in front of him.

11:00 PM Bed time. If you have to get up in the middle of the night, be careful as you are on the top bunk and it’s a long way down to the cold basement floor.

Cookies for Beleaguered Parents

Dear Reader,

There comes a time in the life of every parent who loves to cook that they want to share that love with their children. However, cooking with your children is fraught with peril. Here I have devised a perfect recipe to prepare you for the task.

Cookies for Beleaguered Parents

You will need:

Patience
6 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
3 tsp. salt
Water
1 ½ cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 cups brown sugar
1 bottle vanilla extract
6 eggs (or more)
2 bags chocolate chips
Swiffers
Television

Preheat oven to 375° F. Ask Timmy to measure out 1 cup flour. When he dumps it on floor, show him how to use the measuring cup. When he dumps that on floor, show him again, using best patience. Repeat this process until you have 2 ¼ cups flour in a bowl. Add baking soda to the mix and ask Sally to measure 1 tsp. salt. When she mistakes salt for sugar and eats two spoonfuls, give her water to drink. A lot of water. Put 1 tsp. salt into the flour.

Notice out of the corner of your eye that Sally is now gagging and glistening for some reason. Deduce from the stick of butter in Timmy’s hand that he has greased his sister. Remove butter from his hands and put 1 cup into a separate bowl. Try to wash butter off Sally, wiping and smearing and causing much shouting and anger on her part. Give up and let her put the sugar into the bowl. Now DUCK! because she’s about to hurl a handful of sugar at her brother. Show her, again using indoor voice, that she can use the measuring cup to put ¾ cup into the butter.

Add 1 tsp. vanilla to the butter, then drink remainder of bottle. When you realize that kids have found spoons and are eating the brown sugar, grab a spoon for yourself, because brown sugar is good! Make sure to leave ¾ cup to put into butter.

It is very important that you make sure there are no little fingers in the bowl when you turn on the electric mixer! Don’t make that mistake again! Cream butter, vanilla and sugars until as fluffy as the butter/flour mixture in your hair. Ask each child to crack one egg into a bowl. Again, DUCK! Repeat as needed until you have two eggs ready to go. Put them in with the butter and keep mixing then add flour stuff.

Tear open bag of chocolate chips and eat. Don’t share with children, as that much chocolate will make them hyper. Open second bag, allot three chips per child and put the rest into the mix.

Drop onto cookie sheet and bake eight minutes. Enjoy with satisfaction that comes from self-righteous parenting. Make sure to turn off oven and turn on Noggin before falling asleep on couch.

Up next: reader mail! Tell me your troubles and I’ll tell you what to eat to fix ‘em!
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