Monday Musings.

What on Earth possessed the person who thought that creating a water-based drink with aloe pulp was a good idea?  I joined a beta group that tests new products once a month.  Mostly, it's fun.  Think, "Plentils".  Then there are things like:  bacon/cheddar microwave popcorn.  And Watermelon-Peach Aloe Water (with Pulp).  Urk.  I mean, I have a pretty strong stomach, but trying to deal with aloe pulp is just too gross.  It reminds me of the first time I ate an oyster.  The only way I could live through it was to swallow it whole and do it fast, while trying to appear urbane.  Of course, now I love me my oysters.  But aloe pulp?  {{shudder}}  And what, pray tell, is wrong with just drinking a glass of water?  Must we energize it?  Mineralize it?  Fruity-size it?  It peeves me something awful.

For some reason, holidays often have me musing about past encounters with MILs, mothers of boyfriends, other mothers.  My best other mother memory, was the mother of a high school friend.  They were Italian and it was a large, LOUD family.  She was an amazing cook and my friend was her only daughter.  Coming from my pretty regimented, no talking out of turn at the dinner table, elbows-off family meals, dinner at her house was amazing!  There was yelling (no one spoke to each other in a normal voice), there was joking, there was FOOD.  J's mother would come behind me and hug me and tell me I was a stick and needed to eat more.  (Doubt if that would happen today...)  I always left there dazed and happy.

Then there was the mother of the boyfriend I'll call Murphy.  If there was ever a more dysfunctional family, I have yet to experience it.  She had all boys, her husband had died, she was an amazingly bad cook, and her natural state was angry.  She hated ALL of her sons' girlfriends.  Yet we were always invited to holiday dinners.  Which were inedible.  I remember having a 'discussion' with her about gravy.  She prepared hers with about a cup of cornstarch, a bouillon cube and hot water.  And about a 1/4 cup of salt.  Holey moley.

Then there was the MIL in Illinois.  If I had to give a bride-to-be some advice, it would be:  Go meet the future in-laws BEFORE the wedding.  She raced everywhere in a sweaty, fevered state, dropping things, slamming doors, muttering under her breath.  She, also, was a cook of highly inedible cuisine - and LOTS of it.  And you were expected to clean your plate.  I should add that you were also not allowed to help yourself - she dished out what she thought you should eat in way too large amounts.  There was no clever dinner table conversation.  At the start of dinner, the FIL, who had not uttered syllable one the entire time, shoveled a mound of food substance onto his plate and shuffled off to the den, where he ate in front of the ball game on TV.  Shades of future behavior - I should have seen it coming.

Now I mostly get to eat in peace and quiet, what I feel like cooking, under the watchful (and hopeful) big, brown eyes of Scrappy and Bernie.  Heaven.