Holidays « Manolo for the Big Girl

November 24, 2012

One Holiday Season Over, a New One Begins

Filed under: Holidays — Twistie @ 12:57 pm

Before we get going, I’d like to apologize for the lack of posts last weekend. WordPress kept shutting me out, and I don’t know why. But it’s forgiven me now and I can post again.

Thanksgiving is over. All that’s left over are, well, a few leftovers. And, if we’re lucky, some good memories. Mr. Twistie and I wound up having a different holiday than we’d expected. The friend we were planning to visit came down with a nasty bronchial sludge she didn’t care to share, so we stayed home and made a few adjustments. We watched old movies, I made a delicious dinner, we ate until we were happily sated, he played a little guitar, and we finished our day playing with Jake the cat.

All in all, it was a good day. The memories are, indeed, happy.

The day after Thanksgiving I have a ritual. When I get up, I have coffee and pumpkin pie for breakfast… and then I don’t go shopping. When I worked retail I quickly learned that Black Friday and Christmas Eve are typically the angriest shopping days of the year and so I avoid buying anything more emotionally charged than a bottle of milk on those two days. Okay, we did break down and get Jake some crunchies, but we went to a grocery store that wasn’t in a mall.

Today I will most likely do my traditional change of holiday seasons activity:

I’ll watch The Nightmare Before Christmas. It never fails to get me into the right mood for the next few weeks.

How about all of you? How do you make the transition from Thanksgiving to the Christmas/Hanukkah/Solstice/Kwanzaa/et al season? Do you have a tradition at all? I’d love to hear what you do.

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November 22, 2012

At First I Was Like This…

Filed under: Holidays — Miss Plumcake @ 7:38 am

But then I was like this:

On behalf of Twistie, The Manolo and a murderous Ann Sheridan, I’d like to wish all my American compatriots a happy and strife-free Thanksgiving!

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November 11, 2012

Tips For an Easier and Tastier Thanksgiving

Filed under: Be Super Fantastic,Entertaining,Food,Holidays — Twistie @ 2:01 pm

I’m going to come right out and say it: planning and cooking a traditional Thanksgiving feast is not easy. It’s a challenge, to say the least. Few people have the sort of kitchens that can store and cook all the food required in one go, let alone sufficient helping hands. There are things in that traditional menu that very, very few of us cook at any point in the rest of the year. After all, when else do most people roast a turkey or make a pie? Yes, I do make pie pretty regularly, but that turkey? Not so much. That’s a big honking bird to cook for two people, which is how many eat here in one go maximum most of the year. Heck, my mother had a husband, three hungry kids, and usually at least one friend of someone in the family at that dinner table most nights, and turkey was still a once a year thing.

So let’s talk about a few ways you can make your life easier if you choose to take on making a more or less standard, traditional Thanksgiving meal for you and yours. After all, you want the energy to enjoy what you have wrought when you sit down to eat. Landing face first in the mashed potatoes from exhaustion and frustration does not make for a fun holiday for anyone.

So what can you do to make sure you’re in good shape to celebrate? What can you do to make unfamiliar dishes taste like you’re a pro at cooking them?

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November 10, 2012

Take Care of Your Emotional Health on Thanksgiving

Filed under: Be Super Fantastic,Entertaining,Food,Health,Holidays — Twistie @ 12:55 pm

It’s a fact. Not all families are created equal. Some of us are lucky enough to have families that welcome and embrace us during the holidays… and others of us spend this time of year being emotionally beaten up by our nearest and dearest.

Over the years, I’ve read harrowing tales on this site from awesome Big Girls who are expected to cook the Thanksgiving feast and then berated for every bite they dare to eat. I’ve read of others who spend the holidays in a constant round of being given diet tips by all their relatives, their spouses, and their closest friends. I’ve read about the folks who wheedle invitations to dinner and then complain about the cooking, the choice of menu, and the decor. I’ve read about families grimly sitting down to a traditional meal that took days and huge amounts of money to create, but that nobody actually enjoys eating. And I’ve read about families who take this holiday dedicated to gratitude and turn it into a chance to object vociferously to the size, body art, hair color, clothing choices, sexuality, relationships, child-rearing plans and/or skills, careers, and literary taste of everyone else at the table.

If this in any way describes your Thanksgiving guest list (or the Thanksgiving you’ve been invited to partake in), it’s time to rethink your holiday plans.

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November 4, 2012

How To Compose a Thanksgiving Menu

Filed under: Be Super Fantastic,Entertaining,Food,Holidays,Sage Advice For Living — Twistie @ 12:32 pm

This is a pretty traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Turkey, cranberries, pie, gravy, seasonal vegetable medley… it’s a meal that many people look forward to every year.

It’s also one that many people dread every year. In this case, I’m not talking about the company, because that will be another article. As per usual, I’ll spend the weekends leading up to Thanksgiving (here in USAnia, anyway) talking about different aspects of Thanksgiving, very much including the emotional ones. But today, I’m just talking menu planning.

You see, no matter how traditional or un you plan to be, the meal needs planning in advance. So let’s break it down and figure out how to figure out what to serve your nearest and dearest for the holiday.

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October 31, 2012

Witch, Please.

Filed under: Holidays — Miss Plumcake @ 8:55 am

On behalf of Twistie, The Manolo and all your friends in the Manolosphere, have a happy and haunted Halloween!

And while you’re wading through the vast hordes of the Sexy Try Too Hards, remember the immortal words of Dorothy Parker: You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.

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October 29, 2012

It’s that time again!

Filed under: Holidays,Uncategorized — Miss Plumcake @ 8:46 am

Well, it’s almost Halloween, and you know what that means: Miss Plumcake’s annual plea for you not to dress like you’re the Ambassador from Skanktasia on Halloween.

This isn’t slut shaming. If you want to dress like a Naughty Seasonal Non-CPA-Certified Tax Preparer, that’s fine by me, just do it on some other random day of the year. I’ve heard the weather’s nice on Arbor Day. Wear your three dollar lurex fishnets and speculum-length mini then. At least that takes courage.

The always-topical Manolo sensibly agrees.

And the women from Emotistyle (featuring Tim Gunn) tell you how to do it right.