My sisters and I have a special relationship. We want what’s best for each other, we support and praise each others’ accomplishments, but at the end of the day, I would be fine if we were all happy Buddhas.
“Fat and sassy!” That’s what our mom used to say whenever anyone asked, “How are you, Lil?” Our mom was also an amazing cook. So no big surprise that when her daughters get together, there’s some appreciation of food involved.
The Sisters came to California last month and we all spent a week together, husbands and all, and food and drink took center stage. It was a week of cooking, eating, drinking, wine tasting, flipping through recipe books, and talking about our mom’s signature dishes. Some entire conversations were a round-robin of each of us taking turns saying “What are you getting?,” “Does anyone want a bite of this?” and “Remember that recipe for _____” and “Not to sit at one meal and talk about the next, but what are we doing for dinner/happy hour/breakfast/lunch?”
But we knew what we were getting into.
“What do you guys want me to have in the house to eat and drink? Any requests?” I texted them a few days before they arrived.
“I don’t want to eat a lot,” said one sister.
“I’m watching carbs,” said another. “And dairy. And sugar. And gluten. And counting calories.”
“I’m kinda sorta doing Weight Watchers Freestyle, but mostly I just want to not overdo it,” said the third.
“I joined a cult last month that has me eating only currants, raw honey and my own fingernails,” I chimed in. “But let’s just forget all that for the week and live it up! Love you guys!!!! *Lips emoji*
And live it up we did. The sisters and their husbands weren’t in our house an hour before my husband opened up every container of liquor in our house, including the bottle of clear liquid with the Chinese writing on it left from when my kids had their own Chinese New Year party here. We don’t know what it is. It could be an illegal version of absinthe. I don’t think it’s black market tiger bone wine, but what do I know? What better time to find out than when I’m with people who love me and who know how to induce vomiting.
Our first real meal was Dim Sum for lunch. If you’re not familiar, Dim Sum is where you sit at a big round table with a lazy susan in the center, and servers come flying at you and buzzing about, pushing rolly carts full of food. Platters of different dishes magically appear onto your lazy susan while you reach for the teapot or turn to your sister to say something or blink. Every few seconds, here comes another rolly cart full of four or five new dishes with a server whose sole purpose in life is for no one in San Francisco to be as thin as her and her fellow servers.
“Double portion buns? Pork? Pork? Double pork? Double noodles?”
“Eh–aayaaa,” we are a whole family of nice people, so we agreed to the double everything, even the stuff that no one was eating. We wobbled home to get ready for the Italian feast that I had planned for dinner that night. Extra garlic bread, eh — aayaaa.
In that week, we managed to take in four countries’ culinary fare and checked off several foodie trends, like Breakfast for Dinner, Irish Coffee for Breakfast-Dinner, and Three Irish Coffees for Good Luck Breakfast-Dinner, to name a few.
By the last day, walking up to the counter at Ben & Jerry’s and ordering a Salted Caramel Blondie ice cream at 5pm just seemed to be the right thing to do. I might as well have been waving a white flag at type 2 diabetes. It was just the Caligula-level behavior that seemed to fit with the whole week.
My sisters left eight days ago and I haven’t heard from two of them. Does food rehab have texting privileges?
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Diane has been writing Just Humor Me since 2007. If you’d like to get an occasional email reminder of Diane’s writing, subscribe to her newsletter here.