My "go-to" dish...

My family of Origin.. we've all got one... Mine are...ummm......welll.... errrr..... different. The really are the Family that put the Fun back in Dysfunctional... and I mean that in really, a fun way. I posted about our Xmas dinner earlier, and promised to give them all Internet names. Which I did, not EVER in a million years thinking that any of them would actually take the time to read the blog of the cuckoo in the nest.

Well they did. And they're not happy, Jan.... So at Mother's day lunch today, I promised to give them all BETTER Internet names. I will list them later, but suffice it to say that lunch today was rather different.

Only at my fam's table can you get a conversation about how the Billings Method of Birth Control might apply to mammals other than Homo Sapiens (specifically bovines) and the rational possibility of frozen sperm (all that liquid Nitrogen, you know) having a negative affect on a latex glove.

Don't even ask about the Spaghetti Tree and the Mop Up Bull. Really.. Don't. Ask.


One of the things my fam does is not so much talk TO each other, as talk AT each other. Amongst 12 different people, there might be 8 different and disparate conversations going on. People pick and choose which conversation to be involved with. Sometimes more than one convo at a time. It's like Speed Dating... on Speed. Or like Tennis fans... their heads going back and forward,...... on Speed... back and forward between one conversation and another.

You have to have your wits about you to hold your own in this fam.If you were to stand on the outer and just listen you might hear something like this:

And the Rotolactor
Just wanted to KILL the jetskier
And the young Mop-up Bull said
it's important to know if the underpants were Y-front or Boxers
So the grapevine took about 25 minutes to
wonder if you were out with a new squeeze
and I tried to stalk you through Docklands but
why do you need me to look at your computer?
and bra-Girl
and Mr Charisma By-pass
used electronic stimulation
on Jack Ass
but the Romeo and Juliet complex meant
Stormin' Norman is a pillock
and he keeps the glove in his bedside drawer..
EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

Originally, Furry... who comes from a fam of 3 used to spend most of his time with my fam rocking foetally in the corner. It took him a LOOOOONG time to realise that my terrible habit of interrupting him mid-sentence is actually and ingrained family survival skill.

The one thing you CAN be assured of at one of my Fam dinners, is that I will be asked to bring my potato salad. They are MAD for it. I often think I might try something different, but it's my potato salad they want. And it's so freakin easy... boil at last 2 spuds per person. Allow to cool. Throw in a bowl with 1/2 sour cream and 1/2 a good quality whole egg mayo (I use best Foods or Thomy), some random spring onions, 6 boiled and sliced eggs and top with oven-crisped bacon (run over randomly with a mezzaluna)

My family aren't really foodies (I WILL post that Cat's Vom recipe one day, I promise), and poor Aunti Linney thought the bacon crisps were chocolate, but apart from that... and the conversation about how they get the sperm for artificial insemination into those tiny straws, (again, DO. NOT. ASK.. but the words "old man" and "condom drainage" were touted)), it all went pretty well.

I felt like I was having a bad acid flash-back.. but that's pretty much par for the course at one of MY family get-togethers.

So, without further ado, may I present MY FAM...

Mater Beige, whom you all know and love,
Uncle Maximus (he of the Mop up Bull Story)
Auntie Linney,
The Princess
M and M (If you read this M, take pleasure in the fact that I am not happy with this.. if you come up with a better one, let me know!)
Jazzy J,
Stew
Bluey
Naxaw,
Little Purple Princess
Uncle Mo
The Meringue
Yardglass