Tag Archives: holidays

Póg mo thóin!

Posted by on March 17, 2011 1 comment

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Do you have any Irish in you? I’ve got some – my great-grandfather, Leslie Griffin, was Irish! He was a Home Child – orphaned as a wee lad and sent to England by his uncle to live in a Bernardo Home, and later shipped to Canada as an indentured farm labourer.

Now this year, I am still recuperating from a nasty bout of influenza, so I doubt I’ll be drinking any green beer tonight. However, I am thinking of recreating a delicious pseudo-Irish meal that I first prepared three years ago: Guinness Fondue!

Cheese and Guinness Fondue
Serves 6-8. Recipe Source: Food.com

Ingredients:

  • 2 lbs cheddar cheese, grated
  • 1/2 pint Guinness stout
  • 6 -8 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
  • salt & pepper, to taste
  • cayenne pepper, to taste
  • 1 tablespoon cornstarch
  • bread, chunks for dipping

    • Directions:

    Well, the directions in the REAL recipe say you should melt the cheese first and add the rest ofthe ingredients after, but that sounded dumb to me, so I made up my own rules, because that’s how I roll.

    I guess I could have used any old beer, but Saint Patrick himself spoke to me in a dream and said, “Hey stupid! Use Guinness!” So I did:

    Yummmmmm Beer.

    I heated the beer, Worcestershire and spices to a simmer, then added this lovely Kerrygold Dubliner Irish Cheddar:

    You haven't lived until you've had Dubliner cheese.

    I heated and stirred until the fondue thickened slightly.

    I still wear that same ring on that same thumb!

    That’s pretty much it! If you’re fancy enough (or enough of a HIPPIE) to actually have a fondue set in your house, you could put it in that and do it the real way, but I’m ghetto so I just used some bowls and a platter.

    The recipe said to serve with bread, but that sounded boring, so I prepared ALL SORTS OF STUFF to go with our Cheese and Guinness fondue:

    Potatoes, brocolli, kielbasa, mushrooms, carrots and apples.

    There you have it, folks! An Irish twist on a Swiss classic.

    Éirinn go Brách!

    Well Happy Things and Stuff To You Too!

    Posted by on January 3, 2011 3 comments

    Here’s my much-anticipated 2010 in review post. It all started back in January when…

    … nah, just kidding. Nobody cares that much, not even me. But it got me to thinking…

    I used to have a post-about-my-actual-life blog over at Xanga, where I rambled on about the day’s happenings, raged about general asshattery I encountered, et cetera. It was fun but sometimes I felt I owed it to my readers to be more… entertaining? So I tried, and it was not well received because for some reason some weirdos (present company excluded, of course) actually LIKE reading about my meals, my television watching habits, my bowel movements and my daily interactions with others.

    Over here at GwenStyles.com, I try to keep the Gwen out of Gwen Styles, so to speak. I’m a lot less personal, and much more give-the-masses-what-they-want. But I never actually asked my readers what they want. So I am now. Because if you WANT to read about my ridiculous life, I’ve got some crazy stories I could share, such as:

    1. How my birthday pub crawl started with a classy Greek dinner on the Danforth and ended with bad holiday karaoke at some bar in a Holiday Inn on Bloor;

    2. How Gwen saved Christmas with Chicken Cacciatore;

    3. How the best laid schemes of mice and men go oft awry, and how I subsquently found myself with no party to attend on New Years Eve;

    4. How it’s a damn good thing I didn’t because I spent a good part of NYE in the hospital with my mumsie;

    5. How much Kaluha I intend to drink today.

    SO. Do you actually want to hear about my LIFE this year at GwenStyles.com?

    The Ghost of Christmas Present(s)

    Posted by on December 14, 2010 2 comments

    *UPDATE* So my mother called me about ten minutes after I posted this to provide me with a detailed list of all the awesome Christmassy shit she does, thereby refuting my claim that she’s a grinch. And she’s right – I just like to poke a bit of fun at my mom sometimes, I love her. She made a very valid argument: it’s not that she hates the holidays, it’s that she hates what the holidays do to some people. Totally true.

    Normally I’d pretty this post up with a picture or something but y’all are just gonna have to deal because I’m not having it today.

    Don’t get me wrong, I love the holidays. It’s my favourite time of year. To begin with, my birthday is just a week before Christmas, so growing up the two events a kid looks forward to all year were, for me, back-to-back. I love almost everything about Christmastime: the lights, the decorations, the music, the food (oh God the foooooooood), the parties, the drinking, the gift exchanges, the shopping (yes, I even love the shopping), and of course, spending more time than usual with friends and family.

    But this year, it’s been a real struggle to go through the motions, and I’m not sure why. It seems I’ve lost my holiday mojo. I can pinpoint a few things that may have caused this:

    1. Holiday Haterz. They’re everywhere this year! What the holly? I have a couple of Grinches in my family – you learn to grin and bear their grumblings. If it were anyone else I’d go postal, but you don’t tell your mom to STFU. I get that not everyone enjoys the holiday season. You’d like to think they’d be sensitive to others and would try to curb their rage, but ragey people aren’t really that well-known for their rage-curbing abilities. Anyway, I already know how to deal with my mom’s bah-humbug attitude: I just keep her nice and tight. Hey Ma – ever wonder why I drink three times as much during the holidays as I normally do, and why I always take you down with me? It’s cause I LOVE YOUUUUUUUUUUUU NOW HAVE A MERRY GODDAMN CHRISTMAS. (lol) This year, I’ve had to deal with a couple of bitter angry people in my workplace, too, who have entitlement issues and decided to kick up a big stink about what they’re NOT getting for the holidays. And that’s discouraging. With the poverty, hunger, political chaos, and serious bullshit going on out there in the world, knowing that some people really think that much of themselves is a real downer when the holidays are supposed to be about everything other than receiving (although trust me, I do get the irony in that). While these two lovely, lovely individuals DID almost succeed in ruining my holiday happiness, I am happy to say I managed to get back on track (helped in no small part by my good friend Mr. J. Daniels) and am back in the ho-ho-ho spirit.

    2. Busy-ness. I’ve been damn busy, son. In October, I spent a month away from my job; instead of answering fifty phone calls a day from pissed-off people with entitlement issues, I spent 70 hours a week following a little guy with big dreams all over the city in his progressive, and unfortunately unsuccessful, bid for Mayor. I had a great time, made many important contacts, and learned a lot of super neat shit.  But I mean, I am a sedentary, middle-aged office drone, and it took a toll on me. The day that gig ended I fell sick from sheer exhaustion and I feel like I’ve been playing catch-up ever since. I spent the entire month of November up to my arse in grievances, harassment and discrimination complaints, and discipline issues. All this on top of my regular job, which as I mentioned before, typically involves eating shit on the phone all day from people who really don’t see the point in being nice to poor call centre assholes like me. In early December, I was elected to the executive board of my union’s area council AND I was recruited to lobby my member of provincial parliament about how my good friend Dalton McQuinty wants public service workers to take a pay cut next year (and how we’re gonna tell him to blow it out his butt). On top of all this, I was in night school once a week until recently (and am now an accredited union counselor, BOOYA). So uh, how’ve ya been? I’ve been a mite busy, kids.

    3. Mo’ money, mo’ problems. Our problem, however, is definitely not mo’ money. It’s less money. But I won’t bore you with an explanation. Yes, I do see the world’s smallest violin player sitting on your shoulder playing the world’s saddest tune just for me. Shut up and get me some Bailey’s, shorty.

    4. C’mon get up, get down with the sickness! And oh baby, what a sickness it’s been. My best friend’s had it for almost a month. My ex had it for over two weeks. I started shovelling Cold FX and Vitamin C horse pills into my maw the moment they started sneezing but all it got me was just barely healthy enough to go to work, not QUITE sick enough to stay home without feeling guilty. SO BASICALLY I BLAME DON CHERRY: FOR ENDORSING SUCH A MEDIOCRE COLD REMEDY AND FOR CALLING ME A LEFT-WING PINKO LAST WEEK. (What? It hurt my feelings?) (Okay, it really didn’t LOL.)

    Anyway, my first official round of holiday parties is this week, and on Saturday it’s my (30th) birthday, so I hope that all this liquid happiness will be enough to put a bit of mojo back in my step.

    The Ghost of Christmas Past

    Posted by on December 11, 2010 1 comment

    When I was a kid, Christmas was always a really big deal. We started decorating early – usually by the first week of December the farm house was all decked out in tacky holiday glory. My dad kept every single bullshit kindergarten painting I did, and up on the walls with masking tape went my blue snowflakes, bonhommes de neige, fat ugly reindeer and mangers.

    Yes, mangers. Because I’m Catholic. Well, sort of. I kind of feel like God himself will strike me dead with a lightning bolt every time I tell someone I’m Catholic, because I figure he’s probably pretty pissed that I would dare call myself that. I haven’t stepped foot in a confessional since I was thirteen years old, I had a brief dalliance with paganism inspired by a teenage crush on Neve Campbell, and since my early twenties have laughingly suggested to likeminded thinkers and shocked churchgoers alike that I’d rather believe in Santa than God because I’ve never gotten a My Little Pony doll from the big man upstairs.

    But I digress. Where was I? Right, Christmas.

    Growing up on the farm in Northern Ontario, Christmas was very much a family affair. Grandma and Grandpa lived next door, and none of the aunts, uncles and cousins were more than a half hour away, so we spent every holiday together. We’d have supper at Grandma’s, then play upstairs with our cousins (more on our naughty shenanigans another day), and around eleven at night, everyone piled into their cars and a convoy of Styleses went to midnight mass.

    What was midnight mass like? Don’t ask me, little girls like me were never able to stay awake. I expect it was worse in my church, too… it being French-Canadian and Catholic, there was actually quite a bit of Latin prayer and hymns. Kids who can’t understand what’s going on can’t pay attention. They either misbehave or fall asleep, and since corporal punishment in church wasn’t really unusual, I was one of the latter.

    When my dad carried us into the house after mass, we sleepily had a bedtime snack while my parents set out the cookies and milk for Santa, and the carrots and bowl of sugar for the reindeer. Then we went off to bed. For us, there was never any of that can’t-sleep Christmas Eve anticipation.

    Hey, parents: want your kids to stop driving you crazy Christmas Eve with their inability and/or unwillingness to shut up and go to sleep already so you can have one goddamn drink to stave off the complete festive bullshit your life has become? Dudes, make them go to church at midnight. For serious.

    Christmas is different now. My ex was allergic to tack, so I’ve really had to rein in my wild trailer park decorating ways. Gone are the multicoloured lights, plastic Santa Clauses, snowman candles, red and green doilies, paper chain steamers, pre-lit lawn ornaments, four-foot musical trumpeting angel, and sentinel front door candy canes of my childhood, and heaven help me should anyone catch me listening to Christmas carols on the radio. While our current, grown-up holiday decor is understated, classy and quite beautiful, I do long for the trailer trashy days of yore.

    Well, sometimes I long for them. Otherwise I remember how truly tacky and hideous it all looked and am glad for my classy 7′ slim Tuscan pine decorated in a simple and elegant red-and-gold scheme and clear twinkle lights, my beautiful poinsetta arrangements, and my lovely collection of vintage Christmas cocktail napkins from the 60′s.

    Still, though, I wonder if I’d still be the only one in the house with an ounce of Christmas spirit if things weren’t just a little… in your face.