All this Aries stuff is in my 8th house and I’ve been in a dark mood lately.
…Just in time for the family gathering at Albert’s parent’s house! Yay! Fun times!
Albert’s mom has moon opposite Pluto and some control issues around food to go with it so we were strictly forbidden to “bring anything.” She said she doesn’t want us to have to go to “any trouble.”
The problem with this is his mother doesn’t cook. It’s not like she is going to prepare a resplendent feast for us to just show up and enjoy. No.
No. No. No. No. No. No. Nothing like that.
She will have sent Albert’s dad to the grocery store to purchase “ingredients” for “wraps!”
These ingredients will be placed in a cardboard box underneath the dinning room table until we arrive. There is no agreed upon eating time. As you arrive, you are instructed that there are “ingredients” for “warps!” under the table and you are to make one for yourself.
I’m not doing this affair justice. I really don’t have it in me right now. It’s just dreadful, trust me.
So this time, I’m making a lasagna. I don’t care. I went to the store yesterday and bought noodles, various cheeses, spinach, stuff for sauce. I assure you, I make a fantastic lasagna (which someday I will photograph and blog about for Caroline, but not today. I’m not kidding, I’m in a mood.)
I also maybe…possibly…have some ulterior motives with this lasagna.
Albie has some planets in Scorpio to match mine. So you know, at night we get under the covers and psychologize each other. I don’t know (or particularly care) about you, (that’s not true, I care about you, I told you I’m in a mood) but I find this activity satisfying to the extreme. So, well last night…
I drank too much coffee yesterday and was particularly chatty before bed. I was about 2 degrees off from what we call a Faraday Cage night. (That’s when all my Scorpio planets get freaked out, cause they’re in the 3rd house and Uranus is involved which makes them nervous and I tell Albie I can’t sleep because I can feel electro magnetic waves and I think my cell phone is trying to kill me, so he promises to build me a Faraday cage so I can sleep.) So yeah, I was on the precipice but handling it, just talking rapidly…
…and I let it slip that maybe I had some things I would like to see happen around or directly because of my Lasagna.
He groans “Oh please God, do not go in there and put that kind of energy into that lasagna while you’re cooking it or no one is going to go anywhere near it. It’s just going to radiate hideousness.”
Albie talks with his hands. He made a box like gesture. Then he turned the top hand sideways indicating a melting tower of bad lasagna. All while making a gravely “Blah” noise.
“I don’t care! I’m in touch with my shadow. I’m making a fucking shadow lasagna.”
Have you ever taken a dish to a gathering with some dark emotions baked in it?
Consult with Nota. Follow her on Twitter.
She’s really accommodating, always makes sure theres something vegetarian. Which is in stark contrast to Albert’s brother’s wife who doesn’t eat vegetables. (don’t get me started.)
Albert’s mother is really the nicest person in the universe. She just has some hang ups about food and what she perceives as “trouble” and making a mess.
She’s a librarian and I think she thinks that you should come over and check out one piece of food at a time. If we were to make a family style meal and put it out on the table that would be like just leaving all the books in a pile with a sign that says “take one” or something like that.
I also think this is part of coming of age during second wave feminism. She makes a point of letting you know she is NOT a “cooker-baker.”
One time when Albie and I first started dating I had them over for dinner and she said “Wow, you’re a real cooker-baker!”
I was all “Wasn’t that the last name on Designing Women? WTF is a cooker-baker? you mean a chef?”
LOL, don’t get me started on the ham. I have some bad ham stories.
I dig how you tell stories Nota. This one is insigthful ; )
Can’t say that I have used my oven for the 8th house shadow. Personally, cooking is too primal and intimate. I’m with Albert. No uglies, please!
Feeding people is not just about necessity, it’s an act of love.
I hope you come back with stories of how your voodoo dish was(n’t?) received..
Nota…I love you.
I have not brought shadow food to the party. However I am SURE the shadow food was brought to me. Many many years ago I had a housewarming and asked people to bring something. This one gal came, she was friends with my then-partner but really, she had it in for me as it transpired (he ended the friendship over it).
Anyway, she brought stupid food, like an entire roasted lamb and a ton of really expensive cheese and pickled asparagus. I was friends with this Scorpio gal at the time (8th House Sun) and she whispered to me:
“How rude to bring that food.”
Yes. Now, the food was good, but it was infused and there was just no denying it. I have 4th House Mars in aspect to Pluto. I’m aware when the shadow food enters my home!
BTW I can totally see why you’d bring the lasagne…is she mad at your veganism?
Yes I have. And I think they liked it. Or maybe they were to afraid to say anything accept for “mmm… that was good?”.
Aw, man, that is sweet, that you can see her side. Moon in hard aspect to Pluto often has a difficult relationship to food, doesn’t it? Whether allergies of something else.
I haven’t. But my mother does it constantly. My sister coverted to Judaism several years ago. Now for every family gathering, my mother just has to cook a ham. And shrimp. Both of which are big no-no’s for my sister. Mom is totally fucking with my sister and I’ve even told her so, but those damned hams keep showing up.
not yet but i like this idea
Sounds… delicious?
Wow, I can’t even imagine a dinner scenario like the one you described, Nota! Ingredients for wraps…stored beneath the dining room table. Egads. I was raised in an European household–everyone cooks, food is meant to be savoured and enjoyed, nobody is on a special diet or has allergies, etc. My Pluto is square moon. No food hang-ups here but I do prefer a “matched” menu when I’m hosting more formal dinner parties. In other words, if I’m serving home-made Greek and Persian dishes, I’m not going to be too keen about displaying your jelly-mold salad on the buffet.
Oh, to get back to your question. No, I’ve never made/served food imbued with bad intentions or my shadow side however I once brought over an elaborate fruit trifle to a frenemy’s baby shower. It stood out in stark contrast to the Safeway goodies. I won’t get into why I did this–long story–but none of her friends touched my dessert out of loyalty to her. Her husband and his friends devoured my dessert and left the Safeway crap behind. LOL.
Sugarbaker! I had no idea Designing Women left such an imprint on me. thanks for the chuckle Nota….your sense of humor is my kind of lasagna.
If I’ve ever brought bad mojo food, I purchased it. Being that I’m not much of a cook, I have to want to do it.
If I’m not happy, I have NO desire to feed anyone, so the likelihood of me showing up with shadow-mojo food is very low. I’ll starve their ass instead.
Designing Women is one of my all time favorite shows. Julia Sugarbaker is one of my personal heros. I can totally see a Designing Woman baking a charged lasagna. I heartily endorse this enterprise.
I wanted to be Julia but I’m probably more MaryJo. and, maude help me, I have a bit of Suzanne.
let’s face it. we all bake our “spirit” lasagnas. we show up with our spirit lasagnas fully cooked and how-do-you-do anyway. why not have a real one with crusty-cheesy goodness??
No, I show up with Libran food, LOL. Food for company!! 🙂
“Spirit lasagna.” LOL
Speaking of lasagna, this is the recipe I use and it’s wonderful:
http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2007/06/the_best_lasagn/
Dixie , I’d rather starve em too lol
MMMm now I want lasagna,thanks ladies 😛
Nope,not put in the position often,but your story is just wonderful,thank you for sharing it 🙂
Especially if it has a pound of cheese on it,oh I love cheese and pasta lol
I have seen but not eaten shawdow food at most all of my extended family gatherings. I don’t like them as the food is usually “not happy” and now I know that I was speaking of not just the jello, marshmallow, fruit salad. Thanks for the insight. ROFL
I have pluto opp moon and love to cook and love to eat. I can’t say that I have any issues with food except that i share it a lot and don’t like fru fru food but would rather something with freshness and flavor.
Baking bread today in fact. Way overdue 😀
I am certain I’ve had shadow lasagna or the equivalent. It makes me think of Garfield being haunted by his meal, or some heavy duty Like Water for Chocolate situation.
My mom is not a “cooker-baker” simply because she uses her oven to store pots. But she cooks, and only considers you a cook if you do her type of cooking. I actually do more baking, but less cooking. The most complicated thing I’ve made is a vegetable napoleon which was only involved because I had to dig the baking dish out and relocate all of the pots.
Well I can perceive the smell of this lasagna by means of the bits of the computer…
Jokes apart, many of your considerations can be agreeable to tell the truth…
My MIL “sends home food” when my husband visits, in quantities appropriate for his consumption, not for a family of three. She also asks about my cooking (I am confident in my cooking abilities, I assure you) and reminds me that her son likes the sauce thick, not thin.
I was married for years to a Milanese foodie with a Neapolitan mother and I am well-trained in making an ITALIAN happy-and his mother. Hubs’ mother is from Italy but one of the least talented cooks I’ve run across. Not sure where she learned ’cause it’s very influenced by other immigrants and not in a good way. My son doesn’t like her sauce either, and I don’t want to argue, so I make sauce for us, cook the pasta, and hubs can have his mamma’s. 🙂
He knows I love good food and has begun to wonder why I don’t want it. UGH- it’s like pizza sauce….
but beyond that– yup, there’s something going on with the “food offering”.
Interesting subject- and food offerings being the ancient thing they were- obviously very meaningful.
‘Shadow lasagna’; I love it. I bet it really stimulated some creative energies in those who partook. That’s what the shadow does. Lovely impish, raw creative energies!
Reminds me of a punch a friend once made for a party. She ‘infused’ it. That punch made everyone who drank it horny as hell! I didn’t have any because it wasn’t my bag, and maybe…I guessed the kind of effect it might have on people…
G’day, Elsa!