Jenn and I are co-hosting a baby shower for our friend Katie in two weeks. For party favors we decided to make cookies in the shape of a fleur de lis; the motif is particularly special for the parents and Jenn and I thought it would be a nice touch. I ordered a fleur de lis cookie cutter online last week and it arrived in today's mail.
I dunno. It looks more like a flamingo to me.
At least this was good for a laugh today.
This was sent to me by a friend today: http://tinyurl.com/4mgw5q
Apparently PETA is asking Ben and Jerry's to consider swapping out cow's milk for human breast milk in making their ice cream.
In the eight week state of bliss back "home" in the metro DC area, I didn't bother to post for a variety of reasons, not least of which was because I was too busy enjoying the moment, eating at favorite and newly discovered restaurants, shopping at farmers markets, cruising down my favorite roads with Pug in tow, and generally enjoying the thrill of being back in town in which I had grown up.
Nearly a month into being back in this part of the world, I've struggled with the real letdown of being back, having no access to the sights and smells and sounds to which I had become so accustomed.
On the day we departed Arlington, I sobbed. Hubby tried to console me by promising that we'd come back soon. All I could think of to express my very real pain was to blurt, "I don't want to eat at Carrabas." [one of the many chain restaurants that passes for culinaria here]
Our trip back took two days, with a brief stopover to visit family friends whose lovely Roanoke home cheered me immensely with its wildly beautiful and imaginative touches (including an 18 foot tipi, a trebuchet and a giant slingshot -- very popular with Hubby and with Pug; a romantic wooden pergola that stretched the length of their patio; and five acres of quiet serenity). Our hosts, Ron and Renee, made a brilliant dinner of sea bass with caramelized onions and roasted potatoes, accompanied by steamed asparagus and chased with a lemon meringue pie. Simple, flavorful fare...
The next day found us on the road for the final leg of our trip.
The sign said: "WELCOME TO GEORGIA."
I burst into tears.
Some places are home. Other places are a way station.
The last two months have been a blur of personal and professional changes and a stockpile of blog posts have been building up with no where to go...
But the house is soon to be in the hands of a sitter, Hubby on the road while I and Baby are now ensconced not too far from where I grew up. We will be here for some eight weeks and Baby is having a bit of a rough patch; I think that he, like me, misses his namesake.
Sometimes, in the little corner of the world where we live, I deliberately forget what exists outside because I do not want to live in resentment and want...
...but yesterday my sister and I went with Baby and Gina to the Dupont Circle Farmer's Market...
and I felt like I was breathing again, as if long dormant senses were called once again into action: sounds, smells, tastes, sights and touch. There were ripe beautiful fruits, Rainier cherries in gorgeous golden amber colors, deeply red raspberries, sweet yellow squash, heirloom tomatoes, bright green herbs, farm fresh eggs and a variety of meats in abundance.
...and with the return of my senses comes to the return of my desire to write about what delights me culinarily...I remind myself this is temporary bliss but I plan to eat and eat well in the coming weeks...
These are conversations I should avoid getting enthusiastic about:
"I'd love it if you could make our wedding cake."
These are responses I should avoid spewing:
"Oh absolutely, no problem!"
She notes she prefers certain flavors and her fiance other flavors:
"Oh no worries, I'll make one for you in your favorite flavors, one for him and one for the guests to enjoy."
She mentions certain motifs that have meaning for them:
"Oh that's easy! I can totally make fondant cut outs of the fleur-de-lis!"
See, if I didn't already know that I was insane, I've now confirmed it for myself.
K. and I met for lunch today at the updated River Mill restaurant, where sandwiches and soup have given way to an actual menu. The chef has great imagination and greater ambition; the lunch menu is chock full of dishes more commonly found on a dinner menu and some of the ingredients actually surprised me. Bear in mind....there are routinely hour long waits to eat at the Olive Garden in these parts, so I'm always interested and pleased when someone does something differently in town. I picked the vegetarian lasagna with fresh tomato and cream sauce. It was a little overdone and lacked subtlety, but for a cool day, proved hearty and pleasing for lunch.
It growing late in the hour we considered dessert. For the most part, none of the proffered sweets were tempting (chocolate torte, banana pudding), but one sounded so bizarre I had to try it.
"Deep fried strawberries with dark and white chocolate sauce."
It actually gave me pause.
I've remarked previously about the frying culture of the South. I joke that they can render vegetables unhealthy here. But never in my imagination had I ever considered taking a perfectly good fruit and battering it, frying it, and covering it with even more fattening sauces. Fantastic. So of course I had to order that.
Would that the actual dessert had lived up in taste to the intriguing idea.
I love strawberries. I grew strawberries at one point in a desire to have heirloom strawberries that tasted like strawberries. Strawberries are my go-to easy dessert accompaniment.
But this...NO. Really. NO. In essence, I bit into fried cinnamon and sugar dusted beignet batter covering a too warm and mushy strawberry. NOT a good combination. And apart from not tasting good, I'm sorry, but strawberries look great when they are red and inviting, not brown and beige looking like clumps of little fried fish nuggets.
It's bearing down on midnight and I"m still perplexed. I love battered and fried food and spend a lot of my time happily consuming said foods. But battering and frying a strawberry is right up there in the weird, right alongside deep fried Coke (you think I am joking, don't you?).
IM exchange:
N: How are you feeling?
Me: Ick. I should have walked away when we pulled up to the restaurant and it was a converted Burger King called Hibachi Grill, selling Chinese fast food, with not a single Asian person behind the counter.
N: Yeah, I have to admit, that sounds pretty shady.
Me: I know better than this. But no...I was being nice.
N: Aren't you the foodie?
Me: Read: being nice.
N: To whom?
Me: I'll go back to being a food snob, thank you. Hubby and I had a lunch date and a friend of ours ended up coming along. He wanted to eat there. I should have have known...so many omens. Maybe he doesn't have taste buds?
N: Or has an iron stomach apparently.
Me: I thought mine was cast iron as well. Alas, poor hygiene behind the counter = acid that burns right through the cast iron.
That's it. I am never again agreeing to eat somewhere just to be accommodating and not be "such a food snob" when the end result is FOOD POISONING.
To the Starbucks barista who made my coffee today:
It's @!#$%^&*())_ 1:11 am and my human alarm clock without a snooze button will wake in 6 hours.
When I order "decaf," I am not being coy, I really @#%$%^&*() mean decaf, damn you.
Well its been building up inside of me
For oh I don't know how long
I don't know why
But I keep thinking
Something's bound to go wrong
(Santa Monica, 1994) Uncle Mike is working on the 10th Street house. I am helping, outside painting one of the doors, the melodic backdrop of "Don't Worry Baby" filling the California afternoon. I have neither Brian Wilson's wistful falsetto nor any hope of pitch, but it's too sweet a song not to sing along. After the fifth replay of the song, Uncle Mike pokes his head out the back door and begins to laugh.
"You listen to music that was out like thirty years ago."
"Sure," I reply. "But that doesn't make it any less superb."
The CD player automatically replays the song again.
But she looks in my eyes
And makes me realize
And she says don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Everything will turn out all right
Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
I get this reaction a lot: "Beach Boys." Shudder. "Ewww."
"Never mind," advises my aunt Lori. "While everyone else was stealing other people's music or riding on the shoulders of breakthroughs before them, Brian Wilson was creating something new."
I'm of the opinion that the Beach Boys' music sounds clichéd to modern ears because (for most us in the States) their music is indelibly and inexcusably linked with commercials and pop culture. In my head, I can still see the Sunkist commercial in the 80s which feature "Good Vibrations" as its musical centerpiece. But just because something is trite doesn't mean it isn't good.
I guess I should've kept my mouth shut
When I started to brag about my car
But I can't back down now
I pushed the other guys too far
She makes me come alive
And makes me wanna drive
When she says don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Everything will turn out all right
Take chicken parmesan. When was the last time you ordered this dish in
a restaurant or had the urge to make it? Chicken Parmesan is one of
those workhorse dishes that appears on most Italian restaurant menus
yet no one feels inclined to order it. "Oh God that dish is so passe," shuddered a friend when we were at a swank Italian restaurant in New York. La Tavola in Atlanta, a favorite Italian trattoria, has never put that dish on its menu even though other classics have found their way on and off. I asked Heath (their former head chef) about it once. He smiled and said, "Too old school." But he agreed that
it's hard to go wrong with chicken breasts dredged in butter and
breadcrumbs, and baked under a blanket of tomato sauce and mozzarella
cheese.
And in my own collection, among 100+ cookbooks, I could not find a recipe for Chicken Parmesan. Either I have the wrong cookbooks or this dish is anathema to most cookbook recipe writers. And consulting various cooking websites, I discovered that their versions of Chicken Parmesan were too haute or modified and updated to resemble the original dish. Is it because it's a simple dish? is that why it's considered pedestrian? When does a classic cross the line to cliche?
Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
She told me baby, when you race today
Just take along my love with you
And if you know how much I loved you
Baby nothing could go wrong with you
(Santa Monica, 1995) So I'm watching a documentary on Brian Wilson...and I feel like crying. I know it sounds completely stupid but this is a man whose music I admire and whose songs I know backwards and forwards; and there he is, a virtual wreck of ruined cadence in speech and vocals. His voice is aged and shaking, the result of years of alleged abuse. In his interviews, he sounds timid and scared, his inflections odd, as though he's forgotten how to talk. And when he sings. Oh man.
I keep muttering, "Oh my God."
Then he sings, "Caroline, No," one of my favorite songs from the seminal "Pet Sounds," and I nearly come unglued. I have to remind myself that he's not a teenager any more and it's impossible to expect a man whose life is (in)famously consumed with illness and drugs to sound the same as he did some decades earlier (never mind Paul McCartney!). And seriously, just when I'm about to change the channel because it's too painful to watch, "The Warmth of the Sun," comes on. The song was written on the same day that President Kennedy was assassinated and Wilson said in an interview that he always associates the song with that day. If we're going to get totally gooey on it, the song makes me think of the end of innocence; makes me think of the passing of one generation (the post-war) to another (the hippies); makes me think of helicopters flying over rice paddies (I think this a leftover shaving of the movie "Good Morning Vietnam"); makes me think of a long farewell. His take on "The Warmth of the Sun" has none of the strength or resonance of his youth; but he sings it as an older man with weight and sincerity; and it's this evocative wistfulness that saves the song from ruination (think Maria Callas post-weight loss and after 1954).
It's about as much as I can take. I grab car keys and head out to my car.
The sun roof's open, my windows are down, and I'm cruising up Pacific Coast Highway towards Malibu. Brian Wilson's falsetto rings loud and clear on the stereo.
Oh what she does to me
When she makes love to me
And she says don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Everything will turn out all right
Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
This is how Brian Wilson's music is meant to be heard: in the milieu to which it pays homage. The Beach Boys never sound so right as when you're driving up and down PCH with the sun setting in the water and the ocean sparkling in the remnants of the day.
If you're going to be cliched, you need to make it worthwhile.
