Recently in Cooking Things Category

This turned out to be a real old-fashioned stinker of a Monday. I often feel like I shouldn't complain when other people have it so much worse than I do, but then there is the fact that my experience is my experience, and life is not graded on a bell curve.

I have those longings that are so hard to describe, or even to put my finger on, where they reside, carving out that hollow space in my chest. I miss homes I haven't lived in, people I haven't ever met or have any hope of meeting. I miss abilities I don't possess and never will, except in dreams and stories.

My cat yowls a lot, almost like a wolf sometimes. I've never really known why, except now it occurs to me that maybe she is a bit my familiar. Maybe she, too, pines for things she can't express, other than in a nameless, plaintive howling.

Me, I get on my bike and ride aimlessly. Slowly, in some cases, and that apparently gets me yelled at by obnoxious teeny boppers on the bridge. God, that girl made me mad. At the time I just wanted her to go away, so I pulled on the brake to slow down even more so she'd be forced to go around me.

But later, I wanted to go back in time and throw her off her bike.

Instead, I watched Mary Poppins.

That Dick Van Dyke sure can leap about like a panther. I am not sure whether he's the model guy for me, or whether I simply want to be that character myself. I do a certain amount of leaping about when I have room to, on a given dance floor. I'm right good at it, too. Another one of those callings I've missed.

While I was eating this dinner, I had a strong knifelike pang, the kind that tells you this is a metaphor for something. This simple dinner - just pasta, olive oil, a clove of the world's most beautiful garlic from the winter farmer's market (itself a miracle - local garlic is generally three-quarters dead by this time of year) and some Tuscano kale (or "dinosaur kale" as the guy working the farm table called it). And just a very few leaves of fresh rosemary.

Honestly, you could make this in your sleep, and it was the best thing I ate today.

Something so pure about it - it just was what it was. It was like a tree. Trees are never anything but themselves; they don't take orders and they make no apologies for the bends in their branches, for their knotty trunks, their gnarls, their fine woody smell.

I've often wished for that certainty, that simple knowledge that up is up, and one's path is one's path, and one can and should simply sing one's own song and make no bones about it.

That girl on the bridge hurt me - it was like being in middle school, or even earlier, when words were weapons. I don't like people very much at all, some days.

It rained and rained today, after a Friday so blustery that I had to leap off my bike to avoid being knocked down by the wind.

I'm pretty experienced at riding in bad weather, so that emergency-maneuver moment came as something of a surprise. I'm guessing that gust was 60mph or higher. It's been a weird few days, and I am spinning a little in place, not sure which direction to move.

I had a silly revelation in which I realized that what I'd thought was me having lost my magic touch with bread dough was in fact simply ill-placed frugality. I was stubbornly trying to use up the last of a few packets of expired yeast. They weren't terribly long-expired - just a couple of months, but apparently it does make a difference.

This time around I immediately felt the yeast lively and springing under my hands as I began to knead. No elaborate coaxing necessary. The final product is light and delicate and moist and chewy and delightful. Only six ingredients: flour, water, yeast, molasses, salt, canola oil. Seven if you count the fact that the flour was two different kinds - whole wheat and white hard-wheat (bread-specific). I used a larger ratio of whole wheat to white, because I wanted it to pretty much be whole wheat bread.

I brought some to a dinner party and froze one and kept one out, wrapped up, to be eaten in the next couple of days.

I dunno what to say in the boy department. I feel like it's almost time to meet someone. Someone a bit more than the casual-friend-lover hybrid(s) I've been fooling about with for the last year.

But I can't say I'm especially sanguine about the prospects. I just don't meet people all that often or easily, and I have a lot of requirements. Which is funny, given how much I've teased other people about that very thing - "Your list is too long to be realistic."

My requirements, in order of non-negotiability, are:

non-smoker
not addicted to alcohol or drugs
cyclist
attractive (to me)

I guess that's it, but the last item on the list encompasses a wide range of subcategories. I mean, I'm not attracted to men who are significantly less intelligent than me - unless I'm using them for sex, in which case, Whatever.

They kind of have to have a decent sense of humor, and by that I mean that they have to have some measure of original wit and also to think I'm damn funny when I'm being damn funny.

They can't be a macho chauvinist pig.

They have to think I'm da bomb.

They have to be damn good in bed.

They have to smell right and/or taste right.

They can't live in New Jersey. They can't be domineering. They can't be married or have kids. They can't take the subway. (I'm sorry; that just grosses the shit out of me.) They can't be pining for a high-heels, ponytail sort of girl. I'd prefer that they weren't rampant carnivores, since it makes it hard to agree on restaurants, though that one isn't a deal breaker. It would be really, really nice if they wanted to dance with me sometimes. It would be nice if they had actual hair on their head. It would be nice if they were handsome in an un-mainstream, un-GQ sort of way. A little exotic or a little quirky (or both) is fine. Awesome, actually.

Know anyone?

I've been trying to make especially nice food for myself since I've become so poor, and it's interesting that what is nice food for me might sound like deprivation to someone else. I've noticed a tendency among a lot of men to think of a "real dinner" as a big hunk of meat and some potatoes and a little bit of something green on the side, and maybe a pile of cornbread to go with it.

I used to want to make soup for dinner a lot, and Boywich always complained that that wasn't dinner, even though my soup has so many goodies in it it's nearly a solid.

I was at a friend's house one day while she was making soup for herself and her husband (I had dinner plans already), and I saw him look kinda bummed when he realized what was for dinner - until she threw a bunch of sausage in it. His eyes lit up with what can only be called relief.

If it had lots of sausage in it, then it was real dinner.

Apart from the obvious fact that I don't eat sausage (or meat of any kind), I don't get what the big deal is. I used to eat meat, and during that time, I still loved having soup for dinner. It didn't feel like deprivation; it felt lovely - warm and comforting, like home in a bowl. And yet even some of my vegan male friends look down on soup.

I've got only one male friend who feels the same way I do about soup, and he was born in a different country and grew up in a state of actual poverty - the kind where you don't own a pair of shoes until you are ten years old.

In the years that have elapsed since Boywich and I lived together, I've had soup for dinner about 80% of the time, every winter. I make different kinds, once or twice a week, and I eat it nightly until it's gone, and then I make the next batch.

What I've been doing lately that's special is to add some homemade bread to the equation. I'm not sure that's such a good idea - the bread is too damned good, and I eat too much of it, and then feel like I'm carrying around a whole extra Me in my stomach.

But it certainly feels luxurious. I put out the soup and the big uneven pieces of bread and feel like I'm living like a king.

I've been reading this blog intermittently, and being very interested - not just in how the various writers solve the problem of eating within a pretty strict budget, but also in the idea that one can eat well without spending so much.

The first rule is obvious - you need to cook most of your meals yourself, rather than eating out. But the rest becomes more complex, and more interesting. To some extent, it may depend on what you consider eating well. Anthony Bourdain, who's in a position to know, is fond of saying that the very best dishes come from peasant food. From people who get creative and take care with their food precisely because they can't afford the tenderest cuts of meat or "jet-fresh" out-of-season vegetables.

I think, too, that there's a certain appreciation of simplicity and craftsmanship required. I was thinking, as I kneaded the bread on Monday, that it's just like making pottery or spinning yarn. It's not just sustenance, it's art. And that's why it tastes better. I can taste my own spirit in there, and friends, I am yummy.

It gets cold and my joints start to hurt, especially my knees. I notice that I can't start fast, and I can't climb hills fast, and everything just sets off frightening little twinges. I slow down some. I slow down some more. I warn the boys that I will be slow, and tell them they can drop me on the bridge if they like, but they don't.

They are not my usual boys. They keep a nice pace, one that doesn't hurt me to keep up with but still gets me just that little bit out of breath that I need to achieve some kind of benefit to my old heart.

I feel like thanking them, but I don't really know them well enough, and it would require some explanation.

It would require explaining that I spent all summer racing to keep up. I liked it, and it made my legs stronger than they would have been, going my own pace, but it's impossible now.

I did a bunch of cooking today; it was a lot of work, and it hurt my back, and afterward I had to mop the floors, which made it worse. I thought some about the slow food movement in Italy.

I thought about how that'd never in a million years fly here. We're all about nanoseconds - you should see the bagel guys get impatient with people who can't rattle off their orders in auction-speak, who don't know what kind of cream cheese they want, whether they want it toasted or not toasted. Everything here gets abbreviated: LES, EV, UWS, TriBeCa, DUMBO.

To bicyclists, the bridges are the QB and the Willie B and the Manhattan (no abbreviation there, other than to drop the gratuitous Bridge at the end). Nobody rides over the Brooklyn, just as nobody spells out Brooklyn. It's always Bklyn, or the even-shorter Bkn, or even Bk.

I do it, too. I have a friend who rides a Paris Sport, who always calls it by its full name, and I get irritated. Why don't you just call it the Paris?

I suppose I hate slowing down. My knees are happy, but I feel a lot less like a superhero. I can see the need for it in food, though. I put a pot of chickpeas out to soak overnight, after I'd spent four hours making bread.

The only way to make good food, especially if one is a vegetarian, is to take your time with it. To start from whole pieces of things. To go to the farmers market. To soak dry beans. To cook in that magical way where you are only half-conscious, musing on something more important, or more trivial, or just listening to music, or watching MI-5 or whatever BBC America is serving up that evening.

I know that part of why I don't want to stop is that I can't look at anything right now. It's not often the way I operate, but for the time being, I just can't look at that thing on the shelf.

I can look at the bridge rising up like a long-limbed robot, I can look briefly at Chinese vegetable stands. I can look at half a squashed dead rat and wonder, quietly, which is worse - that or the intact, squiggling version.

I can look at bladed spokes. I can look at the muscular calves of friends, now mostly clad in tights. I can look at a stray morning glory straggling along a fence, and wish it were a grove of pines.

Rice and beans and sauteed greens, that's what little girls are made of.

Well, this one anyway. Then of course, I had to have a second dinner a few hours later, which consisted of oatmeal and apples. Before you get on your aghast horse about the apparent healthyness of all that, know this:

a) I had a little dark chocolate, too. (Green & Black's 85%)

b) If you ever want to improve your eating habits, just become a serious (or even quasi-serious) athlete. You'll have no trouble at all, because your body will be constantly crying out for high-quality fuel, not junk.

It's been quite a week or two hereabouts. I have had bad days and good days, and bad hours and good hours. On the whole, I think things are fine.

A friend who's in a position to know remarked to me today that it was a neat trick of mine to only date men who are past masters in the art of mixed messages, since it helps ensure that I won't be trapped in a relationship that makes serious demands of me.

I laughed and laughed. Genius, ain't it?

And I instantly had an image of Thomas Crown raising a glass to his female toxic bachelor counterpart, Catherine Banning, saying, "Here's to the fear of being trapped." Oh yes, my darling, oh yes.

I rode brilliantly, smiling all the way, in bright sunshine and hefty headwind, and stopped and ate an apple (thank the gods it's apple season once again), and ran into two handsome fellows of my acquaintance (no wait, three), and generally enjoyed my beautiful bachelorhood. Sometimes it's fun to know what you're doing, under all that uncertainty.

It is very warm. I am making the spicy, spicy dal that I tend to crave when it is hot out. I don't know what it is about the one kind of hot that seems to call for the other, but I know I'm not the only one.

I also go through phases where I want the same thing, over and over and over again. An observer might call it a rut, but it feels more as if there's a spicy-dal-shaped gap in my body.

In case reading this is making you aware of your own need for spicy food, here is my rough formula for making the spicy spicy dal (oh I just love even writing that...mmmm). All amounts are approximate, since I just pour spices into my hand and toss them in.

Take a bunch of red lentils, about half a pound.
Rinse them in several changes of cold water until the water runs clear.
Put them in a pot and cover with a bunch of water - you want to have a couple of inches of water over the lentils, so somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-6 cups water.
Add about 1/2 to 1 tsp. sea salt. Set it to boil, then turn heat down to simmer.
Separately, peel and mince some fresh ginger (a piece about 1-2 inches long and an inch wide), do the same for 2-3 cloves garlic, and chop a bit of onion.
Put 2 Tbsp(ish) olive or canola oil in a saute pan, add the garlic, ginger, onion, and also a hefty dose of ground cumin (3-4 tsp.), 1 to 1 1/2 tsp. of hot chile powder (I don't mean the chili powder blend that's designed for making chili; I mean the straight ground dried chiles), about 1 tsp. dry mustard or whole mustard seeds, and a few whole white or black peppercorns. If you have fresh chile peppers, so much the better - you could substitute a fresh serrano or 1-2 jalapenos (depending on how hot they are) for the dried chile powder. Or like 1/4 to 1/2 of a habanero or scotch bonnet. Anyway, saute the spices in the oil, adding a little more oil if necessary, for about 3-5 minutes over low heat. Then just dump them all into the lentil pot. Simmer the vat about 40 minutes, or as long as it takes to cook the rice you're going to eat it over. You will likely want to add more salt at the end, but let it cook first and taste it, since the salt is going to get concentrated as it cooks down. I often end up adding a little more chile, too. Bwahaha. Taste after about 25-30 min. and correct seasoning as necessary. Remember it can be extra-fiery because the rice will chill things out a bit. And because that's what makes it goooood.

Optional additions: juice of 1 lemon. A couple teaspoons of turmeric.
Rice alternatives: Noodles. Polenta.

Yummity yum yum. Yay, fiery.

Tonight I am thinking some bok choy and sugar snap peas in garlic and olive oil to go with it.

Feeling downright beautiful at the moment. The sun came out, literally and metaphorically (yes, I am aware that there may be a quasi-causal relationship between the two). I unearthed my box of bike tools and lubed my chain - thank god.

I get uneasy when my bikes are ill-cared-for. I feel their pain when their chains are dry, and ashamed when there's visibly crusted dirt in the bends and elbows of their frames.

So I rode my newly sparkly bike into town, and on the way got a text message from crushboy asking if I was coming into town that day (yes, right this minute, sugar), and then we had coffee, and then we went shopping (he's a girly-man and likes these things, and a very pleasant quality that is, if you ask me), and then I had a rather delicious hug and went to get my nose jewelry changed.

On the way home I stopped in to visit a friend who lives near me, and she miraculously produced out of her stash of goodies the perfect curtains to replace the ones I managed to lose in the world's worst move. My curtains got thrown in the trash, I think, which sucks beyond all suckitude, since I adored them, and had made them myself, at considerable expense, from long panels of linen in indigo and turquoise-blue (living room) and aqua-tealish silk Dupioni (bedroom).

Okay, I am getting sad again just writing this. But the friend's replacement curtains are really marvelous and just what I had in mind for this apt, but could not have afforded to buy. So it all works out fabulously - well, I assume it will, once I buy some new rods (the ones I have won't work in my quirkily dimensioned windows) and rings and put them up. I hope they'll be long enough. I think they will.

And then, making the giant vat of soup turned out to be another sort of missing link in making me feel at home.

It also didn't hurt that I had a rather wonderful, social weekend - bike rides with friends, and a party five minutes away from my house, and just general delight in being here.

Ahhhh. It's about time.

PS. Kitwich likes it, too - much better nook-and-cranniage for her to enjoy.

Sometimes I am so happy with the simple things. I'm almost surprised to find myself saying this, but at the moment, I feel very content.

Making myself a giant vat of soup (lentil-tomato, because it's what I've been wanting all winter long), got a bunch of beautiful yarn I'd ordered in the mail today, and the colours are so lovely, all of them. Made some important phone calls that I'd been putting off for weeks. I don't know why I was able, suddenly, to get things done; I just woke up willing.

Could be that the smell of soup is inherently soothing. Or the process of mixing and cutting and sprinkling. I've written about how I like that before. Though tonight I was in a hurry with it, because I was hungry, so it's not like it was a leisurely thing.

Maybe it's because I think I know what I want to do about that situation that I'm not telling you about. And maybe it's because the thing I want to do is so simple and direct, so honest.

Neither kind nor unkind. Well, actually I think it is kind because I think people deserve to hear when they've hurt you, so that they can understand and maybe do better the next time. I think it's kind to give someone the benefit of the doubt, to assume that they aren't trying to hurt you, but also not to let them go on thinking that they've done nothing wrong, either.

So I think I will just tell him. I will give him a chance to be my friend, rather than chilling him out, or pretending it didn't matter to me, or any of those more drama-laden postures that seem more appropriate to middle school than to adulthood. They don't lead to understanding, and they never really make me feel any better, either.

Anyway, that's my idea. We'll see how it goes.

Okay, so I made the damned bread. And it was okay, I guess, except for the fact that I was so daft and unfocused that I left out a key ingredient, and accidentally made it fat-free. Which is not such a good idea, breadularly speaking.

It tastes better than it ought to, but I had the devil of a time getting it out of the pan, and I fear for its long-term survival. I mean, it's all well and good and has a nice texture now, but once it's a day old or so I wonder if it will dry out prematurely.

Pleh. All that work. And vacuuming. And climbing onto a precarious tall stool with wounded knees to unscrew my overly conscientious smoke alarm from the ceiling. And climbing back up to screw it back in.

Knees still cranky. Probably have to stay off the bike tomorrow too, damn it all to hell. Plus, it's going to snow and be very windy out - not the greatest weather for cycling when one has a trick knee or two.

Watching Butch and Sundance shoot guns in Bolivia. Took pictures of most but not all of my unfinished knitting projects earlier today but thankfully many of them didn't come out well so I don't have to unveil that particular part of my life for your amusement.

This one of Kitwich being in love with the Malabrigo silky merino I bought for my sister's gifts did come out, though. Looking back over the blog this past month it's been a very heavy dose of cat pictures, which suggests two things, to my mind:

a) I'm not bringing my camera with me when I'm out and about, and/or
b) I'm not having a very good month.

Both of which are true.

Hello Winter. Nice to see you. Sort of.

Well, actually, I'd been having a crappy week thus far, and so I made myself take the squash and yam, potatoes, leek, carrots, and collard greens in my fridge, and make them into soup.

With the help of:

yellow split peas
red lentils
homemade stock
ginger
dry mustard
hot hot Indian chile powder
fresh thyme
a few celery seeds
cider vinegar
balsamic vinegar
sea salt
a drop of honey

Considering all the angst that went into the soup, it's a miracle it came out tasting so good. And feeling so good as I ate it. It makes me think there's something alchemical about cooking. That when I am really, really upset, I can sometimes cook myself better.

No, it's not (all) about boys, or even lack of boys. It's actually more to do with professional and creative endeavors today.

For good measure I also called Boywich and asked his advice, and it was one of those conversations that make me feel glad we are friends. Glad I thought to call. Glad I actually got the words out when he saw that I'd called and called me back.

Whew.

Anyway. I have a plan now, and that's a good thing. And the soup is just damn delicious, not to mention such pretty colors that it's a pleasure to look at as well as eat.

Maybe that's enough, for now.

So I made the gingerbread of Mordor. And it was duly admired and gobbled, and it sent out its mysterious power unto all those who came into contact with it. That being that you may be full to the brim already, even with much gingerbreadness, and yet, lo the gingerbread will still call to you and make you sup again of its deep brandy-laced goodness.

Lordy.

The other Thanksgivingy treats were also thus duly consumed - yea, overconsumed.

And then came I once more onto my bicyclette, and we did (he and me) (he being the bicyclette) make our way homewards unto our own hood, there to take a shower and sit dully upon the couch, thinking upon the many faux pas we may have committed while imbibing too much wine and wishing for things we cannot have.

Okay, the bike probably didn't make any gaffes whatsoever. But I, well, that is another story.

Enh. So what. Big deal.

The thing about holidays, you see, is that there's all this pressure to feel a prescribed way on a given day. Lovey-dovey on Valentine's Day, saintly on Xmas, spooky-playful on Halloween, gracious to our moms on mother's day, and thankful on thanksgiving.

And yet, I often don't feel that way on that day. I might feel that way on a completely other day - I'm sure on Arbor Day I felt perfectly thankful, but today I am nursing a big ol' grudge against fate, and I am sour. And then to have to hide that, channel it into some semblance of cheer laced with dark humor, well, it doesn't always work.

I didn't even know that was what I was doing until after the coffee took effect. Again, oh well. This is one of those days when I can't cobble together an articulate or entertaining post, and I think that whether there's some deeper meaning to all this whirlwind or not, I simply don't care to iron it out into neat little rows.

All I know is this: I'm very, very thirsty for some reason.

Meanwhile back here at Frustration Central, our heroine was tearing up the joint looking for an outlet, and I don't mean electrical. Or maybe I do.

Chemical, anyway.

I thought about callously using the blonde to take the edge off, but he's so not what I really want that I don't think that idea will fly.

Kitwich keeps looking at me as if I've lost my mind (she can apparently read it, so she ought to know when it's gone missing). Really, honestly, I am not quite rational. I am incensed, impassioned, insomniac, immolating, infuriated, insatiable, incitable, inflammatory, infatuated, intoxicated, intolerably intensely incandescent, incendiary, and moving towards insurrectionary.

What I am not is indifferent, impervious, intertwined, invulnerable, insensate, impassive, immured, inured, immovable, indurate, incorruptible, or imperturbable.

I am, on the other hand, possessed of both a vocabulary and a dictionary.

Sigh.

Now I have to make gingerbread. With brandy-vanilla sauce. Here's hoping I don't end up swimming my way out of the brandy bottle.

I'd wanted to post this last night but my ftp client was misbehaving, which sounds rather like I'm a dominatrix and had an unruly man show up for a little f+t=p.

You fill in the blanks.

Anyway, what I did instead of that last night was make soup. Soup is one of those elemental things that brings me back to myself when I am feeling far away. In this case, the personal drift was caused by not being able to eat the things I normally eat, by a week of having to live like some kind of 1950s bourgeois teenager being fed peanut butter and grape jelly on white bread by his beaproned mother.

Yuck.

So I gathered the entire contents of the vegetable drawer - a single giant rutabaga (seriously, it had to be eight inches tall), a passel of white baby turnips, three sturdy carrots, a handful of yellow fingerlings (potatoes), two celery roots, and a small beautiful bunch of kale - and made them into white bean soup.

While I was at it, I made stock from the ends and peels for next time.

The whole pot of soup is now in the fridge, a much-larger quantity than I have tupperware for, and probably more than I can eat in a week, even if I have it for both lunch and dinner. But damn, I needed to do that. I also need to bake some bread, a thing which I've not yet done in this apartment, though I've lived here for a few years.

But I have this friend with a bread fetish, and...he keeps nudging me about it. You should have seen the look on his face when he found out that I can bake bread. It was as if I'd told him I know how to shape the very clouds of the sky with my bare hands. (Well, I can do that, too, but it's a story for another time.)

Stayed up way too late last night, obsessing.

Again, you fill in the blanks. I tell ya, the blog, it writes itself some days.

Some nights I just want to eat a Frankendinner, ya know?

You know what I mean. A little bit of this and a little bit of that, and none of it adding up to a cohesive whole, but somehow that's what I want anyway.

It occurred to me, after eating the veggie hot dogs and the zucchini in garlic and olive oil and the tomato and basil salad, that we're always expecting life to be like a story is. To have a beginning, a middle, and an end - and more than that - a thrust, a meaning, a punchline - something to pull it all together.

We expect it to be like spaghetti and meatballs, not like a Frankenmeal.

But it feels a lot more like my little plates. A little of this, and a little of that, things that taste different, songs that don't go together. Milkshakes before the meal, pancakes for dinner, chocolate in the morning, and fruit with vinegar. It's weird. And it makes very little sense, except in snippets, flashes of insight that peek through at us like the stars winking here and there in the heavy backlit blanket of a NYC night.

Once you start down the Dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. - Yoda.

Put it down to a sudden onslaught of girly bleeding. I have resisted and resisted and resisted. I bought the French press just in case I had a coffee-drinking visitor, months ago. The boy in question vanished before I could use it on him, and there it sat, in the upper cupboard, looking sexy.

All glass and stainless, small, sleek, batting its little French mesh at me. Drat the thing.

I'd also bought a pound of this. (The Hair Bender - do you even have to ask?)

And again, there it sat, well-sealed against air, in the fridge.

Every night it calls to me and I say, no, it's late, I'm not drinking you. And then today I crawled wearily out of bed at 1pm. Okay 2pm, but that was after doing my exercises. Padded into the kitchen. Threw some bras in the sink to soak. (The ones that got hailed on and danced all night in, respectively - I figured they were due.)

Fed the yowling feline.

And looked up into the cupboard, where she sat, twinkling at me. "Lizzzzzbon.....Psssssst. You know you want it."

Yeah, I do, but "It" is usually some glamorous and flouting-the-laws-of-physics escapade involving multiple young boys.

"You can put hot milk in it."

Yeah, honey, I can put hot milk on young boys, too.

"But they are not in your cupboard. And I am."

Well, I can't really argue with that, can I?

Everyone from doctors to gypsy fortune tellers have warned me that coffee is just not good for me. I've got a sensitive stomach, and my brain doesn't respond well to drugs. I had a terrible time, years ago, kicking an only-mild daily coffee habit, and since then I've really just stuck to green tea, and that not even daily.

But:

My redheads are gone - one's moving away, and the other's got a girlfriend. And my new bike is still waiting for all its parts to arrive. And I've recently come to the conclusion that I am not up to letting anyone get closer to me than a safe biking distance. And....look how pretty it looks in that nice big purple cup.

It tastes just the way I remember it, too. And smells even better.

And now, yes, my stomach hurts. Sigh. Perhaps I ought to just find a new crop of boys.

Of all the things I've learned to do over the years, one of the skills I'm most glad to have is my ability to cook. Especially when I see how much poorer a quality-of-life people who cannot cook seem to have, regardless of their income. In fact, there are lots of people who make far more than I do (especially in this town) who don't eat nearly as well.

Because I am a natural cook and I learned so early (at the knee of Julia Child, as it were), I find it hard to imagine being intimidated by ingredients, and hard to imagine having to follow recipes to the letter, or being afraid to improvise. I've thought many times that I'd like to write a cookbook that would help people to learn in approximately the way I learned - that would be more like having a pal in the kitchen to encourage and guide experimentation, which I feel is the key to becoming what I think of as a real cook.

I did write something like that, once, for a friend who'd asked for a cookbook that explained the ultra-ultra basics. I did little diagrams of what a medium or low flame on a gas stove looks like, and added in some silly cartoon vegetables to make it extra-friendly. Really, my aim was not just to explain how to do the basics, but to make the whole thing seem less mysterious, and less like a chore.

I am reminded of all this by the smell coming from my stove, where I've got some apple/pear sauce with ginger and cinnamon and cloves and maple syrup simmering. And also by how nice it was to make soup earlier and eat it, and to feel so very content from those simple acts. There is something primal about cooking - something that puts us in touch with the elements of the earth, with our own creativity, and with the unique joys of smell, taste, and satiation. I hate the idea that there are people who miss out on that, who maybe even live their whole lives kept alive by restaurant food, without ever having the smell of something wonderful simmering in their kitchens.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, our heroine was making technicolor soup (that photo is completely unretouched), sitting on the couch with a sleeping kitten, and watching a lot of MASH reruns. Oh, that Alan Alda. I can never decide whether in his youth, in that role, he belongs on the list.

Carl Lumbly, though, he's a definite.

After two weeks off from work, I find that instead of feeling recharged, I am feeling like I need another two weeks. I recently met some Australians who were in the middle of a month-long tour (or maybe it was three weeks) of the US, and who have done similarly long trips to various corners of Europe in the past few years. And it made me realize how stupid I have been.

I quit my day job some years ago, in part, to have greater control over how I spend my time, and I've been completely squandering that control for the last year. I have gone nowhere and done nothing. Sure, I have been somewhat hemmed in by financial pressures and the fact that I haven't had a traveling buddy available when I did have the money and/or time. But really, there is no earthly reason why 2007 should have passed me by without my taking a single vacation. I am the boss of me, and I have not given myself the breaks I needed. Periods of unemployment (also called looking for new gigs) do not, unfortunately, have the same psychological effect as actual time off. I know that in theory, but I forgot to put it into practice.

Or rather, every time I considered doing so, a gig came up that was too good to turn down. For which I am duly grateful.

Enh. What a boring-ass topic for a blog post. I have another one in mind, but it is one of those personal things, and it has to do with boys, and it was brought on by having gone on another date and ending up feeling lukewarm afterward.

Which all made me realize that there's a very good reason I have been hung up on the blonde. I felt passion for him. Actual real live impossible to resist or even think clearly about passion. And that, my friends, has not come along very often in my life. Really altogether rarely. So rarely that it makes me sad just thinking about it.

I think that I have, in the past, settled for something that seemed sort of nice at the time, or that I fell into. Like a hole. One should not be describing past loves as sinkholes. (Don't take that turn of phrase personally, Boywich, please. You know what we had, and there was a lot of it that was good.)

Anyway. Back to the passion. Having had an all-too-brief taste of that recently, I find myself unwilling to settle for anything other than a repeat. It's ineffable, and impossible to tell by looking at photos or reading online profiles, or exchanging emails, or even talking on the phone. And I wasn't even sure about the blonde when I first met him. After the first date, I thought, well that was fun, and I'd see him again. But I didn't know if there'd be chemistry. And then the second date, I felt like I'd been hit over the head by a flaming ton of bricks.

Yeah, that's what I want. Bring on the flaming ton of bricks. Stat!

Oof, and now I am overwhelmed again by the strangeness of setting up dates with people I have never met. And by work (I have to finish two projects in three days, and I have more than enough shopping errands to fill those days). And all I really want to do is my Xmas knitting, but that keeps taking a backseat to more pressing items.

Do you ever get a longing for a time you've never experienced? I am having that - a yearning for some apocryphal era when social life was simple, boys were plentiful and comfortable to be around (ha! I can't even write that without seeing how far off it is from the truth), and I had nothing much to occupy my time, plus plenty of money. Oh wait, that is heaven. I forgot.

Meanwhile, back on earth...A little judicious tinkering and I have magically (and somewhat mysteriously) managed to get a photo to appear on the site. It is a nice subject, too. Malabrigo (top) in Verde Esperanza and Colinette Cadenza in Mardi Gras (bottom). The former is for me; I'd bought some Malabrigo a couple of weeks ago thinking I'd knit the blonde a hat, but apparently the Sweater Rule has a Hat Corollary. So, when Miz Fury and I ducked into Downtown Yarns this week to pick out some yarn for her fingerless mitts, I decided to exchange the boy yarn for the glorious Verde that I'd lusted after on my previous trip.

I think if I am not completely sick of knitting mittens by that point (I have two other pairs in the queue), I will use it to make myself a pair.

Let's see, what other ephemera can I throw at the wall here? I have two soups on my agenda, and I am just trying to decide which one to make first: A) beet, carrot, ginger, squash, and red lentil, or B) potato, leek, celeriac, turnip, parsnip, collard green, and white bean. Don't they both sound good? Wish I had two big pots; I'd do them double-fisted and alternate eating them.

Egad what a trivial post. Apparently I am too tired to be coming up with grand epiphanies. Go read Juno if you need something deeper, eh? (Yeah, it sounds dirty, but I don't think she'll mind. She's cool like that.)