Good things: a current list.

(1) tiny little art piece by Naomi, posted in my office.

(2) progress on layout for the 2e SLCC Community Anthology.

(3) quiet weekend, mostly at home, getting stuff done.

(4) eating leftover sausage pizza in my office--getting a little hit of fennel.

(5) this pumpkin pie, gussied up with secret additions and revisions. (pro tip: roast your own sugar pumpkin.)

(6) two GREAT films at the SLFS this weekend:

Saw an incredible double feature at the Broadway yesterday and today, Sarah Sinwell-approved: Todd Haynes’ Wonderstruck & Seth Baker’s The Florida Project. And now I will admonish you: see these movies while you can. So good. @saltlakefilmsoc

A post shared by Lisa Bickmore (@megastore) on Nov 18, 2017 at 6:02pm PST

(7) FYI, it is a holiday week, and I could not be happier.

(8) this apple I am currently eating.

[NOTE: a lot of my good things are food, and is there anything I need to investigate on that front? probably not. But to wit:]

(9) a thing called 'sipping chocolate' at Trader Joe's, which may be life-altering? it's seasonal, though, so you should (a) buy it now, and possibly (b) stock up?

And now, I am diving back into InDesign, which, weirdly, has become a kind of homey place to hang out, what is wrong with me? NOTHING, that's what. I am just fine, and now I can apply paragraph styles to content I have put into pages I have applied master pages to, what is WRONG WITH ME.

And now, a cooking report.

Today, unlike yesterday, was cloudy. Big clouds, big cloud cover. In a word, chilly. The temperature dropped a good ten degrees from yesterday.

I got up and plugged in the space heaters. Put on my slippers. Made some pancakes. (Pancakes are not just breakfast, they are an epistemology, and don't let nobody tell you different.)

I worked, sort of, on a poem, sort of. I felt dissatisfied with my efforts, and possibly my poetic means, and also my feet were cold.

We went to the store and chatted with our friends the grocers there. We bought bread and a newspaper and some snacks. We came home and made lunch.

I wrapped myself in a voluminous afghan to do a crossword which I did precisely half of and then fell asleep. My cold feet woke me up. I got in the bed. I put extra layers on my feet. Still cold. I got up and put on socks. Yes, the obvious thing, socks. Why did this take me so long WHY. I blame the chilly weather and the gray situation happening in the sky.

Well, I finished that crossword and read a chunk of my French detective novel, then got out of bed with decisive power, because I was going to make a pie, and for a pie you need pie crust. I found a serviceable pie crust recipe on the internet--well, it was better than serviceable--and got started.

DIGRESSION: in the middle of the above paragraph, I got up to fortify myself with a snack and also another small sliver of pie. The historian said, 'Are you finished?' meaning my blog post.

'No,' I said emphatically. 'No. What do you think this is, child's play?'

'Actually, I sort of do,' he said. I wheeled about, nostrils flaring. (Or that's what I think I looked like. I like imagining myself as a very nimble dragon.) 'Not too much revision,' he continued. (More wheeling and flaring.) 'For you,' he amended.

'No,' I said, emphatically. 'No. I need fortifications, so I can finish.'

'Will you read it to me when you're done?' he said.

'Yes,' I said, with emphasis. 'Yes.'

END OF DIGRESSION.

So I made the pie crust. Cold butter. Flour. Salt. A little sugar. Very cold water. I put it in the refrigerator to rest. So that it could dream of expanding into layers and becoming flaky, or else being perverse and leaden. Whatever things pie crust dreams of when it's resting. And we went out for a walk.

We saw a new eagle's nest, and some skittery, unrevealing birds, and then we went down to the water and saw some water birds of an indeterminate variety. One of the birds was diving and coming up with fish which it ate with a great deal of showy flipping and swallowing with its long neck.

When we got back, I took the pie crust, located the rolling pin, and made a smallish, very thin circle on a piece of foil. I have been making galettes instead of pies in pie tins because galettes are, frankly, easier--you don't have to lift and fit the crust into the tin. Also, galettes seem Frenchier, ergo more nonchalant, insouciant, and je ne sais quoi. I ground some almonds with a little flour and sugar and cinnamon, and put that on the rolled out crust.

I peeled four fat peaches and layered them onto the ground almonds. I tossed some more of that almond mixture onto the top of the peaches, then folded up the edges of the crust (so French!) over the peaches. Baked at 375.

While the pie was baking, I took pretty much every vegetable there was and made a glorious frittata. This included onion, a purple pepper, a zucchini, mushrooms, and the remainder of an excellent corn salad I had made back home, as well as the last of a potato, yellow bean, and feta salad. Six beaten eggs and a bunch of parmesan. When the eggs had set on the bottom of the pan, I slid it under the broiler for about five minutes. It was puffy and perfect. (I had to take the galette out of the oven for this broiler magic--then back into the oven it went.)

This, my friends, was an excellent cabin dinner. (The sliver of pie I just ate--research & fortification!--only strengthens this judgment.) We needed it, what with the strenuous laying around we did in gray weather.

Plus frittata for breakfast. Plus toast.

And a chaser of Apple Jacks.

There's a box of Apple Jacks in my cupboard, hanging out with the more sober cereals, as well as a slumped bag of frosted flakes that are out the door, come to think of it, as soon as I write this blog post. The Apple Jacks have almost concluded their performance. Which is to say, when I had a small bowl tonight, dessert-like, after dinner, and then a judicious sprinkling more to finish up the milk, I thought, they're almost gone, thank God, and then felt a small pang because they're almost gone.

But let me start at the beginning.

Tonight, I had my first two online orientation sessions of the semester. I logged in, clicked Share My Screen and let Adobe Connect do its fiddly little thing, uploaded my pdfs, and waited. I waited, and went to the inbox and refreshed it to see if there were messages--none--and went back to the chatroom. No one. So I checked this and that, read a great article about Serena Williams by Claudia Rankine, and another great article from The Guardian about the North Coast 500, a road along the northerly coast of Scotland, which sounds like I better do it. And another article about how if you eat late at night--which they defined, variously, as after 3 p.m. (! what?) and 4:30 p.m. (come on!)--you are basically doomed. Well, anyway, that's what I got out of it.

I refreshed. Nothing. Chatroom? No one.

Until about halfway through the putative session at which no one was in attendance, or so I thought. Then, I got two messages from different students that were all, Hey, we're in the chatroom--where are you?

Adobe Connect! Your fiddly business!

I should have closed and reloaded. Live and learn. Anyway, I hustled over to the chatroom where the students were, and we had a highly efficient orientation. I scrolled back through the chat--they had been talking about the favorite authors! What good students!

While I was refreshing and checking on the no one that was in my chatroom, whilst the everyone was elsewhere, that was when I got up and got that bowl of Apple Jacks. I finished it before I realized what was what with my chatroom fail, which, good thing, because once I had to hustle to the real chatroom and start orienting, I needed both of my hands and also my mouth. I had no time for Apple Jacks!

Why do I have Apple Jacks at my house? Because when my son and his family were here this summer, we had some Apple Jacks. I bought a box because it would remind me of summer and childhood and the mornings when children at breakfast at my table, when sweet cereal tasted like freedom.

The Megastore recommends (summer food edition).

We haven't yet made it to the farmer's market this summer (this Saturday, we've promised ourselves), but I have been to Trader Joe's, which means that I have things to recommend to you for dinner:

1. Side dishes as main dishes. I stole this recipe list from a blog I read, and I immediately fell

see? side by side by side by side.

upon it as if upon the face of a long lost loved one. It's all sorts of vegetables that are supposed to be served on the side of something. What, I wonder? ( < rhetorical question) Well, around here, we like our vegetables in the middle of things. Or vegetables side by side. So, side dishes on the side of other side dishes? Anyway, let me recommend some other things related to this recommendation:

this guy is so, so healthy.

2. Raw, not cooked. This recipe, for summer squash, mandolined into ribbons and marinated briefly in the simplest vinaigrette, then adorned with basil and toasted pine nuts and goat cheese? So good. If you have ever eaten a rather chunky slice of zucchini in a crudités platter and thought, well., I urge you to try this. It tastes so fresh, so light, so exactly what you need when the day has been hot and you have schlepped yourself to Trader Joe's and back, and worked out, and so forth. You don't have to cook one thing. Well, I guess you have to toast the pine nuts.

pro tip: you really, really have to cook
potatoes before eating them.

3. Cooked, don't be ridiculous. This potato salad, you guys. It is the ne plus ultra of potato salad. First: loads of fresh dill. Second: loads of thinly sliced green onions. Thirdly: capers, which--sometimes capers seem kind of ridiculous, but they add a little salty, slightly pickle-ish je ne sais quoi to this, and it is good. But the dressing! It has tahini in it, which adds a slightly smoky, seedy element, which, combined with the French mustard lemon juice and some more dill, is just the best. People tend to be a little doctrinaire about potato salad, but this--this is worth changing sides for.

pretty, and good, and more than
pretty good, let's be honest.

5. Strawberries. When they are good, they are good, and by good, I mean there is nothing better. So have them, already, sliced into a bowl with a few blueberries and--hear me out, now--some kiwi. This makes a very refreshing finish to your dinner out of side dishes, and refreshment, the people, is what dinner is all about in the summertime. You know I'm right.

Sunday morning: coffee cake.

Some Sunday mornings, you're the second to last person out of bed. First, your beloved, because for some inexplicable reason he woke up at quarter to seven. The last will be your son, because he just rolled back into town and was out late late late.

So you're in bed, half-sleeping, half-thinking. You have to shake off the dream where you're having your oral examinations for the Ph.D. you abandoned a long time ago, and also some other high-stakes exam that, in the light of day, you can't quite identify. No. No exams, no need to reschedule one to accommodate the other. So, whew, you know?

The next question, after dispensing with anxious dreams, is always, always what shall I make for breakfast?

"Sometimes, thinking about what I'm going to eat for breakfast is what gets me out of bed in the morning," I told the historian a couple of days ago. He laughed, but I'm serious. That's why, when the cupboards are bare, it's tricky to start the day.

But my cupboards are not bare, because I have flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and whole milk plain yogurt.  Which means I can make coffee cake.

When I was a child, I had the Betty Crocker Cookbook for Boys & Girls. In fact, I still have it, having recently acquired a copy in better shape than my childhood copy, which I also still have, with the black grease pencil marks by the cookie and other recipes I wanted to try. That cookbook relied rather heavily on convenience foods that happened to also be branded Betty Crocker, but it was nonetheless inspiring. I made all sorts of things out of it and it is one of the formative books of my youth and even my identity. I'm pretty sure that this cookbook was the place I first heard of coffee cake.

As the version of The Joy of Cooking that I use frequently notes, on the subject of coffeecake: "Coffeecakes are a nice excuse for eating cake any time of day. We subscribe to the illusion that cinnamon and nuts--in the form of streusel--or blueberries have the power to transform the richest cake into breakfast fare." To this, I say: yes, and Sunday morning is the best possible time for such illusion to become breakfast.

I offer the following, the very recipe I use and which my children--particularly my daughter in Louisiana, whom I wish had been here to have a slice or three with me--love.

[click to enlarge]

NOTE: if you use yogurt, make every effort to have whole milk yogurt. It is better and makes the whole thing taste better. I hope that we're all getting over this notion that low-fat is better automatically. Whole foods, people: whole foods (and I don't mean the store).

NOTE 2: My streusel is stripped down and I stand by it. Since you use 4 T. of butter for the cake batter, I use the other 4 T. in the stick to make the streusel. Today, I grated the cold butter using my box grater--pretty genius, although this technique works best when the butter is straight up frozen. So: 4T. cut up or grated butter; 1/2 c. flour, 1/4 c. sugar, brown or other; a little bit of cinnamon. Mix it up till it's nubbly. If you have grated the butter, then just mix it up. Press it evenly on top of the cake batter. #easy

The Megastore Recommends: the too much food edition.

1. Leftover roasted vegetables. The people, we had a party on New Year's Day. It was wonderful. This historian's daughter, out of kind concern that I may possibly, sometimes, overreach in my menu planning, which makes the dinner potentially glorious but also exhausting, suggested that we have what Tom Haverford calls "apps and zerts"--appetizers and desserts. It was great.

"What are you making?" my daughter asked me, meaning for the party.

I said, breezily, "Oh, I'm keeping it really simple. I'm mostly laying things on trays. I'm putting out grapes, apples, some really good cheese and fancy crackers. I'm making this bean dip with really good chips. Creminelli salami and some olives and dolmathes and artichoke hearts. Also this thing my mom makes called Josefinas? that you spread on slices of baguette and toast? And roasted potatoes and roasted green beans. And for dessert lemon squares and these pecan squares and this ricotta tart I found on Martha Stewart? And ice cream cones for the kids."

She laughed. "Doesn't sound so simple to me."

I literally canNOT resist overdoing it. But it's true that the party was in fact a little simpler because I didn't have to cook so many things, as in: I had to turn on the oven fewer times.

these are the beautiful potatoes I
roasted. Or like unto them.

But because I made too much food, there were leftover roasted potatoes and roasted green beans. Roasted vegetables, leftover, are a boon when it's dark outside and you're hungry. So last night we had straight up leftover potatoes and green beans and olives, and it was delicious and perfect. I mashed a little gorgonzola and--let's be honest--butter into the potatoes. I roasted them in the first place with garlic and rosemary and olive oil and plenty of coarse salt. Delicious. And tonight, I turned those potatoes and some broccolini into a frittata with some raw baby Swiss. Perfection.

see? so pretty! and crunchy!

2. Leftover raw vegetables. I forgot to add to my overkill list of apps and zerts that I also cut up the prettiest array of raw vegetables that you ever did see and put them in a pretty dish surrounding a bowl of peanut pesto, which is very, very good. (Peanut pesto: either peanuts or crunchy peanut butter, some minced garlic, soy sauce, a drizzle of sesame oil, some honey, a little hot water to thin it down, and some black pepper.)

Orange, yellow, red, and purple carrots. Raw turnips. Fennel. Celery. Sweet peppers. There were, of course, plenty of these left over. Which I have been eating for lunch every day. At work, in the movies, at home. They are lovely, crunchy, delicious and virtuous. I defy you to find many foods that fit all of those criteria.

I may have a small categorical issue here.

3. Leftover bacon. In the category of "things I overestimated," you can add "the number of breakfasts I might cook for all the people during the holidays." This overestimation meant that I had a leftover package of very good bacon, just sitting there in my refrigerator, saying in all but words, what're you going to do with me? Aren't you people vegetarians? Well, that package of bacon had clearly not heard of my Bacon Exception. I'm not proud of it, but there it is. When you like bacon enough that you have a bacon policy, it's kind of nice to occasionally have a little at home, so you can make...

an excellent Rico's tortilla will
up the awesome in your already
princely breakfast. true fact.

4. A breakfast burrito. What with your small handful of leftover roasted fingerling potatoes and your stash of eggs, some grated Monterey Jack Cheese, and that bacon burning a hole in your pocket, you can make yourself the king of breakfasts, the breakfast burrito. Quick and easy, too. Just fry that bacon, drain the fat, slice up a couple of teeny potatoes, give them a good toss in the hot pan, then beat your egg with a little cheese and scramble it to the side of the potatoes. When it's all cooked, slide a spatula under the eggs and potatoes, and put your tortilla in the pan. I happened to have really good tortillas on hand (see "things I overestimated" and "the number of breakfasts," #3 above). Heat the tortilla. You can press it down with your hand and hear the fat in the tortilla sizzle as it heats. Flip it and heat the other side. Lay the eggs and potatoes on the facing-up side, and crumble the bacon. Slide the whole shebang onto your plate and add a little salsa. This is a breakfast that will stand you in good stead for the day of syllabus-consideration and instructional-activity-devising.

Endorsed by the Megastore.

It's the weather! We'll have the meeting another day!

 

1. Cancellations and reschedulings in advance of snow. I love the new weather. The old weather used to be, basically, a prognostication assembled from the weatherman's lucky chickenbone, spitting into the wind or lack thereof, and someone's achy sacroiliac. Now, they got Doppler and computer graphics and our Google Overlords giving them live feeds from the Universe, so you actually know that there's a snowstorm a-comin'. These more precise predictions occasionally lead the boss to say, hmmmmmmmm! better not have that giant meeting tomorrow.

So even if I spent time at work in the morning getting ready for your part of the giant meeting tomorrow, getting the e-mail saying ALL THE THINGS ARE CANCELLED made me feel like it was a snow day when I was a kid. The rest of the day looked brighter, because I'd been released from the pressure, and I knew I wouldn't have to get up early tomorrow, maybe, and so forth. YES to the new weather, bosses calling the snow day early, and time off for good behavior!

in my neighborhood, yo.

2. The new restaurant nearby. I happen to live in the 'burbs. I am at peace with it. All the people can't live in the cool neighborhoods, now can they? No, they can't, in case you are feeling argumentative--just cut it out.

Anyway. My cultural advantages include being very close to multiple Targets, a deep familiarity with the merchandise at my nearest Old Navy, and the various chain and ethnic restaurants that are at least passable and sometimes good, and a giant multiplex full of the movies. Also a nearby dollar theater that is somehow never just a dollar anymore, but never mind. However, if you're looking for foodie kind of food, it is thin on the ground out here, and that's a fact, so it's danged exciting when a new restaurant opens up, and even better when it proves to be good. A couple of weeks ago we ate at a so-called pub that had the word "fox" in its title. I was hoping for "pub food," but whatever the food was, it was not good, and it made me mad at my neighborhood, which made me doubly mad at the restaurant. But tonight, we got ahead of the storm, so to speak, and went to take out Indian food from the new restaurant nearby, and it was so good, the people! We brought it home and it was a feast on a snowy night, which happens to be another thing we endorse.

3. Snow falling. This is why we live here, right? Snugged up in the house while it falls and falls and falls all night long.

Dear foodstuffs lying on my table,

I wonder what can be made of you, separately or together.

I wonder whether I will ever look at hard squash at five o'clock, or six o'clock, or six thirty, at the end of a long day in the middle of the semester, and say: yes.

I wonder if I will still have dried cherries in December, when I will need some for the baking.

I wonder indeed that there are still peaches in October, and that they are still so delicious.

I wonder if it is time to go to the store for more almonds.

Please, foodstuffs lying on my table, reveal your secret logic to me in the form of a menu.

I'm really, really hungry.

htms

Some stuff I've been

reading: this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this

watching: this

admiring: this and this

planning to eat soon: this, this and this  (yep, again)

looking forward to: this and this

hoping to wear this fall: this  (after it goes on sale)

crying about:  this and this, today (and also possibly this, a little, on television, for which there is absolutely no excuse)

listening to: this and this

finding heartstopping: this (like a time machine)

Lots of pretty people there, reading Rolling Stone, reading Vogue.

At Rockn Fish, in Manhattan Beach. We are sitting on the patio; the historian has his back to the door, which means I am in precisely the spot to observe the comings and goings:

Me: You can't see the exceedingly well-groomed people coming in and out of here.

The historian: Really? (continues eating his artichoke.)

Me: Yeah. Like, just now: tall guy, eyebrows clearly professionally groomed, airbrushed tan.

Velvet blazer. Very well-fitted.

The historian: That could be me.

Me: ...yet tragically, it is not.

Open letter to the vegetarian option.

Dear The Vegetarian Option,

Because there was no fish option, which is what I usually opt for at the occasional institutional dinner event, you and I met again last night, The Vegetarian Option, at the round table on the far edge of the room, the giant ballroom filled with dignitaries and rich people and a bunch of us employee types, who were there to season the conversation and decorate the event. I keep thinking that things have changed--that "vegetarian" is actually a cuisine, maybe, at this point. I know I've eaten vegetarian food that has the imagination, the inventiveness, the je ne sais quoi of cuisine, that still fits the criterion "vegetarian." I cook this kind of food all the time.

But not you, The Vegetarian Option. No, there you sat in the bowl, all overcooked penne and saucy sauce, and cut up green-and-yellow summer squash and the occasional incongruous carrot chunk.

First of all, penne pasta: you are not optimal for this non-optimal dish. You are hefty where you should be subtle, and you are tubular and in general, suitable for other treatments, such as baking in cheese. Al forno, penne pasta: you are optimal for that.

Second of all, green-and-yellow summer squash: you are not currently seasonal, and you are in fact usually tasteless. You are a veritable place-holder of a vegetable. Not even the fancy decorative cut-outs in the shape of leaves with leaf-vein divots on the tops of them can address your deficiencies, vegetable-wise.

Thirdly, carrots? I love carrots. But a carrot, particularly in chunk form, is not--how shall we say?--relevant to this dish.

But most of all, The Vegetarian Option, you are lousy with thoughtlessness, rife with lack of care, with I'm-just-here-to-fill-a-dish-ness. You imply that the vegetarian, because she does not care for meat, does not care about food at all. I am taking it personally, The Vegetarian Option. From henceforth you are my nemesis and I shall not rest until you, The Vegetarian Option, behave like actual food, rather than the fodder you actually are.

I mean it,

lisa b.

It's funnier the further west you get.

While we were in Washington, D.C., a few friends gathered at a pretty fabulous restaurant. It is one of those restaurants where the provenance of everything is specified on the menu. Order the food, receive the genealogy of the food.

And let me be the first to say, I was grateful for the information. The food was fantastic and the whole affair was just lovely. But I personally found it hilarious that the veal, the duck, and the pork were of Amish derivation.

(The pig never drove anywhere. The duck paddled by candlelight.)

Apparently I'm the only one who finds this so funny. I mentioned to one of my D.C.-located friends that we'd eaten at this place.

"You went to Fabulous Restaurant Name?" he said. Indeed, I said. Lucky us.

And then I sprang my "now let me tell you the one about the Amish duck!" on him, and he was all serious: "There's a lot of Amish people around."

And I was all: "But the meat! The MEAT is Amish? No, that's funny."

And he was all: [to himself] Nope, not all that funny.

The next day, I told this story to my cousin who lives in D.C. He was all, "No, that Amish veal thing, that's pretty funny." You know, the kind of funny that's by decree, but doesn't actually make you laugh?

Oh, I can deconstruct it. The savory soberness of Amish. The very alternativeness, the refusal of high-tech, the humility of it all. The plainness. Surely this must translate into . . . what? More righteous meat? I think that's how it works.

But I am still amused by it. Amish! Amish duck!

Our compatriot, at dinner, orders:

Maitre d'host: And for you sir?

Compatriot: I'll have the pork. (pauses--glances at me, the source of the Amish-themed merriment) The Amish pork.

Maitre d'host: Sir? (severe pause, so that the compatriot may reflect on his inappropriate jest) How would you like that cooked?

I'll take my Amish pork medium well done, thank you.

The story of crab.

There are a lot of things to write about, not least of which is the birth of a brand new baby granddaughter. I hope to have more to say about this soon, but let us just say this, right off the bat: so very happy for the historian's son and his lovely wife, and for the darling little girl.

But for tonight, I am going to tell you the story of how I happened to have two enormous Dungeness crabs in my refrigerator.

Me, in Whole Foods, both blithe and smug, having put in my cart everything I would need for my portion of the Thanksgiving day feast . . . AND MORE . . .

Guy behind the fish counter: You look like a person who loves Dungeness crab.

Me: [thinking to myself: I do love Dungeness crab!] (aloud:) I do love Dungeness crab!

Guy behind the fish counter: Well, then come over here and have a taste.

Me: [thinking to myself: a taste! just a taste!] (aloud:) Thanks!

That crab happened to be some of the most delicious crab I have ever eaten. [Note to self: the word crab starts to sound kind of funny when you say it a whole bunch of times in a row. See if you can come up with a synonym.]

Guy behind the fish counter: . . . And it's a really good deal. You buy one of these, it's a nice meal for a person.

Me: [thinking to myself: that is a good deal!] (aloud:) That is a good deal. How many of them would make about 2 pounds?

Guy behind the fish counter: About two of them.

Me: well . . . crabs [crustaceans?] kind of scare me.

Guy behind the fish counter: Totally understandable. I can clean them for you.

Me: [to myself: did he just sing the words "I can clean them for you"?] (aloud:) Really?

Guy behind the counter: Yes! (shiny and melodic)

And that, my people, is how I ended up with 2 crabs, cleaned, wrapped in fish paper, in my refrigerator. And also how I ended up thinking, I have two crabs in my refrigerator, cleaned, yes, wrapped in fish paper, yes. And yet I am the only crab eater at my house.

Luckily, we have a lot of vegetables.

The historian is doing a Sunday crossword puzzle.

I am replacing one page in my manuscript with a corrected page, as I have just discovered that there is a leftover word with a strike-through in it. The strike-through is there because the word was supposed to have been deleted, which is what the strike-through meant. I am also trying not to think about the fact that I have recently sent this manuscript with its unassuming yet nefarious, possibly malicious, strike-through word to at least a dozen places. Ugh.

Son and his friends are downstairs watching an unviewed season of Scrubs. Friend of Son, who is like a son to me, comes upstairs with a dish to put in the sink.

Friend of Son, who is like a son to me: I ate some of that potato pie. It was good.

Historian: What would you call that, sweetheart? would you call it potato pie?

Me: I would call it "Tortilla Española." But it had feta on it, so it was unorthodox. (pause, to contemplate how pretentious I just sounded, what with that ñ and all.)

Friend of Son: (polite laugh:) Well, it was good.

Me: Are you a tomato eater?

Friend of Son: Yes, I am.

Me: It's good with some tomatoes by it.

Historian: It was really good.

Me: (small and invisible preening, after which I resume inserting the page at the scene of my recent strike-through humiliation.)

Friend of Son: (without a word, picks up half-eaten bag of Lays Wavy potato chips in the red bag; makes for the stairs.)

Me: . . . So that's how it is around here.

Friend of Son: (sound of laughter disappearing down the stairs.)

I love the smell of fresh basil in the morning.

Yesterday we bought a metric ton of vegetables and fruit--mostly vegetables--at the farmer's market. This matches the metric ton of vegetables and fruit we bought last week. I could not help myself. The historian likes to get sacksful of grapes from this one family, and I like to buy piles of basil and arugula and eggs and bread and peaches and corn. Hence the tonnage. All this food made me feel pensive.

Me: I'm going to cook a whole bunch of things tomorrow, and then we can just eat it all week. Like, corn salad . . . and pesto . . . and quinoa salad . . . and that one sausage casserole for singing son and his family [note: a baby is arriving at their house soon, so the sausage thingie is to put in the freezer for a rainy day, aka a day when there is fussing and diapers and no time to cook.] . . . and gazpacho and ratatouille and vegetable curry!

The historian: [noncommital but encouraging remark. He's heard me in this enthusiastic fantasy before. Still, everyone acknowledges that this would be a good thing, all this cooking and putting the food in a state where we could actually eat it, as opposed to watching it become slowly, slowly less edible by the day in the refrigerator.]

Me: . . . and caprese salad!

Little did any of us know, least of all me, that I would wake up in a state of being moved in fact, as opposed to "in theory," by the Spirit of Cooking. I got up and made myself both toast and a list:

• pesto
• sausage thing for singing son
• corn salad
• quinoa salad
• vegetable curry
• caprese salad
• ratatouille
• gazpacho
• red beans

The list also comprised a pile of other stuff, non-cooking stuff, almost none of which I've done. It turns out that cooking motivates me more intrinsically than grading. Huh, who knew.

I actually ended up cooking only about half of the things on the list. But I think I can make two or three more of them tomorrow. And that means, the people, that at our house we can just about do no cooking all week, which, in a week with a pile of upcoming meetings and less spare time than is actually desirable for an activity I like to call "living my life," a lot of food ready to eat with no more effort than opening the refrigerator door, a spoon in hand, is a good thing.

Things to do to improve your outlook.

By "things to do," I mean "parties," and by "do," I mean "eat."

Saturday morning, I arose bright and early to make foccacia, Famous Pasta Salad, and sugar cookies cut in shapes appropriate to a baby shower. That's right: my daughter, the make-up artist and splendid all-around human being, is having a baby in May, a boy, and my mother and I were the caterers for this affair. We made all the arrangements via e-mail, thus avoiding having to address my increasing phone phobia (note to self: must investigate phone phobia).

I thought, somehow, that in any store where they sell cooking implements (Target), there would surely be a cookie cutter in the shape of something baby-ish (bootie? teething ring? breast pump?). What cookie cutters they had were in the shapes of an Easter egg, two kinds of bunnies, a carrot, a lamb, a duck, a tulip, and another generic flower. I know, appropriate to a baby shower! Especially some of them. I was, I admit, cursing my folly as I was icing the cookies at twenty minutes to shower time, but managed to arrive with a minimum of cursing, enough cookies for everyone, a mountain of Famous Pasta Salad, and two loaves of foccaccia. My daughter got baby booty, a baby shower game was played, we all had a grand time. Because I was taking pictures for my daughter with her camera, I managed to get home with only a small handful of pictures of the shower, none of her, and none of the cookies either. Oh well. The ducks were especially cute, you'll have to take my word for it.

Then, later that same day, we went to a surprise party for the birthday of a poet friend, Jennifer. It was great, super surprising, and delicious, too, as the hosts had knocked themselves out making shrimp-and-scallops pot-stickers, amazing eggplant, sesame noodles, steamed soup dumplings, scallion pancakes, and barbecued pork buns. Another poet brought a gorgeous bombshell of a cake, all whipped cream and strawberries. And we all had a very, very grand time. Here is the surprise:

Here are the dumplings:

and here is the cake: