Katie CotugnoKatie Cotugno
Tellin' stories, eatin' snax. NYT bestselling author of messy, complicated, feminist love stories
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I also broke the bagel embargo of 2010, and it was totally worth it.

Katie

March 30, 2010

A few weeks ago when I was having some vague organizational thoughts re: this blog, it occurred to me that I’d been tending to post food-y, recipe-ish stuff on Tuesdays. Brilliant! thought I. Tuesday will be Eat Here Feel Good Day on kitchendoor, and I will be well on my way  to running the kind of immaculately designed, pristinely executed blog where all the days are themed and awesome and you don’t rattle on about the new Gaga song (ALEJANDRO, oh my God) in the middle of talking about the cobbler you made last night.

photo: the weblicist

Of course, today is Tuesday, and I have done absolutely no cooking in the last week save the grilled cheese I made for Jackie on Saturday afternoon (which she did pronounce excellent, probably because I used about half a brick of cheddar). So, no recipes today. I did, however, do some serious eating while I was in New York, including a most delicious tomato-mozzarella-pesto number from Cafe Lalo (yes! That Cafe Lalo, of You’ve Got Mail fame. I nearly died of glee) and a caramelized apple/brie/bacon omelette from Deluxe that was made even more delightful by the fact that I ate it while smashed into a corner booth with three most excellent brunch companions and a giant mug of coffee. Topics covered: where we are going to find a rich old lady to finance our farm, Gerard Butler: zero or hero?, the fact that I am going to have to break down and read something by (groan) David Foster Wallace. But mostly we stuffed our faces.

In other food news, I’d like to try and feed both my boyfriend and myself something more than tuna from a can at some point this week, which considering what my datebook is looking like is probably impossible, but what can I say, sometimes a guy just wants the impossible (You’ve Got Mail quote!! See what I did there?). Am thinking about grilling, Barefoot in Paris, experimenting with the bread book I got for Christmas, and something special for Lost tonight.

Tell me what you’re eating.

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Fact.

Katie

March 29, 2010

Every morning on the bus I pass this sign that says, “Cash for your Warhol! Call this number!” and every morning I wonder who these people are that think the riders of the Number 9 bus out of Southie of all places have these Warhols just lying around that they’re dying to unload to some sketchy person that put up a sign.

Unless by “Warhol” they actually mean “crack”. Then I would understand it.

Weekend was smashing. Pictures to come.

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Five Good Things: Mobile Edition

Katie

March 26, 2010

1. Am off to New York for the weekend to see a gaggle of my best soul sisters, biological and not. Am posting on the Bolt Bus via Ye Olde WordPress iPhone App. How nifty.

2. Tom is so on board with the Spring Cure, it’s hilarious. We spent an hour and a half at Ikea last night, coming away with a bunch of deck stuff and some storage solutions for the bathroom that will hopefully make it look less like it belongs to a bunch of frat boys (also he offered to buy me a hot dog, but I respectfully declined). Plus we keep yelling “SPRING CURE” everytime we throw something away, which made it sort of fun to clean out the fridge.

3. The first line of the story I’m working on: “Three weeks after Lee has emergency surgery at Mass General to amputate both his legs above the knee, Erin starts calling him and hanging up.” You’d want to publish that story if you were the editor of some snooty journal, right? Um. Right?

4. Having finally made the switch to google reader. What a thing of beauty that is.

5. I think there may be a record player in my immediate future. Must find a place to put it. SPRING CURE!

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Thursday Random.

Katie

March 25, 2010

* Jennie turned me onto the Spring Cure over at apartmenttherapy, and while I can tell you we are not about to paint all our furniture white and fill the house with soothing river rocks, it’s awfully nice to think about chucking some of the garbage and cleaning up a bit. Feeling inspired, I cycloned through the rooms last night while I waited for Tom to get home and tossed no fewer than six different items, including a winter coat that had seen much better days, two cheapie scarves that looked more like cleaning rags, some sweet but seldom-used dessert plates that are off to a brand new home, and two giant tubs of protein powder that expired in 2008. I…don’t even want to talk about that last thing. I’m lucky they hadn’t gotten up and walked across the room.

* What I would love to know: why, when they spent all that money to redo the Copley T station, they made the doors too heavy for me to open without a) looking like a total spaz or b) help.

* Also! Am looking for some cool graphic posters for my kitchen: three of them, in fact, about 11×18 inches each. Have been trolling etsy and am so far am liking these, these, these, and these, but am not in desperate love with any of them and am open to suggestions. Thoughts? Anybody? Also…somebody tell me how you store your cookbooks.

*Because I know Erin, at least, is watching Lost along with me: Richard Alpert! On a horse! With flowing locks!

* Am back on paperbackswap with a vengeance. Listed 13 books last night. Am more than a little thrilled.

* Finished Mere Christianity, which was surprisingly lovely. Fell asleep during Angels and Demons, which was unsurprisingly dull.

* Tonight: chicken! Ikea! Netflix!

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I have seen the future, and the future is bacon jam.

Katie

March 23, 2010

Ever since the delightful Miss Megan brought bacon jam to book club on Sunday, I have been literally unable to stop talking about it. I tell everyone I see. I am an evangelist. “Do you KNOW what I ate the other day?” I ask them, then pause dramatically before the big reveal. The pause is very important.

The problem with preaching the gospel of bacon jam is that the general public, thus far, has been less receptive than I had perhaps expected. Tom just kind of stared at me when I told him about it. My mom was all, “Bacon what?” And Sierra was ballsy enough to flat-out say it sounded revolting, and she is lucky we agree on every other topic under the sun (with the possible exception of Joseph Gordon Leavitt ) because frankly, that’s a dealbreaker, ladies.

Maybe the world at large just doesn’t share my particular enthusiasm for bacon, although I can’t imagine that is the case. Instead, I suspect the problem is that when you say “bacon jam,” (after the dramatic pause of course), people reflexively picture a jar of bright red Smuckers with some pork suspended in it.

THAT IS NOT WHAT BACON JAM IS.

There’s nothing gelatinous happening here. Honest. Instead, bacon jam is more like a tapenade–a spicy, salty, smoky, bacony delight that you spread on the vehicle of your choice along with (dramatic pause) guacamole, or peanut butter, or chocolate. Megan put it on a s’more. I tried it with some cheese dip. I am here to tell you, friends, that bacon jam just might be the dark-wash-skinny-jeans of the culinary world: it goes with everything.

World without end, amen.

(Recipe is here, at Homesick Texan. Go forth. Seriously.)

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Once You Kill a Cow, You Gotta Make a Burger.

Katie

March 22, 2010

Things that were effing AMAZING about this weekend:

health care (you guys, I checked the Times website like fifty times on Sunday and I was walking down the street when I saw that it had passed and I literally fist pumped alone in the middle of the road [the second fist pump of the week, the first having occurred the moment Josh Holloway showed up shirtless on Lost last Tuesday]). Dear President Obama, I LIKE YOUR STYLE; the idea that at some point in time, Lady Gaga explained her idea for the “Telephone” video to Beyonce and Beyonce was like, “hell to the yeah, that’s flipping AWESOME, I would love to dress in a unitard made entirely of breakfast food and poison a diner full of awful men”; the fact that I ate BACON JAM with peanut butter and it was like a giant mouthful of heaven; that I saw a drunk man throw a chicken leg across a subway car; the conversations Tom and I have when he gets home from work early in the morning and I have fallen asleep in front of Roseanne and how they always include me accusing him of  trying to bully me into taking my contact lenses out. also that he said the following sentence to me, and it was true: “Only you would show up at a bar with a purse full of pork butt”; being in the middle of writing three different stories; learning about animal husbandry at book group (I told you I would mention it); being halfway through Mere Christianity and thinking, I wish we had read this in Catholic school; it’s springtime. it’s monday. things are good.

Uncategorized 1 comment five good things

Five Good Things: Dollar Short Edition

Katie

March 20, 2010

1. You GUYS, it is 72 degrees in Boston today. Last weekend I was wearing my winter coat, and this morning I went to brunch (Greek omelette with feta and olives, what what) in shorts and flip-flops. New England is so incredibly weird and awesome sometimes. It’s supposed to be forty and rainy on Monday, but that is A-okay.

2. Who has two thumbs and froze six quarts of chicken stock this week? THIS GUY. I put it in fancy jars and everything. Come over and we’ll cook some dinner.

3. Teaching myself to make marshmallow tomorrow for book club (at least, that is the hope. Otherwise, I will be teaching myself to buy a giant bag of Kraft Jet Puffed). Our theme is BBQ. I’m bringing the s’mores.

4. Tom telling me we should go ahead and sell the extra sofa on Craigslist and put the money toward this desk from Pottery Barn, which has literally been my dream writing desk since before I met him in 2002. You have to be pretty nerdy to have a dream writing desk. I am pretty nerdy.

5. I’m off to go sit on the deck and read for awhile until it’s time to go meet Abbey for cocktails. I reckon I might just wear a dress.

Happy weekend, loves.

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Bowled Over

Katie

March 18, 2010

I’ve been looking for big deep cereal bowls forever, since the ones that came with the dishes I filched from my mom are wicked shallow and I, being an enthusiastic consumer of cereals both hot and cold, tend to spill.  I found these babies at Goodwill on Tuesday for a buck apiece. Aren’t they festive? I bought two giant boxes of Kellogg’s to celebrate.

At Target, though. Not at Goodwill.

Also thrifted: Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies, and a brand new copy of Starring Sally J. Friedman as Herself that may or may not have made it into somebody’s Pay it Forward package. Because who doesn’t love a little Judy Blume in the springtime?

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As Promised.

Katie

March 16, 2010

Okay, I think I mentioned on this blog awhile back that I was worried I didn’t like homemade soup. BOY WAS I WRONG. More accurately, I don’t like crap homemade soup that serves only as a vehicle for dunking grilled cheese sandwiches, but that problem is now solved because, ladies and gentlemen, I have found the only soup recipe you or I will ever need.

Summer’s Broccoli-Cheese Soup for the Panera-Deprived is nothing short of a work of art, creamy and vegetable-y and so delicious you will be positively licking the bowl. Or eating an entire pot yourself over the course of a weekend. Whatever.

The only real change I made was swapping out the half-and-half for 1% milk, which is what we had, and it worked just fine. I did, however, cube and toast an everything bagel for crouton purposes, and I can enthusiastically recommend that particular addition (the everything bagel: the best of all bagel worlds? Discuss).

Summer, you are a genius. Thanks so much.

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Case of the Mondays

Katie

March 15, 2010

Am the slightest bit washed out today, almost certainly the result of the interminable rain that’s been soaking the Commonwealth the last few days. All I want to do is sleep all the time. Still, the weekend was a sweet little whirlwind of brunches and coffees and white trash cheese dip at Bukowski’s with the perpetually delightful book club girls. Also I made some banana bread, the most excellent soup I have ever tasted (big reveal tomorrow), and wrote a feisty letter of complaint to a Catholic priest in Boulder, Colorado (I’m engaging with my faith! That’s…good, right?). Plus Jennie sent me this awesome article today, which you should all check out while I go take a nap.

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Love Junkie.

Katie Cotugno

Katie Cotugno is the New York Times bestselling author of eight messy, complicated feminist YA love stories, as well as the adult novels Birds of California and Meet the Benedettos. She is also the co-author, with Candace Bushnell, of Rules for Being a Girl. Her books have been honored by the Junior Library Guild, the Bank Street Children’s Book Committee, and the Kentucky Association of School Librarians, among others, and translated into more than fifteen languages.  Katie is a Pushcart Prize nominee whose work has appeared in The Iowa Review, The Mississippi Review, and Argestes, as well as many other literary magazines. She studied Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College and received her MFA in Fiction at Lesley University. She lives in Boston with her family. 

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