Funk of Forty Thousand Years
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtyJbIOZjS8]
Whilst at Home
I said to my mom, “Well, one thing you can say about this place is that it’s green.”
She said, “It does have that going for it, I suppose.”
Five Good Things: Universal Lady Edition
1. Home for the weekend to love on my Dad for Father’s Day. We have tickets to West Side Story tonight! And if I’m lucky we might be going to Bond 45 for dinner.
2. Away We Go. Guys, I went to see this with my mom yesterday, and it was JUST the best thing I’ve seen since Nick and Norah. Completely delightful and hilarious and sad in all the right places. What up, Dave Eggers. I might even try Heartbreaking Work again.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEp3NKG2U5U]
3. Drinking Bud Light at sketchy White Plains bars with my little sister and a girlfriend we’ve had since we were tiny kidlets. Because sometimes you just want to listen to Sean Paul and judge people in bad outfits, then come home and eat a pizza. I’m sorry, but sometimes you do.
4. Home Things: Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee, the Harlem Line on Metro North, navigating the subway, my sister’s down comforter, lying in the grass, people who have the same accent as me, and a much-needed eyebrow wax by Lena, who has kept me from looking like Bert since I was twelve years old.
5. This song. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SuSEq0UAJ4]
CSA Week Two!
Lettuce
Mesclun Greens
Chard
Kohlrabi
Sage
Strawberries
8-Grain bread (I signed us up for a bread share and it is wicked expensive but I don’t care, because HOLY CRAP that’s good bread)
So far: Chicken with Sage Leaves, which I bastardized from a similar recipe for pork chops from Best of the Best. I hardly ever use that book–I find it weirdly intimidating–but this actually came together pretty quickly and was, as a bonus, totally gorgeous. Basically you mash up some of the sage with some butter and cut little pockets in the chicken breasts to put it in. Then you brush some full leaves with olive oil and flour (it makes kind of a paste), stick them to the chicken, and fry the whole business up in some olive oil until it’s nice and brown. Finish in the oven. I think Tom was kind of impressed.
We inhaled the strawberries again (well mostly I did), and I’m going to roast up the kohlrabi to go with some sammiches on the aforementioned ass-kicking bread. I’m also all over this recipe to use for the chard.
Have I mentioned I love summer? Because I do.
But I’m a Tempurpedic!
Back in April Tom and I bought a sofa from Bob’s, as you do when you’re poor and live in Massachusetts and get a kick out of procuring your furniture on the Route 1 Automile in Saugus. It’s actually not ghetto at all, considering how cheap it was, big enough for three big dudes (or four little ones) to sit comfortably. It’s a mercifully forgiving chocolate brown. It has a chaise.
The awesomest thing about buying a couch at Bob’s, though, is how it comes with all kinds of unexpected bonuses: a free cup of coffee, for instance. Delivery guys who tell you your husband looks like Justin Timberlake, even though you’re not married, and proceed to sing “Sexy Back” as they drag your purchase up the stairs. And the ugliest pillows ever made.
I almost wish I’d taken a picture of these bad boys before I went at them, because even after four years of writing workshops I sincerely doubt my ability to properly convey their grossness. No, really. They were fuzzy, first of all. Also kind of weirdly scratchy. They had a bizarre retro-eighties geometric pattern in vomitous shades of brown and beige, overlaid with a suspicious streak of pale blue. I actually thought the blue was a stain–“Did they get some shit on these in the truck?”–until I realized both pillows were identical.
Anyway, on Sunday night while Tom was at work and I was marathoning the first season of Lost (OH MAN, that is a post of its own), I finally got around to covering them, and they’re actually kind of spiffy now.
Right?
A little Bob and Katie teamwork, if you will.
I wonder if he’s looking for a new sassy lady to be in his commercials.
Five Good Things: Lazy Weekend Edition
1. A low-key couple of days filled with new-camera-experimenting, afternoon walks to the beach, beer and giggles with two of Tom’s hilarious aunts, and finishing up the last of the CSA veg.
2. A giant summer reading list (I’m starting with the Pulitzer winners from the last fifteen years, plus A People’s History of the United States–although I might do that one on audio, because Matt Damon is the one who reads it. Also, I hear our president wrote a book or two).
3. The first season of Lost on DVD. I might never go to bed. No seriously.
4. Finally getting around to making covers for the godawful pillows that came with our couch–and remembering how nice it is to sew by hand.
5. This Tuesday is date night! I think we might go to Persephone (just a warning: the website plays this wicked obnoxious music. I hate that). I want to wear a dress.
How was everybody’s weekend?
In which I tell you how much I love Ina…again
Photo from FoodNetwork.com
Tom and I threw an impromptu barbecue last Monday, and I needed a quick side salad to go with our steaks and grilled corn (and Reese’s Pieces Klondike Bars). The answer, as always, lay with my favorite old broad. Ina’s Tomato Feta Salad was incredibly delicious, not to mention easy to make–the whole thing came together in less than ten minutes, at which point I threw it in the fridge and forgot about it ’til dinnertime. I didn’t have white wine vinegar, so I used balsamic instead, and it didn’t seem to make much of a difference. Our friend BGriff came back for thirds.
I can already tell I’m going to be making this bad boy all summer. Invite me over, and I’ll bring you some.
CSA: Week One
We begin!
This week:
a giant head of lettuce
a bag of mesclun greens
cooking spinach
bok choi
a basil plant
one parsnip
a bunch of radishes
one pint of strawberries
Made so far: whole wheat pasta with pesto, a bean burrito with lots of greens and leftover chili mayo, and a salad with feta, tomatoes, and roasted radishes. The strawberries we ate just the way they were.
Tonight: Lettuce Wraps!
(photo from Stone Soup Farm)