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Sierra Sierra

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Sierra comes today!

Sierra is my buddy. She lives in New York where she goes to art school and has a great apartment uptown and a cute bespectacled boyfriend and a fancy purse. We like pretty much all the same things, including but certainly not limited to Taylor Hanson, feta cheese, and reading US Weekly at the nail place. Right now she is mad at me because I pestered her into watching Lost, which is roughly the same as annoying your friend into trying heroin. “I don’t even LIKE this show,” she said to me the other day. 

“But you will,” I said. I know, because I know her. 

Here is what we are going to do: eat and drink and talk and watch the teevee. Here is what we are not going to do: anything we don’t feel like. 

Happy Friday, teddy bears.

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Battle With the Heart

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We hit a couple of speed bumps around here earlier this week–an infected nose ring (GROSS RIGHT? I KNOW), a domestic disturbance that was probably more than half my fault, the sudden and unwelcome ubiquity of Jay Leno’s chin on my television. I think we’re just tired, is all, and the weather is doing that weird thing where it’s not a season, and things are just generally out of sorts. 

No matter. We are PLOWING AHEAD. I’m trying to adopt Kal’s Bulletproof Positive Attitude as my own: I baked some maple oatmeal cookies last night to help shoo fall in through the door, and I’ve been burning my Ember candle nonstop. We had turkey melts and potato soup for dinner. Glee continues to delight my freaking face off. I’m coming off a super awesome writing collaboration with my good buddy A, and there is one more story in the pipeline before I settle into some editing. Things are fine. Better than fine, in fact. We are back on track.  

Also, you guys! Kelly has a blog, and it is amazing! I never knew! You should all check it out. Things to know about Kelly: she is great, and the very first time I met her I smacked her on the butt by mistake thinking she was my friend Jennie. Luckily she didn’t smack me back.

How are you all? Tell me how you’re hanging in.

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Randomness, and Icebox Cake

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Have I talked here yet about H&J?

H&J are the people who introduced Tom and me one thousand years ago, when I was a junior in high school rocking the acrylic nails and Tom had a Growing Up Gotti blowout. Good times. ANYWAY, H&J dated back then, and then we got to college and H moved to Florida and J moved to North Carolina and they didn’t date anymore and a bunch of years went by, and then they randomly got back together and now they live literally five blocks from us in Boston, two hundred miles from where all four of us started.

WEIRD RIGHT?

Anyway, the point is that way back when J’s mom used to make ice box cake, which like, I don’t even know what ice box cake IS except that it involves chocolate wafers and whipped cream and, well, an ice box, and I think it is what you eat in heaven if you’ve been really good. Seriously, at 4AM on New Year’s Day 2003 Tom and I stood in front of my refrigerator and devoured pretty much a whole cake like savages or secret eaters, and I am not lying when I say it was a VERY GOOD START to that particular year.

You guys. I had not had an ice box cake in five years, and then yesterday happened, and GROWN UP H & J BROUGHT ONE TO MY HOUSE. I nearly wept for joy. And then I ate a crap ton of it.

Because some things never change.

 

(P.S. Smitten Kitchen explains it better. Go read their post while I shove my face.)

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Eat Your Feelings

You GUYS. I’m going to get published.

Argestes, a literary magazine out of Iowa, has picked up a story of mine for their Fall/Winter ’09 issue, which is…pretty much the most exciting thing to happen in my life since I got to the episode of Lost where Sawyer and Kate do it and then escape from the Others. SO. You know. Pretty exciting.

Obviously, the only appropriate response was to drink a lot of champagne and bake cookies, which is EXACTLY WHAT I DID.

Have a recipe! And celebrate.

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1/4 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/8 tsp salt

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

2/3 cup all purpose flour

1 cup rolled oats

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/3 cup chocolate chips

1/3 cup chopped pecans

1/3 cup flaked coconut

 

Preheat the oven to 350. Beat the butter for 30 seconds, then add sugar, baking soda, and salt; beat until well-combined. Beat in egg and vanilla, then flour, then stir in oats and coca powder. Add chocolate chips, coconut, and pecans. Dough will be thick. Spoon onto a baking sheet–small cookies work best, I think–and bake for eight minutes or so. 

Eat. Drink. And feel damn pleased with yourself.

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Hello, Monday.

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I’ve spent this summer traveling with the frequency and speed of a presidential candidate, and today is the first weekday in I can’t remember when that I’ve had for doing the kind of work I really love–writing and editing, baking and designing. I’m starting off with a long walk to Castle Island, then back here for my writing swap homework and a first attempt at some new cookie recipes– a German chocolate and a maple-oatmeal, I’m thinking. Ponytail is in. iPod is charged. Coffee is brewed. Will report back from the front with details. 

Woot.

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Five Good Things: Barn Jacket Edition

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1. Fall TV starting to come back. I wish I could be one of those  respectable literary-type people who is like, “I prefer reading Proust by candlelight to watching brain-rotting cable programming,” but you know what? My boyfriend works nights, candlelight hurts my eyes, and I freaking love television so much I would marry it if I could. So there. On the docket this fall: Glee, Bones, and The Office, for starters. Not to mention my fevered, glassy-eyed plow through Seasons 4 and 5 of Lost. I’m onto you, Juliet Burke. Don’t think I’m not. 

2. I got home from work on Wednesday night, and Tom had already made dinner. And a salad. And garlic bread. And he bought a bottle of pinot noir. I am not kidding you when I say it was better than Christmas and my birthday combined. Thanks Tom. You are a catch. 

3.  Ingrid Michaelson at the Paradise tonight! I know very, very little of her music, but I have never seen a bad show at this venue, so word. Plus I think there might be burritos involved.

4. Signing up for a winter CSA share, thus stretching the veg haul out through December (though I feel like we’ll probably be eating a terrifying amount of squash). Anybody out there know how to cook a whole pumpkin?

5. “Now is the season for action.” Heck yeah it is. Let’s move.

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This salad will make you popular.

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No seriously. People will like you if you make it for them. I used it to woo new/old friends (Hi Shana and Adrienne!) over the weekend. It’s super easy (as are all of my favoritest recipes), and there is pretty much no junk in it so you can feel good about yourself even if you eat thirds. Which I did. 

All you need:

4 ears of corn on the cob, boiled

2 bigass tomatoes, diced

1 can black beans, rinsed and drained

1/3 red onion, finely chopped

2 ripe avocados, peeled, seeded and chopped (not smashed!)

juice of one lime

salt and pepper to taste

 

What to do:

Slice the kernels off the corn, mix the whole shebang together in a big bowl, give it a squirt with the lime juice, season until it tastes good, and throw the whole thing in the fridge for an hour or so. You know what? Done.

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