Vodka and Children

are the titles, respectively, of those two photos. I had a third one for you, called “bread salad” but I can’t figure out how to make the pictures I take in my house after dark not be awful, so you will just have to use your imaginations. It’s a shame, though, because that bread salad–Ina’s Panzanella, more specifically–was a thing of great and terrible beauty. It basically is a pile of tomatoes and croutons soaked in olive oil, so really there was never any doubt.

This week we are having fancy dinners at my house, a) because I had not cooked anything in many weeks and felt terribly guilty about it and b) we are celebrating, among other things, a new writing gig (number five, bitches), my twenty-fifth birthday, and the series finale of Lost. Actually, it is Eat Your Emotions Week here at Kitchendoor!

Besides the bread salad: blackened chili lime chicken, steak with crumbled bleu cheese, grilled asparagus and corn on the cob, turkey avocado melts, and a cake plate full of chocolate chip cookies.

Look out, world. My emotions weigh ten pounds.