it's even better than bl*gging

Do you want to know what the yachtsman is doing right now? He is singing T. Pain lyrics into his new iPhone app while he makes a frozen mudslide from a TGIFridays mix (just add ice!). I wish I could tell you I disdain these kinds of plebeian activities, but I've been spending most of my time lately reading the Twilight books.

The yachtsman: "Honey, do you wanna hear me sing 'I'm in Love With a Stripper'?"

That's right, the Twilight books. Awhile back I made a Faustian bargain with my friend M. LaBee: He would watch the television masterpiece Gossip Girl; in exchange, I would read Twilight. Frankly, the trade seemed unfair. I knew M. would love Gossip Girl, and I knew I wouldn't like Twilight, but I agreed to the deal because I am a generous, self-sacrificing person.

So M. started watching Gossip Girl, and loved it as much as I knew he would, and I avoided reading Twilight, because I knew the writing would be terrible, and even though my favorite movie when I was fifteen was The Lost Boys and my favorite song was "Bela Lugosi's Dead," the idea of a teenage vampire romance sounded a little, well, nauseating.

And it is pretty bad. Every male has a husky voice and there are far, far too many smoldering eyes, the plots are pretty transparent, and it's hard to ignore the teen abstinence theme. But I don't care. I'm hooked. Like, on crack, hooked. I literally started to have a panic attack yesterday at the bookstore when I went to buy the third book and couldn't find it (when I did find it, I had the cashier double bag my purchase so if I ran into anyone I knew I wouldn't have to claim that I'd bought it for a friend and could quit any time I wanted).

Don't get me wrong: I'm not recommending that you read these books, just like I wouldn't tell you all to go out and eat a wonderful little dessert called Twinkies. But Twilight is pretty much the only reason I'm getting out of bed these days. It's better than working, it's better than crying, it's better than thinking, it's better, even, than sleeping. So if you ever want to get lost for a little while and have already watched both seasons of Gossip Girl, try a little abstinent teenage vampire escapism. Or, turn on your T. Pain app, make a mudslide, and start singing.

how i spent my summer vacation

What I was supposed to do this weekend was proofread. What I did do was lie on the couch watching four episodes of Gossip Girl in the middle of a beautiful, sunny day, and clean the house.

Here's what happened: I got up nice and early Saturday morning so I could go to the farmers market before I started working. It began innocently enough -- baby artichokes and heirloom greens, cheese to bring to Mojie's for dinner and samosas for the yachtsman. But I started to feel like there was something missing. Something I wanted but could not name. I wandered from stand to stand looking for it. I bought bok choy and carrots and new potatoes. I sampled spicy pretzels and basil hummus. And yet I was still full of want. I continued to wander, thinking that when I saw the thing I longed for I would know what it was.

But while contemplating a pint of sour cherries, I realized what I was missing was fruit. Not blueberries or raspberries or sour cherries. F*ck sour cherries. What I wanted was a peach. A juicy, sink-your-teeth-in, juice-dribbling-down-your-chin peach. I wanted to eat that peach, and then I wanted to eat another. I wanted to eat a peach every day for a month. I wanted to eat peaches until I was sick of peaches.

But there are no peaches in Vermont. There are berries and there are sour cherries. There are sad little plums. So I bought a chocolate frosted donut.


Which made me feel ill. And not just sick to my stomach or full. I was depressed. When I got home I tried to go into my office and work, but it was like there was a forcefield between me and that red pen. And there was also a Siren calling me to the couch. So at 10:00 on Saturday morning, I put on my Couch Jedi outfit, laid down on the couch, and proceeded to watch the last four episodes of Season 2 of Gossip Girl.

You may call it lazy procrastination; I call it a vision quest. There were low points where I questioned the meaning of life (for example the '80s flashback episode, which was so bad I had to fast forward through most of it). There were moments where I thought I could do anything -- wear headbands, live in New York, play basketball in a velour sweatsuit. But on a bathroom break during the season finale as I tripped over the yachtsman's winter boots, which were wrapped in a plastic garbage bag because they'd recently been sprayed with a fire extinguisher, I had a realization: I'd spent the first sunny day in weeks watching TV, and we were living in actual squalor. So I saw Blair and Chuck and Serena and Dan through their senior year, and then I cleaned the house.

I still want a peach.

kids say the darndest things

The yachtsman was out of town last night, so I planned to spend the evening doing all of my favorite/the yachtsman's least favorite things: Going to yoga, eating gruel, and watching Gossip Girl. When the littlest sister joined me for the night, rather than change my plans and do something that would appeal to a sprinkle-cake-eating, Twilight-watching twenty-one-year-old, I forced her to join in my old lady fun. (I actually didn't have to force her to watch GG -- she loves it -- but the yoga class and the gruel eating involved actual threats.)

Garbanzo beans with romesco and feta

The littlest sass on yoga: "Oh my god, that was so hard!" And then later in the evening: "Oh my god, I feel so...zen."

The littlest sass on sauteed beet greens topped with Doe's Leap feta cheese (which she DID NOT want to eat): "Oh my god, I don't get it -- why does this taste so good?"

The littlest sass on microbasil butter and radishes on toast (she BEGGED me not to put the radishes on her toast): "Oh my god, I love this! You asshole!"

The littlest sass on wilted arugula topped with a soft-boiled egg: "I will not be eating this again."

The littlest sass on Gossip Girl: "Oh my god, you totally think Chuck Bass is hot! And he's my age!"

Postprandial littlest sass: "Oh my god, is the gruel making you fart?"

And the indoctrination was complete.

hello, losers!

I'm writing to you from Denver, where for reasons I don't entirely understand I'll be spending another night before heading to Trinidad tomorrow.

In an example of pathetic fallacy, it is both snowing and thundering outside: The weather, too, is at grump factor 6! But the weather does not have five episodes of Gossip Girl on its iPod to lie in bed and watch.

[A note to the Mister Who Will Not Watch Gossip Girl: This is an actual line from an episode I watched on the plane yesterday, spoken by one character trying to comfort another after a family secret has been revealed: "We could both use a distraction. I say we play Boggle or watch a trashy movie. I rented Showgirls!" Seriously, Mister, if you have not watched the first season by the time I return home (which may be tomorrow if the freakout/meltdown looming on my horizon actually occurs), I might have to stop being your friend. Unless I go through with my plan to kidnap and keep you as my slave baker, in which case we will be master/servant (which is sort of like being friends) for life.]

at long last, the burrito

That burrito was delicious, and Behind the Scenes at the Museum is good, too. A bit of a slog at first, but now I look forward to the few moments each day I have to read it (usually while doing something else, too: eating lunch, walking from my desk to the bedroom to pet the dog, feeling guilty for not working on The Thing). It's quite different from the Jackson Brodie mysteries, which I’m not ashamed to say I love -- there’s nothing wrong with stories in which someone is killed and someone else spends the entire book trying to figure out whodunit, just like there's nothing wrong with TV shows in which wealthy Upper-East-Side teenagers get drunk, have sex, and are mean to each other.

SVG + GG

While in many ways Chris and I exemplify the expression "opposites attract" (he glides through his day singing little songs, I shuffle around swearing under my breath; he has an iPhone attached to his hand, I know where to place a stamp on an envelope), it's nice when our interests dovetail. For example, I love Gossip Girl and Chris has a job, so this intersection of Lily van der Woodsen and Seventh Generation is very meaningful to both of us.


You can expect that we will spend hours together reading and discussing the interview, after which, Chris will go to work and help create environmentally friendly cleaning products that famous people use, and I will turn on the TV to see whether Serena and Blair are talking to each other again (those girls are so fickle).

couch with a view

I was planning today to upload before-and-after photos of our apartment, but this would require that I (a) get off the couch and take the "after" photos and (b) get off the couch, find the jump drive, and move the "before" photos from Chris's computer to my computer. And I just don't think all of this getting-off-the-couch business is going to happen. The urge to lie here is strong in me, much like the Force was strong in young Luke Skywalker. I'm not lazy, I'm a Couch Jedi, and like Luke, who used his power to fight the Dark Side, I, too, am using my innate gifts, namely to lie here with the computer on my stomach while I download an episode of Gossip Girl.

So instead of the before-and-after tour, I offer you the following, photos I was able to take without disrupting my Couch Jedi training.

Views out two of our windows (the Flynn Theater sign is one of my favorite things about this apartment...



though I also love the geometry of fire escapes and duct work and roof lines out the window next to it).


And while I know that with this photo I will have exposed myself as a Crazy Pet Lady, I am woman enough to acknowledge that I am both a Crazy Pet Lady and a Couch Jedi.


My Couch Jedi Master Gossip Girl is ready now, and I dare not keep her waiting.

i miss my husband terribly when he is away

I really, really do. But one must keep a stiff upper lip. One might seek some meager comfort in watching episodes of one's favorite guilty-pleasure television show, Gossip Girl, bought with one's absent husband's iTunes account, while drinking red wine and eating a soft-boiled egg served atop a bed of wilted garlicky arugula with toast to sop up the savory, yolky juices. That last part would make one's husband gag, and one's husband finds Gossip Girl trite and sophomoric (but in the season I'm watching, they're seniors!). When he gets home, one will greet him with a glass of red wine and kiss him with one's stiff upper lip.

saturday afternoon lunch was thursday night dinner

Tomato-Cheddar Soup
Cheddar Buttermilk Biscuits
Fennel & Celery Salad

For lunch today: tomato soup and a biscuit (leftovers from Thursday night's dinner) and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (courtesy of Junot Diaz, though I'm not sure I'm thanking him: am I the only person in the Western Hemisphere who did not pee herself with joy over this book? Because I'd rather pee on Junot Diaz, or even better, reread Drown).

[I'm hoping that my dad can show me how to take photos that look more like this or this, but for now we're all going to have to settle for these:]




Chris was out of town this week, but when he found out the lovely Lisa and Amos were coming over for dinner this past Thursday, he told me to make sure to "cook them up some gruel," and recommended that I serve them "something pureed," because according to Chris I "sure do like the blender." That's sort of a load of bl*g, though I did use my immersion blender for the soup (see recipe below).

I had this tomato-cheddar soup for the first time at my mother-in-law Jo Ruth's house on the night before Thanksgiving, and it was so good I've been makin' it all winter. It's a pretty serious upgrade from the Campbell's tomato my sister and I used to eat (along with grilled American cheese on white bread and the store-brand version of Oreos. I should note that we ate this kind of thing in our twenties; our parents would never, ever, ever have fed us canned soup or processed cheese, and I don't think I even knew that white bread existed). For Thursday night I made the soup early and stuck it the fridge so I could focus on not fucking up the biscuits and cutting my fingers off with the mandoline.

When Jo Ruth made this soup, she served it with Shelburne Farms' deliciously cheesy biscuits, which I broke into bite-sized pieces and floated in my soup like croutons. I wanted Lisa and Amos to be able to play with their food, too, but the Shelburne Farms biscuits were made by Jo Ruth, who is from the South, and I get the feeling that making a batch of biscuits is as easy for her as sleeping late is for me. I haven't done much baking since the Duncan Hines brownies my sister and I used to whip up after school (at this point my parents were divorced, and all dietary restrictions had moved out with my father), and the Shelburne Farms biscuit recipe includes notes about keeping the ingredients "as cold as possible" and working the dough "as little as possible" and even had a little anecdote about how one time the authors made the biscuits in an unheated barn or some shit and though the authors were "a little chilly," "the biscuits were perfect." That's quaint and all, but so not happening in my culinary world. Instead I found this recipe for cheddar buttermilk biscuits on epicurious.com, which multiple reviewers described as easy, and it was. I was so frickin' pleased with myself when Lisa and Amos walked into the house and noted how good it smelled, then oohed and awed over my beautiful biscuits cooling on the stovetop.

After handing Amos a biscuit because he was so hungry he felt light headed, I started making the salad, a fennel and celery thing I'd read about here, which I hoped would be light and crispy enough to balance out the rest of the heavy, cheesy meal (it's early March in Vermont, and I'm still hittin' the winter foods; as I told my friend Taije when I moved back to Vermont from DC last summer, winter in Vermont makes me want to lie in bed and eat mashed potatoes. FOR SIX MONTHS). My stepmother, Chrysanne, would be horrified to know that I went out and bought a single-use kitchen appliance just for this one recipe, but I knew I would never be able to slice the fennel and celery thinly enough without a mandoline, and since Chris is obsessed with the slap chop, I thought maybe the mandoline would help him stop having a boring life. After having used the mandoline, however, I must warn Girlie Hands never to go near it lest he ruin his potential career as a hand model: I cut not one but two fingers while mandoline-ing my fennel and celery, and only avoided slicing a third finger when Lisa and Amos simultaneously screamed, "STOP!" just before I took off the tip of my pinkie. The recipe is online here, and my only advice is that mandoline-ing and multitasking do not mix. Best to stick with the slap chop.

RECIPE RATINGS & NOTES

Tomato and Cheddar Soup: 4.5 out of 5 Heavy Winter Soup stars
[See recipe for cooking notes. The soup is rich and the allspice gives it a nice, but not weird, flavor. As is the recipe feeds three people well, but is barely enough for four. It's an easy, tasty soup that is fancy enough to serve guests, but is also a good option for those afternoons when in the rest of the world it is spring but in Vermont it is still winter, just brown and ugly now instead of snowy and pretty. This soup pairs nicely with an episode of Gossip Girl or the latest issue of US Magazine.]

Cheddar Buttermilk Biscuits: 4 out of 5 Savory Biscuit stars
[These were cheesy and delicious and easy to make. I substituted minced, fresh sage for the scallions, and the recipe made a dozen biscuits with some dough left over. I highly recommend chunks of biscuit in the tomato soup.]

Fennel and Celery Salad: 3.5 out of 5 Salad stars
[As Lisa put it, "This tastes like spring." Light and crispy and lemony, so easy to make, but beware the finger-eating mandoline, or you will be serving your nice friends blood and skin as well as fennel and celery.]


Tomato-Cheddar Soup
from Cooking With Shelburne Farms

The recipe here is barely modified from the cookbook, which is probably some kind of copyright infringement. DO NOT RAT ME OUT OR I WILL POUND YOUR ASS IN THE PARKING LOT AFTER SCHOOL.

1 packed cup finely grated cheddar
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 small onion, diced
1 cup half-and-half or whole milk [whole milk is really fine, as this soup is as rich as The Donald was in the '80s.]
1 (28 oz.) can fire-roasted tomatoes [the recipe calls for whole tomatoes in puree, but I've used diced tomatoes in not puree, and didn't notice any difference, though I think the fire-roasted part is important.]
1/2 teaspoon allspice [the recipe called for 1 teaspoon, which I used the first time I made it, and maybe I just have some super-strong allspice, but that pot of soup tasted like tomato pumpkin pie, and not in a good way.]
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt [or more to taste, yo.]
freshly ground pepper

1. In a small bowl, toss the grated cheddar with the flour, making sure to coat all shreds [For those of you who are neurotic, I've found from neurotic experience that you don't have to be too, too neurotic about this coating-all-shreds business. Because when you PACK the cheese, it's hard to SEPARATE THE SHREDS for coating. I'm just sayin'.]

2. In a large, wide soup pot set over medium-high heat, melt the butter until foamy. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until translucent but not colored, about 3-4 minutes.

3. Add the half-and-half to the pot, bring to a simmer, and simmer gently for 3-4 minutes. Take the pot off the heat.

4. Put a handful of cheddar into the pot and whisk into the hot half-and-half mixture until the mixture is smooth. Repeat in handfuls until the cheddar has magically disappeared from the bowl.

5. Add the tomatoes and their puree, the allspice, and the salt to the pot and stir. Return the pot to medium heat for 3-4 minutes and cook, stirring to blend. Do not allow the soup to boil. [If the soup does boil, do not panic, as this does not seem to have any effect whatsoever.]

6. Using an immersion blender, a food processor, or a blender [my vote is for the immersion blender], blend the soup.

7. Return the soup to the pot if you took it out, warm it gently over medium-low heat, adjust seasonings, blah blah blah...