please send help

Warning: The recipe I’m about to share with you does not qualify as gruel: It is not healthy. It does not include any vegetables to speak of, and no whole grains. It is not a soup, nor is it a stew. And there’s bacon involved.

The bacon is, in fact, deeply involved. I had imagined creating a vegetarian version of this recipe, but the pork products weren’t having it: The bacon is holding a gun to my head while the bacon fat writes up a list of demands, which include a fueled jet, $1,000,000 in unmarked bills, and not to be left off this ingredient list.

I wish I could blame the bacon for my behavior the first time I ate this dish, which was served by my mother-in-law as an appetizer, a little puff-pastry pizza topped with, well, bacon, tiny chunks of apple, and blue cheese, drizzled with honey, and sprinkled with shallots that had been cooked in, well, bacon fat. But it wasn’t just for the bacon that I ate my share of the pizza, and then more than my share, and then, feeling sheepish but unable to stop myself, all that was left without offering anyone the last piece. It was the combination of flavors that was so addictive: salty and smoky and sweet, slightly sharp from the blue cheese. A combination from which the bacon should not be omitted, or the bacon will kill its hostage.

Smoky-Sweet Puff-Pastry Pizza

Adapted from A Farmer in the Dell

1 sheet Pepperidge Farm puff-pastry dough

4 slices bacon

1 shallot, minced

1 tablespoon honey, plus more for drizzling

a handful of mozzarella cheese

a handful of Gorgonzola cheese

½ of 1 apple, diced

1. Thaw puff pastry according to package instructions and preheat the oven to 400 degrees. When the puff pastry is soft, roll it out on a lightly floured surface into a rectangle and transfer to a large baking sheet. Fold the edges over about ½ inch, press the border with the back of a fork, and brush the border with water. Poke holes in the rest of the dough with the tines of a fork.

2. Fry the bacon in a skillet, remove from the pan, and drain on paper towels, then chop or tear into bite-sized pieces. Add the shallot to the bacon fat in the pan and sauté until almost translucent, add honey and stir until the honey is thin, then pour the mixture over the puff pastry. Sprinkle the pastry with mozzarella cheese, apple, and Gorgonzola crumbles, then drizzle with a little more honey. Cook at 400 degrees for 15–20 minutes, until the edges are just golden.

This could be served as a very unhealthy and ungruel-like dinner with a side salad, or do as my mother-in-law did and cut it into squares and serve as an appetizer, preferably to people who will not bogart the whole thing. Whatever you do, please, please don't leave out the bacon.

the cat's name is grandma wrinkles

The littlest sister came over tonight and demanded beet greens for dinner. Then she demanded that we watch a very classy show called "The Real Housewives of New Jersey," which is on right now. Someone just put a ladybug costume on a hairless cat. Now an orange man and his orange wife are discussing whether she should get a boob job. In front of their three little girls.

repelling bunny attacks

There is a deranged dog in this house: Every time a human approaches him,

he grabs this stuffed bunny in his mouth,

shakes his head back and forth, the bunny swinging wildly,

drops the bunny and snarls,

runs away from the bunny while barking frantically,

and then runs back to the bunny and tries to look innocent, as if he didn't just try to kill it (and isn't about to try and rape it, which is what comes next).

If forced to spend every day in a housing development in a suburb of Denver, I, too, would probably become a neurotic, obsessive animal.

In fact, if I'm stuck here tomorrow, I may steal the stuffed animal and have my way with it.

That's right, Bandit; I'm coming for the bunny.

it's called stockholm syndrome

There was a hostage situation at my house last night, and it was only seconds, not weeks or months, before I went all Patty Hearst and started identifying with my captor: fresh-out-of-the-oven sourdough bread.

Chris went to a bread-making class at King Arthur yesterday and returned home with beautiful loaves of bread he'd baked...



...plus dough he'd started there and brought home.



Last night he baked another round loaf and a delicious bread that I wrongly called a focaccia. This thing was heavily armed: drizzled with a little olive oil, dusted with parm and salt, speckled with garlic. It was WARM, people. Slightly crunchy exterior, soft inside. I'd like to have seen you try and resist (although if you'd been at my house, you wouldn't have had to; I wouldn't have let you near it). If the non-focaccia had handed me a machine gun and asked me to rob a bank, I would have...well, I would have gotten in bed and pulled the covers over my head, because if your food is talking to you, you're in trouble. And if your food is trying to get you to commit crimes, you're in BIG trouble.



All my dinner-making plans went out the window. There was no trip to the market, no making of a salad, even. The non-focaccia would not let me.

I would tell you to send ransom money, but at this point I have actually eaten my captor. I was both hostage and SWAT team; how that's for multitasking?