« previous | main | next »
eight winos, two tarts, and a walmart
This weekend, four friends and I and piled into an American & Proud SUV and headed down to the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, where a friend of ours and his highly hospitable family have a palatial, gorgeous vacation house they let us slum in a couple weekends a year. I wore pajamas the whole time, which is probably the best indication I can give you of just how great the weekend was. Lacking the sleep, detox, and finesse I would need to round the high points into a cohesive essay, I offer you a bulleted list the parts I will admit to:
- Six home-cooked meals. We always go on cooking benders there, inspired by the pinnacle of gorgeousness that is a kitchen bigger than the 6 cubed feet we have grown used to in our tiny city apartments. Can you blame us? There were breakfast burritos, potato leek soups, salmon with endless spices and coconut milk, bay scallop thai lettuce wraps, bacon and sausages, constantly-brewed coffee, and enough wine to sink a ship, yet still not enough to get us through our slothful weekend. Typical.
- I cooked Saturday night, going with some standbys of wine-and-shallot steamed mussels, oven fries (finally gotten just right, thanks to this recipe, minus the parmesan), salad with roasted whole garlic cloves and tiny tomatoes, and red pepper soup. I will not be ashamed to admit that I brought with me my immersion blender, a tool – in the timeless words of Julie Powell – “I love the way other women love their vibrators.” The thought of having to ladle the soup in batches into an old blender was too much for this fussy cook to bear.
- Speaking of my fussiness, Julie, who will henceforth be known as The French One, and I made two strawberry tarts this weekend, and if you have ever cooked with a French One, you likely understand the awe that is working with a someone who concocts pâte brisée and crème patisserie without measuring spoons or a recipe. Hers came out rustic and flirtatious; mine daintily arranged and repressed. Shocking, I know.
- My friend Dupin and I are notorious for our trips to Walmart, which begin with the intention to pick up milk or a toothbrush, but end hours later after a frenzy of Oh My God They Sell Everything, Everything In The WHOLE WIDE WORLD Here, usually with giant shopping bags of flip-flops, party masks, coloring books, scientifically enhanced globally-sized fruits, and liter-sized wine glasses. Everyone – except The French One – knows better than to join us, but she was too excited about her first trip to Walmart to know better. Here we are trying to convince her to walk in talking loudly on her cellphone like a typical New Yorker, “and you can’t get a fucking bagel anywhere!” She took to Walmart like a pro, trying on hats, gawking the $9.86 beach bags and bucket-sized coffee mugs while Dups and I chanted with approval “one of us, one of us, one of us.”
- Finally, you might note in the photo-set an absense of Husband, and you will have noted correctly: Alex and I have officially spent four days apart. (Cue: horror music!) He had the bachelor party of one of his closest friends this weekend, or, you know, Steak & Strippers. He tells me the steak was better and more interesting than the strippers, a sign I have either saved or broken him permanently.
I’ll let y’all muse on that one while I try to flush four bottles of wine and ten thousand extraneous calories from my polluted system. This First Day Without Pajamas is bearing down mighty hard on me.
comments (18)
Oh, that sounds amazing. And that vacation house? Looks absolutely gorgeous.
Don't feel too bad about your repressed tart, it still looked lovely and I'm sure it tasted fabulous.
1 | alana | February 21, 2006 01:05 PM
Ahhh the Bay, how I do love it so. Which is why I consider myself lucky to live within an hour's drive.
Sounds like a delightful weekend full of cooking, fun and friends. What more could a girl ask for?
2 | Agategoddess | February 21, 2006 01:29 PM
Kudos on what appears to have been a flawless weekend.
My boyfriend (currently known as "Mr. Cranky Pants") is on the Bachelor Party committee for his life long best friend this coming Saturday. He has similar thoughts about strippers as your Alex does. However, I am truly envious of you for having something great to do while he is off with the steak and strippers.
This past weekend though, there was a couples shower for the bride and groom, and all the guys that are going to be attending the Bachelor Party were trying to convince me that it is going to be really boring. Like I'm really THAT naive.
3 | smiln.n.ny | February 21, 2006 05:39 PM
Looks like a lovely weekend! And what a gorgeous kitchen!
4 | Hilary | February 21, 2006 05:49 PM
What a fun weekend! The food, the company, the dreaded trip to WalMart. All good times. Sounds like a blast! (I particularly like your reality show group photo!)
5 | kelli | February 21, 2006 06:12 PM
Perfect! I've been looking for a good reciped to make chips in the oven. Thanks for that.
6 | chelsea | February 21, 2006 07:08 PM
As for Walmart "selling everything," wasn't it a famous airhead who asked, "Do they sell walls there?"
7 | Santadad | February 21, 2006 07:12 PM
looks totally awesome.
8 | jocelyn | February 21, 2006 08:22 PM
What a great weekend! And I'm definitely trying the chips recipe! (Sorry but Target is my fav...can't wait for my visit back to the States for that trip!).
9 | UKYankee | February 22, 2006 04:51 AM
I was looking at the photos and it looks like that wal-mart is only a wal-mart.....you should go somewhere with a Super Wal-mart. They really do sell everything!! And it is totally hilarious how us midwesterners (and most other places with extra space) take our wal-mart trips for granted.
10 | Hillary | February 22, 2006 07:24 AM
De-lurking here to let you in on the secret that for some time I wondered if you and Julie Powell were not actually the same person. (Until I got to the chapter about her lack of cleaning habits, that is.)
11 | Carrie | February 22, 2006 08:56 AM
Wow! on the kitchen. I can understand the constant cooking weekend. And a vote for YOUR tart - it's so beautiful it looks like a flower.
12 | Eileen | February 22, 2006 09:59 AM
That's awesome SantaDad remembered a Paris Hilton quote!! :)
13 | Janelle | February 22, 2006 01:34 PM
Perhaps I could just reside IN their kitchen...I would be happy there...or even better, we could transplant it, along with the view and the wine, to Colorado and it could just live in MY house!
14 | Teresa | February 23, 2006 12:11 AM
ahahahhahahaha you people don't know the half of it. Make that the eighth of it. Sixteenth. It's a good thing the family of this friend of ours tripled the size of their shoreline digs to nouveaux-riches proportions, thus allowing relatively peaceful coexistence (it was once a slightly shabby, unimposing cliffside cottage with a charmingly janky kitchen and a faint smell of old people's deck shoes). Because otherwise you guys would have ended up with a murder mystery-themed weekend. Oh, Smitten, you are soooo diplomatic.
15 | Hurricane Marge | February 23, 2006 05:11 PM
A tip to all: NEVER forget your weekend bag and send two gay men and a Smitten to Walmart to buy you thongs. What you're forced to wear will involve obscene sayings (which we've luckily and not surprisingly all forgotten by this juncture), pink tassels and shoddy elastic.
PS It's never the same when Hurricane Marge doesn't blow in for the weekend.
16 | NotoriousANG | February 23, 2006 08:44 PM
PINK TASSELS?! Smitten how could you.
17 | Hurricane Marge | February 24, 2006 03:46 AM
I just love your writing style; so fresh and fun. Your friends house sounds amazing, but your friends even more so, lucky you to have the luxury of a weekend with buddies! I think i'm going to plan one right now!
18 | mermaid | March 24, 2006 11:01 AM