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oh cookie cookie cookie, starts with c
In some cruel, cruel parallel universe where I were forced to choose between cookies and cakes, cake would never win, even if one of the cup variety topped with the most perfect plop of pink butter cream frosting (because pink tastes better, oh yes, it does) and brightly-colored confetti sprinkles.
I don't mean to diss on cake. I've had some good cakey creations in my time here, but even the most spectacular rum-doused pineapple upside down cake or flourless chocolate creation feels at times an uphill battle with the fact that cake, deep down inside, wishes to remain dry. Cookies, on the other hand, desire balance - crisp exteriors, supple interiors, and each and every one of their ingredients gets to make a stand-up, rah-rah appearance in the final flavor. Plus, they keep for almost a week.
Thank goodness I've never been forced to make such tyrannical decisions, but were I, I think I'd start with some of the creations in Thursday night's Chez Smitten Cookie Fest 2006, in which I tried to bake as many oversized cookies as a could in one night, to be assembled into ice cream sandwiches at my friend Dup's luau-style surprise 30th birthday party (the surprise in no way that he still puts up with our antics) last night.
Bonus: Pictures I was only allowed to take by promising not to publish them.
Sources:
- Big, Fat, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie - Recipe from AllRecipes.com via Hilary The recipe is perfect as-is, except for that whole "1/4 cup scoop per cookies" which even by giant cookie standards, is utterly insane. 1/8 cup or 2 T makes a more-than-big-enough giant cookie.
- Molasses-Spice Cookies from the Cooks Illustrated Best Recipe Cookbook, via this gorgeous Flickr stream
- Chocolate Sugar Cookies - from Retro Desserts, copied here.
disentangling, a lopsided how-to
A friend of mine is going through some entangling relationship drama from someone who was rented from the drama-free section of the boyfriend store, thus, disappointment abounds. I believe this was the cause for the bottle of wine last night and the ensuing headache; I don't know for sure because after grammatically correcting a certain email and marking it with a C-minus for "lack of originality," the conversation took a turn to lasagna and how damned good it is.
Still, I'm feeling kind of bad today and it's not just the dehydration. I voted for this guy and encouraged it wholly and damn, I hate being wrong. Besides, I'm never wrong! How could this have happened? I thought my dating radar had only sharpened since I'd gotten married and could more easily see through typical dating bullshit and now evidence points to the contrary. My once-sharp intuition has grown fuzzy and soft in the cradle of newlywed bliss.
Yet, I don't see why this should stop me from being as preachy and self-righteous as ever, so today I bring you Haphazard Dating Advice From Someone Quite Over All of It, really none of it specific to the aforementioned tangle but a general summary of everything I hear too much about. Also, to be taken with a grain of salt so large it might occlude your viewing of this whole page.
- Nice guys finish first. The guy who calls his mother on her birthday and remembers where your sister went to high school is the guy who is going to hold your hair when you're sick and not complain because he has made the bed more times this week than you.
- They're also easier to live with: they don't bitch when it's their turn to do dishes; don't feel emasculated by pushing a vacuum cleaner around a living room so they appear to live in a semblance of tidiness; don't complain about the lack of overall fairness in having to put the toilet seat down; and don't forget your birthday. They fold their own laundry. They always offer to carry the heaviest grocery bag.
- Be greedy. Do not offer to share someone unless you are okay being shared. He either is or he is not involved with someone else. There are no middle grounds and even a hint of a pause when queried is a sign that you may want to consider running, and running far.
- Beware of any man who calls an ex-girlfriend or wife "that bitch". In the same way that history books are written by the winners, relationship stories are only told by the person in front of you. There are no one-sided disasters; there are no blameless decompositions. A man like this is guaranteed to be calling you by the same name, or something more innovative, later on to his next girlfriend who will stroke his arm and say, "I'm so sowwy she was so mean to you." No need to be that girl, either.
- Spare yourself someone's tiring virgin/whore complex. Beware of men who think that every woman they work with is either stupid, a slut or la piece de resistance, a stupid slut, as there is not a chance deep down inside that they don't think the same of you.
- Always give bonus points to the guy who employs complete sentences and has run his profile through a spell-checker online, because in dating as in life, little things add up. It will also come in handy when you learn about the JDate 5'9".
- Always be willing to apologize first. I said willing. Self-righteous, martyred types make for boring life-partners.
- From the better to get it over with sooner than later file: I encourage you to belch at least once in an early-on date.
paradise city
It started last night, when the unwieldy, sickening heat broke open into something fantastic. Cascading rain plummeted onto mailboxes, cars and a few scattering cupcake-eaters without umbrellas and the streetlight below our apartment wobbled and maneuvered under the weight of days of unbroken sauna. A droplet of water somehow managed to ricochet through the smallest space between our air conditioner and windowsill and splash me on the hip.
When it rained in the summer, my best friend and I used go outside in our bathing suits and make up dance routines that also always involved parasols, I'm assuming because they were more fabulous than umbrellas. I'm pretty sure I wasn't concerned back then about my inability to dance with any finesse.
This morning it smells like summer camp, one part damp pavement and one part steamy air. It's so bright it's like the sky is shrugging its shoulders - "What storm last night? I have no idea what rain this is that you speak of." I can't believe there was a time I used to spend my summers swimming, playing softball, singing kumbaya and getting really over-the-top serious about Color War.
I'm not sure when I gave this up, but I'm pretty sure I didn't agree to it; I can't believe I've mixed up getting older and growing up. I'm totally making popsicles tonight.
somebody needs a hug!
I ended up in a somewhat awkward embrace with a middle-aged Suit on the crosstown bus this morning. As the bus slowed down and a cluster of air conditioning-dazed riders approached the back door, the driver slammed on his brakes, sending this man flying through two people. This buck stopped with me however, because via either a momentary sense of self-preservation or deeply ingrained instinct, my arms shot out, hooked underneath his and I somehow managed to break his fall.
It's an odd thing, to say the least, to find oneself in a close embrace with a complete stranger (a man, no less!) without fully realizing how this came to pass. He quickly gathered himself, jumped back — I'm certain dying of humiliation — and hurried down the back stairs. I was so startled I turned left instead of right when I hit the sidewalk, and rubbing my aching arm.
I blame the old folks for this, you know. Years of working in a nursing home and being on the constant lookout for the oft-toppling 87-year-old set has absorbed into my muscle reflexes, and now I'm catching complete strangers, embarrassing everyone involved.
I also blame this stifling heat, making me soft. [Thank god this whole global warming thing is just a farcical creation of the liberal media or it would be really scary, huh? Sorry, bad inside joke as I apparently work with someone who shares this view.] It was very un-New Yorker of me to not step aside and save my own ass, boasting Pollyanna instincts I'd never own up to if my brain hadn't steamed itself out my ears before 10 a.m. It used to be I just watched the Crazy, now I'm part of it.
I'm off to melt my flip-flops onto the sidewalk and try not to bear hug any more strangers today en route to the gym. One can only hope.
the great bake
Things I learned from the leather-skinned old folks next to us on the beach today:
- Those kids are not being careful with that ball and they're going to hit someone and the lifeguard just turns the other cheek.
- We're all on medicine which says they shouldn't go in the sun but we don't know anyone over 70 who isn't on some medicine that tells them not to do something they enjoy and it would be a shame to miss such a nice day.
- Weren't we all in love once?
- They are never going to Vegas again over 4th of July weekend.
- Frank Sinatra's pianist died.
- We all look good for our ages.
Things I saw on the beach today that I'm just going to admit right here that I never wish to see again and also, when did bare ass become de rigueur in public:
- A Russian woman who had to be at least 65 in a thong bikini.
- A middle-aged Asian man in a thong Speedo.
- A girl with her parents in a thong bikini who couldn't have been a day over 16.
- A man with shorts so low, he was about one inch from dropping trou, I'm talking both the beginning and end of the happy trail in plain site here, folks.
- Myself making this face.
the 10.5-month itch kvetch
As the Brighton shores again rule our weekends and we find ourselves depressingly at summer's halfway mark, Alex and I have taken this opportunity to have a near-convulsive multi-week freak-out session, mostly in the name of: Holy shit, have we already been married almost a year?!
How did this happen? Who approved this time passing so rapidly? And is this how it's going to be? Are you just one day bitching because you can't believe how many times you must visit a florist and how much money you have to cough up for him to still fail to do a good job at the wedding (interjection: guess I'm not over it just yet) and then next you two are bitching that the kids never call and you never get to see your grandkids? Because, I swear, at the rate we're going that will be in approximately sixty-two months.
It's more than that, really: if we had loosely decided that the possibility of creating spawn would be investigated at approximately the second year mark, are we halfway there? Is this our last Summer of Freedom? Does it have to rain so much? Will our cotton-themed gifts of the second anniversary arrive in the form of onesies? Because I'm pretty sure the one of us who will be bearing the brunt of the stretch marks just set that schedule back another year OR TEN.
And why are we still on cloud nine? No, this is not a complaint, but what about all that "evening out" that everyone warned us would descend on our existence, all that "the first year can be really tough"? It didn't happen; it hasn't been — are they wrong? Are we?
More pertinently: is fourteen question marks in one post excessive? Crap, fifteen? Because I don't have much to offer in the way of answers: I'm happy but I'm concerned. I wouldn't want things any other way but I'd like them to slow down a little. I wish we'd met each other when we were twenty and then it wouldn't feel like we had so much to fit in so quickly. But mostly, I want some assurance we're not going to wake up in five years with two screamers and a mortgage and wonder how we blinked and missed four whole years.
[And also, while I am asking for stuff, I'd like some assurance that when I get home he will have gotten to washing Monday's dishes so I don't have to do that eye-rolling nagging wife bit again, because I can assure you that makes me feel older than screamers and mortgages ever could.]
foolish notions
I'm concerned that I have completely over-extended your patience for me writing about music, (seriously, between Monster Ballads, Debbie Gibson and George Michael, this site is becoming like a Stereogum for lame people) but I think you'll forgive me for this one because I'm actually writing about my own stupidity today and when do we ever get tired of that?
Sunday afternoon Alex and I drove to pick up two of my friends from the train station who were eager to attend a proper Russian backyard BBQ (lots of smoked fish, pickled watermelon and your liver). George Michael's Faith came on the radio, and have I ever mentioned that I like to sing? A lot? Even though I'm out of tune and have no range and typically only know the first or second line of a song and fill the rest with raucous, upbeat "da-las" and "ba-las" which cause my husband to visibly cringe?
So, it was pretty much like that on Sunday, too, and as Faith progressed my voice grew increasingly boisterous because this song, this is one I know by heart; especially the part when he says "I've reconsidered; My food is yours, son" and hey! why is my husband laughing harder than usual at me?
"Debbie, don't you mean 'my foolish notion?'"
I was flooded with embarrassment.
"I… I… I…"
I am never wrong! But, 'foolish notion' does make a wee bit more sense than 'food is yours, son'. In fact, why is George Michael offering some man in which he'd like to have faith his food? And why would he have to reconsider before he'd share? … I guess I finally got to have that "Hold Me Closer, Tony Danza" moment I've always wanted.
Now your turn. I want you to share your Material/Cheerio Girls, Dancing with Myself/Marcels, Beast of Burdens/Bacon Burgers. Learn from The Smitten: there's simply no point in having humliating experiences if you don't air them publicly for the amusement of others.
seal breakers
- Monster Ballads are indeed a slippery slope. It starts out so innocently — "OMG I haven't heard this Bon Jovi songs since I had The Claw! Turn it up!" — two days later, you're ordering the box set. By Thursday you've moved onto nostalgia for Air Supply and Meatloaf and next thing you know, you're slowing yourself down from a run on a Friday with Careless Whispers. You look around the gym, embarrassed, then breathe a sigh of relief that it's just on your headphones and not on loudspeakers.
- In other news, I desperately need some new music. I always thought the single most prevalent sign of being an adult was that your music tastes will have just dropped off at a certain point; you stopped buying new things, you didn't care that the kids didn't listen to the BeeGees anymore… which makes me clearly a grownup because that year for me was 2000 and all my music is putting me to sleep. Suggestions are welcome but do understand that I have no taste for the overly-suggested Decemberists or any song but one from the White Stripes.
- Not that any further evidence was needed of my insanity, but I made this Gateau de Crepes over the weekend. I probably don't have to warn you about the amount of work it is, but it was incredible. None of the dryness of typical cake, none of the bland; the layers are paper thin and each bite had eight different things going on. The only thing I wasn't able to pull off was the burnt sugar top because my mean, mean husband won't let me get a blowtorch, mumbling unreasonable things like "you can be clumsy AT TIMES" and "very old building with paper-thin walls" and "that time with the crystal/phone/camera/laptop/your toes/the stove and your midsection/the heatpipe incident."
- I'd round up that last item with "obviously he does not really, truly love me" but I can't say that because last week, when I was at work until 8:30 p.m. I came home and he had 1) made dinner, 2) bought wine that cost more than $10!, 3) did all the dishes afterward, 4) downloaded a slew of the aforementioned and mentioned Monster Ballads for my iPod, and 5) decided he wants to make dinner once a week for now on. Consider the marriage contract resigned for at least another year. Maybe even two.