Own too many cookbooks, watch too much TV

I predicted Food52's annual Tournament of Cookbooks would end in a showdown between some combination of Tender, Super Natural Every Day, and Mozza. I was so wrong. 

I basically just picked the books I knew. That was feeble. I am now educating myself on the three titles left standing. They are:  

1. Joe Beef. Bought it. Tremendous book.  Love everything about it from the writing to the bison taxidermy to the absinthe glasses. I love everything about it except . . . the food. The photograph of the trussed fish with milky eyeballs on page 33 turns my stomach, as do shots of the marrowbones stuffed with vegetables and the whelks with escargot butter. Here is a short list of the recipes in the book that trigger nausea: horsemeat topped with a fried egg, Velveeta eclairs, chicken skin jus, chicken skin tacos, mackerel benedict, squid stuffed with lobster, cornflake eel nuggets, pork fish sticks, Jerusalem artichokes with ketchup. 

And yet I can absolutely see why this big, engrossing book has fared so well in the Tournament and think it probably deserves to win. It just doesn't make me hungry.

2. Milk Bar. We're having a long-planned party tonight for which my friend Lisa and I are making David Chang's famous pork dish. (The meat has been in the oven for 5 hours now and hopes are high.) This seemed the right occasion to try a dessert from Milk Bar, so Isabel baked a batch of the compost cookies (choped pretzels, ground coffee, potato chips, chocolate chips, butterscotch chips) last night. I am predicting they will be great. I completely endorse Kim Severson's decision to advance this book, however wacky, unhealthy, and impractical, over Nigel Slater as I am less enamored of Tender than the indignant commenters at Food52.

3. Mourad. By coincidence, Owen and I ate at Mourad Lahlou's restaurant, Aziza, the other night. (We are trying to eat at every restaurant on Geary Boulevard in San Francisco, in order, and Aziza was next.) The meal was delicious, but really expensive. I was going to buy the book for $40 from the restaurant, but after paying $28 for a single exquisite short rib, decided to wait until I got home and order it for $20.11 from amazon. I find the book cold, forbidding, and cheffy and sort of regret the purchase.

Which of the three will take the gold? I predict Joe Beef, but my record is not good.

And now, veering off from cookbooks: After our Aziza dinner, Owen and I went to see Albert Nobbs. You should see this sweet movie; don't let the hideous previews turn you off. It was mildly inappropriate for Owen, especially a startling bedroom scene involving Mrs. Bates, who seems to have gone AWOL from Downton Abbey. But I guess you have to learn about oral sex somewhere and there are worse places than at an art house movie with your mom. I sure hope so.

And speaking of Mrs. Bates, I am sadly afflicted with Downton Abbey fever. It's going around and it's pathetic, but also harmless so I'm letting it rage. I daydream about the clothes, the clinking tea cups, the thwarted romances. Especially the thwarted romances. For a while, I had a mad crush on Bates. Mad in several senses of the word, as Bates is a paunchy, limping fiftyish valet, not the obvious choice for a crush, but, with all due respect to Cynthia Nixon, who chooses? Lately, however, the odd Bates crush has been replaced by unswerving devotion to Matthew. Which requires no explanation. I am now ready to tape his photograph to the inside of my locker. But I don't want him for me! Selflessly, I want him for Mary the same way I wanted Jim for Pam, Tim Riggins for Lyla, Jordan Catalano for Angela, Sawyer for Kate, the Sheriff for the Widow. And on and on.

Think of all the books I could have read.

Downton Abbey is a ridiculous show. Highly recommend it.

Must go baste the pork and set the table. Full report tomorrow.

The olive oil flows like water

He stirred the "breadcrumbs" but would not touch the sprouts.

Some trends have emerged from our two most recent Nancy Silverton meals. See if you can spot them.

SUNDAY

hanger steak with arugula salad and Parmesan
brussels sprouts with prosciutto breadcrumbs and sherry vinaigrette

Time consuming? Very. A lot of chopping and whisking, many bowls and skillets and much subsequent dish washing.

Olive oil called for: 2 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons.

Notes: The hanger steak (a cheap and tasty cut) was fabulous. The balsamic marinade: brilliant. Make this recipe, which you can steal right here though I still think this is a book worth purchasing.
The verdict on the brussels sprouts is mixed. First of all, they're laborious. You fry chopped prosciutto, then fry some breadcrumbs, then toast the fried breadcrumbs in the oven, then mix them with the fried prosciutto and some chopped herbs and toast some more. Now make a vinaigrette. Now toss the trimmed, halved sprouts with olive oil and cook them in a bucket of olive oil. With me so far? Now toss the warm, cooked brussels sprouts with the breadcrumbs and squeeze over some lemon. DELICIOUS. Stand at the counter eating the brussels sprouts because they're so good you can't stop yourself and because they're brussels sprouts and they are going to help live forever. What about the vinaigrette? Oops. You forgot the vinaigrette! Add the vinaigrette. Ruin the sprouts. The next day, give the harsh, sour sprouts to the chickens. The obvious lesson: make the sprouts, but skip the vinaigrette. (For the record, I used flaxseed meal instead of breadcrumbs, but I wouldn't do this unless you are experimenting with a crazy diet or happen to love the faint aroma of fish.)

after ruination by vinaigrette

MONDAY

stuffed quail with pancetta, honey, and sage
long-cooked broccoli

Time consuming? Very. Marinating then stuffing then skewering the quail, then wrapping them in pancetta, then grilling, then plating the wee birds and then garnishing them with grilled radicchio and deep fried sage will make you wish you'd just bought a rotisserie chicken.

Olive oil called for: 3 cups

I bet they look better at Mozza.

Notes: As a bird that lives in our neighborhood, I find quail adorable. As a foodstuff, I find quail silly. They are too freaking small. You stuff a quail with pancetta then wrap it in pancetta and what you're eating is pancetta. Good luck finding a bite of bird meat. For that you need tweezers, a crab fork, and your glasses. As for the broccoli, I found it sodden with olive oil. I guess last night's dinner was a bust. I'm sure these dishes are great when you order them at Mozza, but they were not great as prepared by me.

Would you like some broccoli with your olive oil?

Did you spot the trends so subtly highlighted in this post? Bravo! You are very perceptive.

Willard Scott? Willard Scott?

 1912*

This post has nothing to do with food.

My grandmother -- who has appeared regularly on this blog over the years -- turned 100 on Friday. It felt like a national holiday. Family came from Guatemala and Texas and Rhode Island and friends came from all over the San Francisco Bay Area for the party.  My aunt did an outstanding job with the guest list and the menu and the venue and when it was over I was sad.

Justine and I read a limerick:

"She was born Julia Aida
But to us she's always been Dita.
She grew up in Guatemala City
And word has it she was quite pretty
Which makes sense 'cause she still is at fifty. . ."

It went on, but -- hard to believe! -- deteriorated from there.

I then gave a brief, earnest toast about Dita's wonderfulness as a grandmother, citing her steadiness, her absolute consistency, her ability to listen, all of it true and all of it heartfelt, all of it maybe a little boring and missing the impish je ne sais quoi that is so integral to her charm and character.

1997: Isabel could look a lot better. Dita couldn't.

What I really wanted to say is that my grandmother, who comes across as a very proper and polite, is deep down mischievous and zany. She appears so prim that people approach her like a fragile little doll and sometimes look like they're about to kiss her ring. But encouraged just a tiny bit and she proves to be adventurous and wacky and hilarious, especially after half a beer or a watered-down old fashioned.

Prim?

1993: after two margaritas in Panajachel

I know better!

At the party with our friend Ayelet

I didn't take a single picture Friday so I had to swipe the photo above off Facebook. Too busy making toasts, swallowing happy tears, swallowing wine (oops), and avoiding the crab cakes. 

*I had this post all written on Saturday but couldn't bring myself to push the button on account of this baby picture. I think it's adorable, but my grandmother detests it. She thinks it makes her look fat. Which it does. But she was a baby and a lifetime of slenderness cancels out a chubby phase circa 1912, doesn't it? I still feel sheepish about posting it, but I'm posting it, mostly because she doesn't read my blog. 

Good things come in twos and so do other things

Two salads from Nancy Silverton's Mozza:

1. Nancy's chopped salad. Envision (or just look at the picture above) a mountain of chopped iceberg lettuce, radicchio, red onion, salami, aged provolone, and chickpeas tossed with an oregano vinaigrette. One of the few salads that not only survives, but improves overnight. It does lose crunch and starts to resemble sauerkraut, but it tastes zestier on day 2 than on day 1. Which is good because there was lots left over. Husband: "How many does this serve?" Me: "I think four." Isabel: "Four elephants?" Yes, my saucy daughter. And now it is all gone. What does that tell you? The recipe is here, although the online version calls for twice the quantity of cheese and salami as the version in the book. I think 4 ounces of each was plenty and healthier.

2. Little gems with gorgonzola and dates. I separated all the little gems (found at Whole Foods; like tiny heads of romaine) into individual leaves to wash them, and then it turns out the salad was supposed to be made wedge style, with the leaves not separated. Forged ahead. Tossed the leaves with an incredibly decadent and copious dressing made from yogurt, buttermilk (I used milk), thyme, sherry vinegar and huge chunks of gorgonzola. Served with a few thinly sliced dates. The combination of the sweet-jammy dates, creamy-salty gorgonzola, and crunchy-refreshing lettuce: crazy genius. (Too much dressing though; you can make this salad three times over with the quantity Silverton's recipe produces.) The recipe is here. Try it. Small portions.Very rich.

Two obstacles to full engagement with the glories of Mozza this week:

1. We have two ovens and both of them are broken. The parts have been on order for a month. This eliminates about half the recipes from Mozza, including the veal stracotto, walnut biscotti, and pizzas. Of course that leaves the pastas and the Greek yogurt gelato. Except. Except. Except.

2.  Sheepish about this because I have always thought they were ridiculous and have been opposed philosophically and emotionally, but I am on a reduced carbohydrate diet right now and have to eat my words because I like it and it is working. I was not screwing around when I started a diet back in December, and when the militant calorie counting/exercise yielding dismal results, I changed tactics. Not Atkins or South Beach, just zero starch (grains, potatoes) or processed sugar and almost zero alcohol. A modified version of this. I'm not doing his bizarre exercise program (although I'm curious about it) and he doesn't endorse gorgonzola or salami, not to mention oil, so very modified. Also, he says to eat 10 servings of vegetables per day and I am incapable. I am not, after all, an elephant. More to say about the diet in the future. Prepare yourselves.

Anyway, this is why I am not throwing myself at Silverton's gnocchi with chanterelles or her goat cheese and bacon pizza or her coconut sorbetto. One day I will, although it looks like I'll have to be altogether more moderate going forward than in the past.

Two movies I dread, but will probably see:

1. Albert Nobbs. The preview is a complete turnoff, but then there's this.

2. Melancholia. Kept putting it off. Now someone in the house is insisting.

There are better ways to eat squid

why didn't the boys want to come see Pina with us?

Isabel and I came home from seeing a movie yesterday afternoon and found the house occupied by people watching football, drinking beer, and snarfing up tortilla chips.  Children were eating pretzel sticks and tracking crumbs around like Hansel and Gretel and it was all generally kind of messy and after I said hello and disapprovingly plucked a few wet leaves someone had tracked onto the impractical pink rug, went into the kitchen, made myself a cup of herbal tea, and started cleaning squid for dinner. Diets can be so isolating. Dieting can make me into such a priss.

in fact, not tempting at all

My sister came in to the kitchen and I saw a fork in the road. I could continue drinking tea and feeling aloof, or I could take the other road. The low road. Or was it the high road? I haven't had a good conversation with Justine in a month and if there is ever a time for a dieting person to have wine, this seemed like that time. We had wine. We talked about friends. We talked about shoes. We talked about my experience with the eccentric exercises advocated by Jonathan Bailor. We talked about the Food52 Cookbook, which Justine believes to be almost flawless, albeit confusingly organized. It was very fun. It was definitely the high road.

As we talked and drank, I made Nancy Silverton's red wine braised squid, which entails, as the name suggests, braising squid for an hour in red wine, olive oil, and brandy, along with a chopped orange (rind included), garlic, celery, and carrots. Serve with homemade garlic mayonnaise and garlic toast.

Justine had to take her kids home before the meal was ready, but her husband, Michael, stayed for dinner and to see the end of the game.  I wonder if he was glad he stayed for dinner. I know he was unhappy with the end of the game.

polite

The squid was very tender -- not rubbery at all -- but I actually like the elastic crunch of squid and missed it. The broth was a purplish black and studded with chunks of bright orange peel. It was intimidating to look at. It was a very weird dish.

What we thought:

-Isabel didn't touch the squid or mayonnaise, but ate lots of garlic toast.

-Owen liked the squid, but said he couldn't eat very much because it was "too hard."

-Michael said the squid made him feel like he'd taken a vacation on an Italian island, but he wouldn't come out and say he liked it.

-My husband said the squid was too challenging to eat on its own, but that when he put it on the toast and added mayonnaise it was great. Which is exactly what Silverton writes in the headnote: "The rind gives the sauce a slight bitterness that can seem overwhelming until you eat it on crostini with a dab of mayonnaise, and then it all comes together." My husband, culinary savant.

- I liked it okay. Ate lots of the mayonnaise mixed up with the squid, which was not exactly a glorious diet moment, though I told myself it was acceptable because I skipped the toast. Later, I had bad dreams.

About squid: so cheap. If you're trying to save money at the supermarket, consider squid. At Whole Foods it costs $3.50 per pound cleaned and $2.50 per pound with beaks, globular eyes and lots of translucent jelly that must be squeezed out of the bodies and rinsed down the drain. I bought it uncleaned and spent 25 minutes prepping the cold, slippery squids and cutting off their tiny bulbous heads. By so doing, I saved $2.50 which will buy me a small Diet Coke next time I go see a movie.

Alternatively, I could have spent 25 minutes carefully hand-washing the shirt I was planning to take to the dry cleaner today and saved $6. Or, I could have cleaned out the car, which is a disgrace and causes my heart to sink every time I get in.  Or, I could have read a few good stories in the Sunday newspaper, which remains untouched. Or, I could have wrapped and packed away my mother's wedding china which will otherwise be destroyed in an earthquake. Et cetera.

The correct choice is to buy your squid already cleaned. And yet I know that when I'm standing there at the fish counter again I'll go for uncleaned. I just can't leave $2.50 sitting on the table. This is called thinking small.

On another subject, over at the Tournament of Cookbooks, Tender got a big, wet kiss from Jacob Weisberg today. I would guess that in the final rounds it will come down to some combination of Tender, Mozza, and Super Natural Every Day. Tender would be my last choice among these three for some of  the very reasons Weisberg loved it.

Bring me flesh and bring me. . . oh, I wish

 You in the heritage apron, what are YOU smiling about?

To make Nancy Silverton's porcini-rubbed rib-eye bistecca from The Mozza Cookbook, you first go to a butcher counter carrying a big wad of cash. Ask for bone-in rib-eye steaks, cut really thick; they should look almost like roasts. (If you remember, tell the butcher to "french" them, but if you don't remember, it's okay. I didn't.) Brace yourself. I felt like I'd been punched in the gut when I saw the price, but am glad I recovered and sucked it up, as you will see below.

Once you've got your hands on the steaks, find the biggest bag of dried porcini mushrooms at the supermarket. The recipe calls for 2 ounces and I thought that would be a wee packet, but it turns out to be a large sack. Porcini are both bulky and light.

Back home in your kitchen, pulverize the mushooms in a spice grinder. Then grind some black pepper and red pepper flakes and mix these with sugar, kosher salt, and the mushroom dust. Spread the dun-colored powder on a big plate and coat your steaks thickly on all sides.  Now, grill them or cook them in a super-hot iron skillet, flipping occasionally, until they are as done as you like them. (Rare!)  Let them rest for 10 or 15 minutes. Slice against the grain and eat with gluttonous abandon, because these steaks are disgustingly expensive and by far the best steaks I have ever cooked.

Why so good? First, I almost never buy such premium meat and it makes a difference. I know I shouldn't, but I often buy the thin, cheap steaks at Safeway and it turns out you get what you pay for. This meat, when cooked, resembled tuna sashimi -- tender, pink, compact, and plump -- and was almost as pleasurable to gaze upon as to eat. I think these would have been the best steaks I've ever cooked even without the porcini coating. But the umami of that mushroom powder pushed them off the charts. I served the steaks with Nancy Silverton's simple and delicious recipe for broccolini sauteed with red pepper flakes and vinegar. (If you make this, you can safely halve the olive oil with no loss of savor.)

As Simon Doonan would say, it was a very heterosexual meal.

Which brings me to the second subject of this post: Gay Men Don't Get Fat by Simon Doonan. This book has brought me even more joy than those steaks. After I ate my 4.6 ounces of beef, I took Gay Men Don't Get Fat to the gym and laughed so hard that I almost fell off the treadmill. (Life with almost no alcohol = walking on the treadmill after dinner.)

Doonan quote relevant to my recent adventures with DIY:

"The fabulous irony of all this Depression era fetishization is particularly piquant for moi. My mother, Betty, left school at the age of thirteen in rural Northern Ireland and was sent to work with a pork butcher. As she hacked off the trotters and ears of the unwittingly organic animals, she dreamed of the day when she could tear of her authentic work wear, escape to the big city, bleach her hair, wear nylons, drink gin cocktails and never step in animal feces again. She would have been amused, as am I, to see people a the apex of urban glamour donning heritage aprons and willingly, ardently, passionately and enthusiastically electing to earn their living by deep-frying artisanal doughnuts in hand-harvested pig lard."

(I have sometimes stepped in animal feces while drinking a gin cocktail.)

The two chapters everyone interested in food should read: "Macaroons are so Gay!" and "Jamie Oliver is a lesbian." If I start quoting from these chapters I won't be able to stop and Doonan's lawyers will come after me for copyright infringement. Sufficeth to say, "lesbian food" is a supremely useful term for farm-to-table cooking that features wholesome grains, locally sourced vegetables, and communal tables. Which is to say, the predominant -- and wonderful -- cooking style of the moment. I wish I were bold enough to drop "lesbian food" into conversation, but I think I would blush and feel the need to explain and worry I was offending someone, which I probably would be. We're not all Simon Doonan.

There is only one chapter -- about the taxonomy and sex lives of bears -- that I hesitate to endorse. Unless you are curious about the subject, you might want to skip "Operation Goldilocks."  I was curious about this subject and appreciated the enlightenment, but even so winced a few times like the prudish straight chick that I am. Chacun a son gout and that chapter might not be to your gout. (Doonan endorses sprinkling your conversation with French.)

Anyway, highest recommendation on this book with one big caveat: If you are my father or my husband or my father-in-law or, come to think of it, maybe just if you are a straight man who has ever in his life worn Dockers or participated in a naff belching contest, don't bother with Gay Men Don't Get Fat. You will not like it.

Mozza: Opening Night

Isabel savors Nancy Silverton's mussels 

Well, here we go again. Tonight I made the steamed mussels with tomato passata, chiles and herbs from Nancy Silverton's Mozza and they were fabulous -- garlicky, spicy, salty -- but only my husband and I would eat them. Isabel doesn't like shellfish, so she just ate the garlic toast and some tangerines. Owen dipped the garlic toast in the broth, but wouldn't eat the mussels. I ate the mussels but wouldn't -- well, didn't -- eat the garlic toast. My husband ate the toast and mussels both and washed them down with a big, fattening beer.

At least we all sat at the same table.

It's an outstanding recipe, easy and straightforward and delicious. Cook some garlic and scallions in olive oil, add white wine, tomato sauce, and mussels. Steam for 3 minutes, turn off the heat, and stir in masses of fresh oregano, basil, and chives. Serve with the aforementioned garlic toast. Here's the actual recipe. My one suggestion: If you don't love salt, cut the quantity called for by a half teaspoon. I do love salt and would describe the dish as super salty, which means a lot of people will find it far too salty.

I hadn't been all that excited about Mozza, which looked like just another Italian cookbook. Now I'm excited. Given ongoing slimming efforts, I'm not sure how to handle the pizzas, pastas, and rivers of olive oil running through its pages, but will figure it out as we go along.

Incidentally, Mozza is one of the titles competing in the Tournament of Cookbooks, which starts tomorrow and which I have been eagerly awaiting since the last one ended more than a year ago. Roz Chast is judging; I wonder if her verdict will appear in the form of a cartoon.

Most of you were very patient with The Best of the Best from California. Thank you. It was a horrid book. The minute Isabel chose it, I regretted telling her she could choose. But I could not renege.

At least Betty Friedan had Friedan

That picture is so 5 minutes ago.

Owen and I are in Seattle for the long weekend and day before yesterday we drove out to the Quimper Peninsula where the writer Betty MacDonald lived for a few miserable years in the late 1920s and raised chickens. I'm sorry she suffered, but the experience did provide the material for The Egg and I, and I'm not sorry she wrote that great book. MacDonald's literary reputation is essentially nonexistent today, which is a mystery and a tragedy given her wit, talent, and enormous popularity back in the day. Is it because she was named Betty? It's hard to take a Betty seriously these days. And I don't think MacDonald helps. Nor, come to think of it, does a masterwork called The Egg and I.

MacDonald's onetime hometown of Chimacum, Washington is forlorn and depressing, at least in January. We drove the length of Egg and I* Road and somewhere along that stretch sits the farm where MacDonald was so memorably unhappy. No landmarks, but you get a strong sense of clamminess, chill, and dank houses inhabited by men with bushy gray beards. After our brief tour, we went to Port Townsend and wandered through antiques stores where I refused to buy Owen a $28 vintage Star Wars kit that he insists is a canny investment and will be worth hundreds of dollars in a few years. "When I'm an adult it will sell for $180," he said. "You just don't understand."

a meaningful sight, at least to me

At dusk, we returned to Seattle and ate dinner at Delancey. I've wanted to eat at this Ballard pizzeria ever since I watched it come to life on Orangette. It was exactly as I had expected -- studiously simple and handsome and urban-rustic. There were battered concrete floors and candles in jelly jars. Our young waitress was beautiful, soft-spoken, and tattooed; a lesbian couple with their baby sat at a nearby table. It could have been San Francisco, except that too many of the young men were dressed like lumberjacks. We felt right at home.

The salad -- radicchio, green leaves of something, blood oranges, and pistachios -- could not have been prettier. It was also very delicious, though I might have toasted the pistachios.

proof we were there

The pizza that followed was a nearly perfect rendition of the austere Neapolitan pizza so popular now.

For dessert, Owen ordered the cannoli. Looking back on it, I think the menu might have said "cannoli" not cannoli which should have tipped me off that it was going to be a playful deconstruction rather than a strict interpretation. Instead of crispy pastry tubes filled with cream, he got a few lace cookies sitting atop blobs of cream. No, no, no! That's like serving sliced ham alongside two pieces of bread and calling it a "sandwich." Or putting some raspberries on a plate next to a shortbread cookie and calling it a "tart." Bad trend, this.

Still, other than the cannoli bait-and-switch, thumbs up on Delancey.

Apparently the diet is on hold this weekend.

*can't get Blogger to accept ampersands

How insulting to Jamaicans

"Fresh from Wisconsin"

I can't decide which is the most revolting recipe in Best of the Best from California.

Is it the chip shot chicken? (Coat chicken thighs in nonfat sour cream, roll in crushed barbecued potato chips, bake.)

Or is it the Jamaican chicken? (Slather chicken breasts in blend of instant coffee and lowfat vanilla yogurt. Bake. Top with pineapple slices.)

How about the hot chicken salad casserole? (Mix chicken meat, canned water chestnuts, canned cream of chicken soup, chopped hard boiled eggs, rice, and mayonnaise in casserole dish. Top with buttered cornflakes.* Bake.)

See? Impossible to choose. The name for this style of cooking is "American Grotesque."

The other night for my husband's birthday I served the lemon chicken pasta, a recipe Isabel had flagged when she chose the book. It sounded pleasant enough, but with Best of the Best even apparently innocuous dishes can turn out to be deeply weird once you start cooking. To make lemon chicken pasta, you saute sliced chicken breasts and mushrooms, then season the mixture with oregano, lemon juice, and Butter Buds. (If you're unfamiliar with Butter Buds, it's a cheap yellow powder that smells like movie theatre popcorn and supposedly contains no fat but loads of butter flavor.) To the chicken-mushroom-Butter Buds mixture, you add some broth and cornstarch to make a really thick sauce that gives the whole dish the shine and slippery, gelatinous mouthfeel of a Chinese stir fry. My husband said, "This is just terrible."

Fortunately, his birthday cake was somewhat better, a mocha torte that calls for only staple ingredients like nuts, chocolate, flour, and cream. The book is inconsistent like that, veering from the synthetic and outlandish to the respectable and pretty good. Confusing!

the rare dessert recipe that doesn't contain instant pudding, Cool Whip, or a can of  fruit cocktail

But even a pretty good mocha torte can't compensate for the overall heinousness of Best of the Best from California. The authors, Gwen McKee and Barbara Moseley, claim to be trying to preserve America's culinary heritage by plucking the most beloved and "popular" recipes from regional spiral-bound cookbooks like The Tahoe Parents Nursery School 40th Anniversary Alumni Cookbook and We're Cookin' in Cucamonga.

A thoughtful anthology of great spiral-bound cookbook recipes would be a wonderful thing, but this isn't it.  No thoughtful anthology would claim that a salad of sugar-free Jell-O, raspberry wine, cranapple juice, crushed pineapple, and pine nuts represents the best of California cooking.

I've made 12 recipes from the book and most of them were either so-so or pretty good. That sounds like a very decent return, but bear in mind those were carefully selected recipes. After perusing the ingredients I was game to tackle Mexican stroganoff and chicken lasagna. But I could not bring myself to make the cream of broccoli  soup spiked with Cheez Whiz. And I had no interest at all in the Tunnel of Spuds meat loaf, which contains hamburger meat, instant mashed potatoes, Parmesan cheese, applesauce, catsup, lemon juice and grape jelly. Call me a food snob. I don't care.

Here are two things I have liked about the book:

a. the recipes are easy

b. I am not even slightly tempted to eat them.

I'm calling it a day with Best of the Best. I may let Isabel choose another title, because I didn't spend very long with this one.

On another subject, if you are in the Bay Area, I am speaking/reading at Omnivore Books in San Francisco on Wednesday at 6 p.m. Please come!

*I have no idea how you butter cornflakes.

Apparently I actually could live on air

It looked better after it was roasted, but not much.

I'm not screwing around with this diet and it's interfering with my blog. I haven't been cooking anything except tedious low-calorie foods like the turkey breast pictured above. The recipe comes from Best of the Best from California and involves making a paste of parsley, garlic, and dried herbs into which you dip thin slices of orange. Then you stuff the coated orange slices under the skin of the turkey and put the turkey in the oven. As far as I could tell, the orange slices did nothing for the flavor of the meat, just made the skin bulge in an ungainly fashion. That said, it was a tasty and juicy turkey breast and 1.3 ounces of the leftover meat made a great lunch today when mixed with 1 chopped celery stick and 1 teaspoon of vinaigrette.

I've been on the diet for 20 days now and have lost 4.5 pounds. The weight is not exactly melting off. What excellent survivalist genes I must have! There have been a few slips, like the night at Animal and New Year's Eve, but mostly abstinence. No alcohol. No baking. Do I have to rename the blog? 

Last night, after a 140 calorie chicken sausage and a spinach salad with 1 tablespoon of vinaigrette (that was before I weighed myself this morning and cut back to a teaspoon), I went to the gym and walked very fast on the treadmill for 90 minutes. I like the treadmill because you can read the newspaper while you exercise. It's remarkable how many newspaper stories deal with having too much or too little to eat.

I read about anorexics.

I read Tara Parker Pope's depressing story about how hard it is to lose weight and keep it off. (You probably should not read this unless you are naturally slim.)

I read about kids in Congo who are so poor that they only eat every other day, a problem that puts my own "problem" in perspective.

I read a lot of other stories, too. It was my New Year's resolution to read the newspaper cover to cover every day, like the Italian mother in The Imperfectionists. Sadly, I'm going to have to modify this very enjoyable resolution because it turns out I don't have three hours a day to read the newspaper which is what the task seems to require, at least when the paper is the New York Times. The obvious solution would be to cut back to reading just the stories that interest me. Except that's what I've always done and means I end up reading mostly stories like this and this. Thoughts? How do other people filter the news so you get enough, but not too much?

Today is my husband's birthday. We are having a festive dinner tonight, including a mocha torte from Best of the Best which means tomorrow I will have something  to write about, even if I won't be able to tell you what it tastes like.

Mostly resistible meals

not my idea of a thrilling collection

My in-laws, Mary and David, came from Boston for Christmas and during their stay Mary cleaned Owen's room with him and took him to the Container Store to buy a shelf for his collection of Transformers. Until a few days ago, he stored his Transformers under the bed, on the bed, and all over the floor. He sat there one night organizing them on that Container Store shelf and singing Christmas carols and it was one of my happiest moments of the whole season to watch him discover the pleasure of organizing a ridiculous collection. A pleasure I know all too well.

not most people's idea of a thrilling collection

Cleaning Owen's room was a monumental feat. Mary is a hero.

And this is how I repaid her: By cooking a series of one-dish casseroles out of The Best of the Best from California, a book that pays homage to the wonders of condensed cream of mushroom soup and Jell-O instant pudding.

Meal #1: chicken and wild rice casserole.

Could it be any uglier?

I appreciated how easy this hideous casserole was. To make this you basically cut everything up, season with pre-mixed poultry seasoning, scrape into a big dish, and bake. I thought it was inedible -- dry, bland, sagey, soupy.

But Mary and David loved it, as did their son, as did their grandchildren. My kids sat around crowing about how the tables are now turned! That finally I know what it's like to sit down to a meal I don't like! I wondered if bad taste is genetic and whether I could blame Mary and David for this, but then I reminded myself that they do nice things like take Owen to the Container Store and squelched this line of thought.

Meal #2. Lasagna in a bun.

 To me, they look very tasty.

Fry some hamburger and onion then add jarred spaghetti sauce. Hollow out hoagie rolls, mix preshredded cheeses and ricotta. Stuff the buns with meat and cheese, then top with more shredded cheese. Bake. I really think this concept has potential, not that the dish met its potential; no one liked them very much. I could imagine what these tasted like, so didn't actually taste them because I'm on a diet.

Meal #3. Chicken lasagna. You take meat off a rotisserie chicken, make a white sauce, layer the meat and sauce with noodles and mozzarella. Bake. Everyone liked it; Mary said it reminded her of chicken a la king. I knew from her description exactly what it tasted like, so didn't taste it.

Eat your heart out, Norman Rockwell.

Meal #4. Mexican stroganoff. To make this bastard dish, you fry hamburger and onions, season heavily with chili and paprika, stir in mushrooms and sour cream, then pour over egg noodles.  I took a tiny taste for seasoning and it was enough to know that Mexican stroganoff is both absurd and delicious.

By the way, if you're wondering what it's like to cook meals you don't eat, the answer is: not that hard as long as you also make a really good salad that contains enough -- but not too much! -- feta cheese.

Finally, I did make one Best of the Best dessert, a Hershey's Kiss pie for David's birthday. Mary had earlier in the week reminisced about a Cool Whip dessert she loves, chuckling as she "admitted" this. I took that as license to serve a Cool Whip dessert, which is not ordinarily my thing. To produce this pie, you melt the unwrapped contents of a 12-ounce bag Hershey's kisses with 1/4 cup of milk in a saucepan. Then you add an 8 ounce brick of cream cheese and stir until it melts. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in 12 ounces of Cool Whip until the mixture is homogeneous. Pour the chocolate cream into an Oreo crust (frozen or homemade) and refrigerate until firm.

I did eat a .75 ounce portion of this and almost fainted it was so good. You don't realize how much flavor is contained in a one centimeter shard of Oreo crust until you go on a diet.

Anyway, I didn't do any holiday cooking this year because we were invited other places. It was very restful .

Mary and David are back in Boston now and we are in Los Angeles. We went to this great restaurant the other night and ordered small plates of pig's ear salad, burrata with tomatillo salsa, veal sweetbreads, poutine with oxtail gravy, hanger steak, pork belly sandwiches, gnocchi with liver sauce, and balsamic barbecued ribs. The kids were game and cheerful and ate more than I'd expected. I tasted everything. 

Happy New Year, everyone.

So who's really slagging who?

They look so innocent.

Have you been following the whole bake sale kerfuffle?

First, you have to read Jennifer Steinhauer's story in the New York Times. If you don't have 7 minutes to spare, I'll offer a brief recap: People are bringing store-bought food to pot lucks and bake sales and Steinhauer is irritated:

"Nothing is quite as depressing as the modern bake sale, where amid the veritable celebration of poundcakes and misshapen cookies are the inevitable Ziploc bags filled with Oreos or perfectly formed bakery bought treats. In the countless sales I have attended over the years, I have been amazed by the number of packaged cookies, high-end cupcakes and impeccably round marzipan-covered confections that people plop down on the table, with no compunction, to be resold."

For the record, I think Steinhauer's tone could have been more diplomatic and I think that some of the people she quotes sound snotty. Moreover, I don't agree with her about pot lucks, another target of her disappointment. In my view, you can bring whatever you want to a pot luck, from a bucket of KFC to a homemade croquembouche, and everyone should say, thank you so much. With feeling. Acceptance and inclusiveness are hallmarks of the pot luck.

Bake sales are different. About bake sales, I wholeheartedly agree with Steinhauer. I don't think Oreos belong at a bake sale and I wouldn't buy them there. I'd rather just make a donation. I don't think anyone should ever be forced to contribute to a bake sale or guilted into it and if we can't drum up enough homemade treats from willing bakers, maybe we should scrap the tradition. I love a good bake sale and where's the fun when the merchandise is just repackaged from Ralph's? As Steinhauer puts it, "Look at it this way: You would not resell socks you bought at Macy’s on the art-sale crafts table. Respect the cookie!"

I saw nothing controversial about this statement.

Well, I am in a minority, at least if noise on the internet is an indicator. Over the last few days I've read many criticisms of Steinhauer's piece. The gist of most of them: she is scolding women who can't find time/can't afford/don't want to bake. And that her piece is sexist. Most critics have made lucid points even when I don't agree with them.

But in another category altogether are the vituperative Twitter and Facebook broadsides of the inimitable Ayelet Waldman, who went on a real tear after reading Steinhauer's essay. Some choice excerpts:

"This homemaker fetish is retrograde and anti-feminist and women like JENNIFER STEINHAUER are just PC, liberal Phyllis Schlaflys."


"When are these women going to figure out that this fetish for raising chickens and baking the perfect bundt cake is retrograde, oppressive, and nothing more than latter-day Phyllis Schlafley (sic) bullshit? You know what you don't have time for when you're obsessing over the candied lavender on your Christmas Cookies? Outrage over the political and economic crisis, that's what."


"Oh, I'm too busy baking and raising my own chickens for the fresh fresh eggs. I have no time to, um, work. Or be politically active."


But here's my favorite --  a real gem -- addressed to Steinhauer:

"Hey, you sanctimonious bitch, I have 4 kids, a fulltime job. I don't have time to bake cookies. Lucky you that you do."

It's not Jennifer Steinhauer who strikes me as the sanctimonious bitch.

First of all, I think Waldman needs to consistently spell "Schlafly" right if she's going to use that dated reference as often as she does. I know, it's a bear. But it just seems like good form for a chest-thumping "full-time job" writer to spell correctly in the same way that it's good form for a retro homemaking fetishist to, say, make the bed.

Second, I think it's hilarious that Waldman, a stay-at-home novelist who tweets endlessly about her weight, Devachan haircuts, and where she buys toilet paper (amazon), is sounding off self-righteously about her super-busy life to Jennifer Steinhauer. Jennifer Steinhauer! Who has 2 children, contributes to bake sales, writes a weekly column for Food52 and in her spare time covers Congress for the New York Times. Yes, she really needs to get a life. Good one, Ayelet.

But what really impresses me about these tweets is how Waldman is not just going after Steinhauer's mildly controversial piece. She's going after all us twitty bundt cake bakers and candied lavender fans.

I lost sleep over this for reasons I didn't understand until I got up in the morning and realized I felt personally offended. Baking has now officially been dragged into the stupid Mommy Wars! Great. I don't judge people who do not bake. I hope this is abundantly clear in my blog and in my book and in person. I do not judge people even to the minor degree that Steinhauer does in her article. And Waldman is judging me -- for baking! Except "judging" is too polite a word. "Sliming" is better. Slimed by a professional mean girl for a totally innocuous hobby.

Since then, I've thought far too much about bake sales, baking, the hateful, pointless Mommy Wars and Ayelet Waldman. Herewith, once and for all and hopefully never again, my thoughts:

I've been a parent in the California public school system for 16 child years. Bake sales are few and far between, at least in our district. We are asked regularly for money, rarely for brownies. Would that the two were reversed! In any case, all solicitations are gender neutral so there's no reason women should feel they are being unfairly targeted for bake sale bondage. We're not. No one is ever forced to contribute and anyone can bake those cookies -- Dad, the kids, Mom. You can buy the cookies if you want, though it's sort of a bummer for the customer, at least when the customer is me.

Still, it's true, I have observed, that females do most of the baking and "manning" of the bake sale booth. I've worked the bake sale booth myself. I've brought cookies. My husband? Never.

And yet it doesn't seem terribly sexist or unjust because it is also true that after every school walkathon and fundraiser I've attended, it is men -- dads -- who spend the remainder of their Sunday afternoon picking up grimy half-eaten hamburgers and smashed cupcakes off the basketball court, dragging around Hefty bags, loading dumpsters. You know what I'd love to see? A pissy internet throwdown between downtrodden dads who set up chairs for the silent auction and cool, ballsy dads who tweet that they're too busy with their fulltime jobs and political activism. Maybe Michael Chabon could weigh in.

Honestly. Bake sale duty has taken about 2 hours per year, if that, out of my precious life.  My husband has spent many times that doing the various gross janitorial jobs the men get stuck with. I'd rather bake. Even if I didn't like to bake, I'd rather bake.

But I do like to bake. You don't? That's fine with me. My mom didn't bake unless she really had to, and when she did she used a mix. But baking is a little spot of grace in my life -- which isn't always full of grace. It's how I relax, a way I show affection and share. I truly like to bake for other people, including people who go to bake sales, and I expect nothing in return -- except, I suppose, a modicum of respect. I always thought it was a nice thing about me, the baking, something to value. I still do. So you can shove it, Ayelet Waldman. And you can shut up about the chickens, too.

Who is this harridan and what have you done with Jennifer?

frown

Gretchen Rubin says to "act the way you want to feel." Doesn't work. I have been acting like Donna Reed these last few weeks, and still feel like Medea.

I haven't been very nice lately. I haven't been very happy. Is it the holidays? Is it hormonal? Too many hours spent gazing at the river of time? Too much time cooking things that people make fun of? An innately bad disposition?

Last night I prepared our first meal from The Best of the Best of California, which Isabel chose for me to cook from over the coming weeks. I made the enchilada casserole, which she had flagged. Brown some ground turkey and chopped onion in a skillet. Add taco seasoning from a packet, a cup of yogurt, two boxes of thawed frozen spinach. Layer with corn tortillas, salsa, and pre-shredded low-fat cheese. Bake. It's like something Roseanne would have cooked, except she would have used ground beef, sour cream and full-fat cheese and it would have been better. I, too, used full-fat cheese. I didn't see any low-fat cheese at the market that looked at all appropriate or Mexican.

Everyone was ostentatiously infatuated by this casserole. Owen ate three cups in about three seconds. "This will reheat great as leftovers!" exulted my husband.

whatever

I sulked.

I baked for dessert the Milky Way cake.  I can't pretend I wasn't excited about melting six Milky Way bars with a stick of butter and pouring it into a bowl of cake batter.

Let me tell you, that was some delicious cake batter. But the recipe in The Best of the Best of California makes a point of saying not to grease or flour your bundt pan. I read this and thought, no, no, no, this is wrong. But I sighed and obeyed.

I brought this to the table, vengefully.

The broken cake tasted fabulous. I sulked. (Pioneer Woman has a somewhat different, very enticing recipe for Milky Way cake, if you're interested. And you should be!)

Then, yesterday afternoon, I went to visit a weight loss counselor. I never thought I would do this -- losing weight isn't a mystery!, it's all about character, etc. -- but I made an appointment and kept it. I'm glad I did because it was both clarifying and motivating. This nutritionist was sensible and reasonable and her estimate of what I should lose, based on body fat content (sobering), height, weight, and age: 27 pounds. That's not nothing. If I manage to lose it, I will be right back where I was five years ago, except this time I will  actually believe I am thin. Or thinnish. Or only need to lose 5 pounds. Or maybe 10. Okay, ideally 15.

I guess this will probably influence how I blog for a while. I hope not too much, but probably some. Certainly fewer Milky Way cakes for a while. It's a drag in short run, but in the long run for the best.

Christmas parties and happiness projects

Spice clutter

Has anyone else read The Happiness Project? I suspect this is one of those books that everyone has a completely different response to. Here's mine: a slightly prissy, unintentionally funny yet infectious account of a high-achieving perfectionist's attempt to "master" happiness like you master multiplication.

Maybe it is possible to master happiness. I don't know. Gretchen Rubin certainly makes the case and while I resisted her whole premise and approach, at the same time I couldn't help succumbing to some of her recommendations. Which is why, over the weekend, instead of sitting in my pajamas on the sofa posting about what we ate for dinner and then going to see New Year's Eve, I decided to alphabetize our spices.

We have a lot of spices. Imagine all the spices a person could possibly own and then double that because the person is messy and can never find the spices in the disorder of his/her cupboards or pantry and so has to go out and buy more spices. Rubin is obsessed with order -- obsessed with cleaning closets and eliminating clutter --  and I couldn't help but think about my pantry when I read her sermon. The spice alphabetization involved a trip to the Container Store, the labelmaker and consolidating multiple jars of mustard seeds. It took many hours over four days and I finally finished yesterday. Question: would you file Aleppo pepper under Aleppo or pepper?

In any case, I'm not sure I'm happier. I do know that I now feel like master of a very tiny universe and this will continue for a day or two. And then some innocent making cinnamon toast is going to misfile the cinnamon and I'm going to detonate, which will make not just me but everyone else in the very tiny universe unhappy. This is the problem, I feel, with linking control and happiness. This is one major problem, I feel, with The Happiness Project.

Of course, there's more to the book. Rubin also has felt unappreciated by her family the way I did last week.

Rubin: "Whatever the reasons I knew I should get over my need for Jamie (husband) to applaud the nice things I did, and, even more, I should get over my need for Jamie even to notice the nice things I did. So I made the resolution 'Don't expect praise or appreciation.'"

Well, that's one approach. When you don't get what you want, stop wanting it. I'm going to try it out.

The other night I made this dinner:

pork tenderloin with oranges from Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table. (Very good, but overly fussy for a weeknight dinner because it involves cutting oranges into segments, ugh.)

contemporary take on creamed spinach from Nigel Slater's Tender. (Wilt spinach, puree with creme fraiche. Easy, grassy green, very delicious.)

crushed potatoes with cream also from Nigel. (Boil little potatoes, smash them, drench in warm spiced cream. Delicious.)

The exceedingly unappealing plate of someone trying to diet. 

poached quince yet again, from Nigel. (Peel rare expensive quinces you bought at Safeway because you never, ever see them and wanted to try them, then cook in butter and sugar in a skillet until soft. Delicious.)

For this fine meal, I got much polite praise and appreciation. Isabel said sweetly and earnestly: "I like quinces a lot; I like them more than I like pears."

It's nice when I get it, but I'm going to try not to want it.

Since then, I've hardly cooked. Sunday night, Owen and I went to a party thrown by my mother's beloved friends who have been throwing the same big, boisterous Christmas party for four decades or more. I have memories of this party from earliest childhood and have attended dozens of times. The hostess, as she always does, served egg nog in a big cut glass bowl, steak tartare, incredible shortbread and cut out cookies with tiny silver candy balls for eyes. My mother never missed this party; she basically planned her year around it and would stand at the grand piano singing carols, hoisting a little plastic cup of nog. We all loved/love that party. Attending last night for the first time since her death was very poignant and my sister stood facing the Christmas tree for a while and wept.

But it was healing, also. Because our mother is gone, but the world -- her world -- goes on. That was one part of it. The other part of it -- which will seem paradoxical -- is that things change for everyone. I had persisted on some level in thinking that my mother was cheated, had been singled out. It seemed deeply unfair that she had to suffer and die while everyone else from her world stayed exactly the same, which is how I imagine people I don't see on a daily or even yearly basis.

This is absurd, of course. There have been divorces and big moves and babies born and other happy and difficult developments that I would have heard of from my mother, but have missed entirely. Her world is the same and it is completely different. One of my mother's closest friends didn't recognize me, just gave me a blank look and a cool smile. I hadn't seen her since my mother's funeral 18 months ago, and I made a joke to a childhood friend: "X didn't recognize me. I didn't think I'd gained THAT much weight." Which is actually what I thought, being the self-conscious ninny that I am.

Then my childhood friend told me there was another reason my mother's friend didn't recognize me, a much worse reason that has nothing to do with me.

That was terrible. But I needed to know it. I talked to people I've talked to all my life, ate the shortbread I've eaten once a year just about all my life, listened to carols lustily sung by men and women drinking egg nog, could feel and hear and see the river of time which is sometimes hard to glimpse. It was poignant and beautiful and made me a lot happier than alphabetizing spices.

Food incompatibility: the Q & A

And her word is law.

Q: Hey, where've you been? Basking in glory of seeing Make the Bread, Buy the Butter chosen as one of the notable 2011 cookbooks by Pete Wells of the New York Times?

A: Actually, yes, I was basking for a day or two. But then I plunged into a self-pitying funk.

Q: Seriously? You couldn't bask for more than a day or two? Anyway, tell me about this funk.

A: Like all funks, it's hard to explain.

Q: Try.

A: Well, the other day I did a radio interview and the interviewer said, more or less, "It seems like you do all these great experiments with food and your husband and family aren't into them at all. That must be hard. I could never be in a relationship with someone who isn't into food. Tell me about how that works. . . "

And I thought, wow, what a bold and intimate question! Can I answer this on the record? I did, though, because it's something I think about all the time.

Q: Well, what was the answer? What is it like?

A: Food incompatibility? It's not a deal-breaker, but it's pretty rough. That very night, with that interview still on my mind, I made this great dinner. Really, it was great. I made the fregola sarda with caramelized butternut squash from Food52. I made Dorie Greenspan's beet salad with "icy" onions (delicious), and I sauteed the shiitake mushrooms left over from Thanksgiving in a lot of butter (ridiculously delicious.) Then, for dessert, I made Dorie's long and slow apples which are AMAZING and to accompany this genius apple dish, I baked the cardamom-honey madeleines from a lovely book called Maman's Homesick Pie by Donia Bijan.

A respectable dinner, no? But to hear the sighs of my family members, you'd think I was trying to pass off roasted toad with hemlock sauce. They were all joking and grimacing over the beets, two of them wouldn't touch the mushrooms, and then no one would eat the cardamom madeleines except me. And suddenly I felt very sorry for myself. Couldn't at least one of my children love food?

Q: I'm sorry, but in the scheme of things, this is a pretty trivial sorrow.

A: And that just makes it worse. Thanks a lot. Because not only do I feel bad about the actual thing, but I feel bad for feeling bad.

Q: It might help if you tried to sympathize with your husband. For someone who doesn't care about food it must be hard to be married to YOU.

A: Hey, who's side are you on? But you're right, of course. Poor him. When we were first dating he told me he would like to take all of his nourishment in the form of a pill. And now he has to eat homemade salt pork and lots of kale.

Q: What're you going to do about this funk?

A: I decided I need more family buy-in. So I'm going back to an old plan, which is to let other people in the family choose the cookbooks. We'll do a rotation. My husband has chosen All About Roasting by Molly Stevens, which I just purchased on Saturday after hearing her speak at Omnivore Books. (She was terrific.) Owen chose The Mozza Cookbook by Nancy Silverton and flagged about 15 recipes. I was pleased with that choice and hold out hope that one day he will be an enthusiastic eater. Then Isabel chose The Best of the Best from California. We bought that book together a few years ago because we both think this series is hilarious.

Q: Why?

A: Let's see, is might be the cake that contains a can of fruit cocktail. Or maybe the chip shot chicken that involves rolling chicken thighs in nonfat sour cream and crushed barbecued potato chips.

Q: That recipe sounds like the worst of the worst.

A: I asked Isabel if she wanted to reconsider the book when I pointed out all the recipes that contain Cool Whip and she said, "Your blog readers will like it because you can make fun of it." I'm not so sure, but I told her she could choose any cookbook, so any cookbook it is. And, to be fair, all the recipes she flagged look quite delicious. I'm particularly excited about the Milky Way cake.

Q:  On another subject, any dishes you've cooked lately that you want to tell us about?

Cheese + chard = very happy marriage

A: Yes. I made the best chess pie ever form Nancie McDermott's Southern Pies (thank you Steven). and it has permanently supplanted my old recipe. The shallow tart of chard and cheese from Nigel Slater's Tender is excellent.  His carrot and cilantro fritters are also tasty, though they need quite a bit more flour than he calls for if you want them to hold together. The cocoa-cumin tri-tip roast from Eat Good Food is superb.

Q: So, have you finally broken free of that enslaving CSA?

A: YES! I'm done. I missed being able to choose my vegetables and I hated the waste. Oh, one more thing -- I'm doing some guest blogging here this week. I can't answer half the questions -- I have no idea how to make condensed cream of mushroom soup from scratch to use in a casserole -- but I'm doing my best.

Owen and friend borrowed my camera. Not sure what this means. 

**Correction. Owen just told me what the photograph means: He is a cereal killer.