R(ea(t)d This.

This book is the key to my destiny. It is the most inspirational text I've picked up in years. Not since oh, geez, I don't know, my first reading of Katherine Hepburn's autobiography? have I been this inspired. Well that isn't true, and it isn't the point. I would like to buy a copy of this book for everyone I know.

Moo Cluck

Moo Cluck vegan chocolate chip cookies are not the same as regular chocolate chip cookies. There are no eggs or dairy products in the ingredients, and even though it says there is real chocolate in there somewhere, neither of us could figure out where. We ate them anyway, after big bowls of really delicious roasted red pepper soup and some little grilled cheese sandwiches that were mostly just grilled spelt bread. I made my cookies extra vegan by eating them with a big mug of cold milk.

I haven't been cooking.

My colleague told me during his first year of teaching he lost 20 pounds. "I would go all day without eating running from place to place, getting this or that done," he said. Then by the end of the day he would be so hungry he would devour an entire fillet of salmon, a pot of rice, and finally get to work on a half gallon of Edy's pumpkin ice cream before bed. By the end of the week, he'd cleaned out Gristedes' entire stock of the autumn-flavored dessert, his body under such a hyperthyroidic stress-trance he seemed to burn twice the calories of what he consumed while consuming them. "That stuff is goood," he said, laughing gruffly with a vestige of laringitis.

Society Coffee

This is the story of New York City. One comes home to an empty apartment and goes out to a coffee shop named after the effort of people who are lonely to become un-lonely -- "Society."

I tried eating alone at first. I tried to cook dinner for myself. WNYC talked to me, loudly, as I sat at the kitchen table and read the rest of last weekend's New York Times, scooping up bits of egg with bread, then dipping bread in wine, then in olive oil, then eating sherbet out of the container. It was so boring.

Le Monde avec Mom

I am less embarrassed by my mother than I ever was. It must be around that time of my life. And of all the things she does that are impressive, this weekend kind of took the cake.

I just moved to Harlem, and despite, or perhaps because of, my Mom's own personal aversion to germs, I was granted a free floor scrub and shower scouring, as well as various hardware installations and a week of groceries and beer. I tell you once my Mother gets going I can't intervene; I have tried. So n return for her efforts I conceded her only request – that I attend my first Catholic mass in ten years, and afterwards, of course, accompany her to breakfast.

We brunched at Le Monde on the UWS because it was close to the church and I was getting tired of the usual Morningside breakfast fare: Nussbaum, which I never go to; Tom’s Restaurant, which is touristy and unappetizing and packed with college students; and that other place, I don’t know the name, but which is on the corner of 115^th and Broadway and has delicious French toast. I normally would have picked that one, but I had never been to Le Monde, and it was still early, and one should always try what one doesn’t know about, so we went, and at 9:40 we were the second patrons in the entire place, so I got excited thinking we’d actually eat soon and be on our way back to the park in time for a gander at the farmer’s market.

But as the waitress poured coffee and chatted to us, I looked cautiously over my mother's shoulder and spotted danger. The mother/father/daughter trio beyond us, the only other people in the place, were looking around with hungry eyes. “Just so you know,” the waitress said, “they are making fresh hollandaise, so that’s why your breakfast will take a little longer. It’ll be fresh, but it’ll be a little bit.” She had a voice like Kathy Griffith’s.

“That’s ok,” we said to her, because that is what you say, and she went away and we went back to guzzling coffee and fidgeting with various table items.

Ten more minutes passed and nothing. Ten more. Halfway through our third cups of coffee we had a game of speculation going good as well as a hypersensitive bout of the giggles. “The cook never showed up,” Mom said, setting the jittering coffee cup back down on her saucer. “He isn’t here.” “This better be worth it.” I stared jealously over my shoulder at the plates of bagels and lox being consumed by four blonde tweens and their mother at an outdoor table, my stomach growling. “We should have ordered something non-hollandaise,” I said, watching the team sleepily gathering their bags and heading off to do whatever mothers and daughters looking that happy and healthy and sated do on Sunday mornings after they've been properly nourished.

When the eggs Florentine did arrive, it was all over for me. All of it. It was like getting a much-needed haircut on the house, or like taking the wrong exit and having a fit only to find out you are exactly where you needed to be in the first place. The eggs were huge and puffy and beautifully poached, their whites soft and whipped back, as if dropped like batter from a spoon. The yolks, when gently cut into with the side of a fork, ran out perfectly over the spinach and English muffin, which was buttered and toasted and still maintaining soft whiteness. The hash browns hadn’t a speck of grease, but were just crispy and seasoned with something aromatic but not overbearing. I saved half of the meal to eat for dinner tonight, after my mother left me. “After this Florentine is gone,” I said to her as we gathered our things to leave, “I am back to being my own Mom.” And now I am. And somehow I’m certain I’ll never eat Eggs Florentine that good again.

The Recipe, straight from Dad

Best Bloody Mary:

In a tall mixed drink glass, fill half to two-thirds with ice cubes. Add good vodka to about one-third level in the glass. Add V-8 with full sodium content (not the Low Sodium variety) to within about a half inch of the top of the glass. Add about a tablespoon of lemon (not lime) juice from either a real lemon or from a Realemon. Shake about twenty drops of McIlhenny's tabasco sauce, several shakes of salt, and about twenty twists on the pepper mill, with it set to medium fine grind.

Now shake shake shake your Mary. Add celery sprig, and don't drink more than two of these in one night.

not getting work done, part I

My father insists his Bloody Mary recipe is a secret ("never order a Bloody Mary out, it will be less than half as good as this"), but I will tell you: Stoli, Tabasco, fresh ground pepper, and whatever you do, do not add Worcestershire sauce.

makin pretty food, or makin food pretty?

Want the recipe? LMK.

best breakfast cabbage

Breakfast, to me, is anything that makes you stop feeling hungry enough to get on with your day. Still it is usually a trial. I am picky. Cereal, for instance, has maintained a highly unattractive status for many years. Oatmeal and its implied fix-ins are often too much trouble. Fruit is ok, but not by itself. Yogurt is good with fruit, but there isn't any in the house.

Skipping coffee altogether, which usually entertains me during my indecisive breakfast session in front of the open fridge, I decided on a half head of red cabbage and some light cream. Quartered the cabbage, then quartered it again, then sauteed in butter over medium heat with one side of each quarter down. After about 5 minutes flipped them so the other side hit the pan. Poured in the cream, covered it, lowered the heat very low, so that it maintained a gentle simmer, and cooked for 15 minutes. Sprinkled with salt and fork-served the wilty leaves into the mouth. Braised breakfast, this was called. Braised best breakfast.

and things on which to spread it

Breads n' Spreads looks on the outside like one of those clinics you can find in a strip mall somewhere, flanked by a Subway and a Baskin Robbins, shoved in beside a Christian bookstore; a clinic lacking insignia save for the hyphenated name of the doctor printed on the door. For those who know the truth about it, though, it actually serves excellent lunch.

After today I write in praise of Brian's turkey and provolone on toasted bread with red pepper spread, and the cold potato leek soup I ordered, which tasted like a hybrid of what I imagine ranch dressing and pure vegetable broth would be if: 1) they were mixed well, 2) if the vegetable broth was made from the juice of the crispest, cleanest, freshest cucumbers and zucchini in the countryside, and 3) if the whole thing at the end was sprinkled delicately with chives.

Brian's sandwich also came with an herbed penne salad, featuring black olives, sundried tomatoes and prettily chopped red onions. My soup came with a warm roll, which I had to eat simply because I haven't received a warm roll with anything I've ordered out, I don't think, since I was eight. We drank rounds of tall glasses of cold Snickerdoodle coffee, trying to bite the ice cubes that floated at the top. The ice really did look delicious; the cubes were made of coffee instead of water, and looked like big bobbing blocks of chocolate. All food was served on the kind of ware you only see in Anthropologie catalogues.