here are just a few recipes to look forward to:
curried lentil soup
the 17 minute 350 degree chocolate chip cookie
homefry potato soup with prosciutto breadcrumbs, hashbrown & fried egg
for now... Soup on!
Miss Maria Hold-the-Eggs did not, as her pseudonym suggests, actually “hold the egg”, and went and got herself all kinds of up the duff. As in preggers, mit kinder, knocked up, in a family way, riding the baby train, all blowed up on baby... in any event, she failed the rabbit test, all right, in a big, bad kind of way.
Which is great for a lot of reasons, the least important of which being that it gives me a fabulous excuse to stop with the dour posts about OCD, antidepressants & other mental mishaps not otherwise specified/diagnosed. So it’s a win-win for you, dear reader, too; A soft pink palate cleanser to wash away the existential soup pain.
Because Miss Maria Hold-the-Eggs is one of my all-time favorite people on this planet, her pregnancy gave me a great excuse to co-host a Sunday party-- like I’ve ever needed an excuse to do that-- and with a tremendous amount of help from her lovely sisters, we threw the parents-to-be one really fun fete. No games, no crustless cucumber sandwiches and no estrogen-only requirements for admission, oh no. It was rock and roll, a burger bar, a boatload of beer and champagne punch and boys and girls from all sorts of creative provenance. In short, it was a really fun party to welcome our newest future ‘poloozian to her fold...and we all seriously cannot wait to meet her.
I’ve been asked before how it is that I throw parties for large amounts of people without killing myself (and, more often, the cat), and I think this party made for a really great template anyone can follow to have an easy time of it. Here is a list of some of the things I have on hand and some of what I have learned from a year and a half of steady on-the-job training...
There was a period of time, oh almost a decade ago, that I completely lost it. I joke that it was my Maria Carey meltdown (you do remember the time in her “Glitter” era when she started speaking gibberish on TRL while pushing an ice cream cart around only to wind up in a “sanatorium”, don’t you?). Well mine was exactly like that minus the fame and the money, the butt shorts and the Carson Daly. I had wound up, after a decade of living on my own in California, back in my hometown working in the mall I used to troll as a preteen. It was so not pretty I can’t even tell you. Every so often I would look up from folding a t-shirt (I spent an inordinate amount of time folding t-shirts) to see the schadenfreudic-full face of some girl I went to high school with strolling with her baby while wearing a two carat VS1 diamond on her finger. I cannot tell you how many uncomfortable and humiliating conversations I had during that period of my life, in between the time I spent traveling from the putty colored walls of my shrink’s office to the hallowed halls of Baybrook Mall’s very own Banana Republic to the zombied-out hours I spent watching “The Bachelor” and “The Swan” on my mom’s couch. It was truly pitiful, not to mention ridiculously expensive due to the megadoses of anti-depressants and sleeping pills I popped every day.
The how I got there part isn’t really all that important, but suffice to say I was in the midst of this full-blown major depressive episode by my own making. I had been on a fast track to a life that I thought I wanted, that I thought I was entitled to, only to have all of it blow up spectacularly in my face; I was suffering wildly at discovering that no one is guaranteed anything in life, certainly not everyone gets a happy ending and what made me so special to think I was so special? I was barely 30 and still young, but I held zero hope for my life ending up as I had plotted, planned and engineered with a Machiavellianish intensity.
Those are John’s hands on the mandoline in the picture above with the rainbow radishes. John is 15. John has floppy, curly dark hair and a warm smile. John is 15. John has done four (I think it’s four, though it may be more... I had a few glasses of rosé) different stages at amazing restaurants in both New York and Los Angeles. Did I mention that John is 15? John was a volunteer helper on Sunday for “L.A. Loves Alex’s Lemonade Stand”, a beautifully done food event benefiting childhood cancer. John is 15 and he is going to be a great chef. Hell, he’s already a whole hell of a lot more effective passing out food stuffs and assembling a salad plate at an event than I am. But whatever. John is 15.
John was in charge of slicing the radishes because Chef Kenobi thought a 15 year old could and would do a better job of keeping their digits in tact than I would, which is, actually, all too true. I would like to see my hands continue to be full of fingers, tips and all. But just a shout out to John, my new favorite up and coming chef, I loved working next to you on Sunday and I cannot wait to eat in your restaurant in a few years.
Before I had the pleasure of meeting John, Sunday started like any other Sunday for me as I picked up Chef Kenobi and his adorbs sous chef, I’ll call him Bar-Bearded, and we headed off to Culver Studios. OK, It wasn’t like any other Sunday at all except that there was food. And people. And booze... all to benefit a cure for childhood cancer, which is something I think we can all get behind. Before I forget, please go to Alex’s Lemonade Stand and donate your time, your money or get your kids’ schools involved, please do something. This organization is AMAZING. And Alex’s story is heartbreaking and inspiring.
On Saturday Chef Kenobi, Bar-Bearded and I had hit the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market and loaded up on gorgeous Japanese eggplant, herbs, heirloom peppers and micro greens (actually, I just acted as a curious sherpa, asking all sorts of inane questions while lugging economy portions or marjoram from tent to tent). The menu for Sunday: grand aioli, beautiful fresh, local produce, herbed micro green salad seasoned with olive oil, lemon and salt and lightly fried eggplant and baby potatoes.
One year. Twelve months, Fifty-two weeks, 365 days, 8,760 hours, give or take the few that need to be classified as “lost”...
It feels like I just started this little adventure and it’s been a thousand years all at the same time.
This Sunday, soupapolooza! is one. And like any proud mother whose offspring is reaching a milestone, I can’t help but think about how this thing I imagined is nothing like I imagined; that it has its own ideas independent of my expectations and I am powerless to do anything about it. That everything and nothing have happened all at the same time-- and that I’ve been living my life in the moments in between.
I didn’t know what would happen when I started cooking. I hoped I would learn how to dice and that I would understand a little more about what makes good, healthy food (I have). I hoped that other people might the enjoy stuff I created and join me for a few hours a week (they did). And I hoped I wouldn’t poison them (I haven’t).
Here’s what I didn’t plan for in this year since I started making soup:
