It's lucky I didn't get married when by all rights I should have, during that time known as the Donna Martin decade, aka the 1990s. I might be embarrassed now when I would have looked back at the wedding VHS and realized that "our" song was "Wonderwall" and that all the wedding pictures showcased a drastic blood-red-blunt-bang Vidal Sassoon breakup dye job and cut (it took about three years to grow that mess into that strawberry banana lifesaver stage). Hell, I might even be embarrassed that the reception, most likely thrown at the La Luz de Jesus gallery in Silverlake had offered a backdrop of pin up girls, Weegee photographs and Day of the Dead figurines. And that I listened to Weezer at least 478 times as I hand stamped each invitation ("What's with these homies dissing my girl/ Why do they gotta front?"). I have imagined the scenario probably a hundred or more times over the years, when I was asked to be a bridesmaid or I saw another friend's wedding pictures on Facebook, even when I was six or seven and playing around with my friends. THIS is what my wedding, my big day, is going to look like, and it will be beautiful. Every single detail was imagined and remained as I got older and my tastes changed and the styles of everything around me changed, too, but I was never able to picture one key element:

the groom.

Seriously, even when I was dating someone seriously (and there were quite a few during the 1990s, sorry for partying), I couldn't see the guy, period. Not a body, not a face, not a single distinguishing feature. I'm quite sure that had I been in therapy during any of those imaginative times, the shrink would have had much to say about this.

Maybe most girls are like this, planners and re-planners of this rite of passage, I really don't know, but I think there is something inherently wrong with me. I mean there are many, many things wrong with me, let's not kid ourselves, but maybe if you don't ever see yourself marrying someone when you imagine, oh I don't know, MARRYING someone, you should work on developing other dreams for your life. Like writing a food blog.

This site has been a chronicle of my Amazing Middle Aged Peter Pan Angst(™), and if you've read any of it before today (I know there are at least two of you) you are probably keenly aware that there has been much of it. There has also been silence for more than a year, and I would like to explain, just in case you've felt a gaping hole in your soul.

I’ve almost never fully understood what my currency has been at any point in my life. What a waste my twenties were in this regard and what a crappy thing to have silly things like ideals. I remember giving up an invitation by a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences to attend the Oscars with him because I thought he was a little suspect and aged (I think I’m older now than he was then, by the way) and I didn’t like his hair much, because I was that nit-picky. I also thought that surely if an opportunity to go to the Oscars was being presented to me at 22, I would certainly have others-- I didn’t realize that it was youth and naivety that were my sources of power at the time (I thought it was just my plain ol’ ”badassness”). What giant lady balls I had! I would stomp on kittens to have any number of those lost opportunities now. Yes, I said stomp on KITTENS. Or even BUNNIES, though at this stage of the game I would try and use my feminine wiles to get the dude to cut his hair, which I am quite sure at this point he already has, or at the very least make sure he didn’t take Corey Feldman as his backup date, which he actually did, much to both my disgust and to my delight.

The only time that I can think of in my past when I did know what it was that was my source of advantage was my senior year in college. I was one of the few people (I think there were fifty of us total) that petitioned to live in off-campus housing and had a non Middlebury sponsored residence, which meant I had a nice kitchen and a wood burning stove, which was cozy, if not completely necessary, since this was Vermont and we were all semi-lame pseudo-hippies that smelled good. Anyway, because I wasn’t on the meal plan in the dorm and because there was a food co-op right down the street and because that co-op sold ramen noodles and Annie’s mac and cheese and because I washed down every meal with at least three cans of Milwaukee’s Beast (that’s not a typo), I had acquired quite the culo. My solution? Use whatever means at my disposal to lose the fat ass. And what was at my disposal, you might ask: why, my kitchen and my (sort of) ability to follow directions.

serrano split pea with fried pancetta: splitting the difference

sweet potato with pancetta rosemary croutons AND roasted yellow pepper/ roasted heirloom tomato with serrano cream: soup(s)apolooza!

Why? Because soup is cheap, delicious and easy. Kind of like me.

a weekly attempt to eat well and to savor life. or to see how much food I can get on my clothes.