A Junkie of many stripes

(just slap me when I get hysterical)

Yesterday was obviously a mixed bag. I got some great feedback on improving my store windows. I found out how close I was to a charcoal abode. What you all don't know is that just as I was coming to terms with the fact that bad things happening doesn't always indicate a serious message from the Universe I discovered something horrible in my pantry. Oh, didn't I emphasise that enough? Let me try again...

I found something in my pantry that would have scared the pants off of H.P. Lovecraft himself. I noticed a bloated looking fruitfly floating around in there and thought it was a little unusual. Seconds later (while searching for my pine nuts) my hand encountered a dark bag of liquified...I don't know what it used to be. I'm guessing it was an onion which is about the only produce that ever lives in my pantry. It was black as tar and wet and punctuated with about a thousand little what-have-yous which turned out to be the larvae of the happy little fly. Is your bile rising yet? Because that just about did me in.

I made a tearful call to Lisa who spent at least a half an hour being just the absolute best friend a person could have while also trying to orchestrate her children's homework and probably making them dinner too. Life doesn't stop just because your crazy friend is sobbing about the creatures in her pantry and how she'll never eat again. Strictly beer diet from here on out.

After that half hour of unburdoning my worst fears to Lisa I felt much better. What I had wanted to blog about was my new recipe box (pictured above) and my wonderful six year old soup pot. When we bought our set of KitchenAide pots and pans it was an enormous splurge because we had just bought our first house and I had just stopped working so I could be a stay at home wife. (This is pre-baby. I was staying home because being a housewife is better than any other gig on earth.) The set of five cost us about $560.00. I know, what an outrageous expense.

As it turns out, they were worth every last penny. This pot (unless thrown into the fires of Mt. Doom) will last me the rest of my life. Before we got these we went through pots every year. Leave your water boiling and get distracted with vintage sewing patterns on E-bay? This baby won't buckle. This pot will survive and still be perfect. It weighs about fifty pounds. Left some leeks sweating in there while you rake the yard and come back to find you've got a big burnt mass stuck on the bottom? No problem, just soak it and it will come off and still be perfect.

This canning season I found myself in need of a much larger soup pot and used a 30 quart pot to make sixty servings of corn chowder and the pot was like tin foil compared to my KitchenAide soup pot. It burnt my food and then the bottom buckled, all while I was standing there stirring attentively. Piece of trash. Once you've come to count on pots that are sturdy and meant for cooking in a million times, it's almost impossible to go back to the cheap stuff that crumples under pressure.

In spite of everything that was making me freak out yesterday it was a productive day in the kitchen. I made this Thai curry squash soup (pictured above) from my Deborah Madison cookbook. This soup is guarunteed to improve your health. With two serranos, ginger (fresh), squash, tofu, curry, and fresh cilantro and lime...it will kick the ass out of the onset of a cold. So tasty. (It looks prettier, less like vomit, when you use the full-fat coconut milk instead of the low-fat.)

I also made cornbread for Max (the only thing I cook that he'll eat). I made Lisa's rice salad. And with the leftover squash (I had more than I needed for the soup) I made a version of a dish that Lisa's close friends Lori and Alicia made when they were visiting. I sauteed the cubed squash until it got browned, then added a little water to steam it, then sauteed some onion. I added a quart of my home canned tomatoes, dried oregano from the garden, salt and pepper. Then I put the squash in a baking dish, put the onion/tomatoe mixture on top of that. Then I sprinkled pine nuts on top and a liberal sprinkling of feta cheese. It is so good I wish I had enough to eat it all week. I guess I know where to buy more squash.

So it was a productive day in the kitchen.

Two other things of note: While reading Vogue magazine (because if you didn't already know it, I'm a magazine junkie) I smelled the most compelling scent. Oh my. I can tell you it wasn't the Paris Hilton scent either which smells like tom-cat spray. Plus Paris is a ho-bag and doesn't have even a tiny pinch of class. I don't tend to go for cheap scent. Or cheap people.

Oh crap, now I sound like some idiot aristocratic snob instead of the stocky farmer heritage I share with fifty billion other people on the planet. Anyway...I found the page the scent came from and I couldn't believe it. Hermes' new perfume. Oh my. I want to smell it all the time. Everyday. It's their "Eau de parfum" not the pure perfume. It's called "Ellixir Des Merveilles". Rich people's scent. I've got to say that it's classy, woodsy, spicy, a little haunting, earthy (without clobbering you the way patchouli does), and confident. Philip liked it too. So this is another secret I don't think everyone knows (not even all of my close friends know this): I am a perfume junkie.

It's not cool anymore to wear too much scent. In most circles I circulate in no one wears scent at all except for soap. I love perfume. I loved Opium for many years. I was loyal. My scent. Then the ads got super creepy (corpsy looking skeletal girls touching themselves in none-too-subtle displays of self love) and I stopped smoking which made it hard to wear a scent that reminded me of living in San Francisco chain smoking while waiting for Muni to pick me up and drop me off in North Beach, or south of Market. I wore Opium and it mixed deliciously with the smell of freshly lit cigarettes. So I stopped wearing it.

A couple of years ago Philip bought me a bottle of Clinique perfume. The classic one. I had been wanting that scent and loving it for years. But by the time he got it for me we lived in a neighborhood with a really super cool lady who had chemical sensitivity quite seriously. I never knew when I would run into her and the thought of making her sick weighed on me. So I only wore my Clinique a few times. Now I want to find that bottle in my still packed boxes of bedroom things. I want to wear scent. I don't want to drown myself or anyone else in it. Just a subtle afterthought. And now I want Hermes too. Ooh, it's heavenly. I want my bedroom to smell like it. I think I would have good dreams every night if it did. (And don't anyone make lewd comments here please.)

Back to Vogue magazine though, just for a moment. I have been buying Vogue since I was thirteen. Don't get into an argument with me about the shallow nature of clothes. You won't win. Clothes are one of the least shallow things I can think of. Just imagine your life without them. How could you live in New York City without them in the winter? What would happen to your skin if you had none to wear in Southern California? Forget about all that stupid "Eve and her shame" talk. We need clothes to protect us from the elements. There is no reason in my mind why clothes shouldn't also be enjoyable to look at.

But wait, that's not what I was going to talk about. Vogue is quite disappointing these days when it comes to it's fashion spreads. It mostly only features the big designers, which in general, I think pretty much suck. If a designer finds inspiration in Paris Hilton then I've got no interest in them. How stupid can you be? Elle magazine is my favorite fashion magazine for the fashion. They highlight all the new Indie clothes designers who are doing interesting things. Who's inspiration is not pandering to the useless class.

I keep reading Vogue because they have good articles. That's right, you heard what I said. I know, that's what men say about Playboy too. Seriously, Vogue has terrible fashion editing these days, but the writing over the years has been consistently good. If you don't believe me then I would like to draw your attention to an article I read in this month's issue called "Trouble In Mind" by Eva Marer. It's about the connection between mental illness and physical pain; how the two are connected because both are controlled by the same neurotransmitters. Her research is believable, her personal take on the issue is fascinating and in the end she has some very important things to say about the life of the mentally ill. She said some things I have been trying to say with more elegance than I usually manage.

I keep reading Elle because the fashion is really good. The articles pretty much suck.

Today I go to the store and work on improving the window displays using some very sound merchandising principles passed on to me from Bitter Betty Industries. (Thank you!) So we'll see how I do when I've applied these simple, brilliant ideas. I have a lot to learn. I'm sure I'll take pictures.

Everyone have a great Friday!