Dear friends,

Have you spent much time in the garden at MoMA lately? Some friends and I had an (exorbitant!) iced coffee there this afternoon, and it was really lovely...Physically pretty, well laid-out, all that stuff, but more to the point filled with a neato range of New Yorkers, many of whom seem to have come, mit reading matter, just to take the air and spend time with themselves. I speak, as if it needs saying, of an older generation of art patrons, whom one imagines live somewhere nearby, itself unthinkable.

(Along similar lines, the class of '49 was the highlight of last night's ten-year high school reunion. Gowns by Yumi Kim, since you didn't ask.)

El. hit town for the occasion, among other things, and I celebrated with a taste of Tangier Island - yeast rolls and potato salad from the Hilda Crockett Chesapeake Inn recipe pamphlet, plus Cook's Illustrated extremely labor-intensive and frankly ludicrous oven spare ribs. I'd rate the meal a 6.

We hit the "Renegade Craft Fair" in Williamsburg, which was not remotely renegade but did involve hundreds of whimsical items with "villain mustachio" motifs.

Then today we saw GK4 Former Fiance for brunch and he had villain mustachios.

Ended last night at the home of some bohemian acquaintances. There was a lot of dancing to African music and some whiskey drink with muddled orange and a delightful upstairs neighbor and Waugh enthusiast with whom I hit it off, but then it was high time we left, so that's just what we did.


As ever,

SS

Recipes

As of this writing, I have found my favorite versions of chocolate chip cookies,* lemon squares, and bran muffins **, but pound cake still eludes me. And obsesses me. Because the pernicious thing about pound cake is it's a lot of work, and ingredients, and cake if you're not happy with the results. I have an inkling that cream cheese pound cake, while far from classic, may be the horizon I've been looking for. Unlike Cook's, I make no pretense towards objective perfection - I like things too moist and creamy for many tastes - but like everyone I am seeking my personal grails.

Other things I seek to replicate pre-death:
Orange syrup sponge from Le Loir Dans La Theiere (a moist orange cake soaked in fresh orange syrup, with a butter icing)
Date-walnut brownie from Murray's cheese (even if it does require a convection)
Applesauce cake from 2nd Floor Coffee Shop, U of C, actually made by the maddeningly expensive and closed-mouth S&S Dessert Bakery. (Impossibly moist appleasuce bundt - no nuts or raisins - with a hardish penuche glaze, which component I've actually sort of replicated.)

If you have any leads, you know where to find me.


*Double the salt and halve baking time for my idea of perfection.
**I like the ones from Beat This!

Mixology

Drink-mixing, like free jazz (counterintuitively) and the prose of Henry Greene, is something that eludes me. I like Lillet. And I like to be given something based on the specifications "gin, strawberries and cucumber" at a fancy bar, if I must go to one. An email I received claims this drink is "the Megan Fox" of cocktails.

First Class Punch:

1 1/4 oz Three-O Vodka

1 oz Domaine Canton Liquor

1/2 oz agave nectar

1/2 oz fresh lime juice

1 strawberry

4 basil leaves

In a mixing tin, muddle the strawberry, basil, and Agave nectar. Add the rest of the ingredients, shake very well with ice and strain into a glass. Garnish with a strawberry

Make of this what you will.

Stroking the back of my little brass whale and very soothing it is, too.

Since I got back Monday night, much later than planned, I've been wishing I'd brought the camera. El got a disposable near our motel in Richmond, but as she messaged me tonight, 'who knows how they'll turn out.' She also said she'd finished up the last of the cheese pennies, rich with chopped pecan, that we got at the Mixing Bowl, with a glass of rose.

For my part, I read through the little recipe book I bought after the family-style lunch we weren't able to do justice to on Tangier Island. I arranged the postcards I got on the mantel in the bedroom. And I washed the shells I found on the beach while El was swimming. I wrote up a little description of the island for a friend's travel site in the hope that a few people will go.

Now Slim's gone out to see a friend's band play. I pled fatigue, and am only still up because I'm between books and I hate going to bed without a book. Today I strained and bottled the rhubarb liqueur I made, and of course should have waited until I had a funnel. The floor got so sticky that Matt mopped after dinner. I made lemon squares too, and even though we made a friend take some, there are too many, as they don't keep well. I guess I'll give some to the landlords and maybe the bohemians down the street, although they despise me, and rightly so.

Last night, my friend Marija played some really wonderful music; I must find out the name for you when she burns it for me. Just by chance she met the band in her building and they turned out to all be from the same town in Croatia. She also said in Paris men are always passing her very polite, gallant notes requesting assignations on public transport. She is someone who attracts romance, and as such is somewhat downcast at having to move to D.C. next month. But we'll sort it out, as some of my favorite New York expats live in the capital, to say nothing of all my dead ancestors. El, after all, is in Baltimore, and has managed to make that very magical - she has a way of ferreting out the specialness of a place, be it a bakery or a thrift shop or a neat bit of architecture, and as such is just the person to know in a new city.

I'm cold-brewing coffee, like a fool. Good night, now.

Words to Live By

"The small things of life were often so much bigger than the great things, she decided, wondering how many writers and philosophers had said this before her, the trivial pleasures like cooking, one's home, little poems especially sad ones, solitary walks, funny things seen and overheard." - Barbara Pym, Less Than Angels

Ugh. Roughish week at the office, if you know what I mean. Prompted me to add my optimistic Morrissey subhead!

You know, I have had struggles with my job, blessing though it is, simply because I'm not very tough and it's a tough man's game. I often get down on myself for the caliber of my own work, which is too often not what it should be, but I think the site as a whole does a tremendous job of providing entertainment, humor and forum for discussion, they'd say "without airbrushing," but I'd say "without meanness," which is even harder. I was reading through some archives this evening and found myself crying while reading the words of one commenter, a former sex worker, and the incredibly supportive tone of the other readers. She was new to the site and couldn't believe how generous and empathetic a group of strangers on the internet can be; I sure can. It's a kind group. And at the end of the day, there is so much to be said for this: it's easy to mock earnestness, but pretty hard to live it. Ideally with humor, but hey, let's not ask for the moon, we have the stars.

That's what I have to say.


Oh, and I'm running something sort of embarrassing tomorrow which, in any case, hopefully no one will care about.

I made some fish tonight which was truly awful, almost gratifyingly so, like the baby from Eraserhead, but in horrible dinner form. And speaking of ungoverned sentiment, I've been crying a lot at the green market lately, as the produce and flowers becomes more bountiful and beautiful. I couldn't say, but I think it has something to do with a)beauty, color etc. b)knowledge of the impermanence of all things and c)probably some very American impulse towards thwarted ownership. Or I'm just nuts. I remind myself sometimes of Misabel, the lugubrious Moomin. Well, her or Mrs. Gummidge.


If you haven't heard Brownbird Rudy Relic, do yourself a favor and look him up (he's on iTunes.) And given a chance, catch him live: he's truly bravura. This and Karl Lagerfeld's Twitter are two very worthwhile additions to any life.

Went to mass at St. Joseph's (granted on Saturday) and there were only ten congregants, and of course I don't take the Eucharist. I hated to think of all those wafers going to waste, or having to be put back, untouched - again. Although I suppose they have a pretty good feel for the turnout by this time. A parishoner had died, apparently an occasional lector with a wonderful talent for calligraphy. Maybe things are more happening on Sundays. Hoping so; it's a beautiful church, one of the area's oldest Catholic ones, and played an important role in the conversions of both Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton, back when the area was a bohemian stronghold (and, by extension, the congregation was still pretty thin!)


I was briefly considering becoming fantastic, but don't know that I have the energy.

I'd Rather Have A Paper Doll to Call My Own...

I recently received the single best gift a girl can have: a paper doll of herself.

She has a New York Post...

Rain gear...

Bear suit...

Island of the Blue Dolphins costume for day...

Prairie gear...

...and superhero guise!