CAN YOU DIE FROM EATING TOO MANY TOMATOES

I think I really messed up, can you die from eating too many tomatoes for lunch today?

I Hate Nights in Rodanthe Pasta

Last night, two really terrible things happened to me. I was having a nice girl’s night in, with me the only girl, or person, so that apostrophe isn’t misplaced. Then I realized that my neighbor has a direct line of sight into my bathroom. (Backstory: A couple weeks ago my brother’s girlfriend suggested I open the top halves of all my windows, as I was literally suffocating and dying for a few minutes every night and most days. I’d come to and all my plants would be looking at me like, shit, is she ok? The hot air will go out the top, my brother’s girlfriend said, and the cool air will come in the bottom. My bathroom is no cooler. But my neighbor does have a direct line of sight into it.)

Then, just when things couldn’t get any worse, I watched NIGHTS IN RODANTHE, which in case you haven’t seen it is a goddamn emotional terrorist of a movie. If I got that movie alone and restrained, I would probably lose my humanity.

In this wreck of a film, the lady and the guy have 4 days together in a quaint-ass inn probably called something shitty like “Mermaid Cove” built literally on the beach, which personally is a place I would never build something I didn’t want the ocean to wash away, and they think they fall in love.

Nicholas Sparks, at this point I need a word with you. In “The Notebook,” you gave us a very real love story. I know in my heart of hearts that Noah and Allie loved each other that summer they were together and every blessed second following it. When they’re in the rain and Noah shouts, “Hell, it’s still not over!” I experience symptoms of epilepsy. That love is effing real.

But these chumps? After 4 days? It’s utter madness. Put any two jerks in Mermaid Cove in a hurricane and shit’s gonna go down; there’s nothing much else to do during a hurricane. Anyways, the story progresses and you willingly – by that I mean stupidly – suspend your disbelief. You feel it deep in your bones that they’re going to spend the rest of their lives together. You go to the fridge and get your cat another cat appetizer to celebrate.

So they write letters like idiots for a year or something, and the length of her hair is directly proportional to her happiness over the shitty “I’m reading a love letter” montage so by the end of it she looks like National Velvet the horse, then he’s like “I’m coming to your house now,” and when he doesn’t show, you have a tiny inkling that something might, just might, be wrong. Then immediately after you have this thought, the guy’s son shows up at the lady’s door and is like “AW HELL, HE DIED IN A MUDSLIDE LIKE 15 MINUTES BEFORE YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN REUNITED!!”

To reiterate, he didn’t show up because he was DEAD. What in the name of all that is holy kind of movie IS THAT?!?! It was like someone promised me a sundae, made me wait for it for like an hour and a half, and then very suddenly killed someone instead of giving me the sundae, leaving me no time to get used to the thought of my future without the sundae and with the specter of death.

The only thing that kept me from ending it last night was the damn delicious pasta I made. It’s perfect for you if you experience extreme guilt or panic when adding lots of fats to foods – there’s really no fat beside the oil and ricotta, but you get a little of the creaminess that you’d have in a cream sauce. But there’s no cream. No ma’am. Won’t find that here.

I HATE NIGHTS IN RODANTHE Pasta

Makes 4 servings (1 if you just went on the Neverending Story of a run and can’t see straight)

2 or 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped

3 tablespoons good-quality olive oil

¾ cup peas (I used frozen – that’s right, I said it; I’m not proud, but I was so tired from running I didn’t want to get fresh ones, write your own recipe if you care so damn much)

2 cups baby arugula leaves, packed

1 lemon

3 cups fusilli pasta (orecchiette or campanelle would be delicious too)

½ cup fresh ricotta cheese

skim milk to taste

fresh parmesan to grate

salt and pepper to taste

Boil some salty water and prepare pasta according to instructions – preferably al dente, as any leftover pasta will soak up some liquid in the ol’ icebox.

In the meantime, don’t get lazy. In a large pan, heat oil over medium heat. Add the garlic and sauté until fragrant, 30 seconds to 1 minute. So help me God if you let that garlic burn….

Lower the heat slightly and add the peas. After 5 minutes, add the arugula, stirring occasionally until it’s mostly wilted, maybe 3-5 minutes. Just before the pasta’s done, squeeze the juice of half the lemon into the arugula.

Drain the pasta, reserving some of the cooking liquid. Be careful, that shit is hot, and I don’t want you to end up like the Phantom of the Opera. Put the pasta back in the hot pan and immediately add the ricotta. Stir. Add a tablespoon or two of milk and stir more. (At this point I also added some grated parmesan for some chewy goodness.) Add some hot cooking liquid if the sauce needs to be thinned out. Then, zest that lemon right on in there, and squeeze the remaining juice to taste. Season with salt and pepper, again to taste. I find that the ricotta needs a fair amount of salt.

I also chopped up a tomato and added that it, and it was delightful. It’s up to you; you don’t have to, but you’d be a dumbass not to if your tomatoes looked like THIS, SUCKAS:

Summer Birthdays

Hey all you summer babies out there. I’m a summer baby too.

I know how it is. It blows chunks. Other kids get to celebrate their birthdays every year in school. They get to spread the word around the class a freaking week in advance. With a single “It’s my birthday next Friday,” everyone is abuzz for days, thinking about the interruption this will surely cause in math, or maybe reading if they’re lucky. You join in, acting chipper and shit, but you’re screaming on the inside “IT’S NOT LIKE FUCKING ARTHUR AND D.W. ARE COMING TO THE CLASS, GET A FUCKING GRIP ASSHOLES!!”

Then, moms (and dads, or guardians – I know that families come in all different shapes and sizes) show up to the classroom door with some damn delicious baked goods. Every last child in the room drops his or her colored pencil or calculator or loom or whatever and squeals in delight. Then hell, they’ve swarmed the damn door like tiny flesh-eating dinosaurs composognathuses swarm humans in Michael Crichton’s The Lost World, and in a matter of seconds everyone is covered in frosting and singing and laughing and has raised the birthday kid onto their shoulders and is parading him around the room like some fucking Purple Heart recipient and for a shining moment school is a bigass party. All thanks to the birthday kid.

But when you're a summer baby, you grow up and no one ever hoists you to their shoulders in respect and admiration cause it’s your birthday. Sure you have a party over the summer, but Ned and Matt and half the other kids you’d invite are away at some lake with fish that bite your ankles but you can waterski there. Sure your family’s there, but most of them are way younger or way older and while it’s heartwarming it’s just not that cool. Sure the party’s scheduled to be at the Butterfly Place, but what comfort are butterflies with only a single RSVP not counting your brother?

One thing’s for sure: you don’t get to stop the flow of a school day and have fucking delicious treats. You never get to be the hero.

So in self-preservation, as you cry yourself to sleep, softly, you think, "Someday when I'm a grownup, I won't have summer vacation. I will work year-round, and my mom will bring in popsicles or cupcakes (depending on the weather) to my workplace [ie, my co-workers will celebrate my birthday] and I will finally be celebrated!"

But it’s recently come to my attention that even if your summer birthday is on the calendar at your office, co-workers sometimes forget your birthday anyways. This absolutely bowls me over. After years of struggle and strife? Decades of being undervalued? I’m dead-ass: summer babies, we’re not taking this shit anymore. Who the crap do they think they are? We have to arm ourselves against this shitfest and get redemption – vengeance, even! – while we simultaneously prepare ourselves to reward benevolent co-workers who remember our birthdays.

Here’s what you do, summer baby. On the eve of your birthday, make both of the following recipes and bring them both to work in a cooler. If your coworkers remember your birthday – if they say something at lunch, or get you a cake, or even just mention something while passing your desk – they will be rewarded. You graciously bellow, “Thank you, kind brothers and sisters! To celebrate, I’ve brought a delicious treat for us all to share!” and distribute the first recipe. Laugh, be merry, and be the hero you always wanted to be (and were on the inside the whole time, summer baby; I KNOW IT!!).

If you have waited until 4:45 and your co-workers have still not acknowledged your birthday, call everyone together in a conference room or some shit, I don’t know how offices work, I’ve only been a teacher or museum educator so shut up. Announce, “Hi, everyone, thanks for coming. I know it’s almost time to go, but in honor of my birthday, I wanted to send you home with a delicious and refreshing treat. It sure is hotter’n hell out there!” [Laughter, merry sounds] Then, distribute the second recipe. Everyone will smile sheepishly, raise/knit their brows, and say “Thanks so much, I’m so sorry I forgot your birthday, thanks for doing something so nice for us anyways.” Make sure you’ve packed your things are effing ready to go and promptly exit before anyone takes a lick and becomes truly sorry they forgot your birthday.

Popsicles (adapted from Molly Wizenberg’s recipe)

2 cups plain whole-milk yogurt (if you work with mainly fat people do yourself and everyone else a favor and use non-fat yogurt)

2 cups fresh or frozen raspberries

¾ cup sugar

1 tsp. lemon juice

This is so freaking easy, I love it: blend everything in a blender until it’s smooth. If you don’t have a blender, like me, chew everything in batches and deposit it in a bowl until you’ve worked through the whole lot of it. Put the mixture through a strainer or a windowscreen would work fine too. Throw away the seeds and lumpy bits. Split up the silky-smooth mixture evenly amongst whatever you want to use for molds. Freeze for 20-30 minutes, then stick in the popsicle sticks of your choice. Then freeze’em till they’re hard and you’re done!

To get ‘em out of the damn molds, run them under tepid water and slide them out.

Popsickles (adapted from Molly Wizenberg’s recipe)

2 cups beef stock

1 cup squid

1 cup eggs (raw; this should be about 4 eggs)

¾ cup salt

1 tsp. paprika

Follow same directions as above. Feel free to get creative. Freeze an insect in each pop if you like, Jurassic Park bug-in-the-amber style.

Small Potatoes Potatoes

Small Potatoes Potatoes

Sorry for the hiatus, folks, I’ve been at the greenmarket! It abounds this time of year with the freshest produce, and it’s DIVINE. Baby lettuce, squash, sour cherries, blueberries, green beans – my head is spinning just thinking about the possibilities!

But sometimes you don’t feel like eating that fresh green stuff. Sometime you fuck up, ok? Sometimes you invite someone important over to your apartment for a late-night Limeade Fizzy (see last post) and forget that the late-night bugs have been on creep parade in your kitchen lately. Or sometimes you’re on a date and you bite into a sandwich but your teeth only make it halfway through, leaving you with stuff hanging out of your mouth like you’re White Fang. Or sometimes you have a 5-alarm nosebleed on a pillowcase last night and drop it in the elevator on your way down to do laundry, and Nate the Cute One finds it on HIS way down to do laundry and holds it out and says “I think you dropped this?” but he KNOWS, as he was present for an ill-conceived one-night stand, so all you can do is take the pillowcase from Nate and say “Thanks, I hope it washes out of your pants, too.”

Those are big fuckups. You can fuck up in small ways too. Sometimes you over-utilize your face in conversation, and see you’ve frightened the person you’re talking to. Sometimes the G&T’s at the company party are so strong that you fall into an exposed brick surface and are unable to care that your right knee is bleeding heavily. That’s actually a medium-sized fuckup.

No matter the size, fuckups suck. And when shit like that goes down, shiver me timbers, you need some fucking comfort food. You feel like eating something that came from deep under the ground, where you want to bury yourself and your memories.

Therefore, today, I give you: potatoes. Baked. I call them Small Potatoes Potatoes. They’re good enough to make any fuckup feel like small potatoes. Or maybe it’s just that the flavor explosion of all the fresh herbs sets your nervous system on fireand precludes any other sensation in your body for like three days.

Small Potatoes Potatoes

Ingredients (makes 4)

4 small potatoes

1 teaspoon olive oil

1 teaspoon ricotta cheese (fresh is best, asshat)

1 teaspoon mozzarella

3 drops lemon juice

5 flakes kosher salt

1 tablespoon each of: basil, chives, oregano, parsley, thyme, tarragon, and sage (if you don’t have these herbs on hand, get off your ass and procure them, whiner)

Note: I consider it a shitty myth that potatoes are flavorless. I’m sick of you shitting on my Irish ancestors, and people from Idaho. Josh Ritter is from Idaho, so leave it alone. There are as many delicious varieties of potatoes as there are ways to fuck up in a 24-hour period. So shut up about the blandness and get back to me after you eat a buttery-rich fucking BLUE potato. I eat them like Stacy’s Pita Chips.

Preheat oven to 400^o. Brush tops of potatoes with olive oil and wrap in foil. Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until you can violate them with a fork real easy.

Meanwhile, in a tablespoon, combine ricotta, mozzarella, lemon juice, and salt. Spoon inside still-warm potatoes. If you wait too long, like an idiot, the potatoes will be cold and taste like papier mache or fucking newspaper, so don’t hesitate.

While the cheese mingles and shit with the potatoes, finely chop all the herbs. It’s important to mix them well after chopping, as the flavor profile of each bite really depends on the intermingling of each and every last goddamn one of those herbs, ok?

Sprinkle all the herbs on top of potatoes, and serve. While it’s hot. Any leftovers can be frozen for, I don’t know, 10-12 years, you figure it out, and reheated.

Welcome to the Team!

Here they are: my four new stemless wine glasses from Crate & Barrel. I’m so excited. It’s been six months since three-fourths of my other stemless wine glasses broke, so it’s about time I got some new ones. I’ve been imbibing from old Bonne Maman jam jars, and while that’s charming, I have to consider my sex appeal.

Since wine and such is so expensive, I’m going to inaugurate these glasses with a goddamn delicious non-alcoholic beverage. It’s fizzy, it’s light, it’s refreshing, and it’s a hell of a lot better than nothing.

Fizzies (makes one)

Ingredients:

6 ounces seltzer water

6 ounces fruit juice (my favorites are pomegranate and lemonade)

3 ice cubes

3 mint leaves

(For an added treat, chill glasses in the fucking freezer for an hour beforehand!)

Note: If you for some weird reason have fucking raspberry juice, try using thyme instead of mint. It’s a truly awesome combination.

Place ice cubes in glasses. Pour juice over ice, and add the mint leaves. Muddle the shit out of it. Top it off with the seltzer. Serve.

Owl Cracker

I love owls. They’re adorable as babies – or owlets, as the ornithologically-inclined among us would say – and still cute even as full-grown killing machines. If I could be any bird, it would definitely be an owl. To glide on silent wings, to spot prey in pitch-black conditions, to look nonplussed without even trying…it’s the ultimate. So I thought, why not develop a snack to celebrate owls? After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Owl Cracker

Ingredients:

1 sesame rice cracker

1 jar of almond butter, preferably fresh ground

2 semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 long-ass chocolate chip

1 dried cherry (a raisin would do as well, or a sliver of dried apricot) (optional)

Note: I found my weird chip in a bag of Nestle chips. I don’t have a goddamn clue about how long it will take you to find yours; you might consider purchasing several bags of different brands and sifting through them all beforehand.

Preheat oven to 400^o. Dip rice cracker one-third of its length into almond butter jar, just skimming the top. Don’t dig in like it’s fucking bean dip, be conservative. Nestle the two chocolate chips about pinky-width apart in the almond butter. (If you have big-ass hands, don’t use your fucking pinky as a measure.) Next get that funky chocolate chip and place it where an owl’s beak would be. Finish with the dried cherry on top of the almond butter. Serve.