Wednesday, April 16, 2003

How did I manage to drink too much on a Tuesday night, home alone with the husband?  I’m not sure, but I blame it on the cumulative depressive factors of my job, my commute, my lack of a dog, the slow and painful demise of Buffy, my inability to pay bills or do taxes or participate in any other adult activity, and the fact that I don’t live in Florida.  Or just anyplace not New York. Plus, so I’m REALLY glad it’s not cold anymore (for the moment), but you know what happens when I keep the windows open at night to get the benefits of the fresh air of Long Island City?  We are serenaded by an endless procession of semis and various military-grade transportation units.  And at this very moment, someone seems to be using a chainsaw directly below our window.  We need earplugs, stat. So, not much on the J/J front.  Still poor, doncha know, especially since we seem to owe the guvment eight hundred dollars, which you know I just don’t get that at all.  We need an accountant, stat.  So we ate leftover lamb sandwiches with Mayonnaise Verte, or Green Herbal Mayo.  I mixed it up in the blender this time, so it couldn’t have been much easier.  Only I couldn’t find watercress, and doing the shopping list from memory I bought chicory instead of chervil.  Dumbass.  I guess I don’t really know what chervil is.  I was going to make Crème Sainte-Anne au Caramel, which are just Petits Pots de Crème with crumbled up macaroons, only I couldn’t find any macaroons.  So.  I chopped up two tablespoons of shallots and threw them into a cup of boiling water with about ten leaves of spinach.  Actually, I had baby spinach, because I didn’t want to buy a whole bag, so I threw in more than ten.  I boiled that for two minutes, then added about a third of a cup of parsley leaves and a big tablespoon of fresh tarragon.  Boiled that for another minute, drained it, ran cold water through it, squeezed it dry in a paper towel.  Threw it in the blender with an egg, some dry mustard and some salt, blended it for thirty seconds, poured in a cup of olive oil and peanut oil, mixed, in a thin stream, an voila!  Mayonnaise Verte.  It was sharp and good and very very green, and made good sandwiches with the leftover lamb and some good bread from the Turkish grocery. On the side, I made Hannah’s slices o’ eggplant, fried up in some Pam, and I used olive oil too, which was a mistake, the eggplant absorbed all the olive oil and was greasier than it should have been, and not as crisp, but still good and browned-eggplant-y, so yummy.  I had thought they would be good with the mayo, but the mayo proved unnecessarily rich and distractingly flavored, so we ate them plain. And somewhere in all of this I drank too much.  And now the sweet siren call of work, like lively chatter of a phalanx of jackhammers, beckons.  How would I resist? Random Buffy thought here:  why is that here at the very end, the last gasp, when ratings have been flat or dropping for ages, and it is a fact that the only people still hanging on are the die-hards, why in God’s name wouldn’t they drop the GODDAMNED EXPOSITION??!!!  I mean, it’s not like they’re trying to hook new viewers.  Wouldn’t it be better to run fast and loose, court incomprehensibility in the interest of good characters and a fun storyline?  Unless, of course, nobody gives a shit anymore, in which case just end the fucking thing and leave us in peace.  When I’m a TV exec and I’m running a once great, now feeble and limping television show, that’s exactly how I’ll handle it.    7:36:29 AM    comment []