Stories

summer-dinner-party.jpg There are as many ‘personal chefs’ in Palm Beach as there are swimming pools.  I see them in their white chef coats and Mario Batali crocs at Publix Super Market chatting each other up as they fondle the passion fruit.  I have had to resist the urge to run up to them and say, “I personally know Wolfgang Puck … personally!”

Palm Beach residents love to dine together.  Restaurants flourish, but elegant dinner parties reign! They always have.

So, what does one do in a town where an intimate sit down dinner is for forty people? If one is a Texas DNA challenged, Left Coast Malibubi, “Y’all come on over and I’ll cook up something” works. During the season of Madoff, a small home cooked dinner - while not the rage – does earn a few sophisticated nods of approval. Besides, it gives me a certain pleasure to psychically push aside the personal chefs at Publix so that I too can fondle the passion fruit with the same sense of authority!

Trying to find something different that is relatively easy to do at the last minute and actually tastes good is the goal.  I have gone through the various BBQ and Mexican dinner menus, all of which were adored by my if-I-see-one-more-beef-tornado-on-my-plate-I-will-scream friends. And, I do relish their fawning looks of gratitude over the unexpected but delicious déclassé fare!

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ImageCall it vanity, arrogance ...when I signed on as a stay a home dad I assumed there’d be mothers stepping over one another to help guide me through the trials and tribulations of my new job. I miscalculated. To the contrary, gaining admission into the sorority of stay at home mom’s has been impossible. I’ve tendered numerous applications on my sojourns into Mom Land and have been rebuffed at nearly every turn. Case in point. I was attempting to make a ratatouille awhile back and was shopping at Whole Foods for one of its ingredients – a Japanese eggplant. Shocked that Japan even had its own eggplant, I searched and searched, but the closest thing I could find was – are you ready for this – a Chinese eggplant; given their geographical proximity, it seemed logical to me that a Chinese eggplant was more like a Japanese eggplant than, say, an American eggplant. But was it suitable for my recipe?

For the answer to this, and perhaps more, I approached what looked to be a mom and politely asked if she’d be kind enough to explain to me, once and for all, the difference between a Japanese and Chinese eggplant. After looking me up and down, she snorted some sound of disapproval and walked away. Just like that. Why, the contemptuous look, I wondered?

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coffeeI stumbled into my kitchen, poured the beans in the grinder and pushed, fumbled to separate the filters, filled the pot with water and leaned against my wall oven to wait for the delicious healing brown liquid to brew.

That’s when it hit me.

Milk.  Fuck.

I scrambled to the fridge to find my worst fear fully realized.  There was not one drippy drop’s worth of cow juice in there and I’m just not a black coffee girl.  I grabbed my sunglasses and my keys and drove down the hill to my local Chevron station- which was open early and relatively non judgemental for the morning breath/ morning hair/ jammies wearing mess that I was that morning.  I grabbed a half gallon of milk and plopped it on the checkout counter.

“$4.00 please.” said the uniformed Chevron employee. “Ok.”  I muttered and reached into my pocket to get the cash.

Suddenly it hit me like my alarm clock had just rung. “Wait a minute, $4.00?  How can it be $4.00?? It’s a half a gallon of milk!!!” The checkout guy beamed with pride.  He looked me straight in the eye and declared “I was ripping you off!” He grinned ear to ear.

I just stood there.  I could find no witty retort.  No smart comeback.  I was stupefied.

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sandy1Darkness has flooded my room. I nervously try to avoid pressing power buttons on any of the number of electronics that surround me. Has the power gone out? Did we buy enough if it did? When will it come back on? I go to plug in my computer and to my dismay, the charge light comes on. Hurricane Sandy has completely spared my apartment building—and for the most part my neighborhood: Bushwick Brooklyn.

And I feel nothing but gratefulness for that—but sadness for all that I am seeing across the East River.

My friends on the Island are without power. Those in the lower east side, and most below 34th street- my fellow New Yorkers are too. The subways have flooded, the tunnels are closed, and homes have been destroyed. Cars are floating down the streets—the Brooklyn Bridge Park Carousel is now a submarin-o-sel, and a hospital was evacuated late in the night.

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