A few months ago, when I was looking for the lid to a pot, the shelf supports broke and a rain of blue teflon-lined pans fell upon my head. I saw stars, I cursed at the shelf, and I yelled for Fuzzy to get rid of the actual shelf until such time as we could replace the supports.

All this time later, and the cabinet hardware still hasn’t been replaced, and every time I go into that cabinet, I get pissy, because things are stacked haphazardly. (Of course, I’m also relieved that it was the cabinet where the Target teflon lives and not the cabinet where the ceramic Princess House pots and pans live.)

In fact I hate the cabinet so much that I’ve largely given up on the teflon set, unless I want to make an omelet (because non-stick and eggs are a great combination) or chili, (because the ceramic set doesn’t have a spaghetti pot, and the dutch oven is too big, and who wants their white ceramic stained with tomato, anyway?) and as I’ve been cooking at home more both because it’s cheaper and healthier and because it fits our schedule better, I’ve noticed something else…

The ceramic stuff is easier to clean.

I mean, I have a ceramic roasting pan, and I made a chicken in it last week, and this week I’m making another, and all I did was soak it while I was cleaning the rest of the kitchen, and it was all shiny with almost no effort.

I should have taken the ceramic stuff off the shelf long ago.

“Ocean waves lulling you to sleep, a soft breeze wafting over your skin, as you sprawl across a white bed…” these were the words my mother spoke to me on the phone a few minutes ago, describing why she wanted an outdoor bed. She spent last weekend in a remote Mexican resort, you see, on the ocean side of the Baja peninsula, in just such a bed.

“Does the bed have to be white?” I asked, knowing the answer already.

“Of course.” Her tone made it clear there as no questioning this.

“And I suppose the bed itself has to be teak, because there’s nothing better than teak outdoor furniture,” I added.

“Mmm, resin might work,” she said, “If it was available. But teak is prettier.”

We laughed together, and then she said something I didn’t understand because, as she explained several seconds later, she’d put a frozen cherry into her mouth.

“Frozen grapes are great, too,” I shared.

“Oh,” she said. “Yes. I’ll have to try that.”

What do you talk about with YOUR mothers?

Hey folks.

My friend Cynthia has come up with this nifty idea called A Week in Food, in which people agree to:

– chronicle a week of their eating in photos and text
– share the chronicle at the blog she set up
– calculate how much they spent on food during that week
– donate the equivalent amount of money to the charity of their choice.

I think this is a nifty idea, and I plan to participate, but I’m also encouraging all of you to do so as well. Visit her blog to join the fun.

Just a note that I’m pushing everything back a month or so. If this means that scheduling doesn’t work for you, drop an email to melissa AT missmeliss DOT com.

I don’t post much about it here, because I don’t like to indulge in whining, but it’s been a bad bad bad couple of weeks.

But a new dawn is coming…I feel fierce and inspired again.

And I made a peach pie last night. With ginger.

I am having a late breakfast of peach pie and wonderful coffee.

Happy Friday.

(More later.)

We all (well, the female elements of ‘we all’) have cravings during that time of the month when we’re hormonal and our estrogen and progesterone seem to be at war with other instead of happily balanced. For some woman, it’s chocolate; for others it’s salty-crunchy foods.

For me, it’s cheese.
Actually, it’s cheesy melty things.
Actually, it’s Taco Bell.

Under normal circumstances I do not like food served in wrappers. Oh, I’ve succumbed to fries from McDonalds now and again (usually I eat two and give the rest to the dogs), but despite apparent ease, fast foods always leave me unsatisfied and feeling guilty for eating them.

But for the last few months, there’s been about five days during which the only thing I want is cheesy, melty badly wrapped burritos, or taco salads that sort of have beef waived at them, or their crunchwraps, which are just disgustingly good when I desperately need salt, cheese and crunch in one bite.

It’s embarrassing to admit this.
Especially since my parents live in Baja Sur, and so I know that real Mexican food is nothing like this stuff.
But sometimes, you just have to have it.
At least, I do.

It’s cheesy melty madness.

When I’m busy, I forget to eat, and then I get cranky and whiny. I don’t like being whiny. One of the reasons I don’t like weight watchers meetings is that every one I’ve been to has been a bunch of people whining about their lives. If I don’t even like to hear MYSELF whine, why would I want to sit in a room with whining strangers?

I am midway through a sandwich. I hadn’t eaten today, as the previous entry makes clear if you know me. The sandwich of the moment is toasted multigrain bread, extra sharp cheddar, tomato, sprouts and mustard. I love mustard, but only the good (read: Grey’s Poupon) kind. Yellow mustard is acceptable only on Boardwalk fries.

Yes, I like mustard on fries.
Except I don’t eat fries any more. When Fuzzy brings home fries, we take turns feeding them to the dogs.

So, anyway, I’m sitting here with my lovely veggie sandwich (crunchy!) and a glass of cranberry juiced mixed with lime Perrier, and I’m feeling slightly better.

Slightly.

I’ve been distracted all day today, as jumpy as my dogs, reacting to Fuzzy coming home. I hate that I’m this clingy little wife when he’s gone. I’m really not dependent on him for happiness, I promise.

As I’d finished all my work-related tasks by noon, clearing my day for the plumber I mentioned earlier, even writing an article in half an hour which seriously impressed the bosses, I had to find some way to fill my time.

Now you might think the logical thing would be to write since I’m all psyched about having figured out the book, and stuff, but no. For one thing, my right wrist was really bothering me, and for another, I was too antsy to sit still.

I spent some time washing dishes, even scouring the bottoms of the pots I’d washed. My cookware is not spiffy metal stuff like berndes cookware, but white ceramic stuff with detachable handles, from Princess House. I like it, but Fuzzy never believes me when I tell him that because of the way ceramic transfers heat he should never turn the burner past 3 or 4, so the bottoms are kind of burnt. A little Bon Ami and some elbow grease fixed the pots, but did not help my wrist.

I sat on the deck and read for a while, but then it got cloudy, and after the clouds dissipated it was hot, so I came back inside, and surfed the net, for a bit.

After the plumber had come and gone, I started to clean the tub to the point where I could take a bath, but then my aunt phoned and we chatted – oh, someone remind me to tell EvilAri@LJ about an interesting reaction to the earrings she made that I gave to said Aunt.

And then I was hungry. And the dogs were hungry. And there was Minestrone and Grilled Cheese. And it was Good. (The dogs each got a bit of cheese, and their usual dog food).

I tried reading, but couldn’t focus. Called my mother. Watched a rerun of Strong Medicine (I confess to lusting after Nestor Carbonell). Folded laundry.

Shiny things – dogs, phones, remote controls, keyboards, kept distracting me, and now? Now it’s 2:36 in the morning, and the dogs are curled up against my hips and Fuzzy is almost home.

Last night as I grilled a flank steak on our little George Foreman grill I had this urge to fling knives into the air and bang metal spice shakers around the way they do when you’re sitting around the fire table and restaurants like Benihana.

I’m not sure if this flight of fancy was brought on by the feel of the grill heat on my face – I always sit at the end when we go to Japanese steakhouses so am closer to the heat source – or the sound of sizzling meat, or the fact that I was half-listening to back-to-back episodes of Top Chef while I was puttering in the kitchen, but there you are, or there I was, imagining myself wielding very sharp knives with the same melodramatic flair used by John Belushi in old SNL sketches when he did his Samurai (Whatever) sketches.

Speaking of early SNL, my mind is also living in the early seventies this week, as the part of my novel that I’m working on involves a baby conceived during the Summer of Love, a cafe, and a VW Bus, and it’s made me really wish that instead of sitting in my uber-suburban Texas tract house, I was, instead, sipping percolated coffee while toasting my hands near a bonfire on the beach, or sitting at Haight-Ashbury staple All You Knead, where I remember getting $4.50 spaghetti as late as 1988, when I was in college, and where the menu is a funky but somehow perfectly logical mix of organic, vegetarian, and classic diner.

This novel would be so much easier to write if I were IN San Francisco, not just remembering it.

I really shouldn’t be eating cookies, especially not based on the Ghirardelli recipe, which uses 2 stick of butter (for 4 dozen cookies), but after a week of stabbing brain pain, chocolate was the best headache treatment I could come up with.

I actually enjoy the process of baking as much as the end result, especially on days like today: there was a thunder storm outside, the light was soft, Fuzzy was sleeping off a late night of gaming, and the dogs were curled up on the couch. The movie Practical Magic, an old favorite of mine, was playing on cable, so I let it run for background noise, as I stirred (okay, well, as the mixer stirred and I scraped the sides of the bowl), and shaped, and watched the timer.

Ever the queen of multitasking, I was also blogging, and helping my mother tweak her blog, chatting on the phone with family, and doing a bit of writing of my own.

By the time the cookies were done (and you can see them if you scroll down a bit), the last traces of my headache were gone as well.

Chocolate really does cure everything.