Repent!

Bless me Father, for I have sinned.
It has been 20 years since my last confession.

20 years, Jesus Christ!
What do you wish to confess, child?

I wish to confess my nutritionally deficient and unbalanced eating yesterday. This is dumb, isn’t it?

These are serious issues, but honesty will bring you deliverance.
Please continue.

Well, Father, for breakfast I ate a breakfast quesadilla.

That doesn’t sound so bad.
Eggs are very nutritious.

I'm sure they are, but I'm an ovophobe. I substituted bacon for the eggs. So the quesadilla was tortilla, cheese, fried potatoes and bacon. And salsa.

Oh, I see.
We must face our sins with a heavy heart, which, in your case, must be especially heavy, considering that breakfast.
Is there more you’d like to confess?

Yes. In lieu of lunch, I drank a café con leche, which is made primarily of sweetened condensed milk.
Then my kind neighbor came to my door with a mini pan of monkey bread, which I ate. Quickly and feverishly. Standing up.
Later, I ate about a half cup of mixed berries.

All this on a Sunday.
This really doesn’t seem appropriate behavior for the holy day.
However, you did end it with a righteous choice of some
fresh fruit.
I hope you did end the day's gluttony at this point, with some prayer time to reflect on your dining choices.

Father, I drank a large of glass of wine with the fruit.
About an hour later, I ate a brownie.

I could accept the wine; it is the blood of our Savior, after all.
The brownie, well, I suppose it could have been construed as a type of bread.
I’d have an easier time with this had it been angel food cake.
Is that all?

I wish it was, Father, I wish it was.
At the end of the evening, before watching a movie about glam rock gluttony, I ate a couple of handfuls of pretzel nubs and washed them down with half of a bottle of Chimay red, which had been open in the fridge for 3 days.
How may I absolve myself of these sins to my body and food ethics?

Well.
This is all very serious.
You have strayed very far from the flock.
But ours is a forgiving God, and I am just his messenger.
I would suggest that you start with 5 Hail Marys, not Bloody Marys.
The only wine you should be sipping should be after receiving Communion.
I also recommend that you base your diet for the next month on only righteous, Bible approved food choices.
Lots of loaves and fishes.
Brownies and Monkey Breads are the tools of the Devil.
He wants to tempt us with his delicious, sinful foodstuff.
The path to Hell is paved with Little Debbie’s Snack Cakes.
The flames are stoked by lard and processed sugars.
Repent, lost child.

Hi. Would you like to see this video of 3 guinea pigs fighting over a cucumber?

Virgo Mania!

What a fabulous birthday.

The famous artist gave me a real live piece of art that is hanging at an appropriate height in my tiny french apartment.

The sister wished for me that 28 would be much better than 27. Hope so. I'm off to a good start thus far.

The Sicilian and I took a couple of days off mid-week to go see The National in Denver. On the way up we saw antelope, turkey vultures, and once we got to Denver, we spotted one of the twins from the band getting into a cab.

We were so excited to see the show:



Don't we look thrilled?

The concert was great. Everyone in The National is fantastic: I can't single out any one band member who impressed me more than the others. Okay, maybe I can- the keyboard/viola player is totally rad and obviously has spent some time playing chamber music; the drummer plays with such finessed musicianship and is so efficient physically; the singer looks like Bruno Ganz (well, I think so, at least in Far Away, So Close. But maybe it was the lighting, or the singing, or the heavenly experience that got to my head).

And I got a sexy new pair of shoes:



Here's to lovely birthdays and lovely mini-breaks.

Autumnquerque II

It is, hopefully, beginning to transition from the crispy Albuquerque heat of summer to the lovely layer-inspiring days of the New Mexico autumn.

Green chiles are being roasted city-wide, wafting their smoky, savory air across the dirt city, gently leading me back to my favorite cooking season of the year.

I don't do much cooking in the summer as I do assembling. Salads, bruschetta if I'm really willing to exert some effort- but during the summer I generally concentrate on eating my fill of ripe luscious fruit, unadorned.

I feel as if I'm in the last throes of summer ever; in feeling as such, the Sicilian and I celebrated the last legs of summer with a very summery dish, with a heftiness of the oncoming autumn. One of my coworkers at the day job brought in the last bounty of tomatoes from her garden, which we used to prepare a lovely Monday meal, eaten while watching the dark windy clouds of pre-autumnquerque roll in.

This is a total mutt translation of pasta caprese. Apparently, combinations like this are what evolve out of a relationship between a WASP and a Ginzo.

we halved and sauteed cherry tomatoes in garlic
a few minutes in, added a hefty pinch of corinader and some red pepper flakes
then added a nice glug of pinot gris, which we reduced by at least half, then added a bit of pasta water to balance
then a handful of marjoram
spooned sauce and tomatoes over mostaccioli
then lobbed big hunks of Sweetwood Dairy chevre on top.

dessert: roasted figs with honey.