Location: Casa Menezes; Photo of me by Jane; Photo of Jane by me. LoL, right?
Writing
The coolest cat
“Edlu-pedlu”, she’d call out from the ginormous bench-lined front porch, in that most typical way Indians nickname their children. We were across the narrow road, in our neighbour/cousins’ house playing like there was no end. Making up new games once one ended and turning it into an endless cycle of happiness. We were unstoppable.
“Edlu-pedlu!”. Her voice signaled lunch time. If I didn’t hear her, I had two other sisters she could call out for. Our conscience would finally get the better of us and we crossed the road back into the compound that housed my great-grandfather’s house. My grandfather still lived there. A. Pacy, his unmarried sister, didn’t have any reason to leave her father’s home. That’s where she lived. That’s the same front porch bench she sat down every evening to talk and curse people that passed by, until the poder (bread man) came. Just like my memories stay tied to that place, so too did hers.
She was always a surprise to our pre-adolescent minds. If we ever did have our cousins from across the road or once-in-a-while friends come play at our grandfather’s house instead (which was rare), A Pacy knew exactly which kid she would hate for a made-up reason none of us could fathom. In the middle of our games, we would have to take hiding breaks if we knew she was coming. Not for our safety, but for the safety of our friendships. Just as deeply as she hated, she loved. She would make up cute names and say them over and over again until they became comical punchlines to invisible jokes. We laughed at “Gypsyyyy, Gypsy Girlie” and “Digli”, he names for our pet dog and cat. A lot of her love was reserved for her cats, unless they stole food or refused to sleep at her feet. Come to think of it, she was the only person I knew who treated cats and people the same way.
After my grandfather died, she became more of a person to me. She was no longer in his shadow and we finally saw a concentrated version of her. She was just as feisty and she never held back. One of my favourite stories is of her knocking a drunk man over his head with a big stick. When my mother asked her what if he died and she was sent to jail, she replied: “You would take me out (sic)” My saintly mother – who was the only person to tend to A. Pacy’s well-being – was equal parts exasperated and amused by her aunty’s antics. Mama would go to visit A Pacy after work and would come back with anecdotes like you wouldn’t believe. Despite her unsociable behavior, A. Pacy always asked and knew about everybody. She knew who was getting married, died and whose birthday was coming up. She knew ALL THE DATES (capitalisation is absolutely necessary. She was amazing!). That right there was her biggest gesture of love. I remember going to stay in Parra with my sisters for the first time after Babdi (a name my sister Jane made up for my grandpa) died. We wondered if she knew how it would be to have 3 children in her care, where we would sleep and if it would feel just as cozy. Most of all, we wondered about food. We got all our meals and granted the tea tasted a little strange but on request A Pacy made us her world-famous beef stew, which I mostly ate just for the carrots, potatoes and macaroni. We gobbled it all up like old times.
As she got older and had less control over her knees, my mother made the difficult decision to have her live in an assisted-living home. She was heartbroken. We all were. The entire foundation of that house where we spent the most blissful years of our childhood was losing its last caretaker. It’s strange to be so attached to a house and yet, it isn’t. Those walls have stories. Those walls have years and years of history built into the ground where every crack is a space that couldn’t hold some beautiful, tragic secret anymore. A. Pacy would be getting the best care, while the house would watch as its last human made her way to another. The doors would be closed and stardust would collect.
A Pacy took her last breath last week. She was 90 and a champion through it all. I gave her a needle and thread and a kiss on the cheek the last time I saw her before I flew back to the US. I finally knew how she felt. She’s back where she always wanted to be, a short walk away from her house in a place among the stars.
(My sister Jane prophetically took these photos of A Pacy not long before she died. Jane hadn’t visited aunty in a year and she wrote this before we all knew what would be. RIP, AP)
For mama
I want to know.
I want to know everything about you, mama.
How you smell right now, what you’re eating, what they’re letting you drink..or what you choose to drink. Because you’re your own person. I know this about you.
I love this about you.
I want to know about the day I left home. Rather, got out of the cab into the airport. I want to know what you were thinking because I was thinking about how how I wanted to stop. How I wanted everything to not move. I was about to break your heart.
I don’t want to know if I did.
I already do.
I want to know about the times I called you thosw first few months. Did you know – through my voice – that I wasn’t myself? I asked you every question to keep you on the phone. I sounded curious. I thought maybe I was strong. I was broken. I needed my family. They say you create a new one once you get married. That your family is not #1 but you are that and so much more. So is he. Matt is my life. You must know that you all are. I’m keeping you all.
I want to know if you’ll always laugh. Laugh through it all. Your jokes keep.me.alive. Your stories are my connection. My piece of home. I know the weather because you told me about it. I love hearing about it. You are my place of warmth, my solace and my breath. You shared your body with me. I owe you a debt I can never, ever repay.
I know you but I want to know you more. I write this for you. Always for you. Every word. This blog is your path into my life. We can’t be together right now but read this and we will be.
We will be very soon. I know this.
For mama, because even though you’re going through a hard time, you still find time to laugh.
PS: Ma, today I was feeling blah so I decided to cook. I almost made cookies but the butter was still hard. I made fried rice instead. I’m waiting for you to be at home again so you can do that guest post for my blog. Hurry. I love you.
I’m over here! Look in the window!
On Saturday we handed over the keys to our apartment, locking that door to K305 one last time. I have no attachment to those walls, I tell myself and yet I feel like we’ve just closed a chapter of our lives. It was the first place I came home to in this country and for Matt and I, it is where we became a sort of couple. Of course, the two of us spent today vacuuming the floors (him) and deep-cleaning the kitchen (me) in celebration of letting that place go. It felt bittersweet, but he keeps saying “good riddance” and I have no choice but to move on. Today the old fridge looked cleaner than I’ve ever seen it before. I wish I moved into a place with a kitchen that sparkly! Future renters, we made magical things in that space. As I walked through the house – sunlight pouring in – looking for places for the last batch of things we uprooted from the old flat, I thought to myself: “This kind of feels like home.”
The past 3 weeks have been a blur of shoving things into a car, rock camp and work time fun times that culminated into us sleeping in this gigantic new home (really?) for the first time only a week ago. One week. Nothing has a place, apart from our clothes. We still don’t know where we want things to go and we can’t make that decision anyway until we figure out what colour the walls should be. And you know what?! I don’t care. Surely we would like to change things a little bit and freshen it up but I’m most proud of us moving like champs. We worked together, did not kick each other in the shins and we realised the importance of good neighbours. As messy as the floors look right now, I feel very lucky.
I’m not sure if I understand this correctly, but I get the feelsies that home ownership is very important to Americans. It’s something that says “you’ve arrived and you’re all grown up so take a seat and pay these bills”. I choose to ignore these vibes. It’s a big deal but only because of the money we’ve put in (my parents helped us out a lot, something that rarely happens in America). One might assume we’re rich or we’ve been responsible enough to make this step that required so much from us financially. It’s none of the above. Quite simply, we just wanted to move. No we didn’t have more stuff. I do a great job of being a responsible consumer and a non-hoarder. We wanted to be able to decorate our walls and grill food over charcoal. We wanted space for the dogs to run and I couldn’t stop thinking of tiny vegetables growing up from the ground next spring. We grew up just a little to be able to take this step. But adulthood is a mystery. If I should hit 40 in 13 years (!!!) I would wonder about just one thing: Where all the time went.
On that note, I am welcoming myself to the reality that we have a house. It’s ours. It’s old. It needs love here and there and it’s open and ready for lots of people to come stay over! I want this to be a place of good memories and for me, that means family/friends. If you know me, consider this your invitation. I’ve been yearning for a way to sneak back into my blog with food that will always remind me of this summer of our lives. I think I found it today and I will save it for later in the week until I can find that silly camera cable which I swore I would stash away in a box labelled “camera stuff”. I promise I will look carefully. Again.
I must go now but I promise that there won’t be any more long breaks. Summer is almost over after all and I need to make at least 10 celebratory cakes and cake things. I’ll be here, settling down and getting right back up because houses are work…lots and lots of it.
Be right back.
(Sort of) Eulogy
As a now no-longer single woman (or as civilised society would lead me to believe), I often find myself thinking about men. It’s something I can’t leave home without considering. Years of being stared down as an adult woman makes me ever so cautious and sometimes confused about whether my lack of eye contact makes me a bad person. It doesn’t. I hope I learn this soon.
Matt and I celebrated his birthday this past Saturday, with lots and lots of intended joy. I am happy he’s alive and especially on his birthday, where I get to make him his (and every other man in this country’s) favourite breakfast: Biscuits and gravy. I throw all my rules about eating flour over flour out the window just to make him happy. (PS: There’s nothing wrong with flour over flour. I am just not a biscuits and gravy person. Biscuits are what I eat with tea and gravy has not even a pinch of flour in it.) It was a nice day. I was ready to call this out best day yet. I called him an a**hole once but that’s only because he took advantage of my going easy on him and passed me thrice on the Go-Kart track. I was only thinking of one man on Saturday.
Much much later, at the end of the day, it happened. The other most important man in life had his heart broken. I would love to make this about me. Find a way to say this loss is the hardest for me. It is hard. So damn hard. But for my father I know it is a lot worse. This is the same man who complains about feeding all the animals in my house (including us) but does it anyway. He says he does it because nobody else will, but I know beneath that rationale there is love. My cat Bidli, the same girl I saved from a harsh season in Bombay and who in turn saved me right back, died on Saturday. I will fall short of words if I remember every moment that led me to believe she was in my life for a reason. She was there to connect me with my family. There was no way I was going to subject her to a plane ride and quarantine when I moved here. They let her stay with them and she became theirs. Most of all, she became my father’s. Jane says it feels like a bad dream. It’s the harsh reality of being an outside cat. There’s no way to keep them in when you live in a house where everybody is welcome. It’s kind of how I ended up on the other side of the planet, I think. She was a good cat. Loved by a great family and “only fed” by the greatest man in my life. She was very spoilt. I am so grateful.
The next day, I had to go to work, fortunate for the opportunity and miserable at the circumstances. I’m not sure of the way people call in sick after a pet dies. I don’t even know if it’s an acceptable excuse. I did what I had to do, getting there much earlier than I needed to be. Usually I consider getting some tea or reading my book in a park close by. Neither of the two felt like the usual so I just sat in the park, watching the early sun wake up streets. There wasn’t much to look at other than the inside of my head. Two men walked past, seeming to come out of nowhere. I smiled but apprehensively. I’ve had men in Washington say the most inappropriate things to me just because I acknowledged their existence while walking by. One of them stopped, and said hello. “Good morning,” I said back, hoping that he doesn’t give me a reason to be pissed off. He smiled, I smiled and the two of them walked to the other side of the park. I was too much in a bubble to notice what they were doing, but they never once sat down. I wasn’t worried. Ten minutes later they seemed to have finished what they were doing and walked past me again. This time, one of the men say bye and told me to have a good day. I will, I thought. I would try to at least. Just when I went back into my shell, the two of them stopped. The older man who hadn’t said anything at that point looked right me and asked: “Are you okay, Miss?” “Yeah, is everything okay,” the first man added. Both of them were concerned, I was convinced. “I’m fine, thank you,” I said. I wasn’t but we say these things as they help us go from one moment to another. Little white lies that only hurt us. I was so happy somebody cared enough to ask and complete strangers at that. “We’re good guys,” the man said before the two of them walked away. For the sake of all of men who identify as men, I am sorry he had to say that. For my sake, I’ll try to be less cynical about their kind.
Bidli would’ve wanted that.
“Kind old ladies assure us that cats are often the best judges of character. A cat will always go to a good man, they say.”
Virginia Woolf
Interview with my father dear + Eggs with herb-y baked beans atop a polenta cake
My father’s name is Justos Eustace Francis D’Souza. Apparently, when the priest at the church was filling up his baptism certificate, he pulled Justos out of thin air and gave him this name that pissed off his father. The rest of my father’s six brothers (and only siblings) all have names that start with an “E”, except my dad. According to my Uncle Edwin, my Papa wanted to KILL the priest. This does not surprise me. My father is the youngest of his brothers and he is the main cook in our family. He loves entertaining and loves to cook new things until he can perfect it. He is a great partner to my mother, even though they are complete opposites (He can’t sit still, and she likes to take her time doing things).
I know I’m a day late writing this Father’s Day post but aren’t we the same people that say things like: “Why celebrate just one day?” If it was up to my dad, he wouldn’t give a shit. I don’t need to change my facebook photo, my face or my instagram – he’s a lot more important to us than that. He loves eating something sweet after lunch and dinner and he wakes up at 5am everyday, blasting the radio and then leaving it on while he goes off to play badminton with his friends. Muscle ache on one day? “I’m feeling better now,” he says the same day as if to convince my mother that he is not going to render himself immobile. He hasn’t done any bodily damage yet and like he rightfully corrected me, he’s 64 and looks nothing like it. He is a typical Asian father, (I’ve learnt that our continent produces very similar fatherly-types) and everything he does, he does for his family. Father’s Day 2014 is no big deal. But I feel it’s necessary to toast a man who jointly raised 3 daughters, and unknowingly taught them how to be badasses (This is not a negative thing, Mama and Dada). So here’s my interview #2 with my Dada, all the way from Goa, India.
1) White chocolate, milk chocolate or dark chocolate?
Dark chocolate.
2) Do you like having such a long and complicated name?
It is not complicated. In the old days babies were always given a minimum of 3 names.
3) Why do you sleep so early?
I believe in the early to bed and early to rise philosophy. Also it gives you a head start to do things instead of trying to hurry.
4) What’s your favourite food to cook in a hurry in the morning when you’re trying to get your wife to get ready for work?
Rice, fish curry, some veggies and marinate fish to fry later.
5) Who taught you to cook? What’s the first thing you cooked by yourself?
I learnt myself (mainly the basics) at home in Mumbai and later in Saudi Arabia when I went to meet friends at their place of residence.
5) Name your three favourite ingredients?
Garam masala, ginger-garlic paste and chillies
7) How does it make you feel when see how well you and mama have provided for your family?
I think it is our duty to look after the children when you have them. This is what has been done for years by all parents. I do not know if this system will survive in the future.
8) What made you realise you wanted to marry your wife/our mother?
I liked her the moment I saw her and all the rest fell into place.
9) What is one of the best things you learnt from your father?
To respect others, listen more than talk, and do good (if you can) to others.
10) Were you a mama’s boy?
Maybe being the youngest. But I think later Edgar was the favourite as he did not get married.
11) Who is your favourite brother?
I don’t have any favourite
12) How do you manage to look 10 years younger than 63?
I am 64 and not 63. My principle of hardwork, exercise and “early to bed” has helped.
13) What are your best memories from your childhood?
Very little as we grew up the hard way, like most of the Goans in Mumbai. Although we had other sorts of entertainment and there was a lot of love among people. Unlike now people only spend their time on computers and watching TV.
14) Is there anything you regret in your life?
Nothing! I think God has blessed me and given me more than I deserve.
15) Why do you think Bidli likes you so much? (Editor’s note: Bidli is my cat)
It is not Bidli liking or disliking me. I feed her which no one does. Surely she will like me.
16) Who’s your favourite daughter? (Mama didn’t answer this one and Jane thinks it’s me, just so you know)
I don’t have any favourites. To me I will give and do the same for all
17) When are you coming to visit me?
If your mother would be able to travel I could come to the US every year. Tough luck. Anyway, I may see if I can come someday. First you move into to your new house.
18) Do you care about Father’s Day or not?
To me it is just another day as I have to go about doing my daily chores.
Happy Father’s Day to my dad and yours, your father figures and mothers/dads who do it all on their own, with devotion and love.
Eggs with herb-y baked beans on a polenta cake
What better way to celebrate my dad with a meal I most remember him cooking for our family on Sunday. I cooked this for myself today to remember his Sunday breakfasts for us when we were younger (and even now, except we wake up too late on Sunday for him to wait around for us). I always ate what I called a “yolk egg”. I loved the white cooked and the yolk raw as a sunny day. The baked beans and polenta cake is an updated take on what I consider comfort food. Thanks to the runny “yolk egg” that my father made me (“You want one egg or 2?”), I will always have eggs on a Sunday.
Herb-y baked beans
You’re about to notice that I used canned, diced tomatoes to make these baked beans. I know I wanted a thicker baked bean situation, which I wasn’t able to get from natural ripe tomatoes. It requires some of the canning juices to form the body that makes it breakfast-y, which is why I recommend it. You can make this a day before and store it in the fridge.
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp cooking olive oil
- 3 cloves garlic, chopped fine
- 1/2 cup leeks, white and light green parts chopped
- 411 gms/14.5 oz (1 can) diced tomatoes
- 1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
- 1 tsp fresh thyme
- 425 gm (1 3/4 cups)/15 oz or 1 can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed (if they’re from a can)
- pat (about 1/2 tbsp) unsalted butter
- Salt to taste
Preheat your oven to 300 degrees F
Heat up some olive oil on medium heat in a skillet and to it add the chopped garlic. Stir around for about a minute, making sure it does not brown. Once you begin to smell the garlic, add the leeks and stir for another minute or until the leeks are slightly softened.
Add the diced tomatoes, juices and all and let it simmer, stirring from time to time. Once the tomato juices have reduced and slightly thickened, add the herbs to it. Mix well and add the cannellini beans, stir around for about a minute and then take it off the stove. Using the back of a spatula, flatten the contents so they are evenly-spread in the skillet.
Cut about half a tbsp of unsalted butter or more (if you like) and put it on the contents of the skillet. If you have an oven-safe cast iron skillet, pop it into the oven for 5 minutes. Pull it out at the 5 minute mark, give it one stir and once again spread the contents evenly in the skillet. Put it back in the oven for 5 more minutes. The tomato-y flavours will have settled perfectly with the beans and you will smell the herbs from a mile away, as they bring this dish together. Season with salt.
Polenta cakes
The original recipe serves a lot more people and can be made with the help of a 9×9 inch cake tin. I didn’t want leftovers (crazy, I know) so I halved the recipe and “cuted” it up with ramekins. I used 2 ramekins, which were about 3.5 inches in diameter. They made polenta cakes that were about 1.5″ in height. Next time I try this, I might add something more to the cornmeal (CHEESE+GREENS!). For now, these did well.
Ingredients
Adapted from Food52
(makes two 3.5″ polenta cakes)
- 1 cup whole milk
- 1 cup water
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup stone-ground cornmeal (I used a medium grind)
- Butter or cooking spray, for greasing
- 1 tbsp olive oil
In a medium-sized pot, add milk, water and salt and bring it to a boil on medium-high heat. When the liquid starts to bubble, start adding the cornmeal, a little by little, stirring as you go. Once you’ve added all the cornmeal, keep stirring the mixture for about 5 minutes until it’s thick, smooth and creamy. Apart from creating a smooth texture, the stirring also helps prevent the cornmeal from sticking to the pot.
Grease 2 ramekins with butter or cooking spray. Add half and half of the cornmeal mix to them until they are about 1/2 full. Let them cool completely for 15-30 minutes and set. This cooling process helps the polenta cakes take the shape of the container (the ramekins, in this case).
Add 1 tbsp of olive oil in a non-stick (preferably) skillet on a medium-high flame. Overturn the ramekins and the polenta cakes should slip out easily. If they aren’t doing so, you can try loosening them up with a butter knife.
Put the polenta cakes on the skillet and cook them for 2 minutes on one side. Flip the cake and cook for 2 more minutes. Once they have that even brown colour, they are done.
Serve them up on a plate. Top with warm herb-y baked beans.
Lastly, don’t forget the egg! Cook an egg, over easy and put it on the very top of this delicious breakfast-brunch pyramid.
Loving, leaving.
I looked at my hair in the mirror a total of four times today. It looked the same every single glance I allowed myself. I decided what to make for dinner on what is my first day alone at home in a long, long time. Not long enough for me to forget how much I disliked this feeling same time last year. To say it’s been a blur would be a lie. I do chime in with agreement when people say the same ol’ “where did the year go?”, but I don’t believe it for a second. I’ve never been this present, this willing to channel inherent greatness, before. This is a new thing, where I vomit positivity and become that person I told myself I’d be. That girl. What a crazy girl.
She said she felt she was becoming more feminist, more of a woman and more of a fighter. She gets that it’s hard to succeed at pretty much everything but she still wants to try it all. She felt alone and refused to believe that what she was feeling was normal. She wanted an out-of-body-experience, where she could leave and stay at the same time. She missed a lot of people, she said. She missed a lot of familiar roads and places. She wishes she could drive! I wish I really knew where she wanted to go. I wish I could take her there. She tried to bury herself in books but she couldn’t. The sun seemed like the most normal thing to gravitate towards so she took her spare keys and she went. Everything was new and beautiful (confusing at times but oh so beautiful). It became more apparent that she was blessed. She knew her troubles were real but what a silly thing to think of when she could just go outside. Her feet narrow enough to fit into criss-cross sandals, tanned and sore and her heart alive. Alive with promises and plans and memories to be made. It seems like she found her purpose in this new place.
And all it took was the idea that she has to leave it for a few months, tomorrow.
I am looking forward to it like a hungry tigress. That “she” I was talking about up there, that’s me. It’s really me. It takes me a while to believe it but it is. I’m the eternal transient. As much as people like to believe they’re “settling down” after they get married, settled down is the last thing I am. I’m invigorated and I can’t sit still. I see things so differently than I did last May. I’ve had a lot more time alone where I sat and thought about myself as a whole, living, breathing human being, separate from whatever labels people chose to give me. Wife, lady dude, cat lady, hipster (this is a new one) and I shoved them aside. Who needs that pressure. I’ve had a tough enough time canvassing to my own grey matter, coaxing it to accept this crazy I have and go with it. It might be working. Boy, have I had a lot of help. Gratitude goes to those who helped, unknowingly and a peace sign to those who tried.
This is not my end-of-the-year post. I have a lot more ideas and brain musings that I can’t wait to get out into the world…after my plane ride. If you knew me last year, you’d see that my self-esteem wouldn’t let me be this way. Now it’s different. I already know what I’m making for dinner, right after I take out the recycling.
Hair still looks good!
Dear You,
This coming Monday, I will turn 26. Starting tomorrow, I will be away till then + a little bit more. I will be the exact sane (autocorrect changed my “same” to that) person when I come back. Itching to write, cook and get mixed up about a lot of things. My brain…sigh.
I have done a successful refrigerator cleanse, ensuring nothing goes to waste while I’m away. It wasn’t easy but it’s harder for me to waste good nourishment. It won’t happen this time. I’m a big girl now, I guess.
So wait for me to come back. I will.
Happy Birthday to me in the future.
When I say: “He’s the one”, I mean chicken salad.
Just yesterday right after Awesomepants came home from work, I served him the chicken salad he wanted. It had spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes and chicken marinated in lemon/garlic/pepper/cumin. It was the last thing from “special” but I already knew it was a very good day. My boy, he’s very specific with his food cravings. Specific in a way that’s not too picky and it let’s me do my thing. Specific is a good way to describe this here what I’m going to write. Or maybe not at all, knowing the way I usually write (Miss Bounce of the Walls G D’Souza).
Honestly, this is supposed to be a “I’m so lucky. Yay, I’m married and my life is amazing” kind of post. I am not going to do that. Yes, my life is amazing.
Yes.
Oh, the chicken salad. Metaphor maker activated.
I always thought I hated to cook. Always. I had no desire to cook anything because I saved all of that desire to stuff my face. Cooking? Hahaha. My mother will do it. I could chop onions and all that and sometimes when I was 10 or 11, our house help Sumita taught me how to cook the basic vegetable fare so she could rollerskate with Gayle in the hall. I couldn’t rollerjam so I was okay with the arrangement.
In 2010, when I came here to be with my future husband, I cooked. Something was wrong with me. I tried the chickens and salmons of the world and I was really good! The boyfriend was also on a healthy-eating kick which made my experiments even more fun because I loved known what we were eating was going to give our insides big hugs. He taught me how to make cheeseburgers (with turkey mince!) and I was captivated. Sounds so lame right now. Captivated by a cheeseburger. Maybe this should be the title of the post. His early lessons were the small wake up calls. When he showed me how to grill salmon, I went online, found other recipes and tried to make it a bit more interesting. His reactions were always encouraging…not like it was important or anything.
I went on with my kitchen fun until I had to go back to India. Then, things slowed down a bit. I didn’t stop cooking completely, but I lost some interest. Gayle was usually the cooking star daughter so I let that be. That and my mother would complain that I use too little or not enough salt. Awesomepants has high BP issues so maybe I did try to spread my less salt theory to the happily less developed country. Maybe I’ll never do that again.
Fast forward to yesterday. 2013 and the year or the chicken salad. The chicken salad I’ve spent a few paragraphs trying to turn into a metaphor for my marriage to this boy. (Yes, he’s mostly a boy. Just like some puppies are always mostly puppies). I now love cooking. I dream of doing it for a living, or something like that. It’s a little bit of his fault.
Which brings me right back to the salad. That chicken salad is nothing to make. I start with nothing and slowly as I add more of this and that, it became something. Something he really loved even though it’s nothing at all. It’s leaves, fungi and chicken, COME ON. What I’m trying to say is that it’s ALL about the chicken salad.
It’s exactly like last week when I was in the middle of my flu, looking like shit, playing Yahtzee with him and he stops and says: “You’re beautiful.” Whoa. No alcohol was involved.
We’re not striving for a perfect marriage. I admit I’m very shallow at times and expect fairy tales and storybooks to come alive every time our eyes meet. Nope. Not going to happen. What I want our marriage to be is chicken salad. Any salad. Boring when you see it separately but when it’s all in a bowl, I’ll hear that line I never get tired of:
“Salad was good, bb.”
(*I’ve made him a lot (A LOT) of salads in 2012. Always to take to work for lunch. That’s the one thing I can remember so vividly about this past year.)
Junk food and the BFF
Have you ever had a lot of free time and all you do is read rubbish blogs on the internet that make you feel completely rubbish about your sordid existence? That is not me ergo I never feel that way
Did I just use “ergo” in a sentence?! Way to ergo!
“Er. go,” say all my mean fans.
While you were thinking about that first question I so bluntly posed, Awesomepants and I made a pizza. I love the boy and his enthusiasm for pizza. If you ask me, he is the only hope for humanity. He can sulk about it all he likes but there’s no way I’m taking responsibility for pizza ingredients. I can’t tell the difference between Italian sausage (mama mia!) and lean beef until it’s cooked and by then I’m already in time out.
We make amazing pizzas. Pizzas that shout from rooftops, pizzas that make you weep for joy and pizzas that make you yee-haw, if you were the yee-hawing kind. If we entertained lots of people, which we don’t, they would stop talking to us because that’s all we’d feed them. They’d blame us for making them moderately obese and getting fired from their jobs and just stuff that it’s so easy to blame on amazing pizzas these days.
Nom nom nom
We got the recipe for the bread from Lauren’s Latest. It was a chance discovery. No research. Just pure luck. So easy to make too.
Once we got that down, we used a cookie sheet (even though her recipe calls for a pizza stone) to put all the ingredients together and it worked just fine.
Want to copy us and be fabulous? Here’s how you can!
1) Roll out the dough. Brush some olive oil on the top (you don’t HAVE to, but it’s nice). I seasoned the dough with cilantro, onions and dried sweet basil because I loooooove flavour.
Step one, we can have lots of fun
2) Tomato sauce from a can decided to join the party. We let him, because we can. Get it?
Step two, there’s so much we can do
3) That my Awesomepants’ hand. So pretty and white and alien-looking. He loves the cheeses and manicures. So he put on some shredded mozzarella.
Step three, it’s just you for me
4) Then came the Italian sausage and the pepperoni…happy happy joy. The second time we tried this recipe, I made the mistake with the lean beef instead of the sausage and nothing was ever the same again. :'( Haha.
Step four, I can give you more
5) Mushrooms and a closeup shot for motivation.
Step five, don’t you know that the time has arrived
6) Olives, more cheese, and a photo later, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
Step by step, Step by step girl, Ooh baby, Gonna get to you gi-rrrl
Baking time? 15 minutes.
If it’s not done, add 5 more minutes. But if it’s a good pizza, it will play by the rules. Or not because pizzas are not your bi…son.
Remember Awesomepants? He’s made this all by himself but he says I did it. What do I know….I’m just a boring ol’ blogger who uses New Kids on the Block songs as picture captions.