From the monthly archives: September 2009
• Read 52 books in 2010. (I did this with ease in 2006 and 2007, so it is not a stretch.) I will finally make a list again, and tackle some of the Russians. (I read Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov in high school, but in a poor translation – so poor I hardly remember the stories.)
• Take one afternoon per month and visit a museum. Would you believe I’ve never been to most of the art museums in New York, though I’ve lived here for over four years and do, in fact, work in the arts? (The beginnings of the list include the Whitney, the Frick, the Guggenheim, P.S. 1, the Morgan Library, the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the American Folk Art museum, the New Museum, a handful of prominent galleries, and too many as-yet unexplored wings of the Met, though I’ve been there a lot. Looks like my whole year is mapped out already.)
• Finally have time to start pitching articles to all my favorite magazines. I have a long, specific list that’s been developing in Remember the Milk over the past few months.
• Begin practicing piano regularly again. I love my beautiful stage piano, but I received it as a lovely birthday gift from Tom about two months before I started grad school and haven’t had nearly enough time to actually play very much. I have a handful of pieces I’d like to work on: the Goldberg Variations, a particular Brahms rhapsody I never quite mastered, the third movement of Beethoven’s Pathetique I never got around to learning even though I played the first and second in competition in high school.
• Finally begin practicing yoga on a regular basis. My poor body has taken a beating from all the sitting and staring and non-stop typing, and is tight and prone to soreness and inflammation.
• Watch all those documentaries I haven’t had time for yet, like Ken Burns’s work on New York and a bunch of old PBS documentaries on various philosophers and the 7 Up series.
• Learn to make cheese.
Remainders for today (aka things that have been floating around in browser tabs):
• Why Cooking Matters, The Nation
• What’s the Matter With Culture Studies?, The Chronicle of Higher Education
• Ten Things You Can Do to Start a Community Garden, The Nation
• Copy Editing at the New Yorker with Mary Norris
• Big Food vs. Big Insurance, Michael Pollan
• Why Good Writers Can Be Bad Conversationalists, New York Times
Since the beginning of 2009, and with only a short break in July and August, we’ve held a roughly-monthly brunch at our apartment on a Sunday afternoon. I cook, and people sometimes bring things, and we’ve had as many as 24 people show up. (Our apartment is a 500-square-foot studio, so that is always cozy.)
Yesterday it was raining out, so the group was smaller but more varied, with about half the people never having been to brunch before. Here’s what I made:
• A crockpot roast. (I got a nine-pound pot roast, browned it briefly in a skillet with a little oil, then put it in the crock pot with two cups of water, sprinkled with salt and pepper, and cooked on high for six hours. It was fabulous.)
• Egg noodles to go with the roast.
• Jamie Oliver’s squash soup (sans croutons, for time’s sake).
• Jamie Oliver’s mushroom bruschetta (though I made lots of substitutions with the herbs because I only had rosemary and sage, and I didn’t make it into a creamy sauce at the end).
• Real Simple’s chickpea bruschetta (totally fabulous and really easy).
I also got a few parbaked baguettes and ciabatta and set out some raspberry peach champagne jam from Stonewall Kitchen and a pear jam from the farmer’s market. I purchased a rather stinky Camembert at Murray’s on my way home. Attendees contributed various wines, Peche Lambic, champagne, yummy cupcakes with cream-cheese frosting, and two tiny fruit pies from Rocco’s.
Cooking for a large crowd isn’t much more difficult than a small one – even if you have severely limited space and modest resources. And people are nearly ecstatic to walk into the apartment and smell a roast. No one makes roast anymore. And why not? It’s easier than making macaroni and cheese from a box.
I have been casting about for weeks, trying to find a good system for my blog and website. I think I’ve finally settled on this theme. Inevitably, tweaks will come (it seems my undergrad was good for something), but frankly, I don’t have time to fuss with it anymore. So, here you go. Welcome to me, cyber-style.
In other news, in between my hectic schedule teaching, writing, editing, and working on my M.A. thesis, and Tom’s long days at work on set, we managed to celebrate our third anniversary in early September. It was completely wonderful. We had brunch at the Chelsea location of the restaurant at which we met (because the West Village location closed a few years ago); went to the Natural History Museum and, most importantly, the planetarium (which we loved!); ate a snack – mushroom burgers – at the UWS Shake Shack (no line!); and came home to Brooklyn and ate a fabulous meal at No. 7 – their cocktails and steak alone merit the accolades.
Which has all left me reflecting on the past three years of marriage. We weren’t given too many breaks at the beginning, since my father had just suddenly and unexpectedly passed away, and that means we always have sorrow mixed in with the joy at our anniversary. But we have so thoroughly enjoyed being married and growing to understand all that it means. Yes, marriage is work – but it is also so much fun. We highly recommend it.
Now I’m entering my fifth autumn living in New York, and I am every bit in love with this place as I was the first autumn. As I said to Tom recently, I really enjoy visiting other places, and I have a great appreciation for the variation of people, culture, and landscape to be found outside these tiny islands. But I never felt at home anywhere until I moved here.
