Full of Food and Sleepy

I am amazed at myself. With all this nice tax refund in my pocket, I went to Barnes and Noble at lunch and spent nearly 50 dollars. I can't even remember the last time I spent nearly 50 dollars on anything but food. Admittedly, 25 of those dollars went to re-up my Barnes and Noble membership card, but hell, that comes under the head of necessity, right? Those discounts are amazing. I bought two very silly paperbacks and two magazines (Bon Appetit and Gourmet, of course).

So then I came home (after quite a decent day at work because I was at a desk with very busy phones, which kept me awake - I think that's the best I can hope for at this job) and then Caesar came over and we ended up at Frankie's - the Italian joint a couple of blocks away which is basically our local - and I ate some nice stuffed mushrooms and a lot of bread dipped in olive oil and herbs. I would have had an actual meal, but today's cubicle mate was a nice gent who likes to go out at 12:30, and when you're a temp, you suck the hind tit as far as lunch hours go, so I didn't get out until 1:30 - and since I wanted to go to B&N, I spent an hour doing that, and therefore ate at 2:30. This means that I don't actually get hungry again until about 3:30 am...so the mushrooms and bread will keep me perfectly happy until tomorrow.

And there were many sightings of the umbrella when it's not raining today. It was misty and damp, but people, it was fog, not rain. I can't imagine why this irritates me so much, but it does. Let's see. No one anywhere around you has an umbrella up. There are no cars going by with their windshield wipers going. No one is in the least disturbed that the air is damp. WHY IS YOUR UMBRELLA UP?

Ah. I feel better now. Thank you so much for letting me vent.

Meanwhile, I am slightly drunk and very full of food and will now spend the rest of my cigarette and beer playing solitaire.

Oh, by the way. I went to the Food Network site today in between answering the phone, and their feature of the week was that ghastly Paula Deen. And by their titles, some of the recipes sounded interesting, and, being very naive, I thought the bitch might actually have learned how to cook. WRONG. Every single recipe - I mean, EVERY recipe - contained cream of mushroom soup. What on earth is with this woman? And for that matter, what on earth is with the Food Network that they even countenance having her there? Rachel Ray drives me nuts, because I deeply hate cute, but her recipes, divorced from her persona, are good and solid and use fresh ingredients and are workable and decent. But Paula Deen harks back to the dead days of the 1950's and can opener cuisine...and the recipes are just AWFUL.

Incidentally, should anyone ever want to read about the evolution of dining in America, three books come to mind immediately. Two of them are by a wonderful woman named Laura Shapiro, Perfection Salad and Something in the Oven. They are superb explorations of the subject. The third is by Jane and Michael Stern, called American Gourmet. It's a wonderful history of food in this country - with recipes. It's deeply terrific. Now go spend your income tax refund buying books.

Love, Wendy