I.

I remember the day that I realized I wasn't very good at anything tangible. I was in 11th grade, at a high school that modeled itself after the school in "Fame". Except we weren't in New York, or Los Angeles, or any place where people with talent lived for very long and certainly not where anyone was discovered.

I was in the Literary program, and spent much of my time writing poems inspired by ee cumings, convinced that I could do more with punctuation than he had. Actually, I spent some of my time on that. The rest of my time was spent drinking coffee, searching for fingerless gloves to wear while I wrote poems outside in the winter, and trying to get my pen to leave an ink stain on my finger like I imagined happened to George Eliot. I was very interested in what it meant to live the writer's life. I poured over photos of Updike's three desks, trying to arrange mine in the same way. I was always on the lookout for the perfect journal, one large enough to be comfortable, yet still able to fit into my canvas bag. I loved being a Writer.

Writing, though, was difficult. I was great with setting, with creating detailed characters, nuancing their language so you knew who was talking without having to backtrack. And that was where it ended. My characters, so round and fleshy, just stood (or sat) around richly textured places and talked. They never went anywhere or did anything. Nothing ever happened. Poems were much the same: six or seven lines, spaced beautifully, punctuated to the nines... and boring.

Jacob and I met at a poetry reading. We'd been dating for a few months when I came across his poetry folder. As I read through them, I started crying. Yes, they were very sweet --some even beautiful-- but I cried because he was better than me, and since I knew it absolutely now, I couldn't write any more.

Flashing forward ten years, I am now sitting in Pittsburgh, hours away from my home and friends. I have a miserable, tedious, thankless job. I have an English degree, which is a most useless $120,000 piece of paper. I have two cats with eating disorders and a dog with seperation anxiety issues. I do have a lovely man. I will never grow tired of praising his sweet, darkly hilarious self. However, he's a rocket scientist who plays music, fixes things, and beats me at Jeopardy. He is also unerringly nice and supportive. I hope you know how irritating all of that can be.

We just bought a house. It's a decent size, and sits on a nice piece of land, but it was neglected by the previous owners. It was also built in the early 90's, making it too new or too old, depending. I'll just call it dated.

Two days ago, I realized that I needed to have a goal. Goals work for me, but since I have a man and a house, and have already dropped out of graduate school, I have been aimless for quite some time. And if you've ever been a childless 20-something in a dead-end, soul-numbing job, you know how appealing it would be to have a little direction. So in an effort to please the mans, I was organizing my issues of Gourmet when it came to me.

I want people to WANT to come to my house for dinner.

And it all came flooding in: my love of ambiance, accessories, conversation, presentation. What is more about those things than a dinner party? I also love to read, and Julia Child promised that "if you can read, you can cook." Goodness knows I buy cookbooks at almost the same pace as I buy cigarettes, so there will always be something from which to pull.

I recognize that I can't really cook. And maybe I'm not so good at follow-through. But how hard can it be to achieve such a simple goal, right?

Alright then.


Patsa for When It's October and You Need Time to Think
(from a memory inspired by Gourmet, a fall 2007 issue)

1 1/2 lbs. brussel sprouts
1/3 c. pine nuts
grape seed oil
linguine
1/3 c. heavy cream
salt
pepper
Parmesean

-Prepare the brussel sprouts by chopping off their nubs and pulling off the thick outer leaves. Wash thoroughly. Slice them into halves if they're tiny, quarters if they're golf ball-sized.
-Make your linguine, drain, and return to the pot.
-In a large saute pan, write your first initial in grapeseed oil, then heat over medium heat.
-Add pine nuts and stir them very quickly so they turn golden brown and not black.
-Add brussel sprouts and keep stirring.
-When the brussel sprouts start turning brown on the tender side, add the cream.
-Stir again, then allow to simmer for a few minutes.
-Dump the mixture over the linguine and toss well. Season with salt and pepper then top with grated parmesean.

*I prepared this while drinking Beaujolis and listening to Lucinda Williams's "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road".