"The word was a transitive verb, an exclamation, a command, of which an exact English translation is impossible. The closest equivalent probably would be the phrase:

Lighten up!"



I love it. I love Tom Robbins. I love how it looks like it is straight out of the book. I love the direction my life is taking, in spite of all of the uncertainty. I love the people who have stuck around.

Every tattoo has been a marker in my life. Cheers to a new stage :)

Six years before Skinny Legs and All, Ellen Cherry Charles was alive and well in Jitterbug Perfume. I'm thinking a rereading of Skinny Legs and All is next.

Also, Tom Robbins has written a children's book about beer titled B is for Beer. At 128 pages I think I'm going to have to read it, but I'd like all of my favorite authors to stop writing novels for the wee-ones (Neil, that goes for you as well).

As fate would have it, Sunday's beach plans were rained on and instead we decided to go to Heidi's Gasthaus for some German goodness. Sadly, we learned that after that night Heidi's would close. Thank goddess for that rain, because I would have been devastated if I hadn't had weiner schnitzel one last time. We even bought some beer glasses for memories. Heidi's was amazing -- their food was always on point and their staff was always friendly. I will deeply miss it, and now I really need to eat at all of my Miami favorites just in case they close too.

In any case, in fourteen days I will be eating weiner schnitzel in Frankfurt before heading over to the motherland.

So I finally opened the Amazon box with my study materials which had been sitting on my chair for months. I think that someone should warn you that one day after you finish your undergraduate education you might want to continue onward, and that when that day comes you are going to need your high school math skills for the GRE. Perhaps then you wouldn't have gotten so excited at the idea that you never have to do actual math again in college.

18 days before I leave for Russia.
I need to get my license -- it is amazing how I have managed to get through college and not learned how to drive.

"Life Story" by Tennessee Williams

After you've been to bed together for the first time,
without the advantage or disadvantage of any prior acquaintance,
the other party very often says to you,
Tell me about yourself, I want to know all about you,
what's your story? And you think maybe they really and truly do

sincerely want to know your life story, and so you light up
a cigarette and begin to tell it to them, the two of you
lying together in completely relaxed positions
like a pair of rag dolls a bored child dropped on a bed.

You tell them your story, or as much of your story
as time or a fair degree of prudence allows, and they say,
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, until the oh
is just an audible breath, and then of course

there's some interruption. Slow room service comes up
with a bowl of melting ice cubes, or one of you rises to pee
and gaze at himself with mild astonishment in the bathroom mirror.
And then, the first thing you know, before you've had time
to pick up where you left off with your enthralling life story,
they're telling you their life story, exactly as they'd intended to all
along,

and you're saying, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, the vowel at last becoming
no more than an audible sigh,
as the elevator, halfway down the corridor and a turn to the left,
draws one last, long, deep breath of exhaustion
and stops breathing forever. Then?

Well, one of you falls asleep
and the other one does likewise with a lighted cigarette in his mouth,
and that's how people burn to death in hotel rooms.

Cooked the pasta in chicken stock left over from Monday's cream sauce. Sauteed some sage from my garden in butter and a bit of truffle oil. Topped with Parmesan. It was really flavorful and the truffle oil was a perfect addition to send this lunch over the top.











I have a French test in less than 3 hours, and I cannot say I'm fully prepared. I'm glad to be learning the language, but right now there are oh so many things I rather be doing.

First, to give credit where credit is due, it should be noted that tonight's dinner was a cross between this recipe for roasted tomato and shrimp pasta with garlic and white wine sauce and fotocuisine's champagne chile cream sauce.



I've been trying to use the herbs in my garden as much as possible, before they potentially die (I haven't got much of a green thumb). The other day I sauteed pork chops in a mixture of garlic, onion, rosemary, and sage. Quite good. Today I used some Italian basil in this recipe-hybrid.

I mainly used the techniques featured in fotocuisine, but replaced the oregano in the sauce with basil (along with the oregano at the end with -- you guessed it -- more basil) and added red chili flakes along with replacing the chili puree part with a roasted tomato puree. The other website provided the inspiration for actually making this.



This was enjoyed during the How I Met Your Mother season finale.

From Les Halles - Coral Gables, FL




No cooking this weekend, but I did go to Les Halles. The coq au vin was tasty, but it didn't blow my mind. I don't recall if the last time we ate there the food was better, so maybe I'll just conclude that I'm not crazy about French food. I also have to admit that although I'm determined to be fluent in French, I don't care much for the language either. It doesn't sound as beautiful to me as it does to others, and speaking it is a bit of a pain.

It didn't help that the day before we ate at Fratelli Lyon which had amazing food. It definitely earned its place among my favorite Miami restaurants and it is in fierce competition with Cacao for where I would like to go to eat dinner on my birthday with the family. I had chestnut pasta with wild mushrooms and truffle butter. It was divine.

"I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship."
- Louisa May Alcott