It's official: not only am I an adult, I'm also really, really boring. Upon discovering that I would have the house to myself for all of Wednesday (due to Jeff's attending a conference out of town) I felt that I should do something to celebrate.

So what do I do? Do I go wild, dance naked in the streets, party until the cows come home, stage a wild drunkfest at my place, and frantically run around that evening trying to hide the evidence of the day's debauchery?No.

I go to the grocery store, and buy groceries for the latter half of the week. I pick up seafood, since Jeff can't stand the stuff. I go home, curl up with a container of yogurt (raspberry, thankee), watch a couple of Buffy episodes, and spend lots of time making myself spicy shrimp with a side of asparagus.

It was wonderful.

I am so boring it hurts. I mean, really. I didn't even think to dive into the little cabinet and fix myself a finger or two of Oban. Didn't even curl up on the couch with the cell phone to use up some of my free long distance to call a friend. Instead, I scratched the cats, cooked myself a lovely dinner, and propped my little toesies up on the table and talked back to the television.

What's next, macramé?

Can't say that I've been much inspired as of late—it's become a bit evident that I need to take a few days away from the coding on Quarto so as not to blow a brain gasket. I picked out something mindless, silly, and thoroughly opposite from that task: sorting through my old magazines.

I've had a few years' worth of cooking mags stashed in my bookcase for a few years now. I subscribed to Food and Wine for a while, until I got really sick of obviously being much, much poorer than their snobbish demographic. (Cooking for Manhattanites, I called it.) They occasionally had some really interesting recipes, but I eventually tired of wading through three miles each of advertising and articles aimed at people in the nouveau riche social bracket.

I kept the magazines, but ditched the subscription. (I recommend Cook's Illustrated and Fine Cooking, if you're curious.) I kept saying that "one of these days" I'd start pulling the magazines out, one at a time, and start razoring out the recipes that I thought might be passable to yuppie taste buds like mine.

While snooping through the issues, I found a letter to the editor that sounded remarkably like something I'd write:

To be honest, I really don't care what rich people in big cities eat. All you talk about are how chefs in big cities are turning back to native, peasant roots to find the highly-tasty traditional food the city folk seem to have forgotten. Why not quit wasting your time on finding out what the rich and famous are noshing on today and, instead, go to the 'peasants,' as they're often called, who seem to have this eating thing figured out?

While not his exact words, they were his exact sentiments. I'd read one too many articles about and recipes for arty foods that, quite honestly, sounded like they were better left as artistic ideas instead of actual culinary products.

I mean, "Ewwwww. You'd eat that?"

Of the magazines I've ravaged so far, I've kept pitifully few recipes. This from me, the woman who likes to experiment a bit with food. When you read recipe after recipe and find yourself thinking either "You want me to special-order how many dollars' worth of ingredients for an everyday dinner?" or "You honestly think people would eat that?" you know that dropping your subscription was a good idea.

I guess I'll keep my artistic-peasant taste in food to myself, thankyouverymuch. I can at least say that no one has ever come to my house, looked at what I was serving for dinner, and said, "Are we supposed to…um….eat that?"

Oh, well. Nobody ever said the nouveau riche had taste; it's just that they have enough money to attempt to camouflage their lack of it.