Thanks, esmerel! She taunts me from California with cupcakes I can't have unless i make one of these recipes: Smitten Kitchen's "chocolate whiskey and beer cupcakes" or "Chocolate Guinness Stout Cupcakes with Chocolate Ganache and Bailey's Buttercream Swirl"

What's sad is that my brain doesn't know if it wants a beer or a cupcake.

Anthony Bourdain rails against the current crop of TV chefs and names names:

We KNOW she can't cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So...what is she selling us? Really? She's selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She's a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that "Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!" Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, "Hell…I could do that. I ain't gonna…but I could--if I wanted! Now where's my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?"

Via Jody, of course.

I gave the locals first crack at these, but they've had their turn and now it's yours.

I have large quantities of the following that are free to a good home:

• whole savory
• whole fennel
• whole coriander
• pickling spice
• whole black pepper
• ground cayenne pepper
• whole cumin

If you are interested, speak up.

These are leftovers from a bulk spice order in which we brined a lot of pork.  I'd imagine that a combination of several of these, plus salt and garlic, would make a good brine for just about any kind of meat.

While I wait for today's Godot -- Adobe CS3 -- to attempt (yet again) to reinstall Adobe Acrobat CS3 (of which install, I might add, there are several known problems, especially regarding upgrading) ... well, guess what, kids, you're stuck with me for a little while.

If you want to know how to keep a webmaster from getting anything done, deny her access to her email and her web browser. After a few tumultuous minutes of foaming at the mouth, she will subside into quiet, trailing whimpers while she waits for the pain to stop.

Over the past week or so, I've been asking myself the question every self-respecting traveler asks well in advance of his/her trip—"What's gonna go in the bag?" My goal, admirable but perhaps ill-advised, is to make everything except my toiletries bag fit in one bag, which I will check.I will live out of that bag for a day short of two weeks. Thankfully, the vagaries of flight will deposit me in a land known more for sunshine than for snow. It's far easier to pack for sand and sun than it is for snow and cold. No boots, no sweaters, no scarves.

We are nearly prepared. Yes, PHE 2006 is just about to land on us, and land on us with this sickening, alcoholic *thump*.The RSVP list currently stands somewhere around 40. There will be thirteen people staying in our house alone. I have a fridge full of food, and I'm not done yet.

I have a sweater to finish knitting for Saturday—if I'm diligent, I will finish tonight.

I love to cook, but I love my laziness more. Most of the time, this intersection of personal interests yields little of interest, but every now and then, I have a eureka! moment that's worth sharing.

In the past couple of years I've come to appreciate the goodness of an off-the-cuff pan sauce. A bit of stock, a bit of wine, some aromatics, and then a bit of thickening agent (either some kind of fat, or arrowroot starch dissolved in water) for a good mouthfeel. Reduce, plate, eat.

All well and good, except for that first ingredient - the stock. The standard way of making it drove me absolutely batty: freezing/saving trimmings (bones, etc.) until you've got enough for a big batch, then plunking them into a lot of water in the large honkin' stockpot, along with whatever various aromatics (peppercorns, bay leaves, carrots, onions, etc.) I had on hand, and simmering for ages upon end until the bones give up their lovely useful flavors to the water.

I tiptoed out early on a Saturday morning to buy ingredients for salsa, leaving my spouse, still sleeping, to be guarded by the house cats. I bought a shower gift and salsa ingredients, and was well on my way through processing the vegetables into finished salsa by the time Jeff woke up.

It had to get done, not because it was a chore but because I had promised, and it was my own fault that I'd stayed up late with friends the night before, talking and playing games instead of shouldering responsibility and purchasing habañeros and peppers for food-making.

Thanks to Jody, I understand the dance well. Salsa in a minimum of time is an art of juggling the oven and prepping things in the right order. Turn the oven to broil, and while it heats, drain the beans and corn and add them to the container. While the peppers roast, start chopping ingredients in order of pungency. Once the peppers are out, and cooled, peel and seed them, chop them, and then chop the onions, garlic, and hot peppers.

Sometimes I think that the part of my brain that has forgotten how to waltz has simply retrained itself to the steps of the kitchen dance.

Later that afternoon, we coalesced into a laughing, near-shouting herd at the location of Kat and Sean's shower. I watched much of the proceedings through a minor haze of sleep deprivation and was reminded yet again that underneath the drudgery of a lot of ceremonial wedding preparations lies a true excitement, a wish for well-being. Marriage is only the legal announcement of a life transition that has already happened; much of the rest is the way for friends and family to make such a major life change flow as simply as possible. Our desire to see those we love live in comfort and happiness sometimes comes in the corporeal form of towels and sheets.

We closed off the shower with plans to reconvene in two separate groups for the evening. The men opted for barbecuing and movie-watching at Geof's, while the women opted for Thai and movie-watching at Misty and Stephen's. No strippers, no outrageous plans of town-painting. Just gatherings of friends, made unusual only by segregation of sex.

I went home, desperate for even an hour's nap, and lay down on the guest bed, trying to ignore the fact that I'd forgotten to buy cat food on the way back from the shower. I was still annoyed with myself for putting one too many habañeros in the salsa - and doing so before putting my contacts in, thus guaranteeing I'd be wearing glasses for a few days. I thought that I would not sleep, given that I only had an hour and a half to rest, and when I awakened, I thought that it had not been enough.

For a few minutes, I sat in the computer room, wondering if I should bow out of the night's festivities. I breathed deeply, stretched, trying to shake the sluggishness of sleep away. I yawned, petted the cat, and decided that some life events trumped sleep.

The fog of sleep began to lift as I got in the car; by the time I reached the freeway I realized I was actually happy to be where I was going. I was the last to arrive at the restaurant, and received my share of teasing for being slightly late. Bowing out wouldn't have been an option; if I hadn't shown up in another five minutes, they were going to take turns wardialing my home number until I answered the phone or showed up at the restaurant.

Even I can take a hint.

I balanced native Thai heat against Thai iced tea and came out even. We talked of spouses and marriages and everything less consequential, and when it came time to pay and leave, I excused myself to make a few stops on the way home.

Nobody had asked for libations to be brought to Misty and Stephen's, but I thought perhaps that if some arrived, they wouldn't be turned down. I showed up, late and last, at Misty's with a bottle of vanilla Stoli in my hand; happiness was pronounced when Misty showed us the stack of regular, vanilla, and cherry Cokes that she had just placed in the fridge.

We had our drinks with a side of movie and we laughed, a little more loudly, a little more freely, as women are wont to do when only in the company of other women.

I drove the eight-tenths of a mile back to my house a bit more slowly and with a bit more care than usual, since I'd had a bit of alcohol that evening. The early-September air held the first cool blush of fall, a welcome relief after the sweating damp of August heat.

A few fireflies flicked their cool, yellow-green light along the sides of the road on my way home, their sudden-flash moments of brightness followed by long, slow fades back to darkness. Fragile little summer creatures, their appearance heralds the beginning of another sticky Southern summer, and their disappearance points to the sweaters of fall, and the marriage of two friends in a few weeks' time.

Group photo, first row, left to right: me, Ashley, Jessica.
Second row, left to right: Sarah, Sean's sister Amy, Misty, and Kat.
Silly photo: Jason demonstrating that yes, a dead body could be fit into Kat's new cedar chest.

Current music: Coldplay, Parachutes

Penzeys loves me. I don't have to ask. I just know. Spice companies have to adore customers like me, who, like clockwork, place 2-3 enormous orders per year and turn all their friends into customers as well.

I'm still waiting on Penzeys to be certified as an Official Domestic Crack dealer; their periodic catalogue is ostensibly about spices but more about blatant culinary seduction. Anyone who doesn't believe me has never opened up the catalogue to the 'cinnamon' page, read about the four different types of cinnamon they carry, and found him-/her-self openly lusting over the descriptions of each spice and its origin.

Eventually you catch yourself referring to your spices by their country of origin. Fellow spiceheads can sit together in a kitchen, trying to remember if the cinnamon they each have in their kitchens is from Ceylon, China, or Vietnam. Discussions like this ensue:

We've gotta work on this truth-in-advertising thing. Sure, who hasn't heard that chocolate is bad for you? Rots your teeth, fattens your ass, puts the thunder in your thighs? Sure, we've got it. We ignore it every time we buy a candy bar.

However, in all those PSAs, parental lectures, and root canals, has anyone ever said to you "Stay away from that nasty chocolate or you'll get a one-inch gash on your left thumb?" Don't think so.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am the only person I know who has shed blood over a Sunday morning chocolate craving.I have also, however, managed to prove yet again that the severity of my injuries can be determined by the amount and hue of my swearing just after the injury is sustained. Torrents of colorful and inventive invective can mean only one thing: paper cut.

For some reason, the breaking of bones or the flagrant spouting of blood makes me completely forget how to swear.