The Penguins are playing the Flyers right now so I had to turn the marshmonsters around to watch. Alisha started preaching about how its unnatural to obsess over marshmallows and how if I lived in Arkansas and tried pulling that shit, I’d get gang-raped by a baseball team called the Galaxies. Then Henry said something stupid and shit-coated, like, “Did you just take another picture of them?

They haven’t CHANGED” and I was like, “But people on Twitter might be curious as to what’s going on with them right now.

”

Then I went upstairs to pee and while peeing I started thinking things through, this whole marshmallow thing I mean, and I started thinking about how I never played with dolls when I was a kid, and maybe this is some latent need to play and dress inanimate objects that just bloomed late inside of me.

Or maybe I just really like to make food into play things, because this is not the first time I’ve lost myself in the world of make believe edible friends.

And it probably won’t be the last, either.

This hockey game is fucking fantastico, by the by.

It was 11:30 PM. I knew it was a bad idea. Henry REALLY knew it was a bad idea. But there was a box of corn bread mix in the kitchen and I really wanted corn bread. Of course Henry was all, “Pendants or muffins, I can’t do both.” So I had the bright idea of baking that shit on my own while Henry toiled over resin at the dining room table.

The thing with Henry is that he acts like he’s whatever.

Like, “Yeah go ahead, you do that; see if I care” but I KNOW that it KILLS him to hear me smashing shit around in the kitchen when there’s not a damn thing he can do about it. And then I had to ask him if vegetable oil and canola were the same and I could tell he wanted to march in, reclaim his kitchen, and whip up his own batch of delicate muffins from one of the yellowed index cards he keeps in a prized recipe box. But instead, he maintained a calm facade and continued making pendants while I raped and foraged the kitchen cabinets, scraped the top of my hand on a blender blade, and tried with little success to defend my eyeballs from imminent recipe-induced crossing. Recipes are only word problems in disguise, those fuckers.

After a lot of groaning, grunting, and “motherfuck”ing, I finally had all of my shitty batter (which unlike cake batter, does NOT taste good raw) doled out in what I hoped to be even allotments.

I was wrong.

Oh but don’t worry, the nasty taste of the muffins completely overrode the size discrepancies. Not even the hearty fistfuls of sugar I dumped on top, pre-baking, could mask the bland dryness of these assholes. Henry even slid his plate away with more than half a muffin remaining. And he opted for the runt of the batch to begin with.

This morning, I decided to mix up some honey butter to help combat the dryness and add some sweetness.

I mean, I fucking DRENCHED these bastards in the shit and they were still nothing more than glorified Southern saliva-suckers. Chooch, bless his heart, he tried to eat half of one, but in the end he decided to be honest and said, “I can’t like these. They’re not delicious.”

Fuck baking. Though I am still determined to bake a pie this weekend. And I think I have just the recipe.

Last week, I opened my front door to find a gigantic box from Williams-Sonoma perched at my step. First I panicked, because I knew I hadn’t consciously ordered anything from there and my grandma went through this phase where she was ordering shit from QVC in her sleep and what if that was happening to me now too? All of my family’s best idiosyncrasies, consistently delivered to me on the conveyor belt of heritage.

After hauling it inside, I was overjoyed to find, swimming near the top of the inflatable padding, a card that learned me it was an early birthday present from my friend Alyson. Two boxes were beneath all that, wrapped in pretty pineapple paper. THIS IS THE PART WHERE I LEARNED ALYSON BOUGHT ME TWO CANISTERS OF SPRINKLES CUPCAKE MIX WTF OMG!

(My tutu was still downstairs from the Blogathon bullshit, so I put it to work. It needs to earn its keep somehow.)

Seriously, what a fabulous gift for a cupcake snob the likes of myself. In the enclosed card, she specified that perhaps Henry could bake those fine ass bitches up during Blogathon and I thought, “Why, what a swell idea! Something delicious to feast upon while beating myself stupid in the name of charity, and also – fodder to blog about!”

Henry was gone most of the day last Saturday, partially under the guise of “doing me a favor” by keeping Chooch out of my hair, but I’m sure it was mostly because Henry is scared to be around me during Blogathon. And also because I had a ton of pictures I needed him to pose for and he wanted to prolong the inevitable for as long as possible.

When he WAS home, I hounded him. “What about the cupcakes? How about those cupcakes? It’s cupcake o’clock, you motherfucker, let’s go before I blow up your asshole with a stick of dynamite.” And each time, he would say those words that every child and Erin HATE: “In a little while.”

And then it was midnight and he was standing before me giving me some lame ass excuse about not having any butter in the house and Blake was all, “I’ll go down the street to the gas station—” at which point Henry made a threatening throat-slicing motion.

Perhaps he felt bad that I only slept for 4 hours after being up for 24, and I even weed-wacked that afternoon (can you IMAGINE), because the next day he actually made the vanilla batch without any whining and begging from me.

Of Sprinkles, I will say this:

• The cake part was very MOIST (why do people hate that word? I love it. In fact, I’ve often considered it tattooed inside my lip) and sweet. I think Henry might have baked it too long because he is not as delightful with baked goods as he’d like The Internet to believe (he’s a really great cook though, I can’t deny that), and the edges were a bit crisp.
• Henry does, however, make a bitchin’ frosting. But he wanted to try the recipe that Sprinkles provided, which was very delicious but entirely too sweet for more than a few finger-sweeps while it was still in the mixing bowl. It ended up, in my opinion, being too much once it was sexin’ the cupcake and my teeth screamed a little.
• The signature candy bulls eye toppers they supply have no taste and I really wanted them to spark in my mouth like Necco wafers are supposed to but never did when I tried. I learned that when I was in elementary school, from one of the issues of Weekly Reader. I also learned that if one is unable to brush their teeth, eating a piece of cheese before bed is an adequate substitute. That’s why I always guiltlessly devour cheese before bed, even though I know I’ll be brushing my teeth. That is also why I’m 569 pounds. That is also why sometimes a cube of Monterrey jack dislodges itself from my chin rolls the next day and I think, “Shucks, where’d that come from?”
• My opinion will not be cemented until I try the red velvet canister (because that shit is the best ever, I mean who came up with red velvet? Some poor bitch, that’s who. Some poor serf-bitch who entered a fief-wide contest, vassals ineligible, to win an opportunity to bake the Queen’s pre-beheading cake and THAT is what she came up with over top her kettle with all the rats scurrying around and nipping at her gangrened toes, and immediately she named it after the fabric from which she pretended her burlap nightdress was made, and seeing as it was the only entry that didn’t cause a palace-wide botulism outbreak, she won) and then also visit one of the bakeries in person and even then, my ultimate opinion will be based on whether or not I see Katie Holmes gormandizing one with my own two eyes. I think I will also ask to shadow the bakers because I’m still not entirely convinced that Tom Cruise isn’t using Sprinkles as a front to contaminate the world with batter-planted religious Rufies. 
• I will also need to try every flavor they make available to me. And that better be a wide selection, because don’t they know I’ll be slandering the shit out of them if I’m unhappy?
• Please come  to Pittsburgh. I have a feeling I might really want to have sex with you if we meet in person.

Henry went to bed before the cupcakes cooled, so I was in charge of the frosting station. Of course, I didn’t wait long enough and then bitched when all the frosting shifted around the head of the cake and then began to run down the sides like a souvenir from sloppy sex. What? I didn’t bash in the left side of it from groping it with my heavy beast-hands! It came like that.

THANK YOU, ALYSON! For remembering my birthday, and being such an awesome friend. <3

Sometimes, when I stupidly have an urge to procreate again, I go back and read some of my pregnancy posts on LiveJournal, wherein I am quickly reminded to close them legs up, close ’em up tight, ya’ll.

Today, I had a fleeting desire to try and birth a creature that might actually enjoy to cuddle with its mother, unlike Chooch who might as well just start pulling a switchblade out of his underroos and rolling cigarettes in his shirt sleeve. So to LiveJournal I went, and I found this lovely memory of Ponderosa and realized that hey, I still haven’t been to a buffet since then. This grudge thing, it comes easy to me.

Originally written January 13, 2006

It was all Henry’s bright idea, really. While idling around the house, wondering what to do for dinner (I was content extending my breakfast and lunch of gummies into the evening), Henry suggested Ponderosa. I quickly thought back upon my last trip to a buffet and decided that I wasn’t living life to the fullest unless I gave it another go. Besides, my mom used to take me to Ponderosa when I was a wee chitlin’, and if memory served me right, I believe I liked it.

Things immediately got off to a rocky start when we arrived. I stood in front of the large menu hanging on the wall behind the counter, heart rate increasing from the impending pressure cast onto me from the impatient stares of Henry and the cashier. My only option, of course, was the buffet, as everything else was steak, steak, seafood with a steak smoothie, or super steak. That’s gross for a vegetarian.

We walked over to the secluded booth I chose and it was here when I became arrested by what I affectionately call Fish Out of Water Syndrome. I stood there, next to the table, with one knee on the slippery booth, looking to Papa H for guidance. Do we sit down first? Do we stand here and wait for a signal, a green light or the peal of a dinner bell? Maybe we should just leave; I really wanted to just leave.

“What do we do now?” I whispered. I could feel the anxiety branching its russet fingers across my face, panic wavering from my flesh like heat on the horizon.

“Uh, we go up and get a plate,” Henry chided in the tone he reserves for moments he feels I should be reminded of my fucking retardedness, after which he stood there and stared at me for a second longer, then shook his head and walked away. I quickly ran after him, grasping onto the elbow of his shirt with my sweaty fingers.

I hung back awkwardly, observing Henry’s professional buffet maneuvering. Following his lead, I grabbed a plate, making certain it didn’t come complete with a hair like his selection did, and then I began to tentatively prong clumps of withered lettuce into a small mound on my plate. The lack of fresh spinach among the salad spread had me so bereft that I had to mentally talk myself down from tear-shed. Hormones are a bitch, but to be fair I probably would have stamped my foot even without-child. Two steps down, an employee was coveting the green pepper slices, thereby monopolizing the container from all the paying customers such as myself who really had their hearts set on the addition of the crisp, snappy vegetable to their salad. The peppers were already overflowing! There was no need for restocking at that particular moment, but then I remembered that to me, buffets are  merely an extension of a waking nightmare, so I tried to stop having standards and began to expect typical salad fare to lie in festering clumps, marinating in general buffet splooge and skin flakes from the arms of overreaching salad fixers.

Sans peppers, I moved on to the dressings, which I was delighted to find were not labeled. I blindly added a small dribble to the center of my spinach- and pepper-less crap hill, and shuffled back to our booth with my head down. (I shuffle while pregnant.)

As I pushed the questionable bits of salad around on my plate, I took the time to scope out what nonpareils Henry had acquired. This resulted in an interrogation of how he managed to escape my side long enough to seek out an array of slightly-edible choices. Items such as a golden roll and mac n’ cheese garnished the edges of his plate; things that maybe I would have enjoyed as well.

“If you would have continued along, you would have run right into it,” he explained while tearing chicken off the bone like a caveman, as I whimpered with jealousy.

It’s true, I could have taken more time to explore the depths of the buffet, but not while some old man was breathing down my back, waiting for the right moment to swoop down under the sneeze shield. He was right up against me, tongue wagging and elbows primed and jutted, waiting for the opportunity to start jabbing. I imagined him coating me in the remnants of his impending whirling dervish, and to be honest, I wasn’t trying to stick around for that. Buffets make me feel so rushed as it is, but throw a buffet bully into the mix and watch me freak out like the amazing social abortion that we all know I can be.

After I explained this scene to Henry, while trying to be brave and stifle my tears, he promised to take me back once I picked my way through the salad. Henry’s plate of thoroughly gnashed goods had long since been whisked away by the nicotine-damaged waitress, and still the minutes ticked on. He sat hunched over the table, watching me with his glazed-over eyes as I tediously cut too-large florets of broccoli into bite-sized morsels with his knife.

(My knife was adhered to the napkin it was rolled in, courtesy of an unknown viscous substance, so I wasn’t really anticipating using it on food that would eventually wind up in my mouth.)

By the time I had devoured all parts of the salad that appeared to be health code compliant, there were too many people in line at the buffet, so I made Henry wait some more. It was during this interim that I really got a good look at my fellow diners. Interspersed with folk of Henry’s ilk, and a handful of citizens who looked like they could self-suffice for a few weeks without sustenance, sat:

• (1) man who arrived with his belt already unbuckled;
• a troika of children who had thrown their jackets onto the floor upon arrival and then proceeded to lay on them;
• a group of guys who clearly had just gotten high out in the parking lot

I also finally got to put a face on the noisy nose-blower behind me. And boy I wish I hadn’t, because for that moment in time, I feared that I had somehow wound up in Appalachia.

On my second round of facing the ominous buffet, Henry walked me through and pointed out things that maybe I would enjoy, like cottage cheese, potato salad and macaroni and cheese; it was like having my own guided tour and I felt the need to ask when we were going to see the basement. Little dollops of everything Henry recommended dotted the perimeter of my plate, which I then crowned with a hesitant spoonful of buttered noodles (they looked like worms swimming in snot, you guys) and chocolate pudding (it looked like soft serve poop with a  diarrhea skin, you guys). Henry brought me back a smaller plate featuring a diminutive lump of mashed potatoes (which I took one taste of and gagged back up for added effect), nachos and cheese, and a slice of pizza.

I’m really glad that he had the foresight to include the nachos because otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to deduce that the cheese sauce festering away in that vat on the buffet was the same exact coagulated concoction used to coat the macaroni. It was disgusting, and it made my face crumple up like an air-filled paper bag being crushed.

I may have struck out with everything on my plates, but I still had the pizza to count on. The cheese was so thick and heavy, congealed with a luminous sheen of grease not unlike a pool of oil in a parking lot or the complexion of an amputee after performing a one-legged fornication obstacle course on the most humid day of the summer while chugging mugs of habanera chili, that I had to use a fork to pry the slice off the plate. Mistaking that I was in a real restaurant, with a real slice of pizza in my paws, I dove right in. And what a shock to the taste buds (whom I have promised to make it up to, by the way) as they drowned in a wad of artery-plugging mush. I managed to lumber through half before the thick tomato paste became too much to bear. And the crust was like no other: A strange hybrid of what one might assume was soggy Ritz crackers crumbled and rolled out with Nilla Wafers on a tray spritzed with Grandma’s Aquanet to form a sad semblance of pizza dough. I was intrigued. Nauseated, yes; but intrigued nonetheless.

Hope blossomed around the ingested sludge in my stomach when Henry suggested that maybe the desserts would be better. He brought back a smörgåsbord of pint-sized confections: A small bowl, which bore a striking resemblance to an ashtray, housed a small portion each of sugar-plated bread pudding and a crumbled mass of what I believe had “apple” in the name. Next to the bowl, he set down a plate which carried a slice of some curious variety of sweet bread and a brownie.

The crap in the bowl was decent, but the brownie was no more than a glorified piece of school cafeteria cake with an APB out on the icing. And the bread! Good Lord, the bread. Having the inferior taste buds that are programmed into your average blue-collar worker, Henry masticated his bite of bread as though it were a caviar-capped truffle, but I droned on and on about how dry it was — I even conducted an experiment using a small sample of bread, a sip of water, and an extended tongue — and oh yeah, what exactly was I eating, anyway? He insisted it was nothing more than nut bread, but halfway through the shared slice, I bit into a mushy mouthful of banana.

“It’s banana bread!” I announced as I pulled the plate away from Henry and happily ate the rest.

“So because you now know it’s banana bread, it’s suddenly good?” A veritable pylon of steam chugged from his ears as Henry wrestled with this concept. I love confusing him with my nonsensical food laws.

Unfortunately, one slice of banana bread is not enough to change my prior conception of the buffet, so from this day forward, the word will be completely obliterated from my vocabulary. Buffets no longer exist in my universe.

The lesson learned is that evidently, my boobs aren’t the only thing that have gone and changed on me since I’ve entered adulthood; my taste buds are no longer the same under-developed specks upon my tongue as I once knew them to be. Which explains why Chuck E. Cheese pizza isn’t exactly a delicacy worth writing home about these days, either.

What bothers me the most is that I still don’t know what dressing I had covering my wilted salad.

“What kind of cake did you get, Riley?” our neighbor Ruth asked last night, as we hung out in the front yard. “Chocolate or yellow?”

“Raspberry ambrosia,” I answered for him.

Ruth made the universal “Oh Jesus Christ” face, presumably since the cake was only for a three year old. But when it comes to baked goods, nothing’s too gourmet for my kid. 

Then I gave her a piece and that shut her right up.

My favorite (CAKE) bakery churns out these majestic masterpieces of raspberry orgasms and caps it off with a proper powdered sugar ejacualtion and every bite is a money shot, I fucking promise. I have been obsessed with this cake for years. In fact, one year, I threw a birthday party for Henry (I know, wrap your head around THAT one — me doing something selfless for that man), and when I went to pick up his cake at Bethel Bakery (let me also add that I declined their offer of an iced inscription; it  said nary a  Happy Birthday), I bought myself a raspberry ambrosia cake. Yes, it was Henry’s birthday, but I was still the Queen. I will never forget gathering around the dining room table and explaining, “The plain cake is Henry’s, but that magnificent bitch right there is mine” and of course, none of my friends were fazed by this, but Henry’s sister and the one friend of his I bothered to invite looked a little appalled.

That night is still referred to as “The party where Erin bought herself the ‘good cake’.

“

So yeah, never mind, I guess the whole birthday-party-for-Henry thing wasn’t as selfless of a manuever as I imagined it was back then.

I sent Henry off on his own to retrieve the cake, and after the Easter pie debacle, I’m awfully relieved he didn’t come home with another contestant of the What Were They Thinking OMG Hideous Pie competition.

We also got a half dozen cupcakes from my favorite CUPCAKE bakery, Vanilla Pastry Studio.

As soon as the candles on the cake were snuffed out by his dirty trucker breath, he bypassed the cake and tore into a lemon cucpake. I guess he knew that cake was really for mommy.

 Thank you for being born, Choochie, if only to give Mommy another acceptable day to stuff her face with 16,879 sugar-crystaled calories.

A few weeks ago, I sent out an urgent Tweet begging for advice on how to turn ordinary bread into delicious cookies. The general consensus was, “Honey,just  toast it and sprinkle it with sugar & cinnamon.” This was no good, no good at all. “Nice try,” I thought, “but that’s just TOAST and probably the fanciest thing my mother ever made me for breakfast. So no.”

I was thinking about it again earlier tonight, and,  feeling particularly ambitious, I exclaimed, “Hey, Chooch let me enter the kitchen and bake you up some cookies, child.” And he was like, “Hold on, I’m inviting viruses onto the computer.”

Let me break this down for you in Pretentious Food Blog-style, because I want to make sure everyone gets to experience this culinary delight.

1. FIRST, get out some slices of bread and tear it a new asshole. I used some sort of Roman wheat bread bullshit.
2. Pretend like you’re making boobs out of Play-Doh and roll your bread pieces up real good. You can leave the crust on; I did. For some.
3. Next, think of things that taste real good and sweet to you. (Preferably things that are not a part of someone’s anatomy, because I’m not so sure that would bake well and I don’t know any cannibals IRL to call up for advice. Unless Jeffrey Dahmer had a cookbook?)
4. Once you got some sugar plums dancing in your mind, rummage through the cabinets and see if you have that shit. In my case, I pulled out the SUGAR, CINNAMON and HONEY, what what. Do not overthink it with measuring apparati! JUST DUMP THAT CRAP IN A DIABETIC HEAP.
5. Roll your yeasty ballsacks into it. And now, roll the bread, too. Knead the fuck out of it like it’s the new sexual black dress of 2009. If you have to, think of the last porno you watched. Just get it done.

After you scrape the excess with your fingers and do some deep-throating, the bowl might look like this:

Oh shit, and at some point you should do that pre-heating thing. I wasn’t sure what to set the oven to, so I just cranked it all the way up. Like fast food, bakery edition. I’m unsure what # to make that step, but I have faith that you will persevere. Or have your purse severed.

6. Splat the accessorized balls onto a COOKIE SHEET. I didn’t do anything to the COOKIE SHEET because I wasn’t sure if I should use butter, oil, or parchment paper, so we went bareback for this one.

It might look like this when you’re done with that:

7. While you’re doing this culinary miming, let your child graffiti a dining room chair with Jesus band-aids. It keeps him from accidentally Plath-ing himself  or adding things to your Etsy shopping cart, like a Santa’s Workshop wall-hanging.

8. Open the oven after two minutes to see how glorious and glistening your bonne bouche looks.(And yes, I called it that. Out loud. Coupled with kissing noises.)

9.  Panic because the cookie sheet is missing from the oven; figure it must have been the basement-dwelling vagrant who thieved it when you were wrenching the knife from your child; realize you never put the cookie sheet in to begin with.

10. Put the cookie sheet in the oven.

11. Take it back out three minutes later because you have no patience.

12. If  your teeth involuntarily twinge and ache just from the proximity, and it looks like the vagina of Jabba the Hut’s wife, they are baked.

13. Try to dislodge the confections from the cookie sheet; note that McGyver might want to add hot-ass honey into his superglue repertoire.

14. Do not be surprised when all of your hard work and ingenuity is summed up honestly by a three-year-old:

“This is not a cookie. This is toast. I can’t like that, dorkbitch.”

Apparently, Jesus I’m not. Though probably it would be better if I used different bread next time. And marshmallows. Why didn’t I add marshmallows.

Since last weekend was all about cucpakes and game night, I find it apropos to repost an old LiveJournal post about the same subjects. And hopefully sometime Capn’ Cusspants will let Mommy have a fucking minute to sit down and write about the recent game night. If not, Doctor Nyquil might have to make an appearance. (KIDDING.)

Originally posted January 21, 2007

 Bathing in a tub of warmed pistachio pudding with buoyant sponge caked-rubber duckies.

These are the sensations I imagined would wash over me while I tackled the cupcakes last week. I did not feel any of these things. Instead, I felt tired, bored, agitated. All the things I normally feel when spending time with Henry.

First, he quickly talked me out of the “from scratch” mindset and set me free in the baking aisle of Giant Eagle, where I bought three boxes of cake mix and decorative thingies and neon food coloring. There was so much more I wanted to buy but I don’t know where to go to get the good baking stuff. I wanted to encrust my cakes with edible diamonds and sugared seaweed, but time was fleeting.

My cupcake-baking enthusiasm quickly waned as I struggled to mix the batter, but interest was regained when Henry took the blending-reins and set me free with a kitchen-full of ingredients to plop into each pocket. He lingered close-by, though, to make sure that everything I used was edible. Just because I had hoped to fill the innards with mud, grass, thumb tacks and soiled baby wipes, I guess. Henry was disgusted and even remarked that I have the audacity to wonder why I can’t keep friends. And here I thought it was because of my wicked mood swings and inability to trust!

Here is what I learned:

• Cheerios shrivel and get very hard when baked
• Fruit snacks don’t melt; they still stick to your teeth even after being baked into batter
• Fistfuls of marshmallows should not be allowed inside a cupcake because then Henry has to use a knife to cut the finished product out of the pan. And then your guests think that one was nibbled on by your cats. And then you feel like shit because people think your house is unsanitary and they start holding cupcakes up to the light to inspect further.
  
• Maraschino cherry sauce sinks and congeals at the bottom for a bloody good-looking finished product
• Janna will eat her weight in cupcakes flavored with blueberry preserves, and won’t even notice that a well-concealed olive is awaiting her beneath a cap of green icing
• Chopped dates blend into cake batter and come out the other end of the baking process undetected. Seriously, who ate the one with the dates? No one knows
• When Henry urges me to only fill each baking cup halfway, I should listen

The next morning, Henry and I stood in the kitchen staring at two dozen un-iced cupcakes. We marveled over their non-uniformity and I grabbed the next box of mix.

“Whoa! Oh no. You are not making anymore. Are we looking at the same cupcakes here? You got two dozen disgusting cupcakes sitting here and let me tell you something: once your little friends find out what’s in them, ain’t no one going to be eating them. We don’t need any more cupcakes going to waste.”

I was enraged, yet relieved. Baking is tiring business, you guys. It’s not fun like it looks like on TV. I couldn’t even read the directions on my own. I tried, but words blended together and it started to look like a word problem which angered me because numbers just don’t belong in sentences with words because it makes my brain seize up a little. But I ate a lot (a lot) of batter and felt like it might have been my last day on earth.

So instead of boarding the baking train, we (read: Henry) whipped up some butter cream icing which was then separated into several bowls so I could get all Picasso with my food coloring.

“Just put like, two drops in,” Henry advised as I meat-fisted the small vial and sent at least fifteen droplets splattering into the icing.

We made purple (regular flavored), pink (amaretto), lime (almond), blue (marshmallow) and then I got bored and ditched Henry. He used this quiet time to concoct his own icing: bright green flavored with a hint of red pepper, which left a pleasant warmth in the mouth. It was my favorite, but none of the game night attendees noticed and had to be told what was happening. Sometimes I wonder if Janna’s mommy has to accompany her to the potty since Janna seems to need dialogue added to her every action.

“Now you’re passing a corn-studded turd through your anus. Here it comes! Plunk! That was the sound of it dropping into the toilet water! Now wipe yourself good, Janna. Front to back!”

Honestly. She probably didn’t notice the olive because I wasn’t giving her a play-by-play.

After I finished slathering my disfigured cupcakes, it was finally time to decorate them! Except that I didn’t give a shit anymore! I half-heartedly dusted each one with sprinkles and plopped a cherry on some of them. I was kind of over it. I mustered enough energy to impale two of them with toothpicks in order to create a two-story cupcake shanty.

It’s a shame really, because I had big plans of desecrating each iced dome with obscenities and unmentionables and maybe even using a piping bag to scrawl out some of Janna’s dirty secrets, but my belly ached from the fingerfuls of icing I had scooped out–behind Henry’s back–and jammed into the back of my throat like an orphan eating porridge. (I’ve been obsessed with porridge all weekend.)

I guess baking wasn’t the worst thing for me to find out I don’t mesh with. It could have been something dangerous, like knife-fighting. (Which isn’t to say that’s not a hobby I’ve flirted with in my head.)

For some reason, my guests actually ate all but five or six, forcing Henry to eat his words. There were several murmurings of “What is that sticking to my tooth?” but I really think that Henry’s delicious icing (ugh) overpowered my misuse of creative baking license.

Granted, two of my guests were stoned, but hey–I’ll take it.

As Week Two draws to a close, I have in my head a list of things I am thankful for.

1. Wine
2. Puzzles that occupy Chooch
3. Ability to shut Chooch out when he starts whining in frustration over said puzzle
4. iCarly, for being one of the few shows that can keep Chooch quiet for the entire episode
5. Janna, who has babysat me numerous times while I in turn babysit Chooch
6. CVS, for being in walking distance
7. Wine
8. That I don’t own a gun (thankfulness on this tip is debatable and changes by the hour)
9. the convenient way tablespoons are marked on butter wrapper so idiots like me don’t have to panic
10. Wine
11. MTV reality shows
12. “Annie”,

a. because I forgot how much I love to emulate the theatrical warbling of raggedy orphans

1 . and this in turn gives Chooch a taste of his own obnoxious-coated medicine

b. it keeps alive my dream that the sun really will come out tomorrow, and by that, I mean a rich man will adopt me and it will be all “Henry who?” and you will see me tapdancing into the sunset, my friends.

Did something amazing yesterday, I did. I made cornbread on my own, and I only had to text Henry once for help. I even added real life corn into the mix (which tastes real good, by the way, salmonella be damned) and then, oh you will never believe this, while it was baking in the oven (yes, I made sure all the extraneous cookware was cleared out first. I learned the hard way when I still lived at home and attempted to bake cookies while a bag of missed crackers still sat in the corner of the oven-turned-pantry) I even took it upon myself to mix my own HONEY BUTTER. When it was done, I swiped a finger through it and exclaimed, “I did that!

” which is the same thing Chooch says when he shits on the potty/Sharpies the wall/blows up the neighborhood with a homemade grenade.

And then of course, after all my slaving in the kitchen, Chooch was like, “Are you fucking kidding me, fool?

I ain’t eating that shit.” Even when I tried to say it was cake, he backed away in horror and said, “I can’t like that.” Even when I lied and said, “Daddy made it!” he was like, “Uh, no, YOU made it. I watched you, retard.”

When Henry came home last night, I begged him to try some. He kept giving me excuses like:

• I’m not hungry
• I’m allergic
• I don’t like cornbread
• Look, you’re missing the Real World, omg!

But finally he conceded.

“It’s good right?” I asked expectedly. “I even put real corn in it. It’s like an actual Mexican made it, Henry.”

He said it was decent.

“Although….”

“What?” he asked, cornbread mastication ceased in apprehension.

“Well, the expiration date was from a year ago. But that’s probably OK, right? I mean, it tasted fine to me.”

He quit eating it after that, but swears it was just because he was full.

Whatever. I used fresh milk and eggs, at least. Besides, it said it was a SUGGESTED date. My personal suggestion was to use it yesterday.

“Joke’s on you, mommy-asshole.”

Last night was relatively calm for the most part.

I was able to get Chooch interested in “Annie,” but I don’t think he was listening to my story about how I tried to orchestrate a reproduction of it in eighth grade and Jason Jones was going to play Punjab, but then my ex-friend Keri couldn’t take it anymore and kept deep six-ing my cast list. I think that may have had something to do with the fact that every time she would sleep over, I’d put the soundtrack on repeat.

My love for Annie runs deep, like a stream of piss in Hell’s urinal.

I had him in bed by 10:30 (early for him, believe me) but then Henry had to come in the house like a fucking bumbling burglar and Chooch was all, “Huh? Daddy’s home?” and then it was stomp-stomp-stomp down the stairs, at which point his mild mood completely mutated into whirling dervish mode and he started throwing toys and spilling apple juice. And I took no part in it. I stared emotionlessly at the TV and mumbled, “He was fine all night.

You  make him turn into an asshole. He’s all yours, have a ball, Daddy.”

I had scheduled a phone call with my new friend Jessi. When you’re raising a hellion, phone calls can no longer be fielded at whimsy. And it’s always fantastic when you have to tell people, “Don’t call me until after 11pm” because you know it’s going to sound like Oakland rioting in the house up until then. Fortunately, when Jessi called, Chooch and Henry had at least taken their screaming show upstairs, but the ruckus was still jarring enough that I had to strain  to concentrate on parts of the conversation. I could hear Henry shouting, “Get back in bed!” and Chooch answering from across the hall, “No way!” and then devilishy laughing and chucking what sounded like boulders out of his crib. Finally, it quieted down (apparently Chooch ended up falling asleep in our bed while I was still on the phone and Henry had no idea. We make a great parenting team) and I was able to enjoy a grown-up conversation with a really cool girl.

Today, I woke up and remembered, “Fuck, I promised I’d make French toast for breakfast.” I can’t remember why exactly I promised, what horrendous activity I was trying to bribe the child to quit, but I do know that he reacted well to the bribe and was, for the most part, a decent human being last night. And when I promise him things, I make sure to follow through because the last thing I want is to be like my own mother. (That song “Promises, Promises” by Naked Eyes? ALWAYS makes me think of her.)

So I google “easy french toast” and only 68798097 results turn up, oh lucky day. Quickly, I become confused. Every recipe is different. One says one egg and two slices of bread, another says 2 eggs and 6 slices of bread. I’m not even in the  kitchen yet and I’m in tears.

But I did it. Sort of. I mixed all the shit together and became mildly frustrated at the way the cinnamon melded into a curdled skin with the milk. I didn’t know exactly what “grease the pan” meant, because that was so vague.

So I wiped it with canola oil. That didn’t seem greasy enough, so I sprayed it with Pam. Finally, I caved and plopped some fucking butter up in that shit and marveled at the sizzle.

The first piece, thank God I tried it before serving it to Chooch, because it was wack. Totally raw. The pieces that followed were not much better, but I felt confident that the eggs were no longer raw. One piece actually had a little scrambled egg hanging off it like a breakfast dingleberry. It was cute, but tasted absolutely disgusting.

I let Chooch and myself ingest several bites. But I noticed that there was something terribly off with them, so I said, “Er, maybe we should not eat anymore, Chooch.”

And then Henry came home. Scraps of evidence remained on both of our plates, and Henry asked, “Did you cook it enough?” as he held up a piece tentatively between two fingertips, like he was trying to spy the contents of his cheating wife’s mail.

“I’ll tell you right now what you did, you used too much milk.” He said it in that superior “I watch Alton Brown” tone that makes me want to castrate him sometimes, with an Alton Brown-approved cutlery set. But then, sniffing the kitchen, he added, “You caught it on fire, didn’t you?” And then, upon further inspection of my damning trail, he yelled, “Tell me you did NOT use this metal spatula on my non-stick pan!!!!??”

Later, after he was sure that Chooch and I weren’t going to need our stomachs pumped of swirling raw eggs, Henry tried to reason with me. After eight years, he still tries this sometime. It’s kind of adorable.

“You know, cooking’s not that hard. Your problem is that you rush. You want it done NOW.”

“Well, duh. Why else would there be the high setting on the stove, if not to help me cook things as fast as possible?” And Henry did this thing where he holds up to his hands in a silent prayer, like he’s telepathically asking some entity to please provide patience.

Finally, I snapped, “Look, cooking is not fun for me. I DO NOT LIKE IT. I do not get joy from rooting around the refrigerator for ingredients, I do not like the way my head feels when struggling to read a sentence that contains words AND numbers, and I absolutely do NOT enjoy standing in front of a stove wondering when this shit is going to be done.”

I don’t care if I suck at this. I do not like to cook, not here not now not then not there. And if it takes me writing it out Dr. Seuss-style to get it through his head, then I will gladly work on that shit this weekend. That is, after I bathe in a tub of vodka and have a harem cater to me. “That’s right, you drop that tab in mama’s mouth, just like that.”

Something wonderful and terrible happened all at once: Henry got a second job. He starts today, at 3 and won’t be home until 11. This is awesome because hello, we need the money; but it’s tragic because it means I have to cook dinner for Chooch and myself EVERY NIGHT NOW.

I don’t know how to cook, remember? Not only that, but I don’t LIKE to cook.

I told Henry, “Son, you better do like all those good working mommies do and start freezing some shit.” So last night, he toiled away over a big cauldron and before I knew it, the fridge was stocked with small plastic containers of soup. “This should get you through until at least Wednesday,” he said, and I could tell by the way his voice was strained that he’s worried about this too, like he’s going to come home one night and find Chooch and I in an emaciated heap by the corner, being pissed on by cats mistaking us for rugs.

“I’ll freeze some spaghetti sauce, too,” he said on second thought, coming back from whatever faraway vision of horror he was screening.

When he came home from his first job today, he was in the kitchen stocking up the salad bowl for me. I came up behind him, gave him a desperate hug and whispered, “It’s like, the end of an era.”

“WHAT era?” he asked. The era of home-cooked meals, Henry.

The era of not having to touch the stove, ever.

Oh my shit, I’m going to miss that fucking man.

I can make cheese sandwiches (not grilled cheeses, though; that’s one step up from the three-year-old skill level I currently maintain), sometimes pasta but that’s pretty inconsistent, mac n cheese but Henry worries about the nutritional value when I get “creative” with it, and scrambled eggs but Henry worries that I will poison Chooch. I feel like there’s something else I can make but I can’t think.

Basically:

1. anything that can be cooked in the microwave
2. anything that can be toasted
3. anything that is ready to serve straight from a box
4. anything that doesn’t require SLICING
5. take out, though I’ve been known to fuck that up too on occasion

So, what I’m asking is for good, nutritionous and EASY (read: Erin-proof) recipes that I can confidently prepare for Chooch and myself. I don’t eat meat so I don’t know how to cook that shit. Please help.

And if anyone local feels like showing up on my doorstep with a crock pot full of vegetables, hope, and a grandmother’s love, I might be inclined to invite you in.

I have a confession, something I’ve been holding out on: I succeeded in finding good cupcakes in Pittsburgh and I have known about them now since Sunday.  But I didn’t want to go forth and hold a circle jerk in their honor until I tried them again. And again. And once more.

The nirvana in a cup of which I speak so lovingly comes from a small bakery called Vanilla Pastry Studio. I had heard about this place before, but since its write-ups didn’t come attached with a veritable circus of exaggerated superlatives and a carnival of overrated kudos like Dozen and CoCo’s, I never gave it much consideration. Yes, I admit that I allow my intrigue to be tickled by clever cupcake names, marketing panache and hipster-pandering hype. And I admit that even though we had driven past Vanilla Pastry Studio last week, I still decided to patronize CoCo’s because I had heard so much about them.  And look at where that got me.

And so on Sunday, I played the “Oh my god, I am basically perching on the ledge of suicide and nothing will buffet my topple better than a fluffy cupcake, oh please Henry, splurge for me.” (Splurge, not splooge. That’s all in my other blog.)

When Henry got back in the car, he didn’t seem very confident. “What is with cupcakes and pretension?” he grumbled. And then I began tirading about that topic the whole drive home, scoffing at how something so simple as a cupcake now has such an hoity-toity air wrapped around it, and then we got in the house and I swiped a finger across the top of a vanilla bean cupcake with caramel frosting and—-

“Oh my sweet, tender Jesus Christ curing a pack of lepers,” I whispered as the frosting literally melted away into an essense of pure delight and world peace upon my once-angry tongue.  The texture itself was unlike anything that has ever crossed paths with my mouth, and it created a sensation that can only be described as taste buds fornicating with each other to a master mix of Sade upon a King-sized bed coated with the satine finish of this buttercream frosting. It was sexual. I don’t care; if a kid asks me how it was, I will tell them too.

THAT FROSTING IS GODDAMN SEXUAL.

Mothers should be swaddling their babies in this stuff. I am also willing to bet that the cure for cancer lives somewhere in that recipe.

It was like a mouthful of whipped magic. It made me feel safe and comfortable, like Mister Roger’s sweater was carmelized and ground into the granules of pure sugar, and then rammed into my mouth. I will have to write my own dictionary in order to properly review the wonderment that is Vanilla Pastry Studio frosting.

And the cupcake itself — MOIST. Delicate. Classic. Not a choking hazard. It was sweet and fluffy and light as air, and actually tasted like it was made by a 1950’s-era grandmother.

It was a Spartan and perfect complement to its piquant pate glaze, secure enough in its simplicity to take a step back and let its topping take the spotlight.

“Now I know what they serve God on his birthday,” I moaned to Henry. Speaking of, even Henry was on board.

“And! They were twenty-five cents cheaper than CoCo’s!” he said smugly. Bigger, too!

Today, he brought home another caramel, plus a mocha, coconut and chocolate. Yesterday, I worked out twice to prepare for this. Chooch and I stood at the front door, chanting “We want cupcakes, give us cupcakes” until Henry pulled into the driveway. He wasn’t even in the house yet and I had near-mauled the bakery box out of his hands and dashed into the kitchen. (I don’t know why I took it off him, considering I had to wait for him to come in and divvy them up, since I don’t know how to cut anything other than skin.)

Sucking the frosting off a piece of chocolate treasure, I couldn’t stop giggling. Henry tossed an annoyed glance at me, and I laughed, “I can’t help it. They make me happy!” and then I giggled some more. If these cupcakes make this girl happy, imagine what they could do for you. For Iran, even!

If I ever get married, I want to eat these off of hot naked people at my bachelorette party.

I am bellyaching and completely stewing in gluttony right now, but holy shit these are fantastic cupcakes. I want to devote my life to promoting this shop.

And on the website, the owner of the bakery calls herself a Sugar Fairy. Now, typically something like that might tend to disrupt my temper, but April Gruver deserves this title. She is a hero in this quality cupcake-deprived city. She may call herself a Sugar Fairy, but I call her a Sugar Messiah. And then when I gain twenty pounds in the next two months, I will call her a bitch.

Sunday afternoon, we decided to try a semi-new cupcake specialty shop called CoCo’s. Now, keeping in mind that I reside in Pittsburgh (which, for those of you who are unaware, is not exactly a mecca for cupcake couture), I did not hold my hopes so high and loose that they’d soar away through the atmosphere, taking with them a little part of my heart and childlike wonder. Rather, I kept them ground level, tied to a fire hydrant. Because again, this is Pittsburgh. We have tried our illustrious city’s  other OMG-Look-We-Bake-Gourmet-Cups-Of-Cake called Dozen two or three times, and while their selection of frosting is creative and worth the inflation, the cake part is always dry and reminiscent of a school cafeteria dessert tray at 3pm. The last time Henry brought some home, one went missing; I later found it moonlighting as a saliva sucker at a dentist’s office. But their cupcakes are well-portioned. Dry, but bigger than your dominatrix’s fist!

“Maybe CoCo’s will be better,” I hoped, urging Henry not to give up after he made the twenty-eighth wrong turn (Professional Driver, who now?

). When Henry frowned beneath his bristing ‘stache, I added, “The website says that they use FINE INGREDIENTS.” But really, I knew deep down that this here CoCo would have had to swim across to the Amazon and pluck vanilla beans from the one and only Jack’s stalk and then have Jesus Christ bleed out in her sack of cocoa for it to mean much to Henry.

After road raging upon a poor old man from Wisconsin (you’d be a bad driver too if you had a cheese curd trampoline sealing your anus), Henry found a parking spot. I stayed in the car with Chooch, who chanted, “Cupcake. Cupcake. Cupcake. Pee asshole cupcake? Mommy asshole cupcake? What song is this?” over and over. Several minutes later, Henry was plopping a non-descript paper bag in my lap and growled, “There’s $10 worth of cupcakes.”

I peered inside the bag and at first saw nothing. Then, after some efficient maneuvering of tissue paper, I saw them. Four tiny pucks of ganache. I pulled one out. It felt dense and I was angry that the ganache ran over the paper cup. Mama doesn’t like messes. Immediately, my fingers were attacked by melting chocolate and I began sweating.

Chooch and I took a bite simultaneously. Now, Chooch’s barely three-years-old palate is about as refined as that of an ass-licking dog; he eats food off the floor.  So when he breathed, “Oh, it’s so good!” and, in tandem, I said, “Um, ew,” Henry took my word over Chooch’s. And then Chooch promptly started choking because these sons of bitches were drier than a nun’s snatch. You know how sometimes you’re eating corn bread, maybe it’s a day old, maybe you got it out of the dumpster behind that Mexican restaurant, because look, the economy is affecting us all, OK??? And now say you’re eating this cornbread like it’s fucking Manna from heaven and you just survived the motherfucking Apocalypse. You are eating the FUCK out of this shitty, rock-hard, stale as shit corn bread and then, uh-oh, you’re choking like the first time you drank up that trannie’s bitter sex jam.

Then now you know what it’s like to eat a CoCo’s cupcake. And believe me, you would be begging for a Dixie cup of that sex jam to wash it down.

NOW! To be fair, because I always like  to be fair, perhaps they were getting ready to close and Henry bought the last four cupcakes that would generally be used as pigeon chow, hobo deterrent, mother-in-law killing devices. Maybe they were too caught up in their collective “Holy Shit, Superbowl!!” fingerbanging session that they left the cupcakes in the oven too long.

I do not know. But I can tell you that there was no difference in my very scientific moisture-reading in the vanilla as opposed to the chocolate.

The ganache? It was decent. The little fondant shape thingie that was plopped atop each crown like a Crayola-happy turd? Probably that was meant to be a sweet touch.

It made me think of Play-Doh.

Here is Henry’s review:

“What the hell? It’s like, sucking all the saliva out of my mouth. Oh fuck, is Chooch choking? Oh shit, I’M choking! This chocolate one tastes like the other ones — yucky.” [I just included that because I don’t thnk Henry has ever said “yucky” before.] “Wait, I know what these taste like. Stale Tasty Cakes! These are nothing more than overpriced, out of date Tasty Cakes.” But without all the fluffy white, processed guts. You know, the best part.

And from there, he was on a warpath, a warpath lined with delicate cups of cake and dollops of fluffy frosting made by angel kisses and vintage porn. “I’m sorry, but I can’t believe this place is succeeding. You know what? I’m going to bake my own cupcakes and I’ll only charge $2.00 for them. $2.50 for these dry-ass cupcakes…” and he mumbled like that the whole way home, in that strange recipe-speak that I never did quite understand but I imagine it’s how Alton Brown and Bobby Flay talk during poker games.

I want him to call his cupcake shack Hank’s Dirty ManCakes. We’ll make it look like a miniature truck stop, and each cupcake will have bushy moustaches and be named after ’70s porn stars. And then on Sundays he will serve soup as well, so I can finally have my fucking souperie.

In the meantime, I’m going to continue my search for the best cupcake in the universe. If I was iCarly, I would give a shout out on my webcast and all my little teenage viewers would fucking trip over themselves to send me boxes of their local favorites. And then perhaps someone would even send me a smorgasbord of those famous Sprinkles cupcakes, at which point I will understand how Katie Holmes finds the will to stay married to Tom Cruise.  But I am not a Nickelodeon teen sensation, so I must seek other means. Such as, bundling Janna in a parka and sending her off through the tundra to bring me samples herself. I will even give her a little water bottle.

Oh boy, what should I review next.

For my friend Jessa, who appreciates Craig Owens as much as me!

In other lame areas of my life, I had the first game night of 2009 on Sunday but have been too lazy to write about it. Blogging is becoming a chore again. All I want to do is listen to music, write stories and skin missionaries. Drink some wine after that’s all done. You know, the usual.

I think my goal for 2009 is to make crepes filled with rich delicacies of the world. Then I will open a creperie and I will dress the windows with crepe draperies. I’ll have a specialty crepe called The Janna, which will have boot straps strategically folded in.  Another goal for 2009 is to learn how to make crepes in the first place.

Also for 2009, I would like to stop typing without my contacts in.

My friend Francesco had everyone ask him questions about 2008, and I’m going to ask everyone the one I asked him because I like it when you people tell me shit:

You have one day from 2008 to relive, maybe it’s because you want the chance to do it differently, or because it was just so good that you want to live it all over again. What day would you choose and why?

And I will tell you my answer, because you know I’m just screaming on the inside to talk about more about myself, tralala:

2008 wasn’t too horrible for me so I wouldn’t want to really change any of it. Even the parts that found me crying and puking out my guts in a cemetery? Those parts went on to become better days. So I would want to relive my favorite day of 2008 and there are two that are impossible for me to choose between so I guess if suddenly it were possible to make this question a reality and go back in time, I’d have to flip a fucking coin and then also I would want to go and have sex with Moses and see if that would make it in the Bible. And then after that, I would go thieve some bitches in Constantinople so next time I had to flip a fucking coin, I’d least have something cooler than a goddamn quarter.

Anyway, I’d pick either Warped Tour in July (obv.) or the Westmoreland County Fair in August which I can’t explain, but that was a fun fucking evening. For me, anyway. Henry notsomuch. Last summer was just really rad.

OK YOUR TURN DO IT NOW GO.

I had been looking forward to this dinner for a few weeks; I hoped Janna wouldn’t ruin it. Because I’m a good cattle herder, Kara, Janna and I arrived promptly at the Bigelow Grille at 8:40pm where we were then told by the stiff-lipped host that the 6:00 seating hadn’t ended and we’d have to busy ourselves some other way for the next twenty minutes. I wanted to get naked and set things on fire, but that was vetoed. So instead, we went outside where I was lectured ad nauseum about smoking by Kara and then we all complained about our shoes and wondered if the cute girl duo standing nearby were on a date. After that grew tiring, we sat in large chairs in the lobby with a wide table separating Janna and me from Kara. It was nice to have some distance for awhile. Then of course Janna had to pee.

Finally, it was 9 so we took another stab at being seated but were shooed away again like flea-infested pound puppies.

Other people began arriving for the 9:00pm seating, so a few of us congregated in a small foyer outside of the Grille. I stood too close to the outside door, triggering the sensor to repeatedly engage the opening mechanism. Every 60 seconds there would be a loud whoosh followed by a blast of air. I maintained my stance until someone from another group politely wondered out loud, “Wow, I wonder if someone is standing too close to the door. That’s awfully annoying.”

Behind Janna, there was a small-framed man with a loose blazer hanging over his bones like a death shroud. His hair was forked in thick clumps; he had a sharp, thin nose and a lipless mouth jammed with serrated teeth. I was intrigued by this man and his close-set eyes and the way his eyebrows disappeared into the creases of his forehead when he dryly said to his companion that the hallway we stood in “smells just like the hotel in Tokyo!” I wanted to have his picture in the worst way.

By 9:15, the other diners had cleared out so we pushed our way into the restaurant. That asshole host was doing a fine job ignoring us as he went down his stupid reservation list and called names of people who weren’t even there, instead of saying, “Hi, and your name is—?” A woman next to us asked him just that and he tersely answered that there were people seated at the bar as well, but then the logicality of her suggestion must have found a small brain cell to seep into, because he acquiesced and asked me for my name. He waved his pencil up and down the list until he spotted me.

“Oh yes, I already called you and you weren’t here. Follow me.”

I did not appreciate the snideness of his tone. We weren’t there because he kept telling us to leave! We were right on the other side of the door; he could see us from his stupid hosting station! I hated him. Imagine how thrilled I was when I found out he was doing double duty as a server, too.

That asshole. The host/server, not Janna. Oh alright, Janna too.

In other words, if Beer ran for president and won, I’d move to Canada.

Scott from the East End Brewing Company came out from the kitchen and welcomed everyone for coming, and recited a bunch of Really Important Things that I could not hear because the cacophony from the bar was blowing out the drum of my left ear; Kara and Janna appeared enrapt though which made me wonder if it was really important at all. The waitstaff burst through the kitchen doors again, and slid little plates piled with cheese castles under our noses. Scott said that the chef, Kevin Sousa, would be out momentarily to give us an explanation of the Amuse bouche and the first course.

“That means don’t eat it yet,” I hissed at Janna, who rolled her eyes and visibly bristled. Wouldn’t it be fun if Janna had feathers? I’d ruffle them all the time.

There was a man my family and I met in Europe when I was eleven. His name was John and he taught me one of the most important life lessons that I know of even to this day, the tenor of which your God, church, college, or the blind sage that lives behind the dumpster in the park could never comprehend matching. This nugget of knowledge has pulled me from the claws of destruction and devastation more times that I’m comfortable admitting.

I might have never eaten Spaghetti O’s again had I not known that secret.

Using my advanced math and reasoning skills, I can brilliantly deduce that if a dish is centered around cheese, I know I’ll enjoy it. And I did. I wished it was larger, though. I hoped Janna wouldn’t eat all of hers so I could swipe it like an orphan with a porridge-allergy, but that was wishful thinking.

An interesting thing to note is that the Kvass Bread Beer was the only beer I was able to completely down. Probably because I like bread. However, it took me all the way into the second course to do so, after collecting two other glasses of beer. I was pleased to be the only diner with an ale armada.

Kara and Janna knocked back their beers like the booze floozies they are. I hoped they wouldn’t detract from the sophisticated and, how you say, refined example I was trying hard to set, by sitting upright and spreading a napkin out on my thighs, which were not slung open like those of a benched baseball player, I swear. Maybe once or twice, but I caught myself.

One
Lobster Roll : lobster mushroom, corn, tomatoes, citrus coriander bloom, huitalacoche-tofu mayo, avocado
Smoked Porter

Kara had been freaking out over this course for awhile, ever since a friend of hers outed the lobster mushrooms. [Note from Kara: “I just want to add that it wasnt the lobster mushroom that kept me from eating that roll, it was the fact that huitalacoche is DISEASE INFESTED CORN. “] I wasn’t deterred by the fact that it was really a parasitic mold, and I’ll tell you why: it tasted delicious. [Note from me: AND SO WAS THE INFESTED CORN.]

Janna and Kara didn’t finish theirs. Janna claims she felt intimidated by so many non-regional ingredients piled onto the roll, but I think she was just trying to score points with Kara by proving her solidarity in parasitic mold-hate.

Their palates are pathetic.

The smoked porter was disgusting. I thought I heard a man at a nearby table liken it to the taste of a burning house, and he was not wrong. Janna guzzled hers right down, though, and then she and Kara started talking about gluten which was outrageously dull.

Two
Cucumber Gazpacho : cucumber sorbet, pickled lemon zest
East End Witte

When Chef Sousa mentioned that the cucumber gazpacho would include ‘jicama,’ Janna belted out a very serious, “Ooh.” I jerked back a little and wondered if Janna had some secret life of which I was unaware. “What, do you really like jicama or something?” I asked suspiciously. “I don’t know,” she answered. “It just sounds nice.” It’s a potato, asshole.

While the soup was served in an interesting asymmetrical bowl that would probably inspire a boner from the interior decorator from Beetlejuice, I did not likey. Probably because I don’t like regular gazpacho either. The only time soup should be cold is when it’s made from ice cream. Pretty though, isn’t it?

The chef’s right hand man, Jimmy, walked by right as I announced to being a failure for not liking beer and convinced me to eat that there yellow flower which was a cucumber blossom and not half-bad.

I was initially excited to try the beverage because I mistakenly read it as “East End Wine,” but no, it was beer.

Vegetarian Sushi : cantaloupe roe, porcini sashimi, tempeh “tamago”
wasabi fondue, vanilla soy, crispy pickled ginger
Fat Gary Nut Brown Ale

Something amazing happened during this course. Continuing my role as a trouper, I took a delicate sip of the Fat Gary Nut Brown Ale. I wanted to at least try every beer. I was paying for it, after all. My lips followed their instincts and immediately puckered. My taste buds, however, were like, “Yo, hold the phone. This shit’s kind of not so bad.” I took another tentative swig and deduced that this was no fluke — Fat Gary and his nuts were definitely agreeing with me. I excitedly announced to my dining partners that I was in love with this beer. “I’ll meet you at the altar,” I thought as I took another sip.

Unfortunately, after sip 4.5(b), he proved himself to be just as bitter and deceitful and displeasing as all those other assholes, so we broke up.

The course, though, was delightful. Janna didn’t know what wasabi was so I laughed at her small-town farm girl ignorance and considered chucking some standard food fare at her, something she would recognize. What could I throw at her that she’d recognize…? Oh, I know: an apple.

The cantaloupe roe was the most amazing thing and of course I couldn’t hear how Chef Sousa made it, thanks to all the white noise radiating from the bar. Kara tried unsuccessfully to explain it to me. Something about cantaloupe and compression and then dwarves waved voodoo wands over it and they magically shrunk to look like the spitting image of roe.

Somewhere near the end of the course, I wound up with Janna’s tempeh. The more the merrier has always been my belly’s motto.

All pickled ginger should be served up crispy. When I buy out Food Network, this will be so.

Oh hello, new favorite course! If this was a person, I’d have killed it and stuffed it and put it on pedestal in my bedroom, where I could shower it with love (hey, sexual innuendo!) every day.

Even Kara said, “If you can get Henry to learn how to make this for the next game night, I’ll suck his balls inside out.” (Stop blushing, Henry. No one would ever like you that much.) I was a little tweaked that Janna and Kara had three full globs of creme fraiche panna cotta on their plate, while my third one was MELTED. Rip off.

This was the worst beer. Even Janna flinched a little, and it inspired a hearty “Whoa, buddy!” from Kara, who promptly fondled her freshly-sprouted chest hair. Before the waiters came to relieve me of my growing beer collection, I mistakenly took a giant quaff of the barley beer, thinking I had grabbed my water. Janna said I made the funniest face she’s ever seen, so we’ll take her word for it because:

a) People are typically unable to see their own faces without the aid of a reflective surface

and

b) Janna has to see her own funny face every day, so assuming this is her basis of comparison, it must have been pretty hysterical.

Then I just sat there, not knowing what to do with it. I was absolutely dreading having to swallow that vile wetness coagualting with my saliva—it might as well have been Satan’s own post-asparagus-banquet-urine and seminal fluid cocktail, with a nice sprig of Athlete foot as a garnish.

I swallowed; I’m a whore.

Intermezzo
Fresh hop instant slushy, dried hop vapor
Pedal Pale Ale
(i.e. the part where all the palate cleansing goes down. I hoped they had a horse scrubber for Janna’s tongue.)

The wait staff slowly circled around the dining room, pausing to perspire dried hop vapor out of big plastic pillows and into our faces. I thought I would hate it — you know, because of the beer thing and all — but it was really delightfully refreshing. They dragged it on for a long time though and with nothing to stuff into my mouth, I was growing bored. Where’s a ball gag when you need one?

I didn’t get any salvageable photos of this because the batteries in my camera died so I had to rely on my shitty Razr. I still haven’t really gotten over it.

Kara was starting to act weird from all the vapor, like she was on stage with a televangelist and being cured of herpes. When she started talking about wanting to invent hop perfume, I tuned her out. But she became my friend again moments later when I was frantic to learn about the second part of the Intermezzo as the waiters began placing beakers of orange juice on our tables, and she was the only one paying attention when Chef Sousa explained it.

According to my notes: paint gun —-> tea made of hops ——> liquid nitrogen.

So there, now you can try to figure it out.

The beakers contained orange juice, honey and cardamom which was to be poured over top of a frozen scoop of the paint-gunned hop tea, the creation of which still plagues my mind.

Another person who missed the explanation was Janna, who was en route to her fifty-third potty field trip. While she was gone one of those times, Kara and I were having an intense discourse about the kinds of girls we would go for if we were gay (I use “if” loosely). So when Janna came back, I posed the question for her, then sat back and watched as the temperature rose in her face. She of course assumed I was being an asshole for asking her and put up a defensive wall. I had to remind her that I was being Sophisticated Dinner Erin (read: nice) but she still wouldn’t answer.

Anyway, the tea was served in a glass which spilled forth fog and vapors. We then poured the orange juice over top and mashed it all around, turning it into the most delicious slushie ever and if 7-11 won’t add this to their refreshment repertoire, then look for my very own chain of convenience stores coming soon. I mean seriously, what a refreshing ade on a hot summer’s day when you’re on your way to work or picking up the kids from school or going in for liver surgery.

But don’t take my word for it! Here’s what other people were saying:

“Those assholes at that other table think this is grapefruit juice.” — Kara V.
“This is good. This is cool.” — Janna H.

In fact, Janna’s tone was so dramatically reassuring that it made me feel like she was my mom whom I just walked in on with a transsexual’s wang in her mouth and a cotton candy-wrapped broom stick in her ass. “What? This is good. This is cool. This is natural!”

Who knew that hops shit could be turned into such a delicious confection.

This was also around the time that we learned the contents of the cooler which sat on the floor next to a table of seven obnoxious businessmen. We hoped it was a head, but really it was home made beer that they wanted to ply the East End beer guy with.

Six
Watermelon Salad : melon with pickled rind, French breakfast radish, noble sour, mint, feta, pine nuts, watermelon bubbles
Russian Sourdough

Coming off of my hop-high, I hoped I would enjoy this here Russian Sourdough, because I like sourdough bread and while I’ve never actually had a Russian, I hear good things about them all the time. I took one sip and never really tried again after that. The whole process was getting kind of old. If it makes my lips draw back like an old lady without dentures, then I probably shouldn’t drink it.

The salad was great, though! I don’t know what was up with that watermelon foam, but it was fun to play with and didn’t taste half bad, either. I’ve always been one to hold internal parades for the pine nut/feta combo, but now that I’ve had it atop a juicy wedge of watermelon, a ticker tape trifecta was born. In fact, I think this weekend I’m going to see about making a watermelon sandwich on SOURDOUGH with some pine nuts and feta and whatever that shit-streak is in the picture, because in spite of it’s fecal appearance, it was really quite delicate on my tongue.

Kara ate a radish and exclaimed, “Oh wow, that is one hot radish!” Wanting to form my own opinion, I tasted one for myself and Jesus Christ is she a fucking liar. There were no palate pyrotechnics a-happenin’ in my mouth.
 

Seven
Mahleb unbaked Brulee: chicory ice cream, almond black berry streusel
Blackstrap Stout

The waiters swooped in and dropped dessert spoons in front of everyone. Everyone but me. I was crippled for several seconds after this appalling exclusion, my spoonless fingers stiffened and curled back like talons. Kara diffused any impending tantrum-bombs by hailing down a rushing waitress and asking her to please bring me a spoon. The waitress smiled politely and when she returned (and I’m not kidding about this), she laid down the new spoon in front of me with a sweeping flourish, stood back upright and smiled cartoonishly. Essentially, she was mocking me for being the big fucking baby that I am, and it made me laugh that a complete stranger was acknowledging this. When she left, I whined, “Hey! It’s not the same kind as yours!” after I noticed that the spoon she gave me was a plain dinner spoon and not the fat, rounded kind which were made to be jammed into my ever-flapping mouth. Kara rolled her eyes and traded with me. She mumbled something about me and my sped spoon, to which I responded, “What’s that? I can’t quite hear you over top of this resplendent bonne bouche before me.”

Jimmy, Chef Sousa’s right hand man/Kara’s fantasy bedmate, came out and explained the origin of the ingredients and based on the oohs and aahs of everyone, I figured it must have pretty otherworldly. Of course, I only vaguely heard something about goats eating cherries and “dropping the pits” for the villagers to collect? And all of our desserts were supposed to be decked with a rare wild strawberry.

Two complaints re: rare strawberry :
1. Mine was yellowish green and not a pretty pink hue like Kara’s and Janna’s and, oh, everyone else’s.
2. Kara and Janna had two strawberries. I had ONE.

Bigelow Grille will be getting a hand-penned letter from one angry, neglected diner.

When I found out that the beer was made from brown sugar and molasses, I asked, “Ooh, do you think even I’ll like it?” Kara unconvincingly said, “You might,” and then exchanged doubtful smirks with Janna. (No, I didn’t like it. I really didn’t like it. And apparently either did they, but their excuse was that they “just don’t like stout in general.” Oh OK.)

The chicory ice cream, though? Oh my god, I will only ever be coating my gullet with chicory ice cream. And to think all these years, I was settling for coffee flavored ice cream? Was I insane?! Even the streusal was better than most meals I’ve eaten in my twenty-eight years and I fought with the spoon to collect every last morsel. Every so often, I would have to protectively hug my plate with an arm, after noticing Janna and her furtively darting eyes. She had big plans, I’m sure, but she wasn’t getting any of my brulee. Eat your own, Two-Strawberry Bitch!

We all decided that we wanted to come back in an hour for another serving.

After everything was over and we all gave Chef Sousa a round of applause (and I really meant it, too! Plus, he was pretty hot), we let our bellies lead us down to the parking garage where I’m pretty sure I caught Janna pitching her belt into a urine-soaked corner.

The night before Thanksgiving, Henry stayed up until 2:00am, rifling through his grandma’s recipes like a normal man rifles through porn. I don’t know what he was looking for, considering that I procured an entire feast worth of gourmet recipes from this little thing I just heard about recently called the Internet. Of course Henry found something wrong with every selection: Too-expensive-ingredients (“That will cost more than the turkey!”). Lack of industrial kitchen. Not enough education completed to comprehend recipe wording.

In the end, he settled on:

• Smashed rutabaga with gingered pears
• Turnips gratin (hello new edible husband)
• Scalloped corn
• Meatless stuffing
• Mustard mashed potatoes (“OMG Tyler from the Food Network made them!”)
• Sweet potato pie

Oh, and that over-hyped turkey bullshit that everyone is always buzzing about.

My contribution to the day was taking Chooch to my dad’s house so that Henry could cook in the highest, most divine level of tranquility. Now, I only see my dad on holidays. Shame on me, sure, I know. But it’s awkward because our relationship was once more strained than the ab muscles of a man attempting to suck his own dick. Technically my step-dad, he legally adopted me when I was in the fourth grade. We engaged in non-stop battles of wits and psychological warfare for the entire duration of my teenaged years. Then he and my mom divorced and ironically, we now get along famously; and in an incredible twist, he was the only family member who talked to me while I was pregnant.

Corey, who was staying there while home from college, failed to tell him that Chooch and I were coming over, so my dad was genuinely shocked when he saw us on his doorstep. It was probably 75% of an act, but he seemed happy to see us and proceeded to dole out peanuts, JuJu Bees and cans of pop. He even gave me some Bagelfuls to take home, complete with single-serving packets of cream cheese. A trip to his house is always like a mini-grocery trip.

While he cooked, I made sure Chooch didn’t fall down the basement steps, eat paint chips, or break any of my dad’s classic car memorabilia, while Corey acted disinterested in our presence and my other brother Ryan napped on the couch. I got roped into sitting down for dinner with them, wherein my dad immediately picked a fight with Ryan, who evidently didn’t load his plate with enough food. “I told you not to eat all day!” my dad steamed, to which Ryan grunted, “Jesus Christ, Dad, I only ate some cashews!” My dad countered with a surly, “I saw the cheese you opened up in the fridge!” at which point Ryan hunkered down lower over his plate which seemed plenty decorated to me.

In an effort to break the ice, I chirped, “These mashed potatoes are really good, daddy!” He muttered that they were too runny, but really, anything tastes delicious when the butter ratio is 50/50.

Corey and Ryan didn’t speak at all throughout the painful meal, and I’m sure they were just thrilled at how kind our dad was being to me. He even noticed my hair and enthused about its aesthetic merits for just a note longer than natural.

I love my dad, but I was glad that I had a legitimate reason to shirk my way out the front door. Tension, it just doesn’t sit well with me.

Dinner at my house was supposed to be at 7, so that those who had other dinners to attend (Janna, Corey and Blake) would be newly starved by the time they came over for seconds. However, Henry’s tardy ass didn’t serve shit up until EIGHT O’CLOCK and everyone was bored, angry, hungry. Look at those mugs on Janna and Corey. You’d think they were watching a slide presentation of Henry’s mom dusting her ceramic kitten collection, that’s how glazed with ennui they are.

Sensing that a revolt was on the rise, Henry served up deviled eggs for us to stuff our mouths with while he frantically finished cooking.

For some reason, Henry was really impressed with himself. He kept boasting that the eggs were deviled with STONE GROUND MUSTARD. I’m not even sure what that means. They tasted regular to me, like he could have squirted in a quick fart of French’s for all I know. Something weird clearly went on in my house while Chooch and I were at my dad’s, because no one gets THAT excited over deviled eggs.

Finally, the moment for feasting was upon us, and we all loaded our fancy paper plates with mounds of seasonal slop. Blake pretty much questioned everything aside from the turkey, which was easily recognizable (good job, Henry). I explained to him that I wanted to eschew the expected and serve new twists on tradition. “You mean, you wanted my dad to make things that even YOU can eat,” Blake corrected. And oh how we laughed. (As I silently wished for Blake to choke on a turkey bone.) (Just kidding, Blake.) (No really.)

As I tore into my plate, I realized Corey didn’t have a fork. “It’s OK,” he promised. “I don’t mind waiting. I’ll just have a roll.” He paused, considering that statement, before holding up his broken hand and adding with the slight hint of chagrin, “Though, even THAT is a challenge.” He should have been giving less lip and more thanks for the fact that he has a hand AT ALL.

Later, he momentarily lost his appetite when he mistook the really expensive paper napkins to say “Joyous Fetus” instead of the much less interesting “Joyous Fetes.” We all laughed, but I don’t think Henry understood what was going on because he probably doesn’t even know what “fetes” means.

We’re so classy that we used our best plastic serving bowls. Not even TUPPERWEAR. Just generic, microwave-ravaged plastic. And there’s the gravy that burnt Henry’s hand and thank God it did because I really enjoyed hearing him cry about it all night long. I thought his mom was going to rush him to the Veteran’s hospital. I could almost see Henry’s mind churning: “Remember what they taught you in the SERVICE, big guy. You will pull through this! YOU WERE IN THE AIR FORCE, GODDAMMIT.”

And then Henry’s mom called Janna a myriad of other J-names (Janet, Janice, Joanne) but never Janna, and swore she hated sweet potato pie before admitting that she had never had it. Now she’s had it and likes it, though I maintain that Henry’s version (apparently it was EMERIL’S RECIPE, what a fucking carving knife to my heart) tasted unlike any sweet potato pie I’ve ever had. Ever. Like, no semblance at all.

Overall, I thought it was pretty good for our first time hosting a holiday in my ridiculously small dining room. I know I had fun, and Blake and Henry’s mom seemed content. Janna basically looked like she had just finished watching a double feature of “Benji” and “Old Yeller,” and Corey just looked bored as usual. The shit Henry made was good, and even the gravy was vegetarian. I learned later that my mother translated Corey’s spot at my table into meaning that — oh my god — he’s on MY SIDE. And this is exactly why I was happy to do my own thing this Thanksgiving.

Last night, I yelled, “I can’t wait to have Christmas here too!” but Henry remained curiously silent.

EDIT: I WILL NEVER COPY AND PASTE AN ENTRY FROM WORD EVER AGAIN. FUCK.