Shapely Buns

"When you build your buns ... to their maximum potential,

you won't think twice when someone calls you a hard ass."

-- Karen Sessions, 

"Buns and Thigh Exercises! Get a Firm and Shapely Booty," 

fitnessatlantic.com

Butt buns 11-28-14

"I don't think you ready for this jelly

I don't think you ready for this jelly

I don't think you ready for this

Cause my body too bootylicious for ya babe."

-- Destiny's Child, "Bootylicious"

Butt buns 11-28-14

Hey, I just call 'em like I see 'em.

I baked some dinner rolls for Thanksgiving yesterday.

I was going to make them into three-sectioned cloverleaf rolls. But the balls were too big to squeeze three into each cup of the muffin tin. So I could only manage to fit in two.

As a result, while they were rising, the rolls struck an uncanny resemblance to a dozen, shapely little bottoms mooning me.

They had smooth, squeezable little cheeks.

Butt bun 11-28-14

They had cracks.

Some even had tiny anuses.

We affectionately referred to them throughout dinner as the "butt buns."

And even though they weren't cloverleafs, the butt buns pulled apart beautifully at the cleft into two separate, smaller pieces of ass.

They were bootylicious, and steaming hot.

I'd have eaten more, butt they were full of glute-en.

Sam Is Home!

"You have my whole heart. You always did.

You're the best guy. You always were."

-- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Queen and Jack of Hearts 11-27-14

"Catelyn wanted to run to him,
to kiss his sweet brow,

to wrap him in her arms so tightly
that he would never come to harm ..."

-- George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

My oldest son, Sam, is home for Thanksgiving. He got here yesterday.

He's a busy guy. He hasn't been home since returning to college in August, and I was really starting to miss him. 

We're having a very quiet, very small Thanksgiving Day at home. 

No travels. No company. No biggie.

It's what Sam requested. He has been working very hard at his grueling and relentless academic load and needs a chance to chill out and catch his breath before he goes back for the final stretch of the semester and exams.

So last night I cut his hair. He made a pumpkin pie. We went to a couple of stores for a couple of things. I bought him a tire gauge. We ordered pizza. We watched crappy television. Right now he's upstairs, sleeping in.

He's only here for a couple of days, but I'll take what I can get and try to give him what he needs and not bother him with what he doesn't. 

Having my whole little family home under one roof is what I'm most thankful for. My house is full, and so is my heart.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sharing My Food

"We should look for someone to eat and drink with

before looking for something to eat and drink."

-- Epicurus

Squirrel with nut 11-26-14

"If you really want to make a friend,

go to someone's house and eat with him ...

the people who give you their food

give you their heart."

-- Cesar Chavez

You know what makes me sad?

It makes me sad that schools now have rules prohibiting students from sharing their food in the cafeteria at lunchtime.

I even read a story recently about a kid and a friend who were both served detention for swapping lunches. 

Say I wanted to trade you my Doritos for your Moon Pie. We'd both be fucked.

Or say you forgot your lunch and I gave you half of my sandwich. Again, both of us, fucked.

Maybe you don't have money to buy a school lunch, so I treat you to a tray of hamburger gravy. Both. Fucked.

School officials say the strict rules and penalties are only an effort to protect kids with serious food allergies from unwittingly ingesting something that could kill them. You know. Foods like shellfish or peanut butter.

The rules also protect the schools' asses from lawsuits.

The USDA says the rules help ensure kids will eat lunches that comply with the National School Lunch Program's nutritional protocol.

Well, I've been in my kids' school cafeteria at lunchtime. I've seen the school lunches up close. You know where I've seen them? Uneaten, in the trash can.

Maybe the USDAs tactic for fighting childhood obesity is to serve food so disgusting that even fat kids lose their appetites.

On the other hand, I also read an article about a study that revealed how sharing food actually makes us better, less selfish, more altruistic people.

I agree.

I did it yesterday.

My incredible friend Jill stopped here on her way from Chicago to Cleveland, so I baked her a delicious, bubbly cherry crisp for us all to share. Jill's vegan, so I got some vanilla Tofutti ice cream to make it a la mode. And when she left for the next leg of her journey, I gave her an extra dish of cherry crisp to take along for her breakfast.

Giving another person some of your food is extremely intimate gesture of love. It's not quite as intimate as sex. But nevertheless, it involves one person offering another person something to put inside their body. It's about filling an emptiness.

Sharing food is absolutely essential to human togetherness and relationships. 

It's primal.

Take away that elemental urge and you take one more step toward isolating people from one another. 

If we persist in punishing kindergartners for sharing their Gogurts and Teddy Grahams, we'll create a selfish, isolated, love-starved generation.

Aren't we already selfish, isolated and starving enough?

Anyway.

All of this is by way of saying, with the Thanksgiving season upon us, I believe sharing good food is a good thing.

Go ahead.

Make extra. 

Pass it around. 

Good Recipes (And Cooks Who Share Them!)

"There is nothing like a good old recipe.

If it has lasted, then it is good."

-- Yotam Ottolenghi

My grandma's cookbook 11-18-14

"I hate the notion of a secret recipe.

Recipes are by nature derivative and meant to be shared --

that is how they improve, are changed, how new ideas are formed.

To stop a recipe in its tracks, to label it 'secret'

just seems mean."

-- Molly Wizenberg

I don't use recipes a lot. 

Recipes are rules, and, well.

Recipes 11-18-14

Anyway. When I cook, mostly I just wing it. I follow principles as a general guide, but after that I like to wander off the trail and explore the landscape on my own.

Unless I'm baking. 

Baking is an exact science. It involves chemical reactions and precise measurements and combinations of ingredients and heat and cold and time.

So when I bake, I definitely stick to the recipe.

I have a shelf loaded with cookbooks full of recipes and a shoe box stuffed with hundreds more. Some of them are hand-written from friends and family, others are printed from the Internet or taken from television chefs or ripped from magazines. 

You can tell easily which recipes are my favorites -- the trusty old reliable ones that I return to again and again -- because that's where the pages in the books stick together. They're the ones on the food-stained and spattered recipe cards. They're the ones copied onto sheets of notebook paper that's been handled and folded in half so many times that the paper is soft and delicate as tissue.

One of my favorites is a recipe for Madeleine cookies that a French chef jotted down on an order ticket and sent to me via our waiter.

Anyway, all of this is by way of saying I popped my pecan pie cherry yesterday.

I baked an absolutely perfect pecan pie using a recipe from a Food Network cook after watching her bake it on TV.

Pecan pie 11-18-14

Pie crust has always been a bugaboo for me. Because if the pastry isn't good, then the pie isn't good. I make fine, serviceable pie crust. But I've always wanted to be able to make a crust so tender and flaky and buttery that it makes your eyes roll back.

It finally happened. I made a perfect crust. 

That fucker was as tender, golden, flaky and buttery as shit.

And it wouldn't have happened if someone else wasn't generous enough to share her time-tested recipe.

A tender flaky crust! 

True confessions, though.

I didn't follow the recipe exactly. 

It called for a cup and a half of cold shortening, and I'd only chilled a cup. So I added a stick of cold butter instead, and it worked beautifully. And I'd venture to say my tweak made the recipe even better, because it made it buttery.

Thanksgiving is around the corner. And Thanksgiving is a time for giving thanks, sure, but it's also a good time to do some plain old giving.

Good recipes will be trotted out and prepared on dinner tables across the country. If someone asks you for your recipe, don't be a Selfish McStingy Pants. Cough it up. Share it. Write it down for whoever it is. Let them know where you got it from. 

Good recipes have history. And that's part of the appeal -- knowing the path a recipe has traveled, whose hands and kitchens it has passed through. I love using a recipe that someone else gave me, especially if it's in their own handwriting. It's like looking at an old photograph. It's nostalgic and special. It makes me think of that person and evokes memories of a time and a place and the food we shared, and that feels good.

It tastes good too.

**(For the pecan pie recipe I used, click here.)**