In all my 92 years, I don't think I've ever met a person who was so adorably grateful for a simple (!) birthday celebration as ...friend was. He was so delighted! And I THOUGHT I had veeeedeotaped his big arrival, which would have meant you'd have had to watch us making out, but in fact I didn't turn the dang camera on at all. So that will remain a mystery, as it probably should.
I made salmon, which is my one OTHER dish besides lasagna. Oh, and new potatoes. I mean, I don't know how new they were. They could have been lying to me. "We're totally new! Just got here! So naive! This copy of Reader's Digest and the part where our phone is a Jitterbug? To ignore please!"
June's blog. Where you come for potato talk.
Anyway, here is the veedeo where the pie went completely south.
I went to K&W Cafeteria and spent $8 on a pie. This is what Dick Whitman's mom told me to do in the first place, and why don't I listen to my elders? Not that I am calling you "elder," DW's mom. You are a new potato in my book.
Oh, speaking of the new potatoes, I was driving to get one of ...friend's gifts (there is this beer on tap at some of the places we go to in Winston, and every time ...friend gets it, you'd think he won a million dollars and that 11 dancing girls were performing for him, so excited is he by this beer. So I went to the brewery and got him some in these giant Laverne-and-Shirley bottles), I called my oldest friend Pal From MA, because she cooks a lot.
"How do you make new potatoes? You just boil them, right?"
"Yes, but you could also blanch them--"
"Don't say blanch. You lost me right there with blanch.'"
"It's EASY!" This is always what people who can cook say. It's EASY! Crafty people also say that. "Making a quilt is EASY! Cross-stitch is EASY! Painting the Sistine Chapel is EASY" Oh, shut up. Will that be easy? If you just shut up?
Anyway, Pal From MA said, "You just boil them briefly, then put them in your saute pan--"
"I don't have a saute pan."
"Yes you DO. I used it while I was there. It's that large, low, round pan."
"Oh, the ROUND pan! Not my triangle pan?"
It was around that time that Pal stopped giving me cooking advice. What a bitch.
But what was I talking about? Oh, ...friend's birthday. I also made a salad. With strawberries and pistachios in it. It was good. And I dragged Faithful Reader Chris out of a meeting in Atlanta to tell me how to make his fabulous salad dressing. Really I alienated everyone yesterday.
Here is the final video, since the us-making-out one didn't turn out, where I am yammering on about ...friend being late, when really he got there at 7:38. Which was totally our prescribed time. "Get here at 7:38!" Really, though, eight minutes wasn't bad. What a crab I was being and he wasn't even late yet.
I also got ...friend a giant cookbook called How to Cook Everything, which I also own, as it has really basic stuff like how to boil new potatoes. ...friend is just getting into the cooking, and often I am regaled with a story about how he burned the crap out of himself, or his pan, or his apartment, and so on.
He went on about THAT gift like it was once again a million dollars and 11 dancing girls, and he hadn't even opened the good one yet.
iPod. He has always wanted to stab an iPod with his steely knife. And he just can't kill the beast.
Seriously, you guys. When you're at ...friend's house, trying to make out on the couch, and I know you all are, you buncha tramps, he has to GET UP and CHANGE THE CD. We're gonna party like it's 1999. I COULDN'T STAND IT ANYMORE.
And oh. Delighted? Delighted with that iPod? Good gravy. I swear to you we had nothing but iPod talk the rest of the night. "Can I use it in the car?" Yes. "And I can put my existing music on it?" YES. "And iTunes lets me listen to songs before I buy them?" Good god, YES. It's like he just got to the planet or something.
(He had the knife because he opened gifts on my deck, and it was getting dark, and for two intelligent people, that iPod packaging flummoxed us. Once we got in the light and got READING GLASSES [hello, old potatoes] we could see a simple tab you pulled and BOOM, the plastic was off and you could totally open the damn thing.)
So it was a good evening. And the fake pie was delicious. Remind me to never bake again.
Oh, and one final thing. Nora Ephron. Cannot tell you how much she meant to me, really. I just have to sum it up with crap. Crap! Which is a shame, because Nora Ephron could have summed it up much better.
