Stories

ImageThere were no more than 300 students in grades 1-12 at Baker Academy and I graduated with pretty much the same 17 people I started 1st grade with. Needless to say, I knew these people quite well and knew exactly what I wanted their mother's to make when I came to visit. Lisa's mother, Ms. Martha made an 'apricot nectar cake', Susan's mom "Ms. Betty" made a 'peach pie' and the list goes on. My mother has many of these recipes saved in a nice little recipe box after her Baker Academy cookbook was reduced to shreds.

The "Baker" cookbook was the first one I ever used. It's a compilation of the best recipes from all the families I grew up with. I wish we would have been more gentle with it as was typed on plane paper and bound with spiral plastic; no doubt a project a group of mother's took on, probably 'assembly-line' style in the school lunchroom. 

Several years ago, when my grandmother died, guess what we found? An old Baker Academy cookbook. The cover is missing but it's in pretty good shape. I'm thinking about making copies of it and giving them to all my friends, who ask me for the same recipes that I always ask my mom for that come from the Baker Academy cookbook.

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grilled_cheese_2.jpgI don't know if it’s the famous economy, or I'm just going through an I can't stand take-out anymore, but I've started to cook again. Not just grill a burger, which turns out pretty good when done on a stove top grill pan. I've actually been making vats of chile, or chicken and vegetables in marinara sauce, and freezing perfect portions in those great plastic containers everyone else in the world discovered before I did It's been a bone-chilling winter in New York this year, and coming home to something yummy that I can pop into the microwave, then actually eat straight from the container, has been life-changing. So that's what the room with all the white stuff that I used to go into all the time, is for.

I'm telling all of this to you for a reason. Sometimes, I want that comforting supper, and the freezer is bare. This requires imagination. And boy was I lucky last night. I had a sizeable hunk of Velveeta in the fridge. I had bread and butter. And I had fresh pineapple. Am I the last person on earth to discover how completely wonderful a grilled cheese sandwich, made with Velveeta, and slices of fresh pineapple, can be.

I'll probably try it with Kraft slices, or even some fancier cheese, but only when I'm out of Velveeta. You can be sure I'll always have the pineapple at hand.

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blueprintcleanse_logo.jpg“This will make you feel awake, and healthy.” The promise made to me as I ordered a 3 day Blueprint Cleanse online recently. The healthy part I believed, but awake? How could 3 straight days of just juice and no solids make me feel anything that I aspire to feel in my waking hours, especially if I’m not even allowed coffee, or as it was gently explained to me, ‘you can have coffee, but you’ll feel better if you don’t have it.’ Marketing disguised as self-motivation proved extremely effective, and sure enough, on Day 3 of the ‘Cleanse,’ I felt extremely awake and alert (albeit short-winded) on a run up Runyon Canyon, (truthfully more of a slow jog behind my brother whose college fraternity has apparently turned him into a drill sergeant.)

But I wasn’t starving, and I wasn’t lethargic.

I am not somebody who can go without food for four hours, let alone three days. I have never been successful on a diet, if you don’t count when I was five years old and had to stop eating French Toast in order to lower my cholesterol. These days I have a genuine interest in being healthy, but not exactly a full-fledged allegiance. So the Blueprint Cleanse, a local New York company, seemed perfect for me.

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ImageBroccoli is my least favorite vegetable. To me, there is simply nothing appealing about its taste, texture, or appearance. The sign above it at the farmer’s market, heralding “broccoli crowns cheap today” does not make my pulse beat faster or my heart sing. I’ve tried chopping up those crowns and hiding tiny slivers among carrots and zucchini. I’ve buried florets in omelets, fajitas, and quiches and covered them up with sauces ranging from hollandaise to mole to duck sauce and ketchup. I’ve tried arguing myself into taking just a bite or two under the category of “strong medicine” for the sake of health and wellness. But nothing has led me to reconsider my position: I don’t like broccoli. This may in fact be the only philosophical stance that I share with former president George Bush, who once went on record to declare his aversion to this particular vegetable.

I realize, as George Bush soon discovered after his impolitic announcement, that broccoli has its aficionados, but I cannot find a single thing about it that’s enticing. Its very name is off putting. There is nothing sensual or succulent here: just that harsh opening of “br” followed by the even harsher short ”o” and “k” sounds (and not just one “c,” but two). And even then the word isn’t finished. It continues on, through two more syllables, the final syllable with its “l” and plural end form—i—working together to produce a sort of shriek that makes poetic hash of its singular form’s more musical ending (broccolo). It’s an altogether unappetizing and uninviting name.

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ramennoodles.jpgWhen I was a younger man, I was quite the spendthrift blowing through tons of money that I didn't actually have. Like many others of my generation, I lived way beyond my means on a series of credit cards that I would repeatedly max out the credit limits on and end up slaving away, some times for years, in an effort to pay off. When I first moved to New York in the late 80s to attend the NYU publishing program, I did so with visions of Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City dancing in my head. I eventually landed a job at Random House and wasn't daunted by the fact that it only paid $13,000 a year because in my mind I was on my way to living the life I had always dreamt about.

Sharing a tiny three bedroom apartment in Soho with four friends from school, my portion of the rent was a whopping $700 a month. Despite the expense, we lived happily on ramen noodles and a shared jar of peanut butter, and gorged on occasional freebies we would scam via work or friends who tended bars and waited tables. President Reagan was in office and it was a time of conspicuous consumption, and though my friends and I lived virtually below the poverty line, we still managed to make every night seem like New Year’s Eve. We made friends with the doormen at our favorite clubs and scored a permanent place on their guest lists with tons of free drink tickets to boot. It was a time to "see and be seen" and looking the part was very important. Thankfully the gaunt look was in because no one I knew could afford to eat. And when we weren't drinking our dinner, the Grand Union Supermarket on University Place took credit cards (practically unheard of at the time) keeping us in noodles and PB&J sandwiches in an attempt to add nourishment to our skeletal frames.

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