Oddities and Obsessions

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I decided to go on a liquid fast to lose weight. Needless to say, living on 400 calories a day of fake “milk shakes” is hell, but one strategy, which may sound counter-intuitive, was particularly helpful in getting me through 14 weeks of deprivation: I kept a stack of cookbooks next to the couch and another one by my bed. Reading recipes replaced eating recipes, and I lost a lot of weight. By the time I was ready to eat again, it turned out that I had replaced one addiction for another. My craving for cookbooks filled five shelves and then spilled onto the counters in my den.

Coupled with the many boxes of antiques scattered around the room, I kept expecting the camera crew from “Hoarders” to knock on my door. But what was I to do when I bought Susan Hermann Loomis’ “Farmhouse Cookbook” for its Best-Ever Chocolate Cake recipe, and then, five years later, her “French Farmhouse Cookbook” is released, with another chocolate cake recipe that says, “I thought I’d found the best-ever chocolate cake…but just when you think you’ve tasted the best there is, something better comes along”? Naturally, I had to buy that one, too. Eventually, it dawned on me that even if I made a new recipe every day for the rest of my life, I still couldn’t make all the ones I wanted to try in my 250+ cookbooks.

These! Are they not gorgeous? I think they kind of scream summer in their own not-so-subtle way. They are certainly eye-catching on a platter together.

There is something about puff pastry. It has this way of making everything so darn cute, elegant and fancy all at the same time. If you have never used it, please give it a try. It's so easy to make something beautiful with it. No skills necessary.

I saw this container of colored tomatoes at Costco and had to get them. This was definitely the perfect dish to show off the diversity of their colors. However, using all red tomatoes will be as equally striking. You decide which to use.

Remember, tomatoes are one of the top food sources for daily doses of vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamin E, potassium and fiber. So eat up!!

Filled with goat cheese and herbs, there couldn't be a better appetizer. However, these make a great side dish too.

Last night as I was walking out of the 1 train on Christopher Street headed home, I saw out of the corner of my eye an elderly woman with a walker who was asking where to find the PATH train to New Jersey. As I passed, I overheard someone tell her that she had to circle back to 14th Street to connect. Knowing that was wrong and headed to the PATH myself, I looped back and stepped in telling her it was in fact in the other direction, that I was headed that way, and would she like to go with me.

As we very slowly crossed Christopher Street dodging shoppers, drag queens, and people hustling to and fro various holiday celebrations, she told me that we were destined to meet and that I was her "angel sent from heaven." She went on to tell me a string of rambling tales including one about her evil landlord, who was trying to cheat her out of money. The conversation kept getting nuttier as she bounced from topic to topic. She told me that her now deceased husband had contracted polio in La Isla Mujeres "doing the Hemingway thing" and that Mrs. Roosevelt ("not FDR") had offered her a job in Washington, DC; but she did not want to live there. She said that she had been homeless (which I believed) and that her people were aristocracy from Latvia (it was plausible). At one point, she started yelling and screaming about the "Fascists" and I thought to myself, "What I have I gotten into and what am I going to do with her?”

For decades, women’s magazines had basically three subjects: food, dieting, and sex. Gradually, a fourth one evolved, and now it has literally taken the lead. The January issue of Better Homes and Gardens proclaimed “Get Organized!” The February Good Housekeeping promised “More Calm, Less Stuff: Declutter Closets in a Day,” while the February Ladies Home Journal announced “Banish Clutter: Your New Organized Life Starts Today.”

And these are just the tip of the home-organizational iceberg. I haven’t checked Cosmo in a while (I’m more of an EcoSalon kind of girl), but we can probably expect it to jump on the clutter(ed) bandwagon fairly soon with “Less Stuff, More Sex!”

It was George Carlin who was the first to call our attention to stuff, and although we laughed, we pretty much went on our merry collecting way, blithely adding more and more, well, just plain stuff (and fancy stuff, too, along with electronic stuff). Here’s a measure of how far we’ve come—or fallen.

My husband’s and my first house was half of a double. The house was three stories tall, and you had to climb all the way to the third floor to find even the semblance of a closet. It was so shallow that it wouldn’t accommodate a clothes bar with hangers, and we settled for storing a few seasonal pieces by hanging them on the row of six wooden pegs lining the back wall. Recently I came across the following suggestion for managing the detritus of our consumerism: just turn the smallest bedroom in the house into a walk-in closet. (Ah, but where, then, would I store all those piles of papers sitting on the shelves and floor of that room?)