by Sam Tackeff | Dec 18, 2013 | Blogging, Books, Gifts, omnivore books
This review was originally published over at Medium – a new-ish publishing platform that I’ve been playing with for the past few weeks. Medium has a clean, streamlined user interface which is quite conducive to both reading, writing and editing. This was my first post on Medium, but I couldn’t help cross posting here as well – it’s too important of a topic for me to leave off of the second lunch.
Melt: The Art of Macaroni and Cheese
When friends create something great — there is the perfect Yiddish word to describe it: naches.
Five years ago, working at Omnivore Books, I started collecting cookbooks in earnest. I do my best to acquire a wide variety of subjects for my collection to learn as much as possible, and while doing so I am picky. I do my research. I avoid superfluous acquisitions. At this point, due to constraints in space and time, every new cookbook needs to matter. At Omnivore, I was in the right place at the right time — surrounded by people who cared about food as much as I did, and my desire for cookbooks became as voracious as my appetite. (It didn’t hurt that I could acquire books at cost — thank you Celia — and received many a review copy). My favorite cookbooks are the ones that tell great stories, are personal, and are unique to a time and a place.
After years of reading brilliant works: Nigel Slater, Paula Wolfert, Melissa Clark, Suzanne Goin, and Patience Grey to name a few, I started getting the itch. I wanted to write my own cookbook. I wanted to contribute to the literary canon. To write a cookbook you need a topic, an outline, and a collection of recipes. To write a great cookbook, you need a purpose, a sense of wonder, passion, and adventure, work ethic, and commitment to creating something truly marvelous. You need community — the people around you are just as much a part of the story. Anyone can write a cookbook, but to write a great cookbook takes so much more. For me, the task seemed daunting. After fretting about the magnitude of taking on a cookbook, I decided to repress my urges.
Over the past year, several of my acquaintances and friends have had proposals accepted, their first cookbooks published, and have even made the New York Times and Amazon bestseller lists. The flickering desires may be returning.
———
I met Stephanie Stiavetti in 2009, soon after I moved to the West Coast — I remember it vividly: I was invited to wine dinner at a swank San Francisco restaurant where I knew no one, and immediately felt awkward walking through the door. Wide-eyed and a little panicked, I stepped out into the hallway to breathe and there was this tiny force who saved me from loneliness. Her blog was called Wasabimon (now The Culinary Life), and I knew immediately that I’d like her. We passionately discussed food, technology, family, and then somehow this new acquaintance in an instant became a dear friend. It wasn’t until after I left San Francisco that I started reading Garrett’s blog — this too I remember clearly, because I read a single weekly post and proceeded to start right from the beginning and read the blog for hours over the course of a weekend like a novel. (Incidentally, I love doing this, but I feel like most bloggers would cringe at the thought of someone reading a post of theirs from five years back.)
When Stephanie and Garrett sold their proposal, I was thrilled! And, yet, I’ll be quite honest here: when I heard that it was going to be about macaroni and cheese, I was skeptical. There’s a fine line with monographs — single subject cookbooks have a tendency to be flash in the pan, trendy topics that end up remaindered. The lucky ones though, rise as the true authority on the topic, and these are the ones that I spend a good amount of time trying to collect. [Spoiler alert: Melt is the latter].
Melt isn’t really a book about macaroni and cheese. It’s a book about cheese, about discovery, and pushing boundaries in the kitchen. It’s a book for people who truly love food, who will seek out new flavors, and take risks. The recipes, while many of them are quite simple to make, are new, innovative, and may even seem a little bizarre. Risk in a cookbook is hard — as a home cook with a new book in hand you have to place a good deal of trust in the author. And with these two, I do.
At the core of this book is cheese. And it comes at a good time — cheese lovers these days have much to get excited about. In Boston, we are truly lucky to have Formaggio Kitchen in the neighborhood, where Ishan Gurdal and his family have been building something very special these past twenty years. Formaggio is one of my second homes; their cheese cave rivals none.
For those not lucky enough to live by big city shops, no longer does one have to suffer with supermarket brick cheese as the primary option — many of the great cheesemongers including Formaggio, Murray’s, and Zingerman’s will ship. (I’d be remiss not to mention that Kirsten Jackson, who helped develop many of the pairings in this cookbook book has just started her own cheese of the month club.)
Photos shot and styled by the talented Matt Armendariz /Adam Pearson— make every recipe stand out
The truth is, I don’t usually write much about cookbooks because reviews make me nervous. To do a book justice, you have to write critically — and writing critically of people you hero-worship is a challenge. But here I’ll try to do my best, to share a taste of the cookbook, and the recipes within.
Melt is divided into five main chapters — the first one is 25 pages about the basics — how cheese is made, types of cheese, sourcing cheese, cooking with cheese, pasta, and cooking methods. The second chapter is completely devoted to salads with cheese and pasta. The third ‘Stovetop Delights’ has many of the more classic recipes you’d think of as macaroni and cheese. There are hearty recipes, and a chapter of desserts.
Each recipe has suggestions for alternative cheeses, wine pairings, and additional pairings for the cheese. The breadth of information in this book is quite impressive, but to give a better picture, I cooked through several recipes.
———
After reading through Melt from cover to cover, the first recipe that I tried was one of Garrett’s (the two split headnote writing duties) — soba noodles with parmesan and pan-seared brussels sprouts (pictured up top), one of those dishes that I almost always have the ingredients for: soba, oil, brussels sprouts, salt, pepper, chili flakes, garlic, and cheese. I loved the recipe because it was simple — and lately simple has been all that I’ve had time to make.
The case at Formaggio Kitchen
After the first attempt was a success — I wanted to push the boundaries a little bit, explore new cheeses I hadn’t tried. There are flavor combinations in Melt that are unlike anything I’ve ever tasted, and so many of them looked enticing. Would it be the chocolate pasta with Bucherondin, hazelnuts, and cherries? Or the Rogue River Blue with crab sauce over fettucine which looked awfully good, as did the Beecher’s Flagship Cheddar, with avocado, lime, and shell pasta. And then there was the Roquefort macaroni with beets, shallots, and poppy seeds. Or maybe thepaneer korma with idiyappam noodles. And then there were the smoked Idiazabal mason-jar potpies with lamb and tomato sauce. These were so cute, I couldn’t stand it.
I finally landed on a dish that was too exciting to pass up: the chicken breast stuffed with Leonora goat cheese, star pasta, and crushed gingersnaps. Leonora was a new-to-me cheese, a citrus-y goat cheese from the Léon region of Spain. The headnote, Stephanie’s this time, was alluring — magical.
The only tweak I made was to use chicken thighs instead of breasts, because, well, I think that white meat chicken is a waste of time, and the thighs are so much more robust. Heh.
Leonora cheese
Leonora, Rosemary and Gingersnaps
Chicken stuffed with Leonora cheese, rosemary, orzo, and gingersnaps.
I admit that while making this recipe, I was nervous— sure everything smelled delicious, but could I convince my better half that a dish that included a good amount of pungent goat cheese rind (you keep it in), and crushed cookies would actually be edible? Knowing that perception is half the battle, I decided to bite my tongue and just serve our meal. We tucked in, the bowls were finished, and the only critique being that the meal was a tad rich. (In my excitement, I had neglected to cook any vegetables.) Score #2 for my testing.
Another evening, the weather was cold, and I decided to try the tomato soup with star pasta and Vella dry jack crisps. I couldn’t find Vella Jack anywhere, so I ended up making the crisps with parmesan, one of the suggested alternatives. Normally when I want tomato soup, I take a jar of Rao’s tomato sauce, and thin it down with a little water. It does the trick, but comes at a steep cost, as Rao’s is priced high enough to put one into debt, quickly. This recipe was easy to make, getting depth of flavor from roasting canned tomatoes in the oven before starting the soup.
The cheese crisps too are remarkably easy: preheat the oven to 350 degrees, line a baking tray with parchment or a silicon mat, and bake little mounds of shredded cheese for 13-15 minutes until they crisp up. (I only had foil, and this still worked brilliantly.)
After three successes, and so many more recipes that I’d like to try, I’m able to say confidently that this book is well worth the purchase. It’d make a nice addition to the piles of cookbooks you’ll be giving underneath the Christmas tree. Or maybe consider it for a late Hanukkah gift. Or New Years. Or screw gift giving, and buy it for yourself.
What I’m even more excited about is that this is the very beginning — I’m already looking forward to the next volumes of Stephanie and Garrett that will grace my shelves.
Melt: The Art of Macaroni and Cheese
by Stephanie Stiavetti and Garrett McCord
Published by Little, Brown and Company
224 pages
by Sam Tackeff | Nov 2, 2013 | Books
First, here’s dinner tonight. I heated up my cast iron pan with a glug of olive oil and a spoonful of butter. I seasoned some large sea scallops with salt, and pan seared them in the pan, just a few minutes on each side. In a large bowl, I made the salad – baby spinach, an avocado, and a ripe mango. When the scallops were finished, I took them out of the pan, and added a single clove of minced garlic to the pan juices. I cooked the garlic for about 30 seconds, and transferred the juices, oil and butter to a bowl, and added the juice of a lime. I poured in a bit more olive oil and whisked it all together, making this one delicious pan-sauce vinaigrette. The scallops went on the salad, I dressed everything, and tossed gently. Dinner!
– –
You know how people look back fifty, sixty, seventy years and think “Ahhh, the good old days…now that was the life!” And then smart people realize that that life was fairly terrible back then, and societal norms were actually restricting and oppressive?
Yes, okay.
I was going to make that a metaphor for my reading habits – how years ago I used to read voraciously, except that most of the time I was reading kind of crappy novels, and so my 100+ books a year didn’t actually mean all that much because of a lack of quality reading material. Except, that’s actually a terrible metaphor, because I was reading 100+ books a year, and not wasting the rest of my time with bad habits, so even though those books weren’t all Nabokov, the fact that I was reading more often… well, that made my life better in general.
Right. Books. Let’s talk about them then. For the past two weeks I’ve been trying out a new app called Oyster – which touts itself as the “Netflix for Books” – a reading app for iPhone.
Well, I already use what I’ve thought of as the Netflix for books, which is my multiple public library accounts, which allow me to download hundreds of thousands of e-books and audiobooks on my phone through Overdrive. For free.
But the fact is, Oyster is very pretty, and Overdrive, not so much, so I thought that for the $9.95/month that Oyster is charging it couldn’t hurt try out the service for a bit and see how I liked it. While I’m never going to give up the delights of print, a proper reading experience on the phone is important to me, as I typically always have the device on me, and count on a digital library to entertain me when I can’t have a book in hand.
Set up is fairly easy – download the app – still, I believe, in locked beta – request an invite, get the invite two days later, and then boom, access. They make you choose five books that you’d like to start with – mostly I believe to get you to search through their content, and I couldn’t quite figure out how to bypass this step and start reading.
While there aren’t necessarily NYTimes top best sellers, Oyster has a good selection of literature, non-fiction, and much to my enjoyment, cookbooks! (I actually have this Adam Roberts cookbook, but it’s always nice to be able to pull up a cookbook on your phone while out and about.)
This month on Oyster I’ve read: The Art Forger, by B.A. Shapiro, about art heists, forgery, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum (my favorite museum). And then I read Scott Jurek’s Eat and Run, about his career as an ultra marathoner. I’m almost finished with the Runner’s World “Running on Air” by Budd Coates, a whole book about breathing, which might sound bizarre, but actually I found to be fairly useful.
Now I’m reading Onward, by Howard Schultz about how he re-vitalized Starbucks. I find the book interesting, if somewhat self serving, but I’m only a quarter of the way through.
My main complaints about Oyster are that the books you are reading aren’t all downloaded on your phone, so if you are in a non-service area, or if, say, you are in the middle of your office with low service and your office wi-fi happens to be down, you are not guaranteed to be able to pull up a book to entertain yourself. This certainly saves space on your phone, but limits the usefulness of the app. (Oyster says in the FAQ that they download the last 10 books read onto the phone, but I’ve not been able to pull up books a few times now in this situation. It’s possible that this is a bug in the app, so I’d like to see if this fixes itself in newer builds – additionally they mention the possibility of high data costs of roaming while reading Oyster books abroad, so this makes me curious about how the books are actually being served to the phone vs. being stored.)
At the moment, there is also a limited selection – 100,000 titles, and not all of them full books, although, for $9.95/month, I decided that as long as there are 2-3 books that I want to read per month, it’s a fairly decent value. I suspect that they’ll be getting more additions soon.
The third frustration, and perhaps the most problematic: the cataloguing and search is terrible. This might be by design, but there are limited ways to search, and it’s very hard to search by specific topic. The search bar seems to have a weak algorithm. I’d love to see the ability to search by publisher, and be able to drill down by topic better – or to see most requested books in each category. I like the idea that each book has a “related” feature, but in reality this feature isn’t all that useful.
For instance, in the screenshot above, you’ll notice a section “Similar to Onward” (the book about the business of Starbucks that I’m currently reading.) While the idea of a “similar to” feature is neat, in practice, you’ll note that two of the books “Fresh Pantry Rhubarb” and “Fresh Pantry Lettuce” aren’t all that similar at all. (Unless there’s a plot twist that I’m not seeing coming – maybe Howard will quit his coffee empire and become a hipster farmer?)
The keyword search feature is similarly frustrating – I expect to be able to search for two word keywords, but when I searched “food memoirs” and “food literature”, this is what I got – despite the fact that there are actually quite a decent amount of both types of books in their selection – you just have to dig and dig for them. It’s sort of a trial and error – to find books, I’ve been clicking the related button many times, and trying to go farther and farther down the wormhole in order to find interesting titles.
If Oyster can improve these three key issues, then I think they’ll have the edge on other reading apps. That said, until I run out of books to read, I’ll be a decently happy paying customer – and hopefully they’ll continue to improve!
Next up on my Oyster reading list: Bill Bryson’s ‘The World at Stage’, Lawrence Durrell’s ‘Spirit of Place’, ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’, ‘The Widow Cliquot’, Clifford Wright’s ‘Mediterranean Vegetables’ (a cookbook), Steven Sieden’s ‘A Fuller View’ (about Buckminster Fuller), Annie Dillard’s ‘The Writing Life‘, and ‘If on a winter’s night a traveler’ by Italo Calvino. Admittedly, because if there is one feature I love best it is the list making feature, there’s quite a few others that I have added.
What’s on your reading list? Have you tried Oyster?
by Sam Tackeff | Nov 1, 2013 | Books, Lists, Meal Planning
I’m curled up in bed tonight flipping through my new Nigel Slater: “Eat: The Little Book of Fast Food” – there really isn’t anything better than that. November is here, and although I love my winter kitchen, I’m not quite ready to brave the great outdoors in the most frigid months to come. Boots? Winter running gear? A warm jacket? All of these seem too daunting to think about. Fortunately today reached nearly 70 in Boston, proving, along with a World Series win this week, that anything is possible around here.
—
Here’s a list that I’ve been mulling over. I started writing it just for myself, and then realized that it might actually be useful to share here.
Let’s be honest, life is not a Pinterest board. Life as a devoted food lover is difficult. Sometimes, you want to cook an entire meal out of Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc cookbook. And sometimes, you want to cook a box of Annie’s Macaroni and Cheese and call it a night. Here’s the secret: most nights I want to cook a box of Annie’s and call it a night. In my quest to find a mid-point between the two, I have a list of meals on standby – a backup plan for my weekly meal plan. Not all of these are 20-minute meals (though many of them are), but they are all things I like and make on a regular basis. Most of them are base recipes – ideas that allow for a hundred permutations to keep things from getting boring. When I have a craving, and need a little more guidance, I’ll identify the basic combination I’d like, and I’ll flip through one of my many cookbooks to find inspired variations – maybe a spice combination, or an ingredient I hadn’t thought about. These are largely meat meals, although you can just as easily make most of them meatless.
In no particular order, things that I like to eat for dinner:
lamb chops (or chicken, or pork tenderloin, or butter beans) with salsa verde – sometimes when I’m at a loss, I’ll start first with a sauce – with the knowledge that I’ll always be able to find something to cook with it. Salsa verde is one of my favorites – herby, with a little bit of vinegar to make you pucker. You can also spoon it over roasted vegetables, potatoes, fish, you name it.
crispy chicken thighs with baked baby potatoes and tomatoes – I like tray bakes where you can just squash everything in a pan, and roast it at around 400 for just under an hour. (Usually I’ll steam the potatoes in the microwave first, so that they are soft and quicker cooking.) I’ll also make this with italian sausages, or kielbasa.
meatballs of any kind – in Turkey, meatballs are called kofte, and they are ubiquitous. I have a special kofte spice from the spice bazaar in Istanbul that I use a lot of. Or, I’ll use a different type of seasoning based on my global mood. I’ll fry these on the stove top, and eat them on salad, or with a Turkish shepherd’s salad of tomato, cucumber and parsley.
citrus mustard chicken – I’ve been doing permutations of this one for a while – there’s a good recipe for apricot-mustard baked chicken in “Dinner, a Love Story”.
tex-mex soup – sometimes it’s chicken tortilla, sometimes I go for a spicy bean soup. Back in the early 90’s, we used to take a can of refried beans, some chicken stock, and a can of Rotel, simmer it for 30 minutes and call it dinner – I think that it was probably a Weight Watchers special, but variations on this are still pretty darn good. I also make a lot of no-tortilla soup – usually with leftover rotisserie chicken.
baked fish, potatoes, and green things of choice – on Sunday, I’ll head to the market to see what I can find. Sunday is one night that I can commit to buying fish and eating it fresh. Sometimes it’s salmon, sweet potato, and brussels sprouts. Other days scallops, new potatoes, and asparagus.
dinner salad – chopped salads, “BLAT” – bacon, lettuce, avocado and tomato salad, or crabmeat salad with lemon, avocado, and tomatoes – are some of the usuals. I have a few salad-specific cookbooks that I poke through for inspiration, and quite honestly salad ideas are the first things I turn to when I get a new cookbook.
yogurt marinated grilled chicken – the nice thing about marinating chicken and then grilling it (or roasting it), is that you get a flavor packed meal, and it makes it’s own sauce. I’ll marinate in yogurt and Indian spices, or Moroccan spices, or Israeli spices. Then I cook it! This goes well with green salad.
baked chicken (or eggs) in tomato sauce – sometimes it’s a creamy tomato sauce, sometimes it’s Marcella’s quick tomato sauce, sometimes it’s a jar of Rao’s. When I want it slightly more exciting, I’ll add a tablespoon of curry powder and finish with a little cream.
Indian carrot salad with ground lamb (or) Vietnamese cucumber and carrot salad with ground beef – the idea here is to use well seasoned ground lamb or beef, to top a crunchy vegetable salad that is loaded with fresh herbs, and dressed with a bright dressing. For the Indian version I season my lamb with a homemade curry powder, and make an acidic dressing with lemon, cumin, ground coriander, and toss with plenty of fresh coriander (cilantro). For the Vietnamese version, I cook the beef with five spice powder, and make a dressing with lime and fish sauce, and top with lots of mint, cilantro, and basil.
chicken sausage and grilled pineapple – sometimes you just want a little sweetness. I’ll grab the chicken sausages with apple (or the Chardonnay ones from Trader Joe’s in a pinch), and then grill them with some pineapple wedges. When I eat this, I rarely make a vegetable, and feel a little bit like a picky three year old. But it’s good!
refried beans, eggs, and tortillas – Sometimes I’ll cook up some ground meat to mix with the beans, and usually I’ll eat mine over some greens instead of with the tortilla. This one has long been a house favorite.
I could keep going, but this list will keep me cooking for a while. What are some of your go-to easy peasy meals?
by Sam Tackeff | Oct 2, 2013 | Books, Challenge, Italian, Pantry Staples, Quick and Easy
Marcella Hazan, the iconic Italian cookbook author died this weekend, and like so many other food lovers, I’ve done the thing that seems the most fitting – taken to the kitchen to cook recipes in her honor. Starting with her famous tomato sauce. {Here’s a link to her obit in the NYTimes, and here’s the bible: Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking – an oft consulted tome from my bookshelf.}
This is a meal I come back to again and again in various incarnations: Israeli Shakshuka, or Turkish Mememen, or with Mexican flavors sort of Ranchero style, or Greek style with lots of feta – it’s such versatile and quick meal, and lends itself to all sorts playing in the kitchen. (Usually I like to cook my own sauce, like Marcella’s here, but in a pinch, I’ll use Rao’s marinara, and the meal will come together in five minutes.)
Eggs simmered in Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce
2 cups tomatoes
1 medium onion
5 tablespoons butter
a good pinch of salt
2 – 3 eggs per person
First Marcella’s sauce, which, is perhaps her most famous recipe, likely because it has only four ingredients – and some people don’t even count the salt so we’ll call it three ingredients – but also, because it’s exceedingly delicious for so little effort. Here’s what you do: take 2 cups of tomatoes, with their juices – she recommends fresh, or a 28-ounce can of imported San Marzano whole peeled tomatoes, although, admittedly this time I had a single 15 ounce can of diced tomatoes from Trader Joe’s, and it turned out fine – and you put it in a small sauce pan. Peel a medium onion, chop it in half, and add it to the tomatoes, and then put in five (yes five) tablespoons of butter, and a good pinch of salt. Gently bring to a simmer on medium heat, and cook it uncovered for 45 minutes, stirring every so often. Do a taste check – does it need more salt? Before you serve, you’ll season, and then get rid of the onion – it’s done it’s job. You can use this sauce for pasta, or over chicken, or with some sausages, or with vegetables, or simmered with eggs.
To make the eggs – put the sauce in a large, shallow pan, and cook until warm. Make a few holes in the sauce with your spoon, add the eggs – I’ll do three eggs per person, and share the entire sauce recipe between the two of us – and cover the pan until the eggs set, about 4 minutes. Serve as is, or top with a healthy grating of Parmigiano.
by Sam Tackeff | Sep 26, 2013 | Art, Books
The street pianos have arrived! 75 pianos have been installed around the Boston area, each painted by a local artist. I found two today, the first was this glorious ‘Mericana piano over by the Boston Children’s Museum. (Yes, that’s ‘merica and Americana, in one awesome extra made up word for you.) This piano was decorated by Amanda Baldi, hosted by Children’s Museum and donated by Sarah Asetsano. A few years ago when we had painted cows everywhere I thought that was pretty cool, but pianos! I hope people play them. I touched the keys apprehensively today, but maybe I’ll sit down and actually take some time with one in the next few weeks.
Here’s the second one I came across at the Greenway by the North End – a sort of ombre faux wood grain thing going on, by artist Tova Speter, hosted by Greenway and donated by Berklee College. I’m generally a big fan of public art, even if it’s a little out there, wacky, or ugly – there’s no better public conversation starter – and most of the time the art is delightful. These will be up for just a few weeks, and I hope people get as much a kick out of them as I am.
After a long, busy (but fun!) day at work, I was looking very forward to my evening plans! Tonight was our second monthly Boozy Book Club – with several women from my gym. Jacqueline was the gracious hostess this go around, and I was greeted enthusiastically at the door by her sweet pup Simone (Momo!).
You guys.. this dog.
I’m obsessed with Frenchies, religiously read The Daily Wag, and lust after my own. The first five minutes I pretty much completely ignored my friends so I could get some puppy love. Look at that face!
In fact, I was so enamored, that I failed at getting good photos of the food, because I was so distracted. But the food! Jacqueline made a feast for us:
The Menu:
Sweet potato beefy chili
Sesame crackers, guacamole, and grilled spiced chicken
Bacon roasted brussels sprouts with balsamic glaze
Carrot and beet slaw with pistachios
Rolled prosciutto, walnuts and comb honey
For dessert, Bets brought a gorgeous apple tart (with the apples perfectly arranged), and Lisa brought baked figs wrapped in prosciutto.
At some point, we ended up chatting about the book – Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter. Because apparently I’m incapable of reading anymore, this was the second book club that I’ve shown up without finishing the book. Despite the fact that I’ve actually had this book on my bedside for two straight months. And, yes, if you’re paying attention, that’s two out of two delinquencies. We’re slated to read the cult classic, Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent next month, so hopefully I’ll be on top of things.
What are you reading?
by Sam Tackeff | Sep 24, 2013 | Books, Local stores, Meat
The last Tuesday of the month is the day I pick up my meat club allotment at the best butcher shop in town – M.F. Dulock, in Somerville. For $50, I left with a nice sized package of spicy beef sausage, stew meat, stir fry meat, goat chops and pork jowl – enough to last me several weeks. The meat is pasture raised, broken down by the people handing it to me. It makes me a really happy camper.
I wish I had more exciting stories to tell you, but here’s what’s plaguing me today: I have $11.30 in library fines. I swear I’m not a jerk – it was an accident involving eight items that were overdue for three days. And two of those were DVD’s. And apparently, when you have an excess of $5 in fines, they shut off your ability to download digital items, until you head into the library and pay up. And they also disable your ability to the pay the fines online. This makes me grumbly. Let me give you my money! I might even donate a little extra every time I had to pay a fine if I could do it from the comfort of my own home.
Okay, but what does this mean for me exactly?
It means that I can’t download the audio book that I’ve been queuing patiently for for two months.
Let me pay you money, library, and let me download my Wallander audiobook!
Which reminds me. I probably should get around to trying Audible.com. Does anyone use it? Is it worth it? Inquiring minds want to know. I’ve been trying to stick to this free audiobook from the libary thing, but apparently it raises my general stress level to “unacceptable neuroses”.
Okay, that’s enough complaining. I suppose I should mention something about my almost favorite part of the day – dinner! (Second only to Second Lunch.)
My first order of business was to fry up a merguez burger that I was planning on eating on some wilted greens with lemon. After frying the first side for a few minutes, I got a call from Devon letting me know that he needed to be picked up, so I turned off the heat, flipped the burger, and popped the lid on, hoping for the best. When I returned less than 20 minutes later, the burger was browned nicely on both sides, and cooked perfectly through. A meaty-miracle!
I’ll admit though, that somehow in the 20 minutes I forgot all about the wilted greens. By the time we got home I was starving, so the burger became my appetizer. Devon came back hungry, so I decided to put the “red hot beef” sausage from meat club in the pan – which halfway through cooking I determined was too spicy for him (it was so spicy that I nearly was choking on the smoke – just the way I like it). So he got refried beans and eggs cooked in spicy sausage drippings, and I ate a piece of sausage, and no vegetables, and just decided that I’d be okay with it, because sometimes all you want is a piece of meaty goodness, and nothing else. Sometimes, being an adult is *the best*.
