A Dinner Party and A Hot Mess

I strongly advise pouring a drink.


Ready?  Ok.

We need to start with the dinner party Neil and I threw on Tuesday evening.  We invited our friends Todd and Mark (from the cruise...remember?) over for dinner and, though I was fully prepared to do the cooking, Neil - surprisingly - asked to cook.  This isn't strange because Neil can't cook.  Quite the opposite, actually.  He's a fantastic cook.


It's strange because we only had a week and a half to prepare.


Neil and I have often talked about having a party - as a matter of fact - I approached him with the idea of having one for his birthday, which is next week.  He agreed.


It will be a holiday party.


And the holiday could well be Easter.

I love my husband dearly.  However, 90% of the company I have over for dinner gets whatever I feel like cooking and a ten minute period where I clean the bathroom and spray enough Pledge to make the house smell like a citrus grove.  This is how I ended up with Ghetto Birthday, serving ground turkey and eating cupcakes.


Neil's idea of prepping for company is something a little more involved.  Like moving to a new house.


(I think where we live is just fine - it's a perfectly nice 6 story co-op on the Upper West Side, and it must be nice because it's the only co-op I've ever heard of where the super drives a Mercedes.  So does his wife actually, which makes me wonder where our maintenance payment is going since the elevator breaks every other week and they can't seem to keep a trash can by the mailboxes.)


Sorry.  Damn tangent.  Back to our regularly scheduled programming.


Anyway, with only 10 days to throw something together, Neil is off and running.  When this happens (I'd use the word dervish, but home would be a chilly place this evening), I'm generally instructed to remain on the couch and stay out of the way.  This is a main reason our marriage works, folks.

In this instance, Neil was bound to be more torqued up than usual, since Mark is an interior designer.  To his credit, the preparations did not - as I feared - include painting or heavy construction, and he was content to wipe every surface down with Fantastik and re-locate 90% of the crap I leave laying around.


For dinner we had Sicilian Style Chicken with Brussels Sprouts and toasted baguette with onions, black olives and anchovy.


4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
2 T raisins
1/2 cup white wine
1 1/2 t salt
1 t ground black pepper
1/3 c flour
4 T olive oil
1 small onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 t oregano
2 t sugar
2 T balsamic vinegar
2 small vine ripened tomatoes, seeded and chopped
2 T capers
2 green olives, pitted and chopped
1 c low sodium chicken broth
chopped parsley


Place raisins in a small dish. Add wine and set aside. 

Between 2 sheets plastic wrap, pound the chicken breasts to about 1/4 inch thickness. Sprinkle chicken with 1 teaspoon of the salt and 1/2 teaspoon of the pepper; dredge in flour. 


Heat oil in a large skillet over medium high heat.  Add chicken and cook about 10 minutes to brown on both sides. Remove chicken and add onion and garlic to pan. Saute about 2 minutes; then add oregano, remaining salt and pepper, sugar and vinegar. Stir in tomatoes, capers and olives. Add raisins to sauce and stir in chicken broth; cook until thickened, about 5 minutes. Return chicken to pan and heat through.


Serve.


For the Brussels Sprouts (Adapted from Epicurious:)


8 T extra virgin olive oil, divided
1 1/2 - 2 pounds brussels sprouts, stemmed and cut in half (lengthwise)
4-6 garlic cloves
1 c low sodium chicken broth
1 can (15 oz) cannellini beans, drained
2 T butter 
1 cup grated Pecorino (Neil uses Pecorino Toscano)

Heat 3 tablespoons olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the brussels sprouts (you may want to divide them and cook one half at a time to avoid crowding the pan.)  Cook until brown, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes. Transfer to large bowl. 

Add remaining 2 tablespoons oil to skillet ( I generally skip this - there's usually plenty of oil already in there.) Add garlic; sauté until brown, stirring constantly, about 1 minute. Add broth and brussels sprouts. Cook until brussels sprouts are crisp-tender, stirring frequently, about 3 minutes. Add beans and butter; stir until butter melts and broth is reduced to glaze, about 1 minute. Season with salt and pepper. Stir in cheese.

We had a really wonderful evening and the meal was delicious.  Neil did it without taking three days off from work and we ate by 9pm, so - by all accounts - this gets two thumbs up!

Yesterday I spent the morning working for one of my clients, then headed out to Brooklyn to finish the reel we're producing.  Once complete, it'll go to agents, as well as directors and production companies, so I can try and get my career developing and hosting television shows off the ground.  It was a long afternoon of editing footage and recording voiceovers - when it's done, I'll post a link so you can all see it.  All of the concepts we're developing are about food, fitness, and lifestyle issues, so you may be seeing this blogger on a remote cable channel some insomnia-addled night soon.  

I was a little tired when I got home, and there was some freak on the subway, snorting and clicking like an asthmatic chicken all the way from Borough Hall to midtown.  Plus, it was hotter yesterday (September 23!) than it was in most of June, so I wasn't really up for cooking anything extravagant last night.  

I decided to make a very simple baked pasta and, in a Sandra Lee moment, used jarred sauce.

I have not opened a can of jarred sauce in years.  To my mind, using jarred spaghetti sauce is the equivalent of faking an orgasm.  It's just a cruel lie, no matter how you slice it, and nowhere near as good as the real thing.  

However, we had a jar in the house from the shoot, and - since we finished post-production yesterday, it seemed appropriate to use it.

Faux Italian Style Ghetto-roni and Cheese:

1 box pasta - anything that can hold ricotta will do: ziti, penne, rigatoni, elbows, small shells.  Last night I used a mix of small shells and orecchiette, finishing up every open box of pasta in the house.

1 jar sauce

1 medium onion

1/4 green pepper, diced

4-6 cloves garlic, crushed

1 lb. Ricotta (part-skim)

1 egg

4-8oz shredded mozzarella

salt and pepper and dried parsley

Preheat the oven to 375.

Boil water.  While it's boiling, dice and saute the onion in a little olive oil (just a dash), add the garlic and green pepper.  Add the jarred sauce.  

Cook the pasta - make sure you cook it very al dente - it will keep cooking in the oven and can get very mushy if you cook it too much now.  You don't want a meal with the consistency of oatmeal. 

Rinse.

Mix the ricotta and egg.  Add salt, pepper and parsley.

Dump the pasta, ricotta mixture and sauce into a casserole dish.  Mix it up.  Cover with mozzarella cheese.  Bake until the mozzarella is brown and looks crunchalicious.  This is a technical term.

Serve with warm bread.

Do not eat carbs for a month afterwards.

Today I went to my trainer in the morning, then worked from home for a while before going to a business lunch at Haru on Park Ave South.  

Please do not ever go there.  

It was awful.  Unspeakably bad.  I ordered the Chicken Teriyaki (Chicken Very-yucky) lunch box, which came with broccoli, some weird tempura thing that may have had carrots or may have had shrimp,  a California roll (trying to pass that stuff off as sushi is a crime) and rice.

Everything on the plate tasted like fish.

You want good sushi?  Go to Gari on the Upper West Side or Nobu (midtown or TriBeCa) - it became iconic for a reason.  It's good.

I'm working from a client site the rest of the day, and there's a guy here who literally must be the inspiration for the term "Hot Mess."

He's actually kind of cute, but he's always so unkempt.  His shirt is perpetually half tucked-in and half flying about, his glasses are always crooked, and there's generally a remnant of something he's eaten clinging desperately to his person.  It's like the classic film scene of the librarian who whips of the glasses and lets down her hair and is totally hot.  Except in his case it's more like a lint brush and some personal grooming.

Maybe I'll send Neil after him with the Fantastik.

The Last Word:

DO THIS, New York:

Keep your fingers crossed I get representation and a hosting gig.  I could come unglued at any moment.  And wouldn't that be fun on live television.

Throw a dinner party.  Do not throw one that requires heavy construction or re-location.

Make a ghetto dinner every once in a while.  It can be comforting to eat an entire meal with a spoon.  Look what it's done for cereal!

Eat sushi (If you are Jeremy Piven, do NOT eat sushi).  

DON'T DO THIS, New York:

Don't eat at Haru.  If you are Jeremy Piven, do not eat sushi at all.  Clearly, this bears repeating.

Don't come to work like a hot mess.  Just come looking hot.  We'll thank you for it.

Cheeseburger and Lies: The Happiness Deficit

It would have been great if the weekend were all pancakes and pasta.  Actually, it would be great if life were, too, but that’s too much to hope for – especially when it can barely cover the weekend.

I’ll keep it as upbeat as possible – and surely there’s a recipe and restaurant review farther down – but it’s been a rough few days.

It really started on Saturday, with that stupid Teabagger’s march on Washington.  Nothing makes me angier than the wealthy and soulless exploiting the poor, using fear to manipulate people and trick them into taking positions that are actually hurting them.  Plus, I hate that name - teabagging.  If you want a more appropriate use of the term, see the explanation offered by Samantha during Season Six (Part One) of Sex and the City.  

The first problem I have with this march is that many of the people attending are in desperate need of systemic reform.  14,000 people lose their insurance every month; over 46 million people, roughly one-sixth of the population, is without insurance.  When you account for the under-insured, that number pushes past 70 million and represents approximately a quarter of all Americans.  Worse yet, while the economy grew during the Bush years, that growth was experienced largely by the top 1 percent of households, which claimed two-thirds of the nation's total income gains.  The period from 2002 to 2007 did little to create new jobs or deliver wage growth to the middle class; in fact, by 2008 the poverty rate had grown to 13.2 percent (it's highest level in over a decade) and median household income fell by four percent from $52,200 to $50,300.  Adjusted for inflation, median income was lower in 2008 than in 1998 and every year since.

Here's how health insurance is connected:  if you're lucky enough to have a job, ask yourself when your last raise was? And how much was it?  Now ask yourself when the last time your employer increased your contribution to your health insurance or changed plans resulting in a decrease in benefits.  The rising tide of health care costs is not only a moral issue - who are we as a society that middle class people die for want of preventive care? - t is a political and economic issue.  Keep your coverage if you like it, but don't think it's not important for the government to play a role in restructuring and regulating the system to control costs while guaranteeing coverage - odds are these rising costs combined with stagnating wages are already reducing your take home pay.

So, you can understand why I find it inexcusable that politicians would use fear of change and an underlying racism to manipulate their constitutents.

Yes - I said racism.  are we really surprised?  Am I wrong?  Or can we agree that there are probably plenty of people who wanted change so badly at the end of the Bush years (understandably so) that they could hold their nose for a minute in the voting booth and take a chance, but can't really come to grips with an African-American President on an day-to-day basis?  Can we agree there is probably a cohort of middle class whites who have seen so much change for women, foreigners, gays and people of color, that any excuse is a good one to stand against a Democratic President, a defender of civil rights, and a black man, to boot?

(As long as we're on stereotypes, can I just say that I recently stumbled across a show called "Jewish Doctors."  Are we ok with this?  I'm conflicted.  I kind if think that, if it were ok, it would also have to be ok to do a show called "Korean Grocery" or "Puerto Rican Cleaning Woman"?  Can you imagine?  Yeah - I didn't think so.  It's not ok.)

Not that there aren't plenty of reasons to be dissatisfied with the President, but let's adhere to the facts.  First, he hasn't exactly delivered on a lot of the social change he promised - the federal government will still recognize any marriage performed in any of the 50 states and most western countries, except those between members of the same sex from six states, Spain, Canada, or Holland.

There's also plenty of anger about bailouts.  Since the rich got richer under the last President, you'd think it were time to focus on the middle class, but the piles of money that have been bestowed upon the wealthiest people and most reckless corporations that created this economic nightmare is easily worthy of some righteous indignation.  It's about as insane as offering Adolf Hitler the Nobel Peace Prize.  

"Dear Financial Services Industry,

"You greedily exploited the dreams of middle class and the poor, gambled with the nation's economy, and created a global recession unlike nothing seen since the Great Depression.  As a result, asset values are in the toilet and unemployment is cruising toward ten per cent.  

"Here's billions of dollars!  Please pay yourselves bonuses and take a company sponsored trip to Vegas.  Stay at the Wynn - it's awesome!  

"Love, 

President Obama."

Further, the President hasn't done much to differentiate between the stimulus package (which was a little on the wimpy side - particularly for state and local governments, which would spend the money quickly and are in crisis - but it managed to stabilize the economy, so we'll take it) and the bailouts which may have been necessary to prevent total collapse, but look like a handout to the plutocracy when those of us who played by the rules continue to get screwed.

The exacerbating issue has been a failure of leadership on the part of the President.  Interestingly, it's one of only two things I admire Bush for exhibiting (the other one is the extensive, and undersung, contributions he made to funding AIDS research and medical care around the world.)

But when it came to leadership, Bush had it in spades - I didn't agree on where he was leading, but the guy took a point of view - cleanly and clearly - and argued for it.  While he failed when it came to immigration reform (where I happened to agree with him) and Social Security (where we still need some sort of middle ground, because that bill's going to come due soon, too, as the Baby Boomers retire) - it's worth remembering that he got most of his first-term agenda through fairly easily, including the two years of a Democratic Senate from 2001 - 2003.  No Child Left Behind, a trillion dollar tax cut, two wars.  He used the bully pulpit and the threat of veto - not to mention a clear articulation of his agenda - and defied Congress to reject it.  And this was someone who won without a mandate or a popular vote majority.

Obama doesn't seem to have that stuff, and it's a shame.  Why is it Democratic Presidents always seem to split the difference, rather than articulating why they're point of view is right?  As a result, we end up with leaders who are more triangulators and political calculators than leaders.  It's as if they move to the safest place the polls tell them they can go, rather than Republicans, who take the stage with a voice intended to move the polls.  

I'm tired of watered-down leadership.

So - clearly - there are plenty of reasons to be disappointed in Barry O.  But none of them is that he's a socialist.  (And, as long as we're here for a second - can I just ask - is socialized health care really so terrible?  Spare me your stories of that Canadian friend or your co-worker's aunt in London who waited, like, two weeks to see a dentist.  Anecdotal evidence nothwithstanding, every single non-partisan analysis has shown that the quality of care, and access to it, is far superior to the American system, at a much lower cost.  Of the major western nations we spend a great deal more and get a great deal less.  If you had a choice between flying in a plane that landed safely 95% of the time and one that crashed 50% of the time, which would you fly on?  And how long would you wait for a ticket?  Enough said.)

I need to move off this topic, as I've said much more than I intended to - but there was a second thing that disappointed me about the march.  And the speech.  And the nature of our discourse in general.

Can we please try and obey the unwritten rules of public behavior?

When did it become acceptable to carry a gun to the place the President was speaking?  Is it dignified for a sitting Congressman to call the President a liar on the floor of the House, while it's in session?  Did I really see a sign that said "Bury Obamacare with Kennedy"? 

I say a lot of things, and I even say some mean things, and many of them I simply say for a laugh.  But my momma raised me better than to behave like a barn animal or a piece of white trash in public.  You can disagree and still be a fucking human being.

While we're here, it's worth mentioning that the sidebar ads that come up on the FreedomWorks website (proudly promoting pictures like the one to your left.  No, I'm not supplying a link.) include one for "Angry Mob T-Shirts."  Classy.

So going into Monday you can see that I was actually a little torqued up.

Megan left for California on Monday.  We took an acting class together two years ago and became friends - she's a perky former dancer with amazing acting talent who got into the MFA program at the University of California - San Diego, the hottest acting school in the country right now.  Since I've known her, she's gone from being a near-agoraphobic to a subway and elevator-riding powerhouse.  She did, however, skip air travel (and the medically-supervised dose of Valium it would have taken to get her on a plane,) in favor of riding the bus all the way to southern California.  This is my own personal vision of hell.


She's going to be a huge star one day, but she'll always be my messy friend who pushed me to express my own creativity, and I will miss her.

And two of my girlfriends were struggling through break-ups, while a colleague dealt with ending his marriage after 11 years. 

There's something in the air right now - a happiness deficit (sadness surplus?) - that's somehow appropriate for the times we live in, but no less easier to deal with.


I pray we all all find enough within ourselves to be able to offer something to support those around us who need it.  I feel like community is so critical right now, and as a society we don't seem to be getting that message.

In moods like this, I like hamburgers, so that's what we ate Monday night.  My friend Todd came over and we ate burgers and talked about his summer working at Sant Ambroeus in Southampton.  If you're not out east, go to the one on W4th St.  You can't go wrong with their eggplant parmigiana, the linguine cacio e pepe, the orecchiette, the filet mignon or the branzino. 

The Last Word:

DO THIS, New York:

Add your voice to the efforts to reform health care.  Constructive ideas are always welcome.  Write or call your Member of Congress and your Senators.

Be nice, even to the ignorant.

Watch Sex and the City

Eat at Sant Ambroeus

Make my burgers and Brussels Sprouts:

For the burgers:

Throw some ground beef in a stainless steel bowl.  Use a little more than 1/3 pound per person.

Add salt, pepper, onion powder, and chili powder.

Mix it up, but don't over work the meat.  Form a ball, flatten slightly, make a thumbprint in the center.

Cook them.

Before they're done, add a slice of Kraft 2% Milk singles.

Top with chopped tomato, sliced onion, and sliced avocado.

Serve with:

1 pound Brussels Sprouts, stemmed and cut in half.

A bunch of chopped shallots.

Mix sprouts and shallots with 2 Tbsp Olive Oil.

Season with Salt.  

Toss it in a Pyrex casserole dish and bake at 400 degrees - about 30 minutes.

Be nice to each other.  I'll be funny in the next post - it'll be about my birthday.  YAY!!!

DON'T DO THIS, New York:

Don't teabag.  Either kind.

Don't skip the cheese - I used to do that and the burger is less fun that way.

Don't be a racist.