Homecoming

You didn't think I forgot, did you?

I won't bore you with details or any "I've been so busy!" type talk...that sort of thing is so boring.  In fact, I recently read "The Busy Trap" by Tim Kreider (New York Times), and it completely spoke to me; I vow to resist blabbing anymore about how oh-so-busy I am, particularly when most of it is indeed self-created (or self-inflicted?).

Besides, nothing like that happened anyway.  I haven't blogged for two simple reasons: 1) I've been feeling uninspired, and 2) I feel like I've lost my center a bit.  So I've just been focusing on really getting my house, my life, myself back in order again.  Which, believe me, is nowhere near as dramatic as I just made it sound.  All is well, actually.

So I don't have a recipe to share with you today but, given that I do share so much of my life here with you, I thought I'd show you what I've been up to.  It's been a lovely summer so far.   We've actually been without Bug for a solid month (a month!); she's coming home tomorrow and I'm beside myself with excitement.  And that's why I can't share any recipes with you, actually: Adam and I have been going out nearly every damn night!  I have done a shockingly tiny amount of cooking in the last couple months.  Which is okay and fine.  Sure, I miss cooking...but you do what you gotta do sometimes, right?

 My late spring started with a riverside NYC picnic to celebrate Adam's birthday:

I've eaten lots of ice cream in the past couple months, including Shake Shack's incredibly smooth and rich olive oil ice cream:

This was a highlight: another riverside picnic, this time to watch E.T. in Brooklyn Bridge Park with Adam and the Soul Twin.  Naturally, I ugly-cried...E.T. is just as lovely and heartbreaking to me now as it was to my 7-year-old self.  Luckily, the downtown NYC view I enjoyed this time was much better than my young heart could have imagined:

Bug graduated from elementary school.  Yowza.  Middle school, here we come (seriously, is that the face of a kid old enough for middle school?!):

Adam and I enjoyed a much-needed day at the beach:

We had our annual Ginger Man summer celebration (this was our 4th year), which wouldn't be complete without pretzels and beer (along with lots of laughter and our urban adopted family and friends):

Adam and I just returned from a four-day, Bug-free vacation to Tucson, which including many, many margaritas pool-side...

...and blue skies and sunshine...

Our next stop?  As if our summer hasn't been full enough, we leave this Sunday for a 3-week trip to Europe: Dublin, Zurich, and Hamburg.  I had grand visions of learning elementary German before leaving...but that didn't quite go as I planned.  So I'll just have to get by being able to count to ten to any German or Swiss citizen who asks. 

Thanks, everyone, for sticking with me - I do hope as the fall arrives, Bug starts school, and I'm in more of a routine, that I'll be here much more.  I've missed it very much.

Eat, drink, and stay centered.

  

The One Where I Stop Worrying About Pizza

I’ve been reading a lot about pizza lately – lots of bloggers (For the Love of Food and Lobster Squad, as examples) are experimenting with it and trying to make the perfect pie. But I don’t know – I just feel awfully uninspired to give it a go again and again. Why? Because I have tasted, to me anyway, the perfect pizza. Crust, toppings, everything. And it’s at Grazie in Scottsdale, Arizona. People who have even tasted the best in Italy (alas, not me) swear by Grazie. I’ve tried time and time again to replicate their crispy, thin, light-as-air, charred-in-all-the-right-places crust. I’ve made about a dozen attempts. All failures.

My friend Steve makes a stellar pizza. I won’t say that it’s not as good as Grazie’s…it’s just very different. The glorious, and most important, thing about Steve’s pizza is that it is a flavor explosion. He has perfected the right mix of herbs and toppings, and there are several flavors in there you can’t identify but desperately wish you could. I’ve tried another dozen times to make his pizza too. All failures. And that’s after sitting in his kitchen, watching his every move like a hawk!

I’m out. Especially since I bought Nigella Express and discovered using naan for pizza crust. It’s damn near Grazie’s crust. No more rolling out pizza dough and failing over and over again. I’ll stick with my naan and pine away for Grazie and Steve, thank you.

Note: Is this ever going to turn back into a children’s literature blog? I don’t know any more than you do. Stay tuned…