Of Chicken Breasts and Gynecology

BIENVENIDOS!!! After a long and painful separation, I have returned like the Persian cat of the Internet, to shed hair upon your literary couch and make you wish you hadn't fed me the six Flirtinis and chicken livers that I just recreated upon your new rug. I missed you, amigos. It was a long month of redoing our kitchen, during which I nearly came apart at the seams, and Thanksgiving, after which my pants nearly followed suit. I know I promised photo updates of the kitchen as both a work in progress and a finished triumph, and I know you've come to look to me as a bastion of reliability, but would you believe me if I said the kitchen is still not done? It's definitely functional, after a solid two weeks of having no running water, no counters, and no dignity as we scarfed frozen pizza and paper-bagged cheeseburgers every night. But it's still not cosmetically done, in the sense that I could unveil a finished product to you with a flourish of my hand, fantastic mouth-trumpet noises, and intense profanity as I tried to upload the pictures.

Lawyer Boy is in there painting as we speak. Before you try to peg me as the lazy one, turn your eyes to the fact that not only did I cook and clean up dinner, but that my painting skills produce a finish similar to dropping a pigeon into a bucket of paint and letting it flap and freak around the room until its wings are clean again. Also, someone has to keep the dog and cat company in here.

What finally pulled me out of my intense writer's block was a paltry poultry adventure just now, wherein I got to third base with a chicken against my better judgment. Guys, I didn't even know her name! Here is the story. Don't judge.

Sunday I had bought an entire raw chicken, which is strangely cheaper than a venti caramel latte, to cook this week. I decided to brine it, which is when you make a cracked-out marinade that you soak your fowl friend in overnight. So I made the brine and pulled the chicken out of the fridge to drop it into the deep end, but before we could get on with the skinny-dipping, I had to undress the chicken. We didn't know each other very well, but I grabbed a knife and popped its plastic off in no time. I require no flirting. I require action. And here is where it gets graphic.

We all know that I cook all the time, but everyone has things they don't like to touch, and mine is raw chicken. If you want to call me weird, I'd like you to know that LB's is velvet and fleece. Yes, my husband won't touch velvet. Marinate on that for a bit. At least my fear would give me salmonella if things went south--his would just make him unwillingly plush and snuggly.

So as I prepare to get intimate with this chicken, I'm bracing myself for sticking my hand in its carcass to seek out the baggie of giblets, which as far as I can tell, are alien life forms sent from another planet to study our food. The brand of chicken I normally buy leaves the giblets intact, in a sealed plastic bag inside the chicken, just as God made them. Apparently this time I bought a different brand of chicken.

I thrust my unwilling hand into either the neck end or the ass end, whichever is bigger, and I would like you to know that if you can tell which is which, I'm concerned on your behalf. I wiggled my fingers around trying to find the baggie, and came out holding something that looked like a naked snail. Oh God. There's no baggie.

OH GOD. I realized at this point that I had two problems: First, that I had to stick my hand back up the chicken's muffler, and second, that I had no idea what I was looking for. Beyond the alien life form and the snail, do you have any idea what-all is meant to be retrieved from a chicken's rear? I don't. The baggie was missing, so there went my only guess. Elvis could be in there. This was, after all, a very plump chicken.

I pulled myself together and plunged my hand back into the chicken. I was rooting around in there like a truffle pig after the prize, fully engaged in my mission, probing squeemy bit after jumbly lump after funky chunk, when the most horrifying thought that could have possibly intruded into my consciousness popped in for a visit. As soon as I had finished thinking, while practically convulsing from repulsion, "Omigosh omigosh what what what ISSSS THAAAAAAAAAAAAAT??????" what came into my head but,

"THIS MUST BE WHAT FIRST-YEAR GYNECOLOGY RESIDENTS FEEL LIKE."

Quicker than you can say stirrup, my hand was out of that chicken and my mouth was running seventeen miles a minute in a chorus of "ew ew ew ew ew ew ew what the hell ew ew ew ew" as I flailed my salmonella-coated hands around helplessly and tried to figure out how to retrieve the rest of the aliens from the chicken's rear. Neck. Rear?

Ultimately, I turned the chicken neck-end up (I think) and shook it like a violent can of hairspray to dislodge the rest of the giblets. I got chicken jumblies all over my new granite counter tops, but I was able to spare LB's brand-new paint job from any harm. I can't say the same for the chicken's dignity, though. I think it'll be awhile before she's back in the saddle.

A Year Of Public Fumbling

It's official. Midnight marks the first anniversary of this here ridiculous corner of the Interwebz, with all its glorious insanity and beloved fart jokery. When I first started writing this blog, it was mostly because I had too many words to spew and not enough people to catch them, and after reading month after month of my elaborate, long-winded email epics, my girlfriends suggested that I find a space for rent on the 'webz.

And thus, here we are, a year older and perhaps none the wiser. Over dinner this summer, my friend Jess looked at me and said, "so, what's your ultimate goal for your blog?" and I swear, she may as well have asked me to explain the origin of the universe as it relates to modern animal husbandry. Really? I just like to write. Over the last year I've had some people I don't know in person find this blog, which I think is fantastic, and I had the editor of a magazine approach me about writing a humor column for her rag, which I think is super-fantastic. If people find me, I get excited, but if they don't, I'm okay with that too. Although I feel I must say, just so we're all clear:

THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR READING ME I REALLY APPRECIATE IT AND LOVE YOU EACH DEEPLY, PERSONALLY, AND POSSIBLY ECUMENICALLY!!!

That said, I thought that for my first anniversary, I'd answer the questions that I'm asked most frequently about my exploits here at the Fumbling. So, in no particular order...

Dear Grace: Why do you write under a pseudonym?
Okay, I apologize if I've wrecked anyone's life here, but my name is not actually Grace. And, hold the phone, Lawyer Boy's name is not in fact Lawyer Boy. I know, I know, pick your jaw off the floor and try to move on, mostly because all kinds of nasty feet have been on that floor, and you do not want your jaw all up in someone's foot junks. I write under a pseudonym, and assigned one to LB as well, because we both work in professions where creativity is not exactly rewarded, per se. I don't think that the clients we work with need to know all of the insane things we do in our free time, and I really didn't want clients who got a little drunk and Google-happy discovering things about us that have nothing to do with the work they pay our firms for. I think that, at least in my life, the line between personal and professional needs to exist.

Dear Grace: Why don't you ever write about work? Funny stuff happens there, doesn't it?
I don't write about work because I'm not careful enough to prevent the people I'd write about from finding out about it. Funny, outrageous, and borderline unbelievable things happen at my office, but I don't want to embarrass anyone publicly, nor do I want to worry that they heard about this ridiculousness through the grapevine, and now they and their posse have a bone to pick with me in the parking lot after quitting time. Many of my coworkers read The Fumbling, or at least, they did until our asshole Interwebz blocker shut down sites hosted by Blogger, and I can't handle worrying that someone found me and is OMG SUPER PISSED. My rule of thumb is usually, if my boss found this and read it, would he want to fire me?

Dear Grace: What's up with all the fart jokes?
I grew up with a dad who is big into poot humor, and a younger brother who followed in the family biz. I've noticed that my friends who grew up with discreet parents and/or a houseful of sisters tend to have a much more refined sense of humor, but not me. My sense of humor is so outrageously lowbrow that guys are often amazed at the things that come out of my mouth. This is partly because I'm a girl, but partly because I'm a girl who tends to wear pearls, show up bearing meticulously-decorated cupcakes...and then drop the f-bomb in the first ten minutes of a party. I'm just very up front about the way I am, is all.

Dear Grace: Do you do anything other than write and cook?
I do, in fact, have many hobbies, most of which I don't have enough time for. LB and I have been restoring our old house for the last 13 months, and that takes a lot of time and even more energy (and, if I may, a heck of a lot of our disposable income). My friends know me for having dinner parties, making jewelry, knitting, and of course, making fart jokes. I wish I had more time to write, but it takes a couple of hours and the write frame of mind to churn out something respectable, so I'm really at the whim of my creative side, which is a fickle, fickle princess.

Dear Grace: Who's your favorite author?
Alright fine, no one really asks me that. But I just thought I'd share. It's Ralph Waldo Emerson, Dave Barry, and of course, Henry David Thoreau.

Anything else you want to know, please feel free to shoot me an email at gracethoreau@gmail.com. Again, thanks for reading and making the last year so much fun!

Who pooted?

The Semi-Epic Do-Over, Part 2: The Staredown

Okay, in order of importance:

1) It needs to stop raining. Three days of rain. When it's italicized as Three Days Of Rain and is a play that Julia Roberts (whom I deeply, puffy, puffy heart) starred in on Broadway, it's lovely. When it's all up in my house, and it's punctuated with "ugh three days of rain ugh," it starts to eat at my soul a bit. The ground is giving way like warm Jell-o salad and the Labradozer is tracking progressively more and more foul things into the house. Waterlogged beetles, anyone?

ii) I've been feeling all week like I'm teetering on the edge of getting sick, and I am chomping at the bit to either topple over the edge into a pit of misery, or spring back victorious and bound off to do important things. Part of me thinks it's from all the sheetrock dust, plywood dust, cementboard dust, stardust, mold, mildew, and assorted bullhockey floating around my house. My less reasonable side thinks it's definitely and incurably ebola with a side of the clap. Because, you know, why not? Seriously, trying to talk down my more, shall we say, excitable side is like trying to fight off a pitbull with a toothbrush. Oral-B engaged!

C) If I'm not going to get to be the office Typhoid Mary (which is, admit it, a vague position of power), then I would really like to fast-forward to Saturday morning, when we can get on with this do-over project. Did you ever think you would see me so excited to work with a tool that could snap my fingers off if it wanted to? I have told LB that I want to learn to "do tile" this weekend, so he has gamely agreed to teach me how to work the tile saw and lay tile. I really just want to move along with this project, which I am sure will inevitably bore me after 30 minutes of tedium and loud noises, so that we can have our kitchen back. I also want our special backsplash tile to come in already, so I can love it down. Don't really care if it makes it onto the walls. Just want to stroke it and share my deepest thoughts with it.

Quattro) Watching the Labradozer half-bark and chase imaginary things in her sleep is one of the cutest things in the world.

The Semi-Epic Do-Over, Part 1

Normally when I sit down to talk to you about important, wordly topics (like exactly how I made a pizza out of five croissants, a can of tomatoes, and seven minutes of intense prayer), I have a rule that I follow fairly strictly: I have to be telling a story. Beginning, middle, end. Writing with a purpose, and a point. I try to avoid writing what I often characterize as an "and for breakfast this morning, I had Cheerios"-style blog, because for the most part, that style bores me. Some people can write it, and write it well, and somehow, their Cheerios are hilarious. I do eat Cheerios every morning, but they're not funny. Just delicious.

However, henceforth and forthwith, I am abandoning that rule for the next week. For the first time in recorded history, though, there is a reason for my madness: HGTV's own Lawyer Boy and I are tearing out and redoing most of our kitchen, and since many of our friends are deeply intrigued by the fact that we tore out our countertops on purpose and by ourselves, they have demanded pictures of this superhuman feat. Also, I noticed that y'all tend to enjoy those rare spans of time when I actually rub two brain cells together hard enough to post more than one record of my exploits per week, so I decided that I will chronicle our kitchen do-over with photos and commentary. And also a deep misunderstanding of the functions and basic operating procedures for most power tools.

Let's begin with the reason why we felt the need to destroy our kitchen: Exhibit A, the kitchen that was last redone in 1963, at which point it was a high-end kitchen remodel.

Okay, so in this picture, it doesn't look too bad. There's a friendly sunbeam come to visit, and the cabinets are actual wood, and nice-looking wood, at that. What you can't see here is that the four doors in this room are all painted teal, as are the three windows over the sink. The coup de grace is the counters: They're laminate from 1963, and aside from being a breeding ground for all breeds of mold, they're hideous. They're white with teal daisies drawn all over them. And because laminate is the king of all construction materials cheap and shitty, these have not passed the test of time, and have warped, particularly around the sink in the face of invading water demons. So in the categories of beauty and function, we have a fail and a fail.

For an extra touch of fail, the laminate defacing the counters is also plastered to the walls, from the surface of the counter to the bottoms of the cabinets. The previous owners of our house apparently felt the same overpowering love for daisy-speckled laminate that they did for teal paint, ghastly wallpaper, and mildew. So the acres of laminate, while borderline visually offensive, are not wholly surprising. I have no doubt that the previous owners were all buried in laminate caskets lined in teal velvet.

In case you don't believe me, here's what hell they had wrought upon the dining room:

Remember, when words aren't enough...there's always vomit. And yes, we've repainted.

Now that you've seen what we're working with, here's the plan for the Semi-Epic Do-Over:

Keep: Cherry cabinets as they are; appliances, since we just bought them last year when we moved in; floor, because OMFG we are not taking up the floor. Just no. Dear Lord, no.

Kill: Countertops; laminate backsplash; ugly faux-bronze cabinet hardware; peeling wallpaper; sink, faucet, and violent sprayer that sprays whenever the faucet is on; and drywall soffets above the cabinets. The de-soffetization of the walls wasn't part of the original plan, but when we peeled off the wallpaper, it wrecked that section of drywall, and LB said it would be easier just to pop the drywall out and put in new drywall, than to patch what was there. Fine by me. I'm just the minion here.

We began The Semi-Epic Do-Over last weekend by tearing out the short section of countertop that doesn't have cabinets underneath, to give us an understanding of what this was going to entail. What we learned is that it was going to entail significant manpower, metal tools reminiscent of Civil War-era medicine, and loud explosions of otherworldly profanity. So over the course of the weekend, LB tore out the less-essential half of the counters, the backsplash behind them, and the soffets.

LB working on the soffets in his trusty work-moccasins, which LL Bean sells under the name slippers. The soffets are the parts that are no longer there above the cabinets. Did you think I was kidding about the windows being teal? Because no.

Mango approves of our progress thus far. What a relief.

LB removing the beflowered backsplash from behind where the stove normally lives. You didn't believe me when I said this stuff was everywhere, did you? We have learned some interesting things about the construction of our house during this project. For example, there used to be a window right where LB's head is (on the wall, not on his neck), and there was a sink under it.

The view of the opposite end of the kitchen from where LB was excavating behind the stove. Because I just really, really need for you to appreciate the sheer bum-fugliness of this kitchen. Our appliances don't normally congregate in the middle of the room like this. We have a strict no-loitering policy in effect.

We saved the rest of the counters for Saturday morning, since they were going to make off with our sink upon their exit, and we were trying to preserve a semblance of functionality for as long as possible. Last week I moved things out of the kitchen to make way for the hurricane, hit the grocery store repeatedly to stock up on MSG-licious frozen meals, and stared the weekend down with great trepidation.

Saturday morning, LB and I had a plan: Hit the tile store to pick out tile for the area behind the stove, hit Lowe's to pick up the drywall and plywood we still needed, and then return home to invade the kitchen and BLOW. IT. UP. The tile store adventure was simple enough: We enter, I fall in love with the most expensive item in the store, we debate, we consider, I elope with the most expensive item in the store, and we decide to take it home. Fortunately we didn't need much of the accent tile I picked, because if we had, I'd be selling one of my kidneys on eBay right now, rather than talking to you.

We left the tile store triumphant and headed to Lowe's. In record time, we had built a raft of drywall atop a flatbed cart, and steered it to the checkout line. Special thanks to Douchecannon Randomhag, for making it a point to get in my way while I attempted to pilot the 4-by-8-foot drywall raft around the store. The part later, where I pulled up close enough behind your bologna-colored minivan so as to render it unfathomably difficult to load your purchases? It was on purpose, and it was childish, BUT IT WAS AWESOME.

After a debacle at Lowe's that kept us there for an hour and a half, leaving me certain that everyone at Lowe's is in love with me and thus conspires to keep me there as long as humanly possible, we finally headed for home, where LB started to rip out the final counters and the sink.

That sprayer has been around or about that same position for the last freaking year, and it has plucked my last nerve for the last time. SO I KILLED IT DEAD. The moral? Don't cross me. Clearly.

LB with the sink. If you can't read lips, what he's saying is, "OMYGOD Grace, stop taking pictures and open the damn door!!" Smile, sweetheart!

Finally, after the sink left the building, LB ripped the rest of the counters out with the help of our friend Brian, who is so getting a gold star on his next report card for all his volunteer work. Brian and his wife Melissa, who I have been friends with for approximately ever, had us over for dinner that night, since, as you may have noticed, there was no magic to be made in our current kitchen. I'm good, but not that good.

The next morning Brian, intent on earning another gold star, showed up early to help LB build the counters, which are a layer of plywood topped with a layer of cementboard, which will ultimately be topped with a layer of granite tile. (Don't I sound like I know what I'm talking about? I've learned to fake it.)

The plywood base of the counters. Once they had covered this in cementboard, we cut the hole for the sink, which goes right above the cabinets to the left of the dishwasher, in a space that is currently occupied by an electrical outlet. Yup. Safety first! The missing drawer is currently in our dining room. I have no idea why. No one tells me these things.

LB and Brian laying the cementboard over the plywood base, on the opposite side of the kitchen. Where the counters used to be one section above cabinets, and then a lower section above nothing, we made one long section. The midget counter really drove me crazy, and this way, I can set up lots of food for parties in the kitchen. Like I needed an excuse to have a party.

With the cementboard in place and ready for tiling, we closed up shop for the weekend. All that was left was to clean up, and for that, we had another volunteer:

The Labradozer is really quite the clean freak. She can work that ShopVac like a pro!

The kitchen is currently full of drywall, dust, and appliances gathered together like they're on a smoke break. This weekend, the plan is to tile the counters, put in the sink, and get the essential stuff done so we can use the kitchen again. I'll keep you posted!

The Life and Times of a Halloweenie

I love Halloween. I love the fall weather, I love the midgetine candy bars, and I love the way Halloween gets everyone outside and talking to their neighbors. However, just like my forbidden love for Taco Bell, there's a very good reason why I shouldn't love Halloween: I hate being scared, and just about everything inherent to the celebration of Halloween scares me. I'm very easily startled, and I would say that I tend to blur the line between reality and fantasy when I'm frightened, except that I do not know of a single point in my life at which I have ever actually recognized any line between reality and fantasy. If I watch a horror movie, the characters follow me to bed and stare at me all night. If I encounter someone in a seasonally scary mask, they may as well snuggle up to me as I lay me down to sleep, because that mask is burned into my brain, terrifying me into sleeping with my eyes open all night long.

One of my dad's favorite stories from the The Life & Times Of Grace is torn from the pages of Halloween 1991, when Yours Timidly dressed as Cleopatra and traipsed about the neighborhood with the other kids. The dad gang ambled behind us, preventing the boys from getting into trouble, and going to the doors of particularly "scary" houses to collect candy on my behalf, since I refused to cross the property lines of any yards decorated with otherworldly foam headstones and DayGlo skulls. As we walked between two particular houses, absolutely nothing was happening. No other kids were around. No stray dogs were barking. It was calm as calm could be. And then Dad ruined it.

From ten feet behind me, in a deadpan stolen from the throat of Ben Stein, Dad said -did not scream, yell, menace, or pant- he said, "Look. Grace. A. Real. Witch." AND I WAS GONE. Legend has it that I hiked my royal Cleopatra robes to my knees, ditched my bucket of midgetine candy bars, and fled for the street, wimpering the whole way. I don't know where I was going, since I don't know where I thought "the witch" was; for all I knew I was running straight into her loving caress. But wherever I was headed, I was getting there in record time, and with a smashing gold snake headdress.

In the last 18 years, absolutely nothing has changed. I mean, I can't fit into that Cleopatra outfit any more, but I still jump at my own shadow while celebrating Halloween in a decidedly nonfrightening costume. Why would I want to be something that scares me when I look in the mirror? For once, I am exercising common sense here, people. To demonstrate what I mean by "decidedly nonfrightening," let's take a short tour through the last few years of my costumes.

Freshman year of college, before I had any sense whatsoever, and when I lived within shouting distance of someone who could loan me a spangly pink bra. And a see-through button-down. And who could spray-paint a plaid skirt onto me. That's my bestifer Shelley next to me, and the Dutch exchange student behind me. Eight years later, I still have no freaking clue what the other girl was supposed to be. She looks like she wants to beat some serious ass. While holding an appletini.
This was Halloween 2008, when I dressed as a tennis mom. See how clever I was, with my punny tennis racket of petit fours? I was serving up a good time. Interestingly, our neighbors thought that my tennis dress was lingerie, and I was giving out candy to their children in lingerie. And tennis shoes? Hm. Apropos of nothing, please note the melodramatic teal walls.

Apparently when I said I had never gone as anything frightening for Halloween, I was unaware of the existence of this picture. Phoooooooo. Ooooooooo. Let's move on. MOVE ON!

And thus we arrive at Halloween 2009, when I dressed as The Goddess of Everything. I would call myself "Pandeia," pan for "everything" and deia for "goddess," but some other mythological bitch claimed that already. It's moments like these, where I explain the Latin origins of my made-up Halloween costume nerdery, that I think we can really appreciate what I mean when I say thank God I am not dating any more.
Do I look regal here? Do I look regal enough that you could forget that I tried to create a legitimate Latin name for myself? Let's not talk about me for a minute. Let's talk about how my regal robes coordinate with the paint job in the front hall, which is no longer the color of mildew.

After a couple hours of giving out candy in my robes, which I am sure the neighbors thought was me tumbling out the door in a bedsheet, Lawyer Boy and I went to the Halloween party that our friends Molly and Lee were throwing. Molly and Lee had turned their house into a full-blown haunted half-acre, complete with an animatronic skeleton, giant video screens, and a haunted maze out back. Strobe lights flickered over the fog-filled backyard as the screams of terrified trick-or-treaters erupted from within the maze, the occasional crying child careening out of the exit, damaged for life.

So of course, I went near none of it. I was perfectly content to stay in the house, sipping Firefly lemonades and socializing with my fellow deity, Lawyer Boy:

Lawyer Boy was the God of Animal House, or, as many of our friends have aptly surmised, the lazy one. I particularly like the axe in the back of this picture. We could have used it to cut up the mini quiches, had we started to run low. That's just about all the Halloween carnage I can handle.

Professional Attire At All Times

The part I love most about wearing a skirt to the office is that I don't have to worry all day long about making sure my fly is zipped. This is more of a chronic problem for me than it really should be for anyone over the age of, oh, I dunno, three. Although fortunately, I have long since dispensed with another habit I had when I was three, which was taking off all my clothes every time I went to the bathroom. Socks included. Hairbow optional.

I'm sure my coworkers are more than thrilled by this development.

Casa Del Grace, For Your Enjoyment

Alright, so true to my usual form of making a promise and then beating around the bush fulfilling it for longer than it takes a first-grader to sound out "antidisestablishmentarianism," I am here two weeks after I originally promised pictures of my refinished bedroom furniture, to provide pictures of my refinished bedroom furniure. And to rant, natch. What, you were here for sunshine and kittens?

Okay, fine. Kittens!

Well, singular kitten. Singular kitten totally digging his Santa outfit, whereby "totally digging his Santa outfit," I mean, "shit dude, I'm stoked he didn't kill me!"

Lawyer Boy and I discovered recently that our upstairs bathroom is an unholy disaster of Biblical proportions, and that renovating a bathroom is, coincidentally, a financial disaster of Biblical proportions. We have spent the last year of our lives slaving away on this house that we bought for approximately four dollars and a salami sandwich, which was formerly a disgusting mildew-ridden cricket cave, and which now is...not. I recognize that I've set the bar fairly low here: All I've said is that our house is no longer disgusting, mildew-ridden, or infested with cave crickets, who look to the uninitiated like craggy prostitutes with their ankles behind their heads. * It has been more work than herding a litter of kittens to get this house into shape, but finally, it's really coming together, and our house is no longer a big bucket of suck. We think the progress on the house is moving along well enough, in fact, that in order to get the bathroom done, we applied for a refinance. Yesterday.

This morning, like before-most-college-students-had-gotten-to-bed early this morning, the bank called LB (apparently they know who speaks their language around here). In order to figure out how generously they would like to reward our blood, sweat, and unspeakable profanity of the last year, they want to do a walk-through appraisal of our house on Wednesday morning. Tomorrow. TO-EFFING-MORROW, AMIGOS!!!

Commence extreme panic, frenzied cleaning, and fervent lighting of prayers candles in the Thoreau household. We had been hoping to avoid a walk-through appraisal, the real-life version of "My House Is Worth What?" with less of the profoundly obnoxious Kendra Todd, and more of the tangible real-life consequences. A walk-through appraisal with less than twenty-four hours' notice was, to say the least, as unwelcome as a Jehovah's Witness knocking on the door of a Sig Ep Kamoniwannaleia** tropical mixer. In preparation for the real estate apocalypse that is upon us, one of us finally had to wrangle our wardrobe back into the closet, dresser, nightstand, bookshelf, and everywhere else we use to contain the fabric of our lives when it's not smeared across our entire second floor.

So, my panic-stricken cleaning fest is your gain, and thus I finally bring you, at long last and with much fanfare***, photos of our freshly refinished bedroom furniture. In case you had forgotten, which is possible since I began this topic when Tara Reid had never enjoyed surgical enhancement, LB and I had some truly hideous oak bedroom furniture that I decided we should sand, repaint, and refinish to look "weathered," to fit in with our bedroom theme of "French country romantic."

Now, bear in mind that we're not there yet. The furniture is done but we haven't hung pictures or accessorized or figured out the most flattering pose for the cat to strike while lying on the bed. But, in its infant stages, here is our bedroom:

The view from the doorway. Yes, my bedtime reading is "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." Some of us just think about food all the time. Some of us are going to be a threat to the world food supply when we're pregnant.

From the same end of the room, but really just to emphasize the fact that I have two chandeliers in my bedroom. This room used to be two bedrooms, one of which was roughly the size of a Lean Cuisine, so we have two light fixtures. They are both chandeliers because my husband is awesomesticks.****

In case you're wondering which fabric we picked out at Fondiqua's, this is it. We had to cover the cardboard back of the no-longer-oak bookshelf. Stage left showcases a picture that I haven't found a home for yet. Don't worry, we tuck it in each night and assure it of its personal worth.

Girlfriend just likes to be in her own pictures. Also, Grace-Based Trivia: I'm wearing the same shirt in this picture, that I'm wearing in the picture on the dresser. Play within a play, what what!

The aforementioned dresser, without the aforementioned assbaggery, tomfoolery, and cockamamery. Still with pictures of me, though, so my ego is assuaged. And thank God!

For those of you who are unnecessarily interested in the artistic aspects of this project, this is what the crackle finish looks like up close. It's a chocolate brown base coat with cream crackled over top. Chocolate plus cream. Mmmmmmm. Mmmmmmm....

Speaking of chocolate, I will leave you tonight with a shot of my favorite chunk of chocolate love, Breeze, our 100-lb Labradozer who has recently taken to sleeping on the sofa:

Can you imagine trying to move that so you can sit down?
No, I just can't imagine trying to make that face move. Who is a muffin? Who is a sweet, sweet chocolate muffin?

*A worthy skill, of course.
**Wherever you are, and I include in that an open cubicle or church, please say that out loud.
***Cue the fanfare! I said cue the trumpet fanfare NOW!!
****Thanks to Mr. Apron, who called my sense of humor "awesomesticks," which I can only assume is a compliment.

A Brush With Celebrity

Okay, seriously, pictures of my extremely exciting new bedroom decor, complete with panty window valances and seersucker jacket draperies, are on their way. At least, that's what it's going to look like if I don't ever put on my big-girl pants and address the laundry mayhem that has blanketed the room like San Francisco fog.

I would put my big-girl pants on if I weren't currently using them as window treatments.

Instead of playing the responsible role of Holly Housewife at home tonight, I went to my first-ever book club meeting, starring as Holly Housewife At Large, wherein I showed up with hot spinach dip but neglected to read the assigned book. I'm guessing that the cheesetastic dip was more popular than my comments on the book likely would have been, since they would probably have been in the vein of "I would love this character, except she's a giant asshole."

The exciting part of the book club meeting was that after reading her blog for almost a year and feeling a tad bit e-stalkery, I finally got to meet OMG FAMOUS VALERIE. Val is a friend of my friend Hayley, and Hayley turned me on to Val's blog around the this time last year. Something I may have never mentioned here before, possibly because it makes almost no sense, is that in my head all bloggers are celebrities. Following this logic, I still find it surprising and borderline insulting that the paparazzi aren't stalking my every move, following me at the grocery store to report back to my adoring public which heirloom tomatoes I selected for dinner tonight.

All assbaggery aside, I certainly don't consider myself a celebrity, or even worth taking seriously 99% of the time, but I rather illogically do consider all other bloggers to be rockstars. So when I walked into Hayley's living room tonight and immediately recognized OMG FAMOUS VAL from her blog pictures, I became a bit starstruck. It took me a good forty-five minutes of sweaty palms and mentally rehearsed opening lines before I could figure out a way to talk to her. Am I a frat boy, and is this the Mardi Gras mixer, or what?

Proving that I am smooth like pistachio pudding, I eventually went and knelt down next to her chair, and waited for a pause in the conversation. This gave me a chance to refine my personal introduction from a high-pitched giggle to actual English words. Words like, "SQUEEEEEEEEE HIIIIIIIIIII!!!!! Iknowyoubutyoudon'tknowmedon'tbescaaaaaaaaared!"

I was totally delighted to discover that Val is a really lovely person to talk to, in addition to being a great writer and mother to a super-precious chubby bunny of a baby. I don't know what I would have done if she had been some sort of steely-eyed girl-hating bitch, but I think it would have involved making love to the bowl of hot spinach dip in the corner to comfort myself.

That said, check out her blog and her chubby bunny baby, while I play over here and stall for more time to post pictures of my new bedroom.

Promise + Compromise = Prompromise!

Now really, when I wrote the title for the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism you're about to read, I was thinking that my dear seventeen readers would immediately see things as I do,* and would recognize the word as a a head-on collision of the business end of "promise" with the party end of "compromise."

What it actually appears to be is a mashup of the popular springtime high school ritual known as "Prom Promise." I actually prefer my take on it, injecting the spirit of compromise into the oath teenagers take not to Do It On Prom Night just because they suddenly can't resist each other's rented clothing and overzealously applied body glitter. The Prompromise is more in the spirit of, "Sure Mom, I promise not to Do It On Prom Night, so as a compromise, we'll only Sprint To Shortstop in the backseat of his dad's Taurus. But we definitely won't Do It. No worries."

Anyway. I was trying to convey that in the spirit of last night, when I promised I'd be back tonight to share pictures of our bedroom furniture project, I am here to shed words upon you. However, I don't have pictures of the project yet, because I have yet to act anything like the grownup I play on TV and get my wardrobe out of the bedroom floor. So, as a compromise, I figured I'd just write about something else. See? It's a prompromise!

Apparently I'm also super + lame = superlame, but that's neither here nor there.

Lawyer Boy and I were all set to corral my calamitous clothing and get the rest of the furniture in place tonight, and the only piece of the puzzle we had yet to procure was a little fabric to cover the hideous faux-oak (fauk?) backing on the bookcase. In order to do so, unfortunately, we had to go to a fabric store of the generic variety. You've probably got anywhere between one and forty-two of these retail lint traps in your current locale, and out of a desire to not get sued for Christmas, I'll call it Fondiqua's. LB hates fabric stores because his mom dragged him through each and every one on the Eastern Seaboard frequently and at great length when he was a kid. I hate fabric stores because they involve paying attention to one thing and one thing only, most of which is ugly, and most of which is not shoes, wine, or food, the only topics to which I can devote my undivided attention for more than thirty-two seconds.

So we wandered into Fondiqua's all set to sprint through the store, pick out a piece of fabric in a Michael Phelps amount of time, and sprint back out before Fondiqua's could cover us in applique-ed ducks and corduroy covered in autumn leaves. Or giraffes. Or whatever the hell they were.

We found our fabric. We even figured out how much we needed, which was something of a magical occurrence, since one of us whose name rhymes with Sawyer Joy forgot to measure the fauk panel we were trying to mask. We even unhinged the roll (bolt? cape?) of fabric from the rack without destroying or wearing any of the other capes of fabric, which was really fortunate, since absolutely none of them were my color. Seriously, since when is everyone a Winter? We took our prize and paraded it to the front of the store, where we had to wait in line. Twice.

Have you ever met anyone who likes to wait in line? Have you ever seen an industry that isn't actively trying to get rid of waiting in line? Self check-out. Associate to Aisle 5. "I can take whoever's next!" No one likes waiting in lines, so every store with common sense and a desire to write some black ink this year tries to get you out of them quicker than Kanye West out of any public event whatsoever. Fabric stores, however, do a number two on your desire to cut and run: You have to wait for the gravy-ass Scissor Sister to cut your fabric for you, and thennnnn you have to get in line agaaaaaaaiiiiin to give them dollars in addition to the sanity you've already given them. Look how generous you are! Dollars AND sanity! Bless your heart.

Seriously, did they plant the purchaser of yards and yards of bargain-basement purple polyester in front of me on purpose? Did they steal her ability to speak English just to keep me teetering on my three-inch pointy-toed shiny red heels just as long as humanly possible? Did they miss the part where I almost threw my three-inch pointy-toed shiny red heels at the polyester procurer just to get her the eff out of Fondiqua's? Because all. of that. HAPPENED. PEOPLE.

By the time LB and I sprang free from the cottony clutches of Fondiqua's, we were both so exhausted, hungry, and in immense pain from a day in three-inch pointy-toed shiny red heels that we couldn't bear the thought of finishing the bedroom. I don't think I can touch that fabric for at least another twenty-for hours.

*Which is, frankly, a terrifying thought.

Wherefore Art Thou, Grace?

Well, faithful amigos, I've been around. Recently I've been a really useful combination of busy and lazy, wherein I run around doing all kinds of productive, meaningful things like painting furniture and making my own yogurt,* only to be so butt-ass worn out by the time I sit down in the evening, that finding two words to put together is even more difficult than finding a shadow of a brain cell anywhere between Megan Fox's elaborately pierced ears.

Stop Googling "Megan Fox piercings" right now. This is about me, people!

Anyway, I promise to return triumphant this week. Lawyer Boy and I have been busy trying to prepare our house and our persons for La Grande Douche, or as it would roughly translate from French, "the part where we have to tear apart our entire bathroom, our only full bathroom, to pull a complete do-over from the floor underneath the tile all the way up to the peeling plaster ceiling." We're not embarking on this test of our sanity and marital strength until November, so until then, we're finishing up all the other random projects we had swirling around the giant toilet bowl of our house, in hopes that while the bathroom is a giant pit of suck, the rest of the house can be somewhat less suckiful.

Today we finally finished refinishing all our bedroom furniture. Remember like, six lifetimes ago (okay, back in June) when I said I was going to do that? Yeah, we finally did that! I will have pictures for you tomorrow, once the ratio of my underwear collection to actual furniture in the room has been significantly diminished. Right now the room is much less "French country romantic" than it is "detonated laundry warhead." I've actually come to enjoy the way my tweed work pants double as window treatments.

That said, I'll regale you with all manner of ridiculosity tomorrow. Happy Monday!

I know, right? Ew.

*Total waste of time, this yogurt business. Well played, Yoplait. You win this time.

Little Yard of Horrors

I have a weird relationship with gardening: I really want to love it, but I also really want to smack it in the face and make it cry. I think our Chris Brown/Rihanna relationship stems from my rather overblown romantic notion of what gardening is. I prefer to think of gardening as a bright, fresh morning, the night's dew sparkling on my tomatoes and zucchini before it melts away under the hot summer sun. Before the sun is out in full force to wreak havoc upon the friendly dewdrops, I emerge from my house, my hair loosely braided, and clad in all-natural fibers--you know, something appropriately bohemian but also consciously fashionable, like a J. Crew sheer cotton button-down. I have some sort of fair-trade wicker basket in my hand (organically sourced and hand-woven, natch) and an exceptionally cute, sustainable straw hat on my head, maybe with a bow. I mean, hey! This gardening stuff? It's hard work, people! I need the right gear.

As I wander from my house, completely one with nature and in full communion with Mother Earth, who is coming over later for tea and gossip, I stop at the various plots of fertile soil in my garden, from which have emerged a veritable Thanksgiving cornucopia: shiny tomatoes about to burst, fat blackberries practically jumping off the vine, and cucumbers bigger than Jon Gosselin's ego (EGO. I said EGO, perverts!). I pick anything and everything I desire, filling my lovely, sustainable basket to the brim, and then meander back into the house, where I make blackberry teacakes for my date with Mother Earth.

Yeah.

You know what gardening is REALLY about? Gardening is DIRT. And BUGS. And digging up the long-dead housepets of the prior owner of your eighty-year-old house, and wondering if that discovery falls into the category of "grave robbery" or "clinical exhumation." Ultimately, I realized that, unfortunately, bugs are inherent to any outdoor adventure, and that any exploits that involve Lawyer Boy and I debating whether the subject was once named Fluffy or Pookiss is not in any way a "clinical" exercise.

We have spent the better part of the last six months trying to wrestle our front and back yards free from the terrifying grip of ivy, kudzu, and what I have been told is grass, but what I patently refuse to believe is grass. Frankly, it is too friendly and loving to be grass. It grows quickly, and so long and free that we sit in the sun together, the "grass" and I, braiding each others' locks and giggling about boys we want to talk to us. I've never met grass so eager to please, but LB burst my love bubble by telling me that it's not the grass, it's me. The love that it gives as freely as a middle-schooler with a crush is not because it really wants me; it's because I refuse to break up with it. Put simply, the grass wouldn't be all up in my biznass if I would remember to cut it more frequently than once a month.

So instead of a Garden of Eden of delectable, desirable vegetables, I am faced with acres of ivy and slutty grass that wants only to wind itself provocatively around my ankles. Anything that is supposed to grow, anything that is planted on purpose, dies as soon as I glance at it, killing my dreams of sustainable baskets and beribboned straw hats. I possess the mythical kiss of death. I only wish I'd known that when I was dating; I could really have used that power to weed out the losers earlier in the game.

However, Lawyer Boy is quite the Prince of the Pea Pod over here, raking and hoeing Fluffy's graveyard into producing some serious farmer's market goods. He has grown whole plants from seeds, which I find beyond impressive, since I cannot grow plants from plants. In just a few months, the kudzu has been bitchslapped, the ivy sent to boot camp, and the overgrown grass taught to shape up and keep its pants on. He is a true Green Giant to my Blackbeard.

Not that I, you know, have a beard. But if I did, I would totally braid a ribbon into it before wandering out into the garden, so that it coordinated with my sustainable straw hat.

I Know I'm A Twit...What Of It?

After many months and much confused cocking of my head, I finally gave in to peer pressure and the allure of broadcasting every bizarre idea that cruises through my cranium to the Whole Wide Intarwebz, and signed up on Twitter. Or, as Lawyer Boy calls it, Tweeter. You can find me on Tweeter as @gracethoreau, or $gracethoreau, or #$%!gracethoreau, or whatever you use to Tweeter on me. At me. Upon me. All up in my Tweetness.

Regardless of whatever verb you would like to use in the phrase "____ @gracethoreau" (kick, hug, flying elbow) you should follow me on Tweeter. I just (like, right this hot second) discovered that I have to know someone's Tweetername to Tweetertalk to them, which really throws a wrench in my plan to get on Tweeter just to e-yell "stop being a dumb ho!" to Lindsey Lohan, Mary-Kate Olsen, Ashley Olsen, Heidi Montag-Breast, Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, and the chick at my office whose skirt was so tight today, I could see her soul through it.

There should be a button on the right-hand side of this illustrious bit of the Intarwebz directing you to my Tweeterage, but since I all but have a stroke and collapse anytime I have to do anything other than throw word bitlets at the Intarwebz, I make no promises.

That said, Tweet away!

Food Doof Challenge, Day 7: The Grand Finale!

Well, we made it. We went seven days and seven dinners without hitting the grocery store, and to give you the Cliff's Notes: No one starved, died, or vomited profusely while screaming my name and obscenities, alternately cursing my cooking and begging God for mercy.

In a way it got easier to cook later in the week, because I was no longer paranoid about using up the useful ingredients and not having them later in the week, because obvi, it was already later in the week. Tonight I had two packs of frozen chopped spinach and a package of fresh carrots that I needed to use before they went to the bad, as my dad says, and as usual, I had enough bakery supplies to force-feed both of us pound cake all the way to a diabeetus coma.

I decided to make a crustless spinach quiche, which is one of my favorite quick dinners, the recipe for which I can share with you in three easy-to-read sentences: Buy a box of Bisquik. Find the recipe on the side for "Impossible Cheeseburger Pie." Omit the ground beef, onion, and cheddar cheese, using in their place anything you want (meat and mushrooms have to be cooked first, but that's the only limitation I've found). I like to make this with frozen spinach, cooked and drained, and whatever cheese I have in the house, which is usually around a dozen different varieties. Tonight it was either Parmesan or Gruyere, since that was all we had left.

To go with the quiche, I sliced the carrots lengthwise, tossed them with a little butter, sugar, and spices, and roasted them. I threw together a batch of baking powder biscuits, adding Parmesan and black pepper, and voila! For the last night of the Food Doof Challenge, we had the most nutritionally-balanced meal yet. And it was actually good, which is always a bonus.

Last night I mentioned that I had one last project that I was holding out to try tonight, and it's in the oven right now. I made a cake with the cranberry sauce, and I think it might have actually baked into something other than a big pan of barf. I have a great recipe for pound cake that I make all the time, and I've added jam to it before for random flavor, so I thought, hey, cranberry sauce is like jam! I could add it to the pound cake, and maybe no one would die!

In case the cranberry pound cake turned into a kitchen disaster equal to Rachael Ray, I cut the recipe in half. As usual, halfway through putting the cake together, I forgot that I had halved the recipe, so I used the full amount of baking soda and salt. If I had any sense at all, I would take the advice that cookbooks always give, and I would write out the measurements for a reduced recipe separately, and follow THAT instead of the original recipe. But if I had any sense at all, we probably wouldn't be here.

Before I put the cake in the oven, I tasted the batter, and--yes, I tasted the raw batter. Yes, I know I could get salmonella. Yes, I know how gross raw egg is. But seriously? Cake batter, brownie batter, and cookie dough are too delicious for a little threat like a bacterial hurricane to stop me. Also, it's important to know if your baked good sucks rocks before you bake it, so that you have time to drown your sorrows and disappointment in a quart of ice cream before the terrible finished product comes out of the oven. Or, you can taste it so you can tinker with the seasonings one last time before it's too late. Whatever.

ANYWAY.

I tasted the batter, and the first thing I thought was, "*gasp*! This tastes like Christmas!" I had added the cranberry sauce (all professionally mooshed up), cinnamon, vanilla, and Chinese five-spice to the batter, and in its raw, deliciously contaminated state, it tasted like Yule-y goodness and holiday cheer. Because it takes longer to bake a pound cake than it does to grow a real human baby, I'm still waiting for my pan of Christmas cheer to come out of the oven. Stay tuned!

***ONE HOUR LATER***

CAKEWIN!!! The cranberry sauce cake is delicious. It's a Christmas miracle! It has a nice tart undertone, like Granny Smith apples, which plays nicely against the warm, holiday spiciness of the seasonings. Additionally, it does not suck. I would totally make this cake, blanket it with cream cheese frosting (which, honestly, I would put on anything, including cheesecake, cheese crackers, and actual cream cheese), and take it to a holiday meal. If anyone would like the recipe, just shoot me an email and I'll send it over.

Well, on that happy Christmas note, I declare this week of the Food Doof Challenge closed. I also declare it a success, and I invite you all to try it out, naturally requiring you to email me photos of any particularly disastrous culinary catastrophes immediately. Captions involving four-letter charmers are also welcome.

And if I've learned anything from this week, looking at the goblins that continue to haunt my pantry despite my best efforts, it is that diamonds are not forever. Excess barbecue sauce and brown rice are forever.

Food Doof Challenge, Day 6: Pasta alla Partial Puttanesca

Last night's wedding was absolutely beautiful, and the food delicious, even beyond the fact that it was not frozen spinach sauteed in Memphis barbecue sauce that I rustled up from the back of the fridge. I'll write about the wedding more tomorrow, after the final episode of the Food Doof, but for now, I will let you know that the part where Lawyer Boy dropped me in the middle of the dance floor was less delicious than the almond wedding cake with Irish Cream filling.

Tonight I had planned to make pasta (fettucine, from a box in the cabinet) with puttanesca sauce, which is one of our perennial favorites. For the uninitiated, puttanesca roughly translates from Italian as "whore," so obviously, we at The Fumbling could not care less what it tastes like, but we are all about making Whore Sauce. Puttanesca is named after Ye Olde Italiane Whores because it's quick and easy (I am not making this up), but beyond that, it's a tomato-based sauce containing garlic, onions, artichokes, anchovies, green olives, and my lovechild, capers. Our favorite restaurant, Avenue 805, does a fantastic puttanesca, and even though LB spares no love for anchovies or green olives, he sucks that stuff down like, well, an Italian whore.

After my little affairette with the tomato saucentrate the other night, I had lots of tomato sauce left over, since one pizza doesn't take a whole lot. I decided to marry that "sauce" with the artichoke hearts and capers in the cabinet, along with a chopped onion and the end of the fresh garlic, for a partial puttanesca. We didn't have anchovies or green olives, but you can't taste them and LB picks them out, respectively, so I didn't feel like we were creating "Jeopardy!" without Alex Trebek over here. I sauteed the onion and minced garlic in olive oil and went to add the tomato sauce, turning the Tupperware upside down to pour the sauce in...and the sauce did not move.

Personal note to tomato sauce: Hi, my name's Grace. We played this game Friday night. Remember? I almost threw you away because you were a dry, pasty whore, but then I added to you the entirety of the Atlantic Ocean and we were good to go for saucy delight. And now? When did you get so thirsty? Now, when I want you to be a whore of a sauce, when I am begging you to be a whore of a sauce, you have transformed back into a mealy brick of seasoned tomato glue? Please. A little justice for the Food Doof, you...whore.

Once I had pried the tomato block out of the Tupperware and nestled it into the sizzling onions, garlic, capers, and artichokes, I poured in some chicken broth, and added in a liberal glug of white wine. I added kosher salt and cayenne pepper, and a dash of white wine vinegar, and covered the sauce to simmer and think about what it did. About forty-five minutes later, when we were ready for dinner, I boiled the fettucine. Upon stirring the thick, tangy sauce into the finished pasta, I threw in a bunch of basil from our garden, because what is life without a chiffonade of basil? And because LB grows mad crazy plants.

Seriously. No holds barred. This was THE BEST DISH so far in Food Doof Challenge Week; so delicious, in fact, that I wrote the recipe down to recreate it at a time when I'm not culinarily unstable. Everything really came together perfectly. The sauce thickened up just right, and when I tossed it with the starch-laden freshly-cooked pasta, it clung to the noodles in just the right way to prevent the noodles from floating in a watery mess of sodden sauce and vegetable bitlets. Put simply, it was absolutely delicious, which leaves me concerned that tomorrow's dinner, the final hurrah in Food Doof Week, will just not be able to measure up.

For tomorrow night, I do have one grand finale planned, not so much in the meal, but in the form of a dessert that I've been throwing around in my head all week. It will either be spectacularly delicious, or spectacularly, mind-blowingly horrendous. Either way, it will be the perfect finish to the Food Doof Challenge!

Food Doof Challenge, Day 5: Victory, Italian-Style

Well, here we are at Day 5, with only two more "meals" left to brew in this week's cauldron of calamity. I don't know who's more relieved that we're nearing the finish line: Me, for no longer having to stress over what to cook with a collection of ingredients more random than Lindsey Lohan's sexual partners, or Lawyer Boy, for no longer having to stress that I'm going to ask him, at long last, to unhinge his jaw and suck down the vacuum pack of teriyaki tuna in the cupboard.

Last night's lemon chess cheaterfest was definitely a success, as was Molly's arugula pesto dinner, which was far beyond anything my kitchen is capable of spawning at this point in the week. The Italian dinner, complete with prosciutto-wrapped melon and homemade limoncello, got my Giada juices flowing, and I decided to (try to) follow suit with my own Italian masterpiece: Pizza made with absolutely no mozzarella to be found.

In between rolling out pie crusts for everyone I have ever met, and rolling out pie crusts for everyone I might hope to ever meet, last Saturday I happened to finally find a great recipe for pizza crust, while at the same time discovering that my oven will heat to a summery five hundred and fifty degrees. I made two really fantastic pizzas in three days and fortunately, as a totally unhinged baker, I still had tons of flour and yeast in the house. What sealed the deal was the small jar of tomato paste that I found in the back of the dwindling cabinet last night. Raise your hand if you know what tomato paste is. Raise your hand if you know what tomato paste is for. I, frankly, question humanity's need for the existence of tomato paste, since it seems to be nothing more than what happens if I leave tomato sauce on the stove for too long. If I had known I could bottle that crap and that people would pay real dollars for it, full-time employment would no longer be de rigueur in these parts.

My mom, however, recently told me that tomato paste is just tomato sauce concentrate, to which you can add liquid to turn it back into tomato sauce. Okay, seriously, why. do. they. not. say. that. on. the. can??? Or call it tomato sauce concentrate? Or even better, tomato saucentrate? Or just share with the world at large that THIS PRODUCT HAS A PURPOSE???

I'll write my Congressman about that later. Tonight, while my dough rose, I added liquid to turn the erstwhile tomato sauce back into tomato sauce, throwing in salt, herbs, and spices so it didn't taste like licking a tomato on Ecstasy. With the dough rolled out and spread with my reconstituted saucentrate, the only hurdle left to overcome was the fact that we had zero mozzarella cheese in the house. I pillaged the fridge for melty dairy products, coming away with two slices of havarti, a half-cup of Pecorino-Romano, and eight ounces of Gruyere.

Every time I cook with an unusual combination of ingredients, I think to myself, "this is such a cool idea! Why hasn't this become really popular yet?" Most of the time, the reason is, "because it tastes like ass." So when I mixed my three cheeses and spread them over the pizza, it occurred to me that there is probably a reason no one uses those three in harmony. But since it was either the cheese stooges or apple butter, I decided to take my chances with the cheese.

All in all, the pizza was good. The crust was outstanding, but I hadn't been forced to compromise anything in making that. The sauce, on the other hand, was HOLY SHIT TOMATO. I added lots of liquid, but it was still extremely tomato-y, although the garlic and spices fought hard to assert themselves against the crimson tide. The cheeses were a mixed bag. The havarti completely disappeared, leaving the Pecorino and Gruyere to duke it out for the title of Dairy Queen. Ultimately, the Gruyere won, beating out the Pecorino in a most unexpected way.

Does anyone else think Gruyere tastes like pineapple? I always have, but I was hoping that once it was onstage performing with the rest of the cast, the pineapple would take a backseat to, oh, I dunno, the actual taste of cheese. In fact, not so much. Either that, or a gnome snuck into my oven and spritzed my pizza with a pina colada.

With all the weirdness I've seen come out of my oven this week, my money's on the gnome.

***

As a reminder, LB and I are off to a wedding tomorrow night, to nibble on delicious cuisine that wasn't fished out of the back of the bottom shelf of someone's fridge, sprinkled with coconut and brown rice, and deep-fried. See you on Sunday!

Food Doof Challenge, Day 4: Cheater, Cheater, Lemon Pie Eater?

Dearly beloved, I have a confession. LB and I are not eating dinner at home tonight, which appears on the surface to be a grievous breach of the solemn promise I made to y'all Monday night to eat all the bizarre and atrocious things lurking in my kitchen, for a week straight.

But seriously, I'm only human, and more importantly, I tend toward the flakier side of humanity, particularly when it comes to managing my own busy and demanding schedule of cocktail hours and hair appointments. Put simply and abjectly apologetically, I'm terrible about double-booking myself, and since the technology that would allow me to annoy people at two events at the same time hasn't beleaguered humanity yet, this causes problems. When I committed to a week of Doofery on Monday, I had forgotten that our friends Molly and Lee had invited us for dinner tonight, so natch, I said yes. I also volunteered to bring dessert, before I volunteered to not buy groceries for a week.

Upon realizing my fumble, I decided that I could make amends by bringing a dessert created only with foods already in my kitchen.

Time out. Did you think I was going to say that I decided we would reschedule with Molly and Lee for next week? Please. How lame would that be? "I'm sorry, I can't come over to enjoy your meticulously prepared haute cuisine, because I have a date with canned asparagus and crunchy taco shells. LYLAS!" Also, Molly is making homemade limoncello from her grandmother's recipe, and no one has ever made me hootch from scratch* before, so there was no way I was walking away from that. I pledged to destroy the excess in my kitchen, not the lifeblood of my social life!

I justified it with an intense case of denial the rationalization that if I were to cook a whole, fancy dessert from things in my kitchen, it was equivalent, at least in number of ingredients, to making dinner from the same kitchen contents. I had a pie crust in the fridge that I made last weekend that I needed to use, and I found a recipe for lemon chess pie composed entirely of random crap in my fridge. Making it helped me deplete the five-pound bag of lemons that I bought last week, for a reason that has since wandered out of my head, to get lost in the woods and never return.

The pie is baking right now, and it smells so much better than any of the oddities to come out of my kitchen this week. It actually smells so good that it has inspired in me a new idea for how to go to dinner with friends, and still stick to my challenge. We go to Molly and Lee's, take the pie with us, and while everyone else eats Molly's cooking, I take a fork to the pie and call it dinner.

What? You totally know that lots of people would eat half a pie and call it dinner. I mean, I'm just saying, I know people who have eaten a hunk of pie and called it dinner. Like people who live in my house. Who are named Grace.

So am I a terrible, unforgivable cheater who deserves punishment of a criminal nature?

*I would call it "scratch-hootch," but doesn't that sound like an STD? I know.

Food Doof Challenge, Day 3: Tacos Con Bizzarros

Lawyer Boy and I love tacos. I can't sugarcoat that and try to make it sound classy or sophisticated, nor can I deny the fact that if one of us pulls out the Old El Paso Taco Shells box, the other is bound to start hopping up and down, dancing with glee like the Labradozer at the sight of a Pupperoni, possibly with similar accompanying drool. We usually have Taco Night once a week, and my only complaint is that it's always over too fast, leaving me to content myself with a plate full of salsa and happy, crunchy memories.

So of course, delving into Doofery this week, we had a box of taco shells, but no ground beef, and no envelope of taco sodium with a hint of seasoning. LB and I are purists in our Taco Night ritual, and the cast is always crunchy tacos with seasoned beef, cheddar cheese, and salsa. I don't know why I decided that the taco shells should become innocent victims to my Doofery, though I suspect it has something to do with my borderline-homicidal desire to deep-six the can of refried beans that set up camp in my cabinet. What else could I do with them? Stir them into oatmeal for a dash of savory protein? Toss them with penne pasta and artichoke hearts for a cross-cultural carbo load?

Well, it's official. No one will ever come eat at my house again, after that last suggestion.

Following the plan I concocted last night, I saved half the baked chicken tenderloins to season for tacos. I pulled out the refried beans and allowed myself to be moderately appalled as they slid from the can in one solid piece, laying themselves to rest in the pan like some little-known internal organ. I added garlic powder, sauteed onion, salt, cayenne, and paprika to try to disguise the fact that it was a massive hunk of smearable fiber, and tried to break up the chunks to destroy the ridges of the can imprinted in its loins. The beans were in business.

I cut the chicken into little itty bits, hoping that the tinier the pieces, the tinier the utterly disgusting leftover-chicken taste would be. I don't know why, but leftover poultry tastes awful to me, so my least favorite day of the year is the day after Thanksgiving. When all there is to eat is turkey soup, turkey stew, turkey burgers, and turkey tetrazzini, I consider it the perfect day to go out for Indian. But since my friends in curry weren't available to help out this week, I had to figure out some way to cover up the chicken-y taste of the chicken, and Mexican spices seemed like the best bet. Into the skillet with the chicken went the same spices as the beans, a little water, and then a chunk of cream cheese. I've done that before and in my humble opinion, it's faboo. The cream cheese melts and mixed with the water and spices to make a really thick sauce, and a thick cream sauce can cover up a variety of shortcomings, including tough meat, flavorless meat, and bad first dates.

With the chicken cooked and the beans as gussied-up as I could make them, we were ready for taco assemblage. (Yes, I cooked the taco shells too, but throwing a baking sheet in the oven didn't seem to merit a narrative.) I smeared some beans into the bottoms of the shells and was moderately disconcerted at the beans' uncanny resemblance to peanut butter. A little cheddar cheese, the end of another glorious cheese product, went between the bean layer and the chicken with sauce. Taco Night was ON!

Well, on-ish. The tacos weren't bad, but seriously, anyone who tells you beans are a worthy substitute for beef needs to head for the halls of Congress, because he or she is obviously an accomplished career liar. The chicken was delish, mostly because it tasted like spicy cream sauce and not foul leftover fowl. On the downside, we didn't have enough cheddar for me to turn my tacos into a dairy bomb as I love to do, and the beans softened the crunchy shells more than I liked.

But on the upside, it was dinner that was not disgusting, and contained enough protein to actually call it a meal. Furthermore, it confirmed my suspicions that I am a meatatarian for a reason. Beef over beans at all costs!

And henceforth, we have no more meat for the rest of the week. Anyone know how to catch a squirrel?

Food Doof Challenge, Day 2: ChickiParm

In case you missed the beginning of The Food Doof Challenge, you can read about its humble start here.

Because I am not Harry Potter and thus cannot magic bizarre culinary oddities into unexpected deliciousness, I did not spend all day slaving away in the kitchen, waving a wand in an attempt to piece together a nutritious and delicious dinner from cranberry sauce and refried beans. However, I did spend all day obsessing over it. My biggest concern at this stage of Food Doofery* is that I will use up all my useful ingredients, the ones that I could actually build a meal around, in the first three days. By Thursday, if this were to happen, dinner would be brown rice pilaf with a Cheerio crust, glazed with an orange marmalade-chili bean sauce.

Fear of Doof disaster has led me to ration my ingredients that don't actively suck, breaking them into portions that are proportionally different from what I'd normally serve. For example, I had a 1.25 pound package of chicken tenderloins in the fridge that needed to be cooked sooner rather than later (read: immediately), and in my regularly scheduled programming, I'd dedicate them all to one dish. But as a committed Food Doof, and with the specter of orange marmalade chili beans lurking behind me, I decided to stretch the chicken by making it more of a splashy accent to the dish for two nights, as opposed to the main dish just once. The Watson to the plate's Sherlock Holmes, if you will.

What, would you not call Watson "splashy"? Clearly you missed the "Watson Gone Wild" Vegas special. Might I suggest Tivo?

I knew I wanted to bread the chicken and serve it over pasta, so I breaded half of it using some long-neglected Italian breadcrumbs I found in the cabinet. The other half I sprinkled with a little salt and pepper, so that I could bake it tonight, then shred it, season it, and mix it with the refried beans to serve as taco filling tomorrow night. It's like killing two birds with one stone...except for it's one bird...with one stone...hm.

For the main attraction, I had bowtie pasta and the remains of what used to be tomato bruschetta. A couple weeks ago I had served tomato bruschetta over goat cheese as an appetizer, and to keep the bruschetta from oozing everywhere, I had scooped it out with a slotted spoon, leaving several cups of bruschetta juice in the jar. Then, it seemed completely reasonable and economical to save the bruschetta juice for a later use, because I was apparently high at that time. Had I not stepped up to the Doof Challenge this week, I would have done like any normal person and poured the bruschetta juice out when I came to my senses, but staring into my fridge and receiving the cold stare of a tub of Cool Whip and three dill pickles in return, bowtie pasta in bruschetta juice sounded simply divine.

So while the chicken baked, I cooked the pasta, scalding myself on the cooking water, then put it back in the cooking pot with the bruschetta juice. I added some reserved demonic pasta cooking water, and stirred in a bunch of grated Pecorino Romano cheese (just about the end of my stash of that gem, by the way). After just a couple of minutes of bubbling, stirring, and intense praying, I had bowtie pasta in a thick, creamy tomato cheese sauce, to top with strips of breaded chicken. I hesitate to call it chicken Parmesan, since 1) it wasn't, and 2) no Parmesan was harmed in the making of this dish, but since it was so similar, I've named it ChickiParm.

And here I am, two nights into this potential foodie fiasco. Tomorrow I'm trying to magic up some tacos with the shredded chicken, but I have no idea what to serve as a side dish. Suggestions would be super!

The problem I have already noticed is that, aside from some beans, two packs of frozen spinach (which cook down into approximately two tablespoons each), and cranberry sauce, we don't really have any vegetables, not counting potatoes, so I've been nagging LB to make sure he eats lots of roughage at lunch. Otherwise, he'd come home and try to call four servings of beans his daily quota, in which case I'd refuse to sleep in the same room with him.

Scratch that. I'd refuse to sleep in the same house with him.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment of The Food Doof Challenge! I assure you that this will become progressively more squirrelly as the week goes on...such that I am not entirely ruling out the possibility of eating squirrels. In orange marmalade chili beans, natch.

*One of my friends recently questioned my use of the word "doofier," which is not exactly recognized by Merriam-Webster, per se. Every time I spin "doof" or "doofus" into a new vocabulary bit, I see his eyebrows raising and hear his voice of reason scaling up, asking "doofier?" So of course I try to use it in casual conversation at least three times a day.

Letter To The Human Clown Car

Dear Michelle Duggar,
When you have spent an enormous amount of your life in stirrups, and yet you are not an award-winning equestrian, it is time to reconsider your hobbies and life goals. While I do understand that at this point, childbirth no longer involves actual labor, and that your babies just wander out into the light, blinking, might I suggest scrapbooking or knitting as hobbies that are both meaningful and less draining than childbirth?
Other great hobby choices include cross-stich, vasectomies, and identifying the 18 humans you've already dropped.
Yours in Huggies,
Grace

"Food" Is Just "Doof" Spelled Backwards

The release of this summer's Streep-apalooza "Julie & Julia" has caused many of my friends to examine, with renewed interest and hopeful appetites, my maniacal cooking habits. Some of them have compared me to Julie Powell, although I personally see no similarities beyond the two of us possessing both a nosy cat and ovaries. Additionally, I like to believe that I'm at least marginally sane and/or emotionally stable; at the very least, I do not talk to an imaginary friend while I pound out pie crust. I am very clearly screaming at the rogue pie crust as I hurl creative obscenities into the kitchen.

My kinder, gentler friends have made the more flattering comparison of me to Julia Child, and while all of them are on a special list to receive extra-large, flashy-like-Vegas Christmas presents, I have to disagree with this one as well. I am not now, and could never hope to be, the prolific pioneer that Julia was in shaping American cuisine as we know and love it today, and I can only cook because I have outstanding chefs like Julia to Xerox.

Also, I read her memoir, My Life In France, and would you believe that there is not a single fart joke in that entire book?

I just really love to cook, and coincidentally enough, Lawyer Boy and I love to eat, so most of my experiments don't last too long around these parts--except when I get carried away by the tides of kitchen creativity. Case in point: This weekend I became a bit, shall we say, overzealous about perfecting my mixing, chilling, and rolling techniques for pie crust...so I made four. (No, Mom, I did not eat them, and yes, I know what my cholesterol is.) Two of them became peach turnovers and two of them went into the freezer for future delight. For the future, when my cholesterol comes down out of the quadruple digits, circa the year 2034.

As the above-referenced crust capade might lead you to believe, my culinary explosions are not always practical, but I try to plan our weeknight dinners to include more balanced meals than not. Sometimes it works and I can turn out fare that makes 30 Minute Meals cry into its cacciatore in the corner; sometimes, like tonight, I discover that I've got canned cranberry sauce, taco shells, and Triscuits to spin up into a meal. For some reason, I just don't think a sprig of parsley and some creative plating are going to disguise that kind of horror.

Staring into my cabinets and wondering who bought chili beans and instant mashed potatoes (me and me, respectively), I thought of an experiment that the Bon Appetit Foodist had written about a few months ago: To cook dinner for yourself and, if applicable, your long-suffering spouse, for a week, using only the current contents of your kitchen. I find the thought of giving myself a week to dispose of the ridiculously random ingredients that have been staring me down for months vastly appealing, in a cleansing sort of way, and I find the idea of living at the mercy of my more unfortunate grocery acquisitions appealing, in a punitive sort of way. Seriously, I need to be punished for buying instant mashed potatoes.

And thus tonight, for better or for worse, for fantastic or foul, LB and I decided that this will be the week of The Food Doof Challenge, wherein we will bumble our way through disposing of the contents of our kitchen in the next seven days, trying to find the most appetizing ways to prepare what we've got. The only rules of The Food Doof Challenge are:

1) We can only use what we already have, period;
2) We have to, throughout the course of the week, use as much of the food that we have as possible (so no living on brown rice); and
3) We have to actually cook dinner each night (so no living on Cheerios).

As we begin our quest for gastronomic glory, the more useful elements in our corner include one pound of chicken breast, plain nonfat yogurt, artichoke hearts, capers, and two boxes of pasta. The more challenging items, however, include cranberry sauce, lard-free refried beans, three kinds of vinegar, and four jars of jam. And who bought seven bottles of barbecue sauce? I'm not naming names...but his rhymes with Lawyer Boy.

Day 1: The Food Doof Challenge Kickoff Event

Tonight we didn't do too badly. I roasted a pound of broccoli, which is both delicious and an appropriate detox mechanism after a weekend of pastry and pizza, and LB made a burrito with our lone tortilla (of questionable provenance and age), a can of black beans, cheddar cheese, and the salsa I made last week. Calling the tortilla cardboard would be unfair to cardboard, but LB's stomach is apparently quite the Viking. And seeing as I just plowed through a pound of broccoli, I'd better be hoping for some Viking digestive powers of my own. Normally I'd go for a more balanced meal than just a fiber tsunami, but I wasn't particularly hungry tonight.

I'll report back each night for seven nights to let you know what we ate, how we cooked it, and who was the first to gag. As a caveat, we are going to a wedding Saturday night, so we'll have a night off from chick peas slow-simmered in peach-caper jam (and if not, I'm having a chat with the bride), but we'll make up for that by driving this train through this time next week.

Bon appetit! If you dare.