The Last Meal

Los Angeles, California

My dad used to tell the old joke about the guy who appeared to be uncharacteristically elated one day at his workplace. When his coworkers asked him why he was so happy, he confided that he and his wife only made love once a year. That's terrible, one of the workers exclaimed. And another cried, How can you be so happy?! Grinning, the man replied, Tonight's the night! Ba-ba-bing. And, boys and girls, Lent comes to an end at sundown tonight. And, need I say that there will be martinis.

But on a more serious note, we are coming to the end of Holy Week, and while I've made a lot of jokes about our sacrifice during the almost-seven weeks that have now passed, this has been a time for reflection. The sacrifice underscores that and keeps it in front of us. We have just passed Holy Thursday. Yesterday was Good Friday, and tomorrow is Easter. It's not all about chocolate bunnies and Peeps, you know. Nor about all the patter I've provided both here and more or less everywhere about giving up spirits for the duration.

But, to lighten it up a little...I want to write about the death of Nora Ephron. Seriously. At the end of the year, I heard a radio recap of interviews with celebrities who had passed away. It was just snippets of conversation, and I cannot remember the origin of the interviews. Maybe it was NPR's Fresh Air, which I often listen to when I am getting ready to go out to dance salsa. In the portion of the interview with Nora Ephron she spoke about how important it was to plan and have your Last Meal. To paraphrase, she said that most people don't get the last meal they want, so you should not wait, you should have it, well, NOW. Then she went on to speak about what would comprise her last meal. She was a cook, as anyone who has read Heartburn knows. I still use her recipe for vinaigrette, and always remember her mother's admonition not to bruise the ice in cocktails. So her mention of the Last Meal made me think.

A long time ago, on a blogless planet far, far away, I wrote about my favorite meal in a favorite restaurant. It was the late, lamented Citrus and the meal began with yellowtail carpaccio. That was one of the most wondrous dishes I had tasted at that time. But would it be part of my last meal today? To be honest, I'm not sure that I could come up with my last meal in the course of writing this post. And, surely, that's not the point. The point is for you, reader, to think about what would comprise your last meal, and following the advice of Nora, to enjoy it NOW (and maybe even often). It is food for thought in the truest sense of the phrase, and I intend to give it attention and come up with my last meal menu. After all, we know what was provided at the last supper. It was a Passover seder, and that's all well and good, but I can guarantee you 100% that my last meal won't feature matzo. I would want the best french or sourdough bread on the planet, and that amazing butter that I had at The French Laundry. Or maybe I would make my own sweet butter by using the old cream-in-the-jar method from elementary school. But that's about as far as I can go...

One thing I know is that there will be a cocktail, and there will be really good wine. And there might even be one of my favorite beers. Ok, too much. But not too much for this weekend, when Lent will end, Easter will be celebrated, and here at Casa Healy, life as we know it resumes. Or as we like to say on a Sunday afternoon, It must be five o'clock somewhere...Salut! Happy Easter, and thank you for reading my blog. 

Irony and Cynicism

Los Angeles, California

We're coming to the end of a long dry spell. Billy and I both gave up all alcoholic beverages for Lent. I had my last drink on Monday February 11th, the day before Fat Tuesday. I was dancing on that Tuesday, and I rarely have a drink when I am out dancing. I can't remember what that last drink was on that long-ago Monday. Probably scotch, and most likely The Macallan Single Malt. An 18-year old; old enough to be out on its own, as was said about an even longer-aged scotch whiskey in the film Local Hero. We don't often drink that rather pricey scotch (we generally hang out with 12-year olds which better matches our maturity level), but to paraphrase Dorothy Parker, fornication like this there should be 18-year old highland single malt scotch. It was the last hurrah for forty-six long, and almost unsurvivable days--John Kerry (our new go-to term for Just Kidding).

Seriously, there is no drinking problem here. Like the old joke, we like to drink, we drink, what's the problem? We more or less adhere to the recommended quantity limits which, for women, is 50% of the limit recommended for men. I think we ladies can have about five to seven drinks a week with some health benefit and minimal, though currently-debatable, health hazard. What I feel about drinking is pretty much the same as I feel about eating butter, or dancing with Latino men. It's like that other old joke about the man who goes to the doctor and asks: Doctor, if I give up smoking and drinking and chasing women, will I live a much longer life? And the doctor replies: No, but it will feel like it. Trust me, Lent feels like a lot, lot longer than forty-six days.

But I have to report that the desire for a cocktail or beer or glass of wine (we are equal opportunity drinkers) lasts for about ninety minutes between around 4:30 and 6:00 pm. And my new drink of choice, Beck's non-alcoholic beer with a lime wedge, pretty much satisfies. I've always thought that my acquired taste for alcohol is rather equal to my desire for the buzz. So, it's been manageable. Although Billy reported that the first Saturday night when he was driving up our driveway at the end of his work week, he realized that he really wanted a martini. Evidently, that freaked him out a little, as he asked me if I thought that meant there was a problem. I told him that I would think so only if he had to give in to that. Like, a couple of Saturdays ago I really, really (really!) wanted McDonald's french fries. So much so, that I had to cave and buy a small bag of them. While there are times that I think I could use a 12-step program to get the french fry monkey off my back, I'm not overly concerned about it, and our Saturday night martinis while we are preparing dinner together are simply part of the routine. A very missed part of the routine...

The respite in all of this was St. Patrick's Day which passed this past Sunday. We always take a St. Patrick's Day gap day in our annual Lent observance. We are an irish home, and that day is not going to pass without observance, and observance means, amongst other things, Irish Whiskey--either Bushmills, or the more politically-correct Jameson. And I was looking forward to this. But it didn't quite turn out as expected.

First of all, we had rain-check plans with our friends, Todd and Christopher, and they are not meat-eaters. That got me off the hook of the corned beef thing, though I think I make pretty good corned beef which is glazed and roasted after being boiled, and turns into sortakinda Irish beef carnitas or pulled pork. I don't do the cooked cabbage, but I do those amazing roasted brussels sprouts which you can make by adapting a recipe in a previous post entitled Roasted Broccoli and Shrimp (available here all of the time mas o menos). Anyway, none of that this year. It turned out that we had neither Irish Whiskey nor martinis (the old standby). And that's ok. I started St. Patrick's Day off when I arrived home at 12:15 am after a night of salsa dancing and poured myself a half-shot of Cuervo Gold. I could have had more; I could have had better tequila. But the 3/4 ounce of cheap tequila served it's celebratory purpose in a weird sort of Carlos O'Brien's kind of way. I sipped it while I undid what I had done about four hours before (salsa requires suiting up like a matador), then turned off lights, and prepared myself and the house for bed. I brushed my teeth last thing, but I could still taste a bit of that sweet agave flavor as I drifted off.

On Sunday afternoon, we shared a Guinness, then went off to meet our friends at their fab place in an industrial area of Downtown LA, where we shared a lovely bottle of Bollinger brut. We went to RD-40 for dinner (I had misread their text and thought we were going to R-23 for sushi--is it my eyes or attention span that is diminishing?), and shared a bottle of Viognier. It was all good. I thought we might each have a half-shot of Bushmills when we got home, but we were bushed in a different way. Yesterday morning the ordeal of deprivation began again. I'm really John Kerry. It's actually been a very positive experience for me in most ways, though I have also been making subtle changes in my diet so it's hard to know the benefit in a chicken-and-egg situation like this.

Will we do this again next year? Perhaps. But maybe it's not enough of a challenge. I think it would be a greater challenge for Billy to give up television. Not that we watch a lot of television together, but it is his go-to passive entertainment of choice when I am not around. And what about me? Well, I've been telling people that I'm going to give up irony and cynicism. In response to that, TWO(2) of my friends remarked that they don't think it that is a good idea as it will only pile up. After a beat (especially when the first one said it), I replied: I said irony not ironing! Truth be told, I gave up ironing, for the most part, a long time ago, along with that other heinous chore which is vacuuming. Though both might be less painless with a shot of tequila or irish whiskey to take the sting out of the endeavor. I'll give that a shot (or a half a shot) in about twelve days...Thanks for reading my blog, drinkers and ironers alike. And may the wind be always at your back...

The Collector

Los Angeles, California

I frequently tell this joke based on something that Billy once said. It's about my hair products. I have little to no sales resistance when it comes to hair products. I need the ones that make my hair fuller, shinier, and healthier. I also want the ones that give me my hair a messy, slept-in look; the ones which add texture, and those which profess to add volume. I like foams, sprays, mists, gels, and oils. I am particularly fond of Bumble & Bumble products which I buy at Sephora. But I'm not above purchasing John Freida products at my local CVS. So here is the joke: If anything happens to me, my husband is going to sell all my hair products on Ebay then go to Europe for a few months with the proceeds.

He could probably also do a weekend somewhere really nice here in California, if he sold my collection of greeting cards. I may have written here before that I have an intense relationship with paper. I LOVE paper, it comprises the wheels on my life's car. I love books, and stationery, and tablets of paper. I bag all of the little pads of paper that they have in hotel rooms. Forget the toiletries, I want the notepads. I stow them in my luggage the first day, and hope that housekeeping will replenish the stock so I can take those too. A rueful confession, this, though as a friend of my mother's used to say about ashtrays, They wouldn't put their name on them if they didn't want you to take them. And I do use them. I have a stack of them on my desk and they are my go-to notepads for, well, for notes! For each page that I use I get a mini-memory flash of that particular hotel or resort on that particular vacation. A blast from the past, as they say.

But, back to those greeting cards. I have a lot of them. At last count, somewhere around three hundred and counting. Which wouldn't really be a problem. Let's say that I have twenty to thirty friends whom I could mail cards out to--get well soon (Sandra), girlfriend support (DG), birthday (Diana and Gwen), etc. I could run through these pretty darn quick. But here is the rub--I've lost my will to do those cards. I don't know what that is. In the old days, I could sit down on the floor at my coffee table with a glass of wine or a short one of something else, and write and address these cards. I'd put a little note in, write the address in colorful and matching ink, then decorate the envelope with stickers (or even earlier, rubber stamps). I'd put a thematic postage stamp on it, and a return-address label that features Rocky & Bullwinkle or a picture of our late, great aussie. I had this thing down. But then. But then, I somehow lost it. I started procrastinating. I missed events. A stack of purchased Thanksgiving cards wrapped around to the following Thanksgiving. A stack of Valentine's Day cards did the same, with the result that I sent out a Jacquie Lawson ecard instead (find out more about here wonderful products here).

The problem with all of this laxity is that I didn't pull back on purchasing the cards. Last September, in Carmel with Las Chicas girlfriends, I spent almost forty bucks on greeting cards at a new store that we discovered there. I still love buying the cards. I just don't seem to love sending them as much as I used to. And that's the thing about collections. You get onto something you like to acquire, and if it has no function, or you are not following through on its function, then those things just sorta...accumulate. Which is not good.

And just to swing this around, I do use those hair products. Seriously. I am a firm believer in the layered look, and I put one on top of the other in a succession of scents and textures; liquid, gel, or mousse, in hopes for healthy, shiny, voluminous locks. I just never seem to use any of the bottles of product, up. As a result, they multiply like rabbits down there under my sink. How many do I have? You can't handle the truth.

It would be honest to say that if I eliminated all the paper (books included), and hair products in my house there would be a lot more room here. And that would be space that I could fill by, let say, collecting more Tom's brand shoes. Or more logo tee shirts and baseball caps. Or more cocktail napkins. Don't even get me started, as I'll just drag you down with me. Really. But do remember, if you get caught in a bind with bad hair and needing to send out a card, you know where to find me. Meanwhile, I thank you for reading my this particular blog post. Don't stop here.  I've got a whole collection of 'em...