More chronicles of my exciting, glamorous, fast-track life!

1. Mario Karts is too much fun.

2. Nadine, the littlest cat, has lately become obsessed with meat. A few weeks ago, she harangued me for a taste of some steak -- this, from the little, silent kitty who used to have no appetite at all. Then, last night, she tried to get up on the stove to lick the pan I'd cooked pork chops in for dinner.

She missed -- and took down the Pyrex casserole dish that was also on the stove. Which happily shattered into a zillion pieces plus glass dust when it hit our slate tile kitchen floor.

I hope the cacophony, plus the angry shouting from me, was at least a deterrent to trying to break the "no cats on kitchen counters" rule again.

3. I can understand why she wanted the pork chops, though. Smothered in onions and pan sauce. Yum, yum.

(no subject)

(This is the kind of post I should be making at home, near my bookshelves, rather than at work. Oh well.)

People always ask me what my favorite cookbooks are. Understandably, as I have many, many, many cookbooks. Which also makes it hard to choose favorites, though.

And I have some very well-loved cookbooks that are on very narrow subject, too, and usually I feel awkward recommending them unless someone has specifically asked about said subject (like, say, breakfast, in which case Marion Cunningham's The Breakfast Book is the one, or meat, in which case Bruce Aidell's Complete Book of Meat and whatsisname's River Cottage Meat Cookbook are my picks).

But, OK. For posterity's sake, then, here are a handful of both my most beloved and my most versatile cookbooks, followed by a more quirky selection of recommendations. Ask me next month, and I might have a different opinion, but not too different.

Because I have a lot of cookbooks that I love to read, but not necessarily cook from. These are all cookbooks I cook from. Promise. Check the pages for stains when you come over and you'll see what I mean.

Two really excellent general cookbooks:

Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone by Deborah Madison. I was a little shocked to learn that this book is ten years old now (and coming out in a new edition). And yet, it's the backbone for so much of what I do in the kitchen. Madison isn't kidding with the title -- it doesn't matter whether you're a vegan, a vegetarian, an occasional vegetarian, or a happy go lucky omnivore. If you eat plant matter in your diet, this book will serve you well.

Simple Food by Alice Waters. This book is less than a year old and I've already cooked out of it a zillion times. I also think this is a great starter cookbook. And on the other hand, I am hardly a novice and I still get great mileage out of these recipes. They are simple indeed, but solid. Also, she made me love soup.


Quirky choices (other than the three I mentioned above):

Just about anything by Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford, but especially Seductions of Rice and Hot Sour Salty Sweet. The former is a tour of rice in world cuisine; the latter is all about Southeast Asian food, and strikes just the right balance between accessible and 'authentic.'

Claudia Roden's Book of Jewish Food and Book of Middle Eastern Food. I love the former because of its emphasis on Sephardic cuisine, which turns upside-down the usual notion of what "Jewish food" consists of -- or, more precisely, opens it up wide to encompass so much more. Some people think Roden underseasons her dishes, btw; I say, if you're tasting as you go, you will never go wrong with her recipes.

I love Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries. The book is just that -- a diary of what he cooked and ate at home, all year. Some entries are true recipes, some are just sketches, and some are just a sentence about good cheese and bread and fruit and cold cuts, say. What I particularly love, other than the casual accessibility, is the seasonal aspect to the writing. This is a book about what it's like to cook to the rhythm of the seasons, day after day.

The Real Conspiracy

I'm not surprised that many people think that Deborah Jeane Palfrey's death was not suicide. I believe it was, but I understand the impulse to question it as well. (Questioning it, and denying it, are two different things, though. But that's another issue.)

I don't think that the real conspiracy lies in how she died, however.

Surely it has occurred to someone already that we've had two high-profile "prostitution ring" busts in the past several years. Both operations seem to have taken up a lot of time and money and resources on the part of the investigating authorities. As Palfrey said to Susie Bright, "For 31 months I was being observed! Any good vice cop will tell you that a simple prostitution bust or investigation takes no more than a few days to a few weeks to a few months to put together — from start to finish."

In Palfrey's case, they netted a Republican Senator and an administration official. The Senator still has his job, although the official does not.

In the other case, they netted a Democratic Governor, and all hell broke loose and then some.

Why the difference? Why toes Eliot Spitzer -- a john -- get hung out to dry, while David Vitter still has a job?


I am not usually one for conspiracy theories, honest. But do I think that there's the possibility that, among its many greater sins (like Guantanamo), this administration has been directing various investigations into the use of escort services by high-placed politicians in the hopes of creating a scandal or two -- but only a scandal or two for the non-Republican party, please? If they happen to catch a Republican by accident, the focus is switched, quickly -- to the madam. In this case, Palfrey.

(Of course, I wouldn't put it entirely past them to also be keeping an eye on escort services favored by Republican politicians, too, just to keep tabs.)

Palfrey herself seems to have come to a similar conclusion. Again, from her interview with Bright:

"SB: I suspect something partisan is going on. J. Edgar Hoover used to watch certain people he was politically afraid of, like Martin Luther King. "I'm gonna get all this sex shit on him, so that I can use it later."

DP: That's what came to our minds eventually, because October was one month before the very crucial November election of last year, when both the Senate and House went Democratic, and the balance of power in this country shifted."