A Good Wife Always Knows Her Place

A friend sent me this 1955 Good Housekeeping article about how to be a good wife to your hardworking hubby. I'll share with you some of my favorite tidbits:

"Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it."

"Let him talk first -- remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours."

"Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice."

"Don't ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him."

"A good wife always knows her place."

"After providing your husband with a healthful meal, washing the dishes and putting your little treasures of children to bed, join your husband in the marital bed and open your vagina to him so you may perform your wifely duty."

Ok, I made up that last one, but it's pretty much implied anyway. Wow.

On a similar note, I've started reading a book called Finding Betty Crocker by Susan Marks. While I'm willing to bet Betty had a lot of advice similar to that above, she also had a lot of good, practical cooking advice for all those housewives (and out of work husbands). Granted it was all loosely veiled advertisements for Gold Medal Flour, but in the Depression Era at the dawn of radio, Betty Crocker was a revolution in brand marketing.

Also the idea of a radio cooking show maybe isn't really that weird.

Summer is for BBQs

I've been a slacker about posting on the blog all summer because I've been too busy doing what one is supposed to do in the summer -- abandon the kitchen for outdoor BBQs! Aside from taking one rainy Sunday to bake a strawberry rhubarb pie, I've been soaking up the sun at lots of friends' backyard and public park BBQs. Kudos to the Shameless Carnivore for grilling prosciutto-wrapped asparagus and delicious pickle brine-soaked pork chops last weekend, made from spicy McClure's pickle brine no less!

Summer also means outdoor concerts, and I've managed to see one almost every week between the Pool Parties, Celebrate Brooklyn, East River Music Project and River to River. But there is one event that will be combining my love of summer BBQ and summer outdoor music -- the New York Magazine "Highbrow BBQ" on August 23rd. It's part of their successful New York by New York live music series. Here's the info below -- buy your tickets now! You can even enter a Best BBQ food challenge.

What: Highbrow BBQ
Who: Former Top Chef contestant Chris "CJ" Jacobson and a full-set performance by Islands
When: Saturday, August 23rd, 1:00pm - 5:00pm. (Rain date August 24th, same time.)
Where: Solar One, East River waterfront at 23rd Street, Manhattan
How much: $25, buy your tickets at nymag.com/nyxny
Is that it? Nope, a 46 issue New York magazine subscription is included with each ticket purchase

This event is presented in collaboration with Glaceau. New York Cares is a charitable partner.

Admission is all ages but ID will be required for drinking.

Note [8/13]: Just added - DJs Never Forget and Tanlines. Preview the Tanlines jams here.

Wedding Version 2.0

Last weekend, after attending a childhood friend's wedding, I was lured by the promise of danishes and mimosas to a day-after brunch at the bride's parents' house. Turns out this was also a trick to get us to watch the newlyweds open their pile of wedding gifts. I've never really understood the appeal of sitting around watching someone open many gifts when you have no gifts of your own to open. I love Christmas morning gift opening, because everyone gets something, but bridal showers, baby showers, graduation parties... it's dull. Especially wedding gifts because we all saw the registry. There's rarely any surprises.

Even further beyond my understanding is why one would want to videotape the gift opening, as the father of the bride was on this occasion, and watch it again later. Of course, this particular video will have the running commentary of her dad's wonderfully awful puns. Guess which gifts were being opened while these one-liners were delivered: "They're barely married and you're already MUGGING them!" "Boy, I can really DISH it out!" "You seem really BOWLED over by that gift!" "I think this marriage has gone to POT!"

The good friend sitting next to me agreed that this is not an activity we'd ever want to relive by watching the video, which led to the plan that when I get married the gift opening will happen via webcam. That way anyone who really wants to watch can do so from home, and even fast-forward to their own gift being opened, while I remain in my pajamas amid a pile of Crate & Barrel boxes.

Even better, my friend added, "you can have the maid of honor Twitter all your gifts as you open them instead of taking notes!" It was then decided that my friend will get ordained online and preside over my eventual Web 2.0 wedding. Guests will be invited via Facebook and each sent home with a flashdrive keychain party favor.

You can add to my earlier post about this modern internet age two additional engagements I recently learned of thanks to Facebook. This is not including the wedding I'm heading to this weekend -- that's two weekends in a row! I get the feeling this couple are the type of people who already have everything, so I decided to get them a primarily edible gift. I filled a basket with local pickles, organic coffee, tea, dark chocolate covered peanuts, ginger chocolate, wine from the bride's home state and ceramic mugs from the city where the lovebirds met - NYC!

Green Gadgets and How I Know I'm Getting Old

I wanted to share with you a couple of the stranger "green" gadgets I've learned about this week:

Elephant Dung Paper
Yes, paper made from elephant poop. Supposedly elephants produce enough byproducts to make 115 sheets a day! And no, it doesn't smell.

No! Shopping Bag Bra
I mean, WTF? I'm trying to imagine the scenario at the check out counter.



I also have a green item that isn't weird, it's just awesome. I was complaining recently of the lousy water pressure in my shower to a friend, and she told me she bought a water-saving shower head from takeashower.com. Takeashower.com, besides being a cutely obvious place to buy a shower head, is more old school than Dunder-Mifflin paper co. You call up the folks at Takeashower.com, aka Water Management, and place your order over the phone. As I finished giving my info to the nice sales rep, he assured me, "Don't worry... we'll get you clean." And it sounded like he really meant it.

A week or so later my new shower head arrived in the mail, and I screwed it into place. The shower I experienced next, after six months of limpid streams of water and having to rub the suds off, was pretty much next to heaven. I don't know how they turned my weak shower into a cleansing blast, but boy, what Takeashower.com doesn't have in website savvy they make up for in shower head tech skills. As they should, I suppose.

Anyway, the fact that I just felt it necessary to write an entire blog post about a shower head, and that there was a subsequent text exchange between myself and my friend's boyfriend about said shower head (Boyfriend: "Awww yeah that showerhead!", Me: "YES!") means only one thing. I am getting old. These are the things old people get excited about.

[Note: Today I noticed, perhaps due to this post calling their site "old school," takeashower.com now takes orders online! - 9/17/08]

Shame Stew, Easy on the Onions

On a recent evening I decided to make myself a nice dinner of beef bourgine, because as usual I wanted an excuse to cook with red wine. My first stop was to Balducci's for fresh herbs, mushrooms and beef. I asked the butcher behind the counter for one-third of a pound of sirloin.

"Three-fourths of a pound?" he asked.

"No, ONE-third. Why? Is that weird?"

Shrug.

Was this butcher judging me? So what if I'm cooking for one? Is that so unusual?

"This is about half a pound," he said, holding up a piece of sirloin.

"Ok?" I replied, not knowing if he was asking my permission to sell me half a pound, or just educating me on the cut of meat. But next thing I know, he's wrapping up the not-exactly-cheap sirloin and passing it to me over the counter. Apparently it's not ok to eat for one.



Indignant, I headed to my neighborhood grocery store for the less-fancy staples for this dish, which included frozen pearl onions. Of course, the store has no pearl onions, but after three passes through the frozen section I did find "Stew Mix." This store-brand veggie mix showed a photo of potatoes, carrots, celery, and abundant pearl onions. That should work! Surely you see where this is going...

Upon opening the "stew mix" at home I found, amid the golf ball looking potatoes and icy carrots and celery, exactly ONE pearl onion. Friends, beef bourgine was a bust -- shamed and duped all in one meal. A single onion for a single girl.

Sign of the Times

In the year 2008 I find out that two of my good friends got engaged over the weekend... via Facebook. (I found out via Facebook; they didn't get engaged over Facebook, but expect to see that in 2009). This is just a little too "Web 2.0" for me, though I soon discovered that they did in fact send out a friendly announcement email, complete with an attached photo of their smiling faces, but this communique got eaten by my spam filter. Also very 2008.

"What else is stuck in my spam filter?" I then wondered. And there it was. The email from my local farm co-op telling me that shares in the 2008 crops were going on sale NOW so act fast if you want fresh veggies every week from local farms. I had been so excited to partake in this feel-goodie, localvore, slightly-expensive-given-that- our-whole-planet-is-experiencing-a-food-shortage experience. But thanks to my spam filter thinking my veggie application was some kind of virus attachment, shares sold out and I will be picking up my greens at the grocery store and the farmers market with everyone else. Sigh.

Odds are I would get stuck with piles of swiss chard every week anyway. And what the eff do you do with swiss chard?

Rock and Roll Recipe Radio - Episode 5

For this installment of Rock and Roll Recipe Radio I invited over my friend Scott Gold, author of the new book The Shameless Carnivore: A Manifesto for Meat Lovers. While writing his book, Scott tasted 31 different animals in (roughly) 31 days, so it's safe to say he knows his meat. Scott brought over two different cuts of buffalo meat to my apartment which we turned into buffalo carpaccio, buffalo tenderloin with roasted potatoes, and pan-fried buffalo ribeyes. Don't worry, I prepared some veggies too.





Listen to our cooking here and check out the musical playlist below.

Rock and Roll Recipe Radio - Buffalo 3 Ways With the Shameless Carnivore

Buffalo Tom - Treehouse
Dash Rip Rock - Trapped Inside a Liquor Store With You
Appomattox - Either Way
Harris - Carousel
The Ruby Suns - Oh, Mojave
Deerhunter - Cryptogram
Songs in the Key of Meat - 31 Animals in 31 Days

Read more of Scott's meaty exploits here.