The Best Part

OK. What is your favorite thing about fall? Otherwise known as autumn? Otherwise known as those brief weeks between late summer and early winter?

Our side gate

It is just about fall here right now. That is my hands-down ABSOLUTE favorite time of the year. I love the leaves turning colors, the weather getting cooler, the jeans and sweaters, the football games (!!), the pumpkin carving, the costume-buying, the smell in the air, the firewood stacking by the fireplace, the nutmeg/cinnamon/mace/cloves everywhere, the apples, the brisk walks, the cozy blankets.

I am in love with this tree.

Everything. We have a flame maple outside that is positively burning up, one branch at a time, and every time I duck under it a part of my heart finds peace.

The broom is not going to sweep the courtyard itself...

So. Your favorites of fall. Go.

Resolved!

So you know how people make New Year's resolutions, then never keep them? The gym is all crowded for two weeks, the liquor stores are desolate, cigarette sales go down, and there's not an empty pew in church? Then two weeks in, everything is back to the status quo.

I think maybe part of it might be the timing. You are asking people not to drink or smoke or eat greasy burgers and instead to go to the gym and church the morning on which they wake up with their worst hangover of the year. Also, it is the dead of winter, and the Super Bowl is right around the corner. Please. That would be like trying to fast on Thanksgiving Day.

OK, so here is the thing. Right now? We have a solid month (slightly more, actually) before Thanksgiving. It is the end of summer but not yet snow-clogged, depressing winter. And what you really need is ONE solid month of unbroken resolution. ONE month. If you can do it for 30 days, chances are you can do it almost forever. Unless "it" is not breathing. Wait, no, that totally works. If "it" is... running a marathon a day, you would definitely die, though, and not be able to keep it up.

I am getting sidetracked. MY POINT IS! Now is the time, ladies and gents. The hour is upon us. Make haste. YEA! MAKE HASTE!

Where did that come from. It must be really late.

MY RESOLUTION: To make no resolutions, because all I do is break them.

Shitshow Kitchen: Fondue!

I know, I know. I have been gone FOR-EV-ERR. You thought that perhaps I had deserted you, or maybe run off and joined a convent in repentance for my last post.

YOU WERE WRONG.

Here I am, back again, all the traveling and laundry and business catch-up done. Well, mostly done. OK, I am procrastinating finishing all that shit by posting here. What can I say? I have my priorities in line.

Tonight, ladies and gents, I made fondue. Fondue! YES! FONDUE!!

This is perfection. If your mouth is not watering, you should go to the doctor and get checked for that.

Fondue is awesome to make when you have friends over with whom you are comfortable sharing a pot of cheese. I guess you could try not to eat off of the long fondue forks but it is kind of impossible. People love this shit, yo.

And I am going to excuse the rest of my post by saying... um, I made fondue. And it really just gets you shithoused. IT DOES. For some reason there is just more alcohol than you anticipate, every time. It doesn't matter how you make it or how many people eat it or what. You are wasted at the end.

Which is right now.

OK!

Ingredients
16 oz (1 lb.) Gruyère cheese (or Swiss Cheese)
2 T flour
2 cloves garlic
2 C white wine plus MOAR for drinking
1 T lemon juice
1 shot Kirsch (AKA Cherry Brandy or Cherry liquor)
1 t nutmeg
1-2 loaves French Bread
Optional: An apple, a pear, boiled potatoes, or blanched broccoli, cut into cubes

Shred your cheese. I am pissed I didn't remember to get a photo of the unshredded block, since I got ACTUAL Gruyère, which is super spendy. I always used to make it with store brand Swiss when I was in grad school, so this was a momentous occasion. Oh well.  

Like half the ingredients. I don't know why I didn't take this picture with bread, etc... whatever.

Please ignore the red flecks in the cheese. I used my food processor to shred it, which is really easy, but which accidentally shredded the stamped rind. Um... yeah. Hey, it is not like it is poisonous. Just not so photogenic. Anyway. Sprinkle the flour onto the shredded cheese and give it kind of enough of a toss so that all of the cheese is slightly coated. The flour helps it to separate better when it hits the wine, and therefore makes it melt more uniformly and not all clumpy and weird.

Open your wine and pour a 2 cups plus one glass for yourself. Mmm.

Please use an acceptable Chardonnay. Something you would drink all by itself.

Cut your garlic clove in half and rub the cut sides on the bottom and sides of a medium-large saucepan and your fondue pot or crock pot. Yes, crock pot. My fondue pot was broken the last time we made it when one of my overexuberant (read: drunk) guests literally threw it into the sink and it shattered. Anyway, whatever you have. One or the other. Rub it all up with garlic. Rawr. Leave some garlic shreds strewn about the vessel because they are tasty. Then turn your crock pot/fondue pot to low and turn your burner on low. Measure out two cups of wine and throw it in the saucepan.

The beginning of the end

Realize you forgot to cube the bread. DAMMIT! Hurriedly cube it.

I didn't have time to take a picture of it cubed. Use your imagination.

When it starts to kind of form a bit of a bubbly froth on top, like it is aerating excessively but NOT boiling, add your tablespoon of lemon juice, give it a stir, then transfer to your fondue pot if you have one (or just leave it in the saucepan if you don't), and add a smallish handful of shredded cheese.

Do not add more than a little bit or you will be sorry.

You only add a little so you can incorporate it fully relatively quickly, and you have to stir it constantly so it doesn't burn or congeal. If you add too much, it becomes this blob of cheese in the midst of a bunch of liquor. So just be patient! Have a drink. Mmmm, wine. When the cheese is fully incorporated it will look kind of like this:

Unappetizing? GOD YOU ARE SO IMPATIENT.

Keep doing that. Make sure each handful melts really well, to the point that it's just kind of cheese crumbs in the liquor. After about four handfuls it will look more like this:

I look the same. Bitch is crazy.

You can see kind of the extent to which the cheese has melted on the spatula. When you've got it all stirred in, Add the KIRSCH! That is right, more liquor. Because that is how we roll. The Kirsch actually helps to achieve the super-smooth consistency you want in fondue.

Kirsch I bought last year when I last made fondue. Thank God liquor stays.

Sprinkle the nutmeg on top and stir it in. You can add some cracked pepper, and maybe a dash of salt, but I forgot. This is where I transferred mine to the preheated crock pot. Keep your fondue pot heated or your crock pot on low(ish) while you enjoy the fondue.

I didn't sprinkle the nutmeg very well, so it kind of clumped up before I stirred it in.

Serve with bread cubes and/or all the other shit I listed in the ingredients, plus MOAR WINE for drinking, because it is TRADITION, yo. We used La Crema for the fondue and Rombauer Chard to drink because it is the best and I already told you we were splurging with the fahnsay cheese, so why not the wine, too?

Picture Charlie took while I was getting everything set up outside

So there is a method for dipping. You stab the bread or whatever you're dipping pretty securely, then plunge it to the bottom of the pot and make a figure eight with it, then bring it out. The figure eight ensures that you are kind of stirring it up, because otherwise the liquor might separate out onto the top of the cheese (if it does, just give it a stir with a spatula) or it might burn on the bottom (stir with spatula and maybe turn it down a touch). If you lose your bread into the pot, you have to forfeit a kiss (or some other agreed-upon penalty). IT IS TRADITION.

OMG GET IN MAH MOUF

Also, if the cheese starts getting too thick and not liquidy enough for dipping, add a little bit of Kirsch at a time, stirring to incorporate, until it is the proper consistency again.

By the end of the night, you will all be drunk. If you are not drunk, you did not have enough fondue and/or did not properly enjoy the beverage service. Then you can post about it on your blog or do something you will possibly regret with one of your guests.

Serves 2-4

What She Said

"What She Said" by Billy Collins, from Horoscopes for the Dead. © Random House, 2011. (buy now) 
(via The Writer's Almanac)

When he told me he expected me to pay for dinner,
I was like give me a break.

I was not the exact equivalent of give me a break.
I was just similar to give me a break.

As I said, I was like give me a break.

I would love to tell you
how I was able to resemble give me a break
without actually being identical to give me a break,

but all I can say is that I sensed
a similarity between me and give me a break.

And that was close enough
at that point in the evening

even if it meant I would fall short
of standing up from the table and screaming
give me a break,

for God's sake will you please give me a break?!

No, for that moment
with the rain streaking the restaurant windows
and the waiter approaching,

I felt the most I could be was like

to a certain degree

give me a break.

Yard Work

Today I raked all of the things. We got eight huge black leaf bags full of crap off of our front lawn. Leaves, sticks, clumps of sod, small rocks... some bags were heavier than others.

My hands hurt from holding the rake. My shoulders are lightly sunburned because I was not expecting to need SPF when it was only 40 degrees outside and overcast. I have that ache that feels good, because it means you got shit done.

Next day off we tackle the back yard.