In which I find a terrific quote and get very anxious
Diego Luna of Y Tu Mamá También is apparently my male counterpart. This morning I happened to thumb through a copy of Interview in which Luna is, as you might suspect, interviewed. Take note of the following passage:
Interview: What do you want from life? You told me before that you want to find a woman.
Diego Luna: Definitely.
I want to be in love and eat as much as I can!
[Molly: Who can disagree with this man? Look at
that enthusiasm! And that exclamation point! Amen!]
Interview: So it’s love and food and sex, I guess.
Wow, what a morning! Mexican movie stars really know how to live. And how to steal my ideas.
After that serendipitous find, I rewarded myself with a drippy tomato-and-mayo sandwich on toasted wheat berry-y bread. I must gorge myself on these while I still can, before fall arrives with its tomato-killing chills. I never get tired of drippy tomato-and-mayo sandwiches. I am so boring and happy.
But then things went downhill. After lunch I set to work putting the finishing touches on my birthday cake, unfortunately destroying my chocolate ganache in the process. My forays into baking are not usually so dramatic, I assure you. I’m not used to these feelings of panic and betrayal in the kitchen.
In today’s ganache episode I unknowingly overheated the heavy cream, and the chocolate, when added, proceeded to separate into little bumpy grains and puddles of slippery oily sludge. Most inconveniently, it waited to really do this until after I’d already begun pouring and spreading it over my two-tiered dark chocolate and raspberry cake.
I carried on, terrified, working my icing spatula with a fool’s determination. Once the entire thing was covered with my broken ganache, I called my mother and left a frantic message about being afraid of my birthday cake. She didn’t call back.
I will spare you the ugly details, but I did manage to salvage the cake and the ganache with a combination of desperation, very dirty fingers, and aggressive spatula action. My cake looks smooth, modern, and architectural, with dull spackle-like frosting.
And now I’m afraid that the El Rey bittersweet chocolate I used may be too bitter for my comrades in tonight’s birthday festivities. I am full of fear.