1. This morning’s edition of The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor quite nearly destroyed me. I’m not so interested in the sonnets, but rather the drama, the intensity, and the jelly. Read on: “It’s the anniversary of the day that poets Robert Browning, 34, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 44, eloped (1846). The Brownings met for the first time in 1845 and over the next twenty months exchanged 574 letters. Elizabeth’s father didn’t want her to marry, so their courtship and marriage were kept a secret. The night before they eloped, Elizabeth wrote to Robert, ‘Is this my last letter to you, ever dearest?—Oh, —if I loved you less … a little, little less.’ Robert and Elizabeth read and critiqued each…

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I can’t keep it to myself. FareStart is a Seattle nonprofit organization that “transforms lives by empowering homeless and disadvantaged men, women, and families to achieve self-sufficiency through life skills, job training, and employment in the food service industry.” And through this admirable program, FareStart gives me a reason to feel even better than usual about treating myself to a three-course meal. A $19.95 three-course meal. FareStart holds weekly Guest Chef Nights, in which stars of the Seattle restaurant scene work with FareStart students to produce complex and delectable three-course meals. Volunteers from local groups and businesses act as servers, and all proceeds are put to use for training and social-service programs for the students. And in case you can’t…

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Happy anniversary to a shameless reader of Us Weekly and his significant other! Have a wonderful dinner at Ceiba, Doron, complete with an exotic-sounding cocktail or two and some Jamaican crab fritters! And please, don’t be shy: ask for my brother David, introduce yourselves, and demand to be treated like kings. Were I there, I’d roll out a red carpet for you to saunter down in your excellent pants. If all is not perfect, I will give that brother of mine the best sisterly talking-to I can muster. When he was a teenager and rode his motorcycle down our street without a helmet, I—then only two or three years old—tattled on him to Mom and Burg. And [, she says…

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My little heart thumps with joy. I just love you so much. First, the singers: Mom, your rendition was tasteful and quite lovely, but Katie, I would have preferred something louder and with more off-pitch screeching. Jen, you—after some palpable initial reluctance—pulled off a beautiful answering-machine solo. Sarzee, I purposely let the voicemail pick up so that I could listen over and over to you singing (in a fake eastern-European accent, to boot) in the train station. And Rebecca, your slow, soulful, and brilliantly on-key version quite nearly stole the show, but I expect nothing less: it sounded as though you were stretched over a piano somewhere, your ubiquitous rhinestones shimmering under a pencil spot. And those who didn’t sing:…

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Dear supportive reader, I need not have feared.My near-disaster cake was roundly applauded and went smashingly with Keaton’s Bonny Doon Framboise dessert wine. Saturday evening’s early-birthday festivities began lazily around the table with dollops of Jessica’s garlicky Greek lima bean puree and whole wheat pita, which some of us washed down with Fischer Amber. Next up was Keaton’s autumn-like carrot-fennel soup, with a 2001 Charles Mitchell Pinot Noir I had inherited from Burg and saved for a special occasion. Then Kate presented us with lovely composed plates of linguine with red chili flakes and olive oil, steamed clams, cherry tomatoes, and bias-cut scallions. I slurped, splashed, and, yes, succeeded in staining my flimsy filmy 0044 shirt yet again. And then…

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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…

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I’ve been shamefully slow to hop on the bandwagon. But I can now declare with great enthusiasm and ample experience that Cowgirl Creamery’s Red Hawk is a stunning cheese. Easily the finest domestic cheese to make its way to my plate. Red Hawk, there is none so fair as thee in all the land! Produced in Point Reyes, California (only a dozen or two miles from the site of my conception, dear reader!), Red Hawk is a triple-cream cheese with a red-orange washed rind, made from organic cow’s milk from the Straus Family Creamery. I first learned of it a year ago, when the American Cheese Society named it “Best in Show” at their 2003 competition. Upon hearing this news…

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This afternoon I felt still, quiet. Lonely, pretty, like singing. Abstractly emotional, on the edge of something. I think too much. Jeff Buckley’s “Morning Theft” is lush and beautiful. In the car on the way home from the airport, I began a list, organizing myself. Sundays are for taking stock, returning to wakefulness, asking questions that don’t need immediate answers. Underrated Things (which, by the very act of this writing, shall no longer go unremarked-upon, at least not by me): Prunes Oatmeal Mayonnaise Liver Malty chocolate malts Buckwheat flour Scrabble Literacy Walking Family Quiet Bare feet on warm pavement Being healthy and free from pain Being taken care of Cool air from the open window while you sleep Eating food…

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Mom is lying on the couch, recovering. Eight-course tasting menus at Union are exquisite. If I could do high kicks, I’d compose a cheer for Ethan Stowell and his Union. I’d also add that Union’s tasting menus are an incredible value, a real steal, but that makes it sound as though I’m hawking a used car. Nonetheless, get thyself to Union, and make haste. I am a wonderfully cheap date, so please invite me when you do so. One and a half glasses of wine (Mom finished the other half) and I have to really concentrate to get to the bathroom without leaning on the tables en route. But I am very charming, poised, and well-trained, so no one will…

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The lamb roast has come and gone. Sunday did not begin well. I had worked until the wee hours of morning on an ill-tempered Parisian flan, a thoroughly nasty end to a lovely Saturday of sailboats and swimsuits and bare feet. The dough for the flan’s pastry shell disintegrated in my hands not once but twice, dear reader. I swore like a sailor, slapped the dough shards into a pile and bullied them into a ball, and then I rolled them flat before they had a second to protest. I chucked the crust into the oven with its custard filling and then tossed it onto the counter to cool, along with two miniature versions I’d made with the extra dough…

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My leisure sports need work. My pool game is almost as bad as my bowling, which is bad. But, on the upside, I am uncannily good at rolling around on the pool table like Tawny Kitaen on the hood of the Jaguar in that old Whitesnake video. I also know all the lyrics to Dolly Parton’s “Nine to Five” and Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler,” which scored me big Brownie points last night with Keaton’s boyfriend Mark. Keaton said I never cease to amaze her. She thinks I should ride a mechanical bull on my birthday. I think I should ride a real bull. In honor of Oklahoma and all those kids from other states who used to ask me if…

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Heavens to Betsy! The carnage was unprecedented! I made strawberry scones! A couple of months back, I went strawberry picking in Carnation with Kate, her sister Margot, and Margot’s boyfriend Todd. A mere hour or so of backbreaking labor yielded 16 gorgeous pounds of loot and made me almost dizzy with glee—until, that is, I realized that each and every berry had to be washed and dried. To make a long, messy, juice-stained story short, I cooked up three batches of jam from a recipe given to Margot in Italy, and I now have a freezer full of red-to-the-core strawberries. And I can’t stand seeing them just sit there unused, unattended, unloved. These sorts of dilemmas keep me up at…

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I love driving home alone at night. I race west across the lake, Seattle blinking silently before me, its streets wide and burnished-looking under the lights. I know my way without thinking, and it feels so solid here on my own, coming home to myself. A noteworthy day all around. My belly hurts from laughing too much. The rains have returned, and this evening Keaton quite literally blew off the downtown street and into my car. We came home for gin and tonics, which, after a busy couple of days at work, Keats admirably threw back like a pro. She then quickly got to work making herself a second one, not without a near-catastrophic misjudgment of lime juice quantity and…

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Oh Paris, your pastry is perfect. I’ll eat you for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Paris, you kept me up until 3am and made me shy on the phone. You laid a blanket in the park and spread it with saucisson sec and fromages qui puent and we drank Champagne at two in the afternoon on your big day. Paris, I watched the eight o’clock news alone in your apartment and ate chaussons aux pommes in line at the movies, and I bought your small modern packages delivered by the small trucks that block your ancient streets. Oh Paris, you gave me skirts with rabbit-fur trim and danger-sexy designer bags on sale. You told me I looked like Cleopatra. You said…

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Words hold such promise. Yesterday morning I received a spam e-mail from someone named Napoleon Mayo. I deleted it right away, of course, but what a name! Napoleon Mayo. It reminds me of Colonel Mustard. Condiments with military prowess. Sometimes anthropology is so exciting. Yesterday, while doing some editorial work for the department website, I was faced with a document called “What is Luminescence Dating?” Now, this stuff is entirely beyond me—dealing as it does with natural radioactivity and artifacts and other things that concern archaeologists and not people like myself—but what a term! I’d like to appropriate it and twist it a bit. What is luminescence dating, you ask? Why, it’s a date so fantastic that by the end…

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Seattle, the Ave makes me sad, and you’d better do something about it. It’s the strung-out street kids and their skinny dogs. I suppose the Ave is good for those days when I enjoy being ogled and harassed, but for the most part, it just makes me sad. Seattle, are you listening? Speaking of the Ave, I met my dear friend Kate for an early-evening drink yesterday before her GMAT class in the U District. We sat next to the window, where there was a cool-ish breeze coming in from the door, and we Ave-watched and drank Bohemia with big wedges of lime. Kate had brought me a groaning basket of treats from her family’s garden: dozens of dusty purple…

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David Byrne, I may never recover. The muscles of my face ache. The moment you took the stage, I settled into an alternately dreamy-giddy-ecstatic-awestruck-giddy-dreamy smile that lasted for two hours. Oh David Byrne, I love you till my heart stops, love you till I’m dead. Oh David Byrne, you’ve got a face with a view. Thanks be to Keaton, who turned to me in the third song and said “Let’s go down and dance!” And so we climbed toward the stage, where big thick bouncers were glaring at anyone who tried to get any closer than the wings, but then all of a sudden the people around us rushed forward and Keats grabbed my arm and we ran in front…

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1. Julia Child, you taught me how to hard-boil eggs and make soufflés! You give me hope. When I was about eight, I used to do an imitation of you misting water into the oven for your baguettes, crying “Water! Water! Water!” On Friday I read in the newspaper that you and your husband Paul sent out Valentine’s Day cards one year with a picture of the two of you in your bathtub in Paris. That makes me so happy. 2. There is no way I could be a poet anymore, even if I wanted to regress to 17 and try it again. I am too verbose, and happily so. 3. Flirting is a skill I’m not sure I ever…

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The torta di ricotta was a smashing success at Robert’s dinner party last night, if I do say so myself. And I am one lucky girl, because I still have some ricotta left in the fridge. The only thing better than torta di ricotta is fresh ricotta straight off the spoon. Robert has been taking a cooking class and produced a beautiful spread for fourteen(!): braised “Riviera” chicken with sun-dried tomatoes, onions, and paper-thin slices of lemon and lime; a pasta salad with sliced radishes, dill, and chunks of some sort of creamy mild white cheese; sautéed zucchini rounds with garlic; and a baby arugula salad. At some point after dinner, I sang “What a Feeling” (from Flashdance, in case…

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Oh, dear readers! David Byrne blogs too! Now I can stop feeling sheepish, because blogging must not be as questionable as I thought. In his blog, he mentions a recent rollercoaster ride he was talked into, and there’s a picture of him ducking as the rollercoaster swoops around a loop. David Byrne doesn’t like rollercoasters (see title). Guess what? I don’t like rollercoasters either! David Byrne also riffs relentlessly on reality and rationality and refers to himself as “Mr. So-Called Anthropologist from Mars.” I am an anthropologist! David Byrne, I am you.In other late-summer news, tonight I’ve laid waste to more Romano beans, which are my new favorite farmers’ market item. Summer makes everything taste good, except those lovely winter…

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Much to attend to. It’s apero hour, and I’ve been eating edamame and drinking a chilly gin and tonic with lots of lime. David Byrne, like Nan Goldin, is so very brave. He is so extremely odd. It makes me exquisitely happy to see how odd he is. Take a listen to “Au Fond du Temple Saint” on his newest album Grown Backwards, and you will understand. It’s Byrne-esque opera, for one thing, and he is singing loudly. He may have perfect pitch, but it takes some kind of courage to push that voice to that decibel level. The way those strings build into the chorus almost brings tears to my eyes. Also, David Byrne is silver-haired, foxy, and stylish.…

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When it is this hot, it can be difficult to use complete sentences. Everything must be short, easy to blurt out between gulps of cold water. Today’s favorite snacks for hot weather, consumed while sitting in front of the fan:One spoonful of cold unsalted natural peanut butterCold leftover French fingerling and German Butterball potatoes with mint, dill, apple cider vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper Newest favorite hot-weather activity: tearing day-old bread into shards, tossing them with olive oil, baking them for ten minutes or until crispy, then tossing them while piping hot with halved garlic cloves, adding chunks of deep crimson and/or green zebra heirloom tomatoes, splashing on balsamic, splashing on olive oil, scattering slivered basil over the top,…

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It is a sleepy afternoon. I am sleepy. It is sleepy. Last night I dreamt that I was on some sort of a quest–the phrase “vision quest” was running through my head when I woke up–alone in the semi-wilderness. I was sent out on my own into a not-too-wooded-but-dark-and-shadowy place, and I was supposed to find my way to some mystic destination I now can’t recall. I would have to keep warm, sleep somewhere along the way. In the dream I went on this quest twice (it was only an overnight quest, and thus a repeat performance seemed somehow not illogical), although I woke up before fully completing the second go. Oddly enough, and not at all in keeping with…

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Tonight’s dinner for one: –Lamb sausage with fennel seeds, kalamata olives, artichoke hearts, and feta, seared all nice and golden and shiny in my beloved Wagner 9” cast-iron skillet –Salad with baby lettuces from last Saturday’s market, shaved fennel, and thinly sliced cukes, dressed with mustard vinaigrette –Tall Grass Bakery pain au levain –And for dessert: 85% dark from Paris, along with some honey grahams dipped in milk Oh, meat meat meat. Maybe it’s because I was delirious with hunger, but I don’t think so: that sausage, dear heart, was nothing short of rapturous. So juicy, so earthy, delicately tinged with anise, shot through with melty feta. I actually exclaimed “Oh my God!” aloud, and I may have moaned a…

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I stabbed my big toe tonight on the steel blade for the Cuisinart. It’s really not so complicated as it sounds, or else I would explain. The pesto smells luscious, and that’s all that matters. I’m now taking contributions to buy a roasting pan, dear readers. My birthday is barely over a month away, and I’ll be ringing in the big two-six. 25 was a solid number: a quarter, a silver anniversary, the square of five. But 26 feels round and smooth, full of possibilities for adding, dividing, multiplying. And I’m already behind in the meat-roasting game; women of previous generations would be well on their way to spinsterdom for such shortcomings. I’ve got work to do. I’ve got my…

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Just walked down to Scarecrow Video to return discs 1 and 2 of Six Feet Under and pick up discs 3 and 4. Am so excited. Think I’ll try to prolong the gratification by only letting myself watch two episodes at a sitting. Can hardly wait. Good thing I don’t have a television, so I can’t get this irrationally excited about too many other shows. But this is all a tangent. The real meat of the deal is that, as I was walking home, I saw a chicken. I was on 11th Ave NE, near 56th St.–no barns in sight, just some asphalt–when a brown-and-grayish chicken came nonchalantly hopping out of someone’s yard and onto the sidewalk a couple of…

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A resolution on writing: I’m trying to remember that feeling exactly, that feeling I had after leaving the Nan Goldin show at Galerie Yvon Lambert. I felt as though I’d been somewhere far away. I had let myself be wrapped up in the music she’s using (a uniquely uplifting snippet from Godspeed You Black Emperor!) for her “Honey on a Razor Blade” slide show, and I was half in love with her brazenly beautiful nephew Simon. And I was so in awe of her bravery, her embracing of the messiness, frailty, ugliness, and shattering beauty of human life. I left the gallery feeling full to bursting, like I might laugh and cry all at once, explosive. It reminded me of…

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Lovely is my new favorite adjective, so benign and sweet and faux-British. And so, lovely things on Saturday, July 31: -Four heads of baby lettuce (two green oakleaf and one red, plus one unidentified variety with perky burgundy leaves) for $3 at the U District farmers’ market -An heirloom tomato sandwich for lunch: thick slices of green zebra with S & P and a healthy swipe of mayo on toasted sprouted-wheat bread. So drippy, so delicious. I was almost reduced to slurping. -85% dark chocolate from A la Petite Fabrique in Paris. I may have complained about my 66-pound suitcase, but now that my schlepping is done, I have no regrets about having bought 17 bars of chocolate. None. –Six…

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