summer – Orangette

June 30

Molly — Sat, 01 Jul 2017 04:08:18 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, while researching rhubarb crumble recipes for the Crisps and Crumbles episode of Spilled Milk (still going strong, 52 weeks a year! and still featuring impromptu hair-metal duets!), I pulled down an old copy of Canal House Cooking, and it fell open to page 57, “Cutlets Smothered in Peas.” That’s when it dawned on me that I had somehow made it to age almost-39 without ever cooking a chicken cutlet, and that my child had somehow made it to age almost-five without ever eating a chicken cutlet. I understand this makes one subject to ridicule and rebuke not only in America, but also in many other parts of the world, including Japan, where panko-breaded, pan-fried chicken…

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June 28

Molly — Wed, 29 Jun 2016 01:24:11 +0000

I am not, in general, someone who keeps a running catalog of her favorites: favorite movie, favorite book, favorite song, favorite color, favorite number, and so on. A couple of decades ago, if pressed, I might have offered The Shawshank Redemption as my favorite movie, because I have a thing for Tim Robbins, and I also have a thing for Morgan Freeman’s voice, and, of course, it’s also a first-rate story. But then I moved to Seattle and rekindled my teenage love for Singles, which you know all about because I mention it near-constantly, and because it’s the only movie I can actually quote lines from. Still, I don’t know that I’d call it my favorite. That’s a strong word, and it scares…

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The opposite of fancy

Molly — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 02:57:12 +0000

In August of 2014 – which, for those who are counting, was twenty-two entire months ago – I mentioned my friend Natalie’s “famous cucumber dip.” A bunch of you asked for the recipe, so I e-mailed Natalie, and she sent it promptly. The recipe is not fancy. It’s the opposite of fancy. I liked that about it, and I was very excited about the new chapter of my existence that was revealing itself, an existence promising as much famous cucumber dip as I could get myself around. I was going to write about it immediately. But then a few days went by, and then more days after that, and some more after that. By then, it was sometime around New Year’s Day of…

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June 26

Molly — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 20:47:00 +0000

I am feeling profoundly (or, as my fingers tried to put it, “feely profounding”) inarticulate today in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage. I keep thinking of my uncle Jerry, the first gay person I ever knew, whose death to AIDS in 1988 spurred me to activism as a young kid with moussed bangs and a Silence=Death sweatshirt, and in whose memory June carries one of her middle names. I wonder what he would say today. I’m grateful, relieved, elated, and beyond, that June will grow up in a world that’s very different from what I knew in 1980s Oklahoma. It also feels like a fitting time to reread John Birdsall’s whip-smart Lucky Peach piece, “America, Your Food…

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And: FUDGESICLES

Molly — Fri, 29 Aug 2014 04:16:00 +0000

I have a child who is about to be two years old. I have a lot of thoughts on the subject, but one thing I do not have a lot of thoughts about is a second birthday party. I could take it or leave it. For one thing, June doesn’t understand birthdays yet, so it doesn’t matter to her either way. Also, I am lazier than I let on. When your kid turns one, a party feels mandatory, because you kept a small human alive for an entire year and you survived it and bells must be energetically rung. Cake must be baked! BEERS MUST BE DRUNK! I am here to report, however, that a second birthday party feels much less…

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August 18

Molly — Tue, 19 Aug 2014 00:51:00 +0000

A couple of weekends ago, we packed up the better part of the restaurant kitchen, crammed it in the back of a pick-up, and drove two and a half hours east to cook an all-day anniversary party for a pair of longtime Delancey regulars. We rented a big house along the Wenatchee River, about ten minutes from the property where the party was held, and we brought as many people as we could fit inside, including a set of 8-month-old twins and one almost-two-year-old June. If you’ve ever been to Leavenworth in the summertime, you will remember how hot it gets. It hit 100 that weekend, and no one had air conditioning. The flies were out and biting. But the…

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July 22

Molly — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 04:36:00 +0000

A month of summer gone already! I don’t want to think about it. I rediscovered my Fuji Instax over the weekend and have been firing off shots like I were made of money. That’s another thing I’ve decided not to think about. I want June to have photo albums from her childhood – proper, three-dimensional albums! With the requisite wonky Polaroids! Like the olden days! Next up: suspenders and a paper route! – so I’m not allowed to fuss over the cost of film or the stupid, stupid, stupid flash that goes off whether I want it or not. Babies: they get your priorities straight. I appreciate that. Though I wouldn’t mind sleeping past 6:30 again someday. It seems like…

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I promised

Molly — Sat, 12 Jul 2014 09:46:00 +0000

It hit 85 degrees in Seattle today, and here in our city of no air conditioning, that counts as a heat wave. I know: talking about the weather is boring, blah blah blah, but on a cloudless day in mid-July, the best one can hope for, I think, is to have nothing but the weather to talk about. I come this evening, however, to talk about sour cherry milkshakes. I promised. Most of us know sour cherries in their cooked form, as the kind of cherry that you bake into a pie. I didn’t know them at all until five summers ago, the summer of 2009, when we were about to open Delancey and I had no idea how to…

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Run with it

Molly — Mon, 23 Jun 2014 23:33:00 +0000

It is 12:26 pm on June 23. I’m sitting at my desk in the window, which, if you were considering it, is a bad place to put a desk. What a person needs behind a desk is something sturdy, galvanizing, like a wall. Otherwise you’ll wind up spending your time as I am today: watching the world’s most subtle breeze blow through the branches of the neighbors’ tulip magnolia, wishing I were eating a cheeseburger. I’m slowly emerging from New Book Insanity. I am so relieved, so glad to have this book behind me and out in the world, and also so, so, so tired. Elated! Tired! Dead! (But hey, Spokane: I’m going to be in your town tomorrow night,…

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A new reason

Molly — Sat, 10 Aug 2013 08:41:00 +0000

I just sat down, looked at the calendar, and noticed that it’s August 9th. June is eleven months old today. On Monday, Delancey will be four years old, and on Thursday, Essex will be one. Is this what happens when you become a firm-and-fast adult? You’ve done enough stuff and crossed paths with enough people that at some point, each day comes with a birthday or anniversary? I mean, in addition to bills and tax deadlines and increasingly tight hamstrings? In other words: there’s always a new reason to eat cake, isn’t there? Or drink wine? Both? I have a very cold bottle of riesling in the refrigerator. But there is no cake here, and that is because there is no…

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