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Confidential to Keith:  Not right now, because I know you are busy with your own ‘thon, but when you have a chance, my timestamping still looks funky.  My most recent post went up around 2:02 a.m. and it’s showing up as 2:30.  There’s also a pair of posts timestamped an hour apart, even though I know that the only time that much time elapsed was when I was actually on a subway train.  Again, not a big issue, just a curious one.

Last weekend, when Lloyd and I were temporarily rooming with Bunni while Con Ed tried to figure out what the hell happened to our power, we took a trip to Dylan’s Candy Bar on Third Avenue to stock up on both Blogathon snackies and additional snackies Bunni planned to bring to the LovecraCked premiere.  Among the goodies she bought were several bags of Sour Patch Cotton Candy.  It looked lurid and scary, but it also looked like exactly what she needed to stay awake:  it’s cotton candy!  it’s sour! What could go wrong?

As it turns out, just the very act of eating the stuff is where it goes wrong.  It’s not even bad in a good way.  It’s just bad.  Kids, the Bunni is a wise and sage Bunni.  Heed her words.  Do not partake of the Sour Patch Cotton Candy, ever.

In an attempt to get my ganglia in order, I’ve started replicating the conditions in my apartment at Julie’s and G’s, namely plenty of cookbooks at the ready.  Ten minutes ago, totally at a loss for what to do or say next, I found Julie’s copy of Maida Heatter’s Cookies (Andrews & McMeel, 1997).  Knowing that Maida is always good for what ails a girl, not just because she’s a peerless baker but because she also manifests teenager levels of enthusiasm for it, I opened the book to her introduction, titled simply, “Bake Cookies!”, and found this:

A few days ago I heard a doctor talking on television about the dangers of stress.  It can kill you.  It can cause a heart attack or stroke.  The doctor listed ways of coping with street.  Exercise.  Diet.  Yoga.  Take a walk.  I yelled, “Bake cookies.” I often talk to the television.  I yelled it again and again.  The doctor went on with his list of 12 ways to reduce stress...and he never once mentioned my sure-fire treatment.

If you are reading this book, chances are you know what I mean.  You have probably baked cookies.  You could probably tell me a thing or two about what fun it is.  But if you have not baked cookies, then let me tell you.  Bake cookies!  Happiness is baking cookies.

Oh, absolutely. 

No, wait! I am a winner!

And look at what I won! (It’s one of those gorgeous notebooks, which you can see by scrolling down a bit.)

Woohoooooo!  Thank you, Cricket!  (And thanks, Barb, for pointing me in Cricket’s direction!)

(Coffee?  Why, yes, I will, thank you...)

Well, that tears it.  On Monday (which I’m taking as a vacation day because I have the sneaking suspicion that I will *not* be fit company at work), I am running, not walking, to Kitchen Arts and Letters to see if I can get my grubby little mitts on my own copy of Nela’s Cookbook.  I’ve been paging through it—yes, at a time when I should be either writing frenetically or issuing cheery missives to my friends, I’ve been reading a cookbook—and I am enthralled, for reasons including, but not limited to:

1.  Her recipe for fresh egg pasta includes an offhand comment about how eventually, you will get so skilled that you will know the number of eggs you need to use per person, and the amount of flour each egg will hold, and you will no longer need a recipe.  (As an added bonus, she shows how to get the dough really thin by rolling it over your knuckles, like strudel or pizza dough.)

2.  Her recipe for pate sablee (cookie-style pastry dough) is terrific.

3.  Among the suggestions she has for that pate sablee dough is to line a tart shell with it, bake it fully, peel and core and slice some apples into eighths, saute them in butter and sugar, pour the hot apples into the tart shell, make a caramel out of melted sugar and pour it over the apples.  To quote my dear friend Grace, I am weeping here, people.  Weeping.

4.  In giving a recipe for a vanilla icing (for another pate sablee iteration!), she notes that the same mixture, sans vanilla, is also a type of milk fudge known as kalouga, and can be found in Alice B. Toklas’s cookbook.  I know that Alice and Gertrude got around, but it always impresses me to see just how wide their circle really was.

5.  Last, but by no means least:  Cary Grant supplied a jacket blurb.  ("No matter how many cookbooks you may already possess, my wife and I happily recommend your adding Nela Rubinstein’s to your collection.  It’s indispensable.” Can you not hear him saying that?  I’m getting all swoony here.)

Sweet Zombie Jesus, but the half-hours surely do pass quickly when you take a little break for dessert and an iced coffee.