But today, after my disappointing phone conversation, I don’t even bother trying. Today, I scoop all eleven pounds of her up into my arms and say, “You know what? I don’t blame you.”
When I first started Bon Appétempt, though it was a side project and something I wanted to do for fun, I also felt adamant about sticking to the structure of beginning each post with their version, which was always an image of the completed recipe as it appeared perfectly and beautifully in a magazine or cookbook. This was then followed up by my version, which was always, of course, a very flawed image.
But after the first year, this structure began to stifle me. I would find photo-less recipes I wanted to try. Yet not wanting to break the template I created, I wouldn’t. Eventually, though, I gave in.
And once I did, I was off and running. I attempted Julia Child’s photo-less recipe for mayonnaise. I re-created the butterscotch budino from one of my favorite restaurants. I let Matt do a guest post on the roasted pumpkin seeds he makes every Halloween. And after a weekend in Big Sur, we simply posted a series of photos from our trip—there was no recipe at all.
So, two and a half years into the life of the blog, when I came across Swedish pop star Robyn’s music video for her song “Call Your Girlfriend,” in which she mesmerizingly dances with abandon in a giant warehouse space in one long take while wearing floral leggings with a faux-fur long-sleeved jacket for the entire length of the song, I not only know that I want to re-create it for the blog, but I know that I can—that it technically falls under the realm of a bon appétempt.
But wanting to shoot a music video of me dancing for three solid minutes in floral leggings in at least somewhat of a choreographed fashion, I soon learned, is a very different experience from actually doing so. When my friends and I began the shoot, I felt like an idiot wearing extremely unflattering clothing and too much eye makeup. But then, the more takes we did and the more my friends screamed at me to “go crazy!” the more I let go.
And ironically, not only does this become the second most popular post of my food blog’s lifetime, but also, of all the things I’ve accomplished (not too much, but you know, I did graduate Phi Beta Kappa from Johns Hopkins, have had a few small publications to my name, married a nice fellow, etc.), it was this video that pushed my dad to e-mail me that he was proud of me—words I’d learned not to expect from him; words I thought were reserved solely for my brother, and even then, only within the confines of the sport of wrestling.
Sometime shortly after that September phone call with my agent, it begins to dawn on me that I’ve seemingly forgotten about Bon Appétempt’s expectation-less, founded-in-fun origins. Back then, the kitchen and the blog were safe places for me to explore, to play, and to fail if need be. I wasn’t trying to prove anything or impress anyone.
And now what? It’s a few years later, and just because my soup didn’t come together as easily as I thought it might, I become upset and beat myself up about it? It reminds me of my obsessive dieting in college—putting such severe expectations on myself, not being able to live up to them, and then hating myself for it.
In the next couple of months, I start to come to terms with the fact that I cannot will this book to happen any more than I can will Mavis to walk when she doesn’t want to, any more than I can will certain recipes to come together flawlessly and effortlessly.
I can work hard. And I can do my best. And sometimes that’s when I’m happiest, when I have a project and I know I’m putting in the necessary time and effort. But that’s just one facet of who I am. There’s another part of me that needs more space to properly thrive, that needs room to spread out—to do things I want to do just because I want to do them, and, if necessary, to look stupid in the process. I need to reserve the right to make a simple meal that doesn’t even require a recipe, one that isn’t for the blog or because Matt requested it, but merely because that’s what I’m hungry for.
This is one of the first meals I made without a recipe to guide me. It’s a staple meal of one of my coworkers who hails from Panama. And so, with nothing more than her description of how she sautés some garlic and onion, then adds rice, beans, and coconut milk, and lets it all simmer together in the pan until the rice is cooked, I went home and made it. She told me to serve it with avocado slices and lime, but Matt and I usually also add salsa and often wrap everything in a tortilla. Sour cream doesn’t hurt either.
RICE AND BLACK BEANS IN COCONUT MILK WITH AVOCADO
Serves 4
2 tablespoons olive oil (or, if you have it, coconut oil works really well here)
1 onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon salt, plus more for seasoning
Freshly ground black pepper
1 (13.5-ounce) can light coconut milk
¼ cup water
1 heaping cup white basmati rice (or another kind of white rice of your choosing)
1 (15-ounce) can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 teaspoon ground cumin
8 corn tortillas
2 avocados
1 to 2 limes
Sour cream
Your favorite store-bought salsa
Heat the oil in a wide skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté for 4 to 5 minutes, until softened. Add the garlic and sauté for 2 to 3 minutes more. Add a few pinches of salt and pepper.
Preheat the oven to 250°F.
Add the coconut milk, water, rice, and beans. While it’s coming to a boil, add 1 teaspoon salt, the cumin, and a few more pinches of pepper. Once it’s boiling, cover the pan with a lid, bring the heat down to a gentle simmer, and simmer for 16 to 18 minutes (if you’re using a type of rice other than white basmati, check the package directions as the simmering time may vary). After it has cooked, let it rest with the heat off and lid on for another 10 minutes.
While the rice is resting, wrap your tortillas in foil and warm them in the oven.
Slice the avocados in half and remove and discard the pits. With each avocado half skin-side down on a cutting board, slice the flesh into strips, and using a spoon, scoop out the slices into a bowl. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and cover with the juice of half a lime. Set aside.
Just before serving, juice the remaining half of the lime and pour over the rice. Stir to distribute and season with salt and pepper. Serve the rice and beans with the tortillas, avocado slices, extra lime slices, sour cream, and salsa. (Matt likes to wrap everything up in his tortilla, whereas I like to have it there on the side to scoop up bites.)
Chapter 31
Figuring It Out for Yourself
At the end of November, as usual, Matt and I both have work the days leading up to Thanksgiving as well as the day after, aka Black Friday, aka retail’s biggest day! For the fourth year in a row we won’t be able to travel home for Thanksgiving, which, to be fair, isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
During these past four years, we’ve been able to build our own little Thanksgiving traditions. One of these is simmering mulled wine in the early afternoon and drinking it while we cook. Matt typically takes charge of the gravy and the bird while I handle the side dishes and dessert. The hardest part is finding the time to do the giant grocery trip beforehand.
After work, all I want to do is sit down, spend some time alone, and try to forget about how just a few hours earlier a pair of registrants purchased all of the remaining items on their registry, how they paid with $1,800 cash, how between packing up all of their items, marking them off the registry, and double-counting the $1,800, I somehow forgot to give them their $63 in change, how I then went on my lunch break (it was almost three p.m. at this point, so I firmly blame this giant mistake on low blood sugar), how they came back fifteen minutes later to explain they hadn’t gotten the cash back, how I wasn’t there to confirm my mistake, how things got a bit heated between them and my assistant manager, how my assistant manager had to remove the cash drawer and count it in the back room to discover that, yes, we were $63 over, at which po
int, I returned from lunch so that I could first hug my assistant manager, who was trying not to cry as she counted, and then, second, hand the money back to the registrants and apologize for my error.
But this year, two days before Thanksgiving, I come down with the worst case of strep throat of my life. It’s the kind of sore throat that makes you realize what an asshole you’ve been for taking for granted the ability to swallow your own saliva with neither pain nor fear.
When my mom doesn’t answer her landline or cell phone, I track her down at the office and have her confirm my diagnosis. She technically can’t do so without a throat culture, but she kindly calls me in some antibiotics anyway. After calling work to let them know I can’t make it in and picking up my meds at the pharmacy, I tuck myself into bed with my laptop. Last Thanksgiving, we’d watched back-to-back documentaries on different people’s journeys up Mount Everest. Remembering this with great fondness, I begin my Netflix search there, hoping a new documentary might have come out in the past year.
Sadly, there isn’t anything Everest-y I haven’t already seen. This leads me through the entire selection of Netflix’s sports-documentary subgenre, which eventually spits me out onto YouTube, where I find someone has posted the entire two-day broadcast of the 2008 Women’s Gymnastics Olympic Trials competition. I saw it live, but that was four years ago. I’m more than happy to rewatch it now.
To me, the two achievements—summiting Everest and making the US Olympic gymnastics team—share a lot in common. Both rely so much on a person’s drive and work ethic, and yet, simultaneously, so much hinges on specific arbitrary circumstances, like the weather for the climbers and one’s age for the gymnasts.
To set the 2008 gymnastics scene for you, only six girls (all of who must be sixteen or older) can make the Olympic team. You might think that this means the top six finishers at Trials would be the ones named to the team. But only the top two all-around competitors automatically make it. In 2008, they’re Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson. (By the way, Johnson, of all of the celebrities I’ve run into here in Los Angeles, is the only one I’ve felt compelled to approach and tell what a fan I am. We were both shopping at a health food store and at five feet six and thirty-one years old, I towered over her both in height and age as I sang her praises and lamented the fact that her knee injury had kept her from trying to make another Olympic team at age twenty in 2012. When I was finished, she timidly said, “Thank you.” I stood there for a moment, waiting for something more but realized that was it, then returned to grocery shopping feeling like a low-level creep.)
The rest of the team is chosen by the suits, namely USA Gymnastics, which is headed by Márta Károlyi, the National Team Coordinator for USA Gymnastics, who needs to make sure that among those six girls, she has four who are solid on beam, four who are solid on floor, four on bars, and four on vault. In the end, this means that the two teenagers who actually placed fifth and sixth at Trials in the all-around don’t end up making the team, as they simply don’t fit into Márta’s puzzle.
To come so close and not make it. Can you imagine?
Once I’ve shaken myself from my gymnastics trance, I realize that if I can somehow get out of bed and to the grocery store, I can accomplish the dreaded Thanksgiving grocery run at two p.m. on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving instead of on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, which has to be the busiest food-shopping day of the year. And since my mom said that I should start to feel better within twenty-four hours, maybe by tomorrow, I can even prep a few dishes ahead of time.
In a way, my strep-ridden, sweatpants-and-hooded-sweatshirt-clad trip to Whole Foods is simpler than it would’ve been under healthy circumstances. Had I been healthy, I would have been rushing and distracted. I would have been annoyed by the fight for a parking space and the throngs of humans surrounding the normally unloved russet potato bin. But in my fevered state, I cannot be distracted. It takes all of my energy to just be there, list in hand, shopping.
I drive home and after unloading all of my bags, I’m completely spent. I sleep the rest of the day.
By Thanksgiving Day, however, I am feeling better. Not great, but hungry. Although it’s not my typical kind of hunger; the potential dreaminess of a perfect meal doesn’t entice me. I’m hungry for the day itself, for the ritual of it, for this tradition Matt and I have created over the past four years.
There are no demands on us. And since it’s just Matt and me, we needn’t bother changing out of our pajamas or setting a time dinner needs to be ready by. We eat breakfast, lingering over our coffees. We take Mavis for a neighborhood stroll. Matt watches football, the sounds of which—the whistles from the referees and voices of the commentators I know so well—are actually comforting. We occasionally check in on the Macy’s Day parade and are surprisingly entertained by the song and dance numbers.
And sometime in the early afternoon, we begin to cook.
Instead of stuffing, I make a savory bread pudding with ham, mushrooms, radicchio, and Gruyère. I take it right up to the final step so that all I will need to do is bake it for about forty-five minutes before dinner. And instead of cranberry sauce, I unmold the cranberry-maple jelly I made last night, which just spent twelve hours in the refrigerator.
As for Matt, he’s in charge of roasting two small chickens with lemon and garlic as well as the Brussels sprouts. But these dishes, like the mashed potatoes and gravy, can’t be made too far in advance.
Thus, the rest of the afternoon is spent on dessert, an apple tart. I mix the tart dough in the food processor, work it into a ball, cover it in plastic wrap, and then put it in the refrigerator so all that butter in the dough can re-solidify.
Meanwhile, I peel, core, and slice two pounds of apples. It takes a long time, but it’s satisfying to see my pile of pale-yellow crescent-shaped apple slices grow and grow. I preheat the oven and flour my work surface. I unwrap the dough from its plastic and roll it into a thin flat circle. I consider whether my circle is fourteen inches in diameter and decide that it’s very close. Then, remembering the beautiful accidental tarte aux pommes we ordered in Paris with its spiraling circle of apple slices, I layer my own slices. My pattern starts out perfectly, but by the end has lost its way. I remind myself that this is a rustic tart; I’m not even baking it in a tart pan. I’m simply folding the edges of the dough over on itself. And once I do, I coat it with melted butter and a sprinkling of sugar.
When it comes out of the oven forty-five minutes later, it’s a sight to behold.
The whole dinner is. From the table, which I’ve set with all of my best linens and dishes (accrued over the years at Heath), to the individual chocolate turkeys I’ve placed at both of our place settings to, of course, the food.
And though my appetite isn’t fully restored—my plate holds just a sampling of each dish on it—Matt’s exuberance is enough for the two of us. His plate is comically towering with food and un-photogenically completely covered with gravy. He’s holding his fork in one hand and knife in the other when he looks up at me. “Well?”
It’s that moment that only happens before certain meals when we know how hard we’ve worked and how seldom we eat such bounty.
And so we pray. Matt leads off with the Jewish version, the baruch. And I finish with the Christian one I grew up with. Thank you, God, for this food. Bless it for our use. Amen.
And then, at long last, we eat.
Almost exactly three months later, my agent thinks my book proposal is ready to go out to publishers. She sends it to a couple of her contacts on a Friday so that, that Saturday, while it’s out there in the hands of the deciders, Matt and I are eating dinner with two of our oldest friends at Taix, one of the oldest restaurants in Los Angeles—opened in 1927 and where some of the servers are over eighty years old. The chicken is always dry, but the pommes frites are fantastic, and so is the semicircular booth the four of us are sitting in. And while scooping out New England clam chowder from a terrine in the middle of the table, Matt says, “Oh,
guys. Amelia’s book proposal is out to publishers.”
“Oh, yeah?” says Neal. “How do you feel? Are you nervous?”
“Well, yeah, I’m nervous,” I say, “but at the same time, I’m—you know—life is going to keep going no matter what happens.” As I say it, I check my theory for holes, for leaks, for cynicism. But no. I seem to actually believe it.
When the proposal does sell less than a week later, I’m both surprised and ecstatic. I hadn’t expected to hear something so quickly. It had taken me over a year to get those forty-plus pages together. I had gone through so many drafts, and then all of a sudden, just like that, that part of the journey was over.
The news is hardly more than a few minutes old when we do what we always do when we have good news. We call Matt’s parents.
Matt’s parents are the kind of people I hope everyone has access to when they have good news to share. They are such positive, effusive people that it’s truly more fun to hear their reaction to any good news than to hear the good news yourself. (I once snapped a vacation photo that caught Matt in midair as he was diving headfirst onto a hotel bed. When Matt’s mom saw it, she responded with an enthusiastic, “Aw, that’s great, Matt!”)
And when we tell them, they don’t disappoint. They cheer so loudly over the phone I feel like some kind of Olympic champion. (OK, fine, I feel like an Olympic gymnastics champion.)
When we eventually hang up, we’re still on a high. And since Matt’s working from home today, we have time to continue to celebrate.
“Let’s call your brother!”
We call my brother.
“Let’s call your mom!”
We call my mom. (She knew it, by the way. “Aw, Sweetie. I knew someday somebody would recognize your talent.”)
“Let’s call your dad!”
“I dunno.”
“What do you mean? C’mon. He’s going to be thrilled.”
Bon Appetempt: A Coming-of-Age Story (with Recipes!) Page 22
