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Yeah yeah yeah…its been a while. We cool? Cool.
For the moment, I am going to spare you all the stories of what kept me from you for so long, and get right to a far more important matter – the slow rekindling of my relationship with Jamie Oliver.
I have always been a bit swoony for Jamie. His recipes far outnumber any other celebri-chefs’ on this blog, and his philosophy on food jives right with my own. Add to that the adorable accent and his being, in my opinion, somewhat easy on the eyes, and he had earned rightful inclusion on my Husband-Approved list of “five celebrities I would be permitted to make out with if the opportunity should arise”. That was until, however, he stood me up for Thanksgiving dinner.
Long story somewhat shortened, through a series of phone calls with various producers and the approval of my painstakingly created Turkey Day menu, there was, in 2008, a very real I-could-almost-taste-it possibility that Jamie Oliver was going to join me and my family for Thanksgiving dinner in my Brooklyn home. As you can imagine, this sent the staff at My Husband Hates Veggies Headquarters into something of a tizzy – a tizzy which I fully blame for the lack of cheese in that year’s Pumpkin Cheesecake and the obscene amount of money spent on a certain smart-looking tablecloth. Husband was also in an entirely different kind of tizzy, with the impending arrival of the virile young celebrity chef that he had consented to allow his wife to snog. Shakira, apparently, had not answered his invitation.
The heartbreak when Jamie never showed would have been manageable had I been in a sound state of mind. I was, instead, seven months pregnant at the time, and felt quite sure that Jamie’s snub of my dinner party was directly related to the then gargantuan size of my butt. The marked hormonal avalanche that followed resulted in an abrupt halt in the preparation of Jamie recipes, and his immediate exclusion from my Celebrity Snog List.
It is only now, nearly a year later, that I find myself letting a little bit of Jamie back into my heart. There is a shiny new Jamie cookbook to devour, after all, as well as his continued devotion to improving the quality of school lunches and call for a rise in standards in the meat and poultry industries. Why, I even cooked one of his new recipes today. Yes, it would seem that Mr. Oliver has wormed his way back into my life, albeit in a now entirely platonic way. What can I say? My taste buds are the only body part aching for Jamie at the moment. Could it be because he left me in my hormonally-heightened child-bearing state?
You can’t argue with pregnancy hormones, folks. That shit’s primal.
Well, I certainly hope none of you were searching for something light and healthy after gorging yourself this past weekend on stuffing and gravy. And apple crumb pie. And Bacon & Leek Potato Gratin. Wait…don’t I still have some of that hidden from Husband in the fridge? Back in a sec….
You’d think that the abundance of creamy carbs currently filling my system would make me desire something a little less stick-to-your-ribs than pasta with cream sauce, but, you see, there is another power at work here – a power that makes me pee at odd intervals (like 5x this past hour), burp loudly in mixed company, and crave nothing but carbs, morning, noon and night. This power also firmly plants its heel into my kidney at inappropriate times of day, and causes my body to experience all manner of “little miracles” that are best reserved for a forum other than a food blog. Trust me, there are some things you guys just don’t wanna know about.
When I first met my husband, he owned a half set of pans, and two cookbooks. The first cookbook was called “Are You Hungry Tonight? Elvis Presley’s Favorite Recipes”. The second was called “Cook Your Way Into Her Pants!”
Cook Your Way Into Her Pants! With an exclamation point. I’m serious.
Amidst the gratuitous bikini shots of the female model, credited only as “Z” (who is kind of a Cleveland Brown, as my husband would say), the author, Ted Taylor, takes us through his time-tested “hottie-scoring” kitchen techniques, such as: Disguising heavy cream in a soy milk carton so she doesn’t know you are cooking her fattening food, Naming whatever sauce you are cooking after the girl in question, as in”this is baked chicken with Shannon sauce”, and, my personal favorite – A recipe for a smoothie that will improve the taste of the male ejaculate. I’m serious.
But I have to be fair. This is actually a fantastic little cookbook. In 65 short pages Ted demystifies roux and stock, simplifies souffles, unpretentiously suggests wine pairings, and seemingly pioneers the molecular gastronomy movement by teaching us how to make liquid nitrogen ice cream (in a book published in 1993!)
Ted, if you are out there, I have my own recipe to add to the “recipes that will get you laid” repertoire. Not only is it quick enough to whip up for a weeknight dinner and completely fattening, but your intended seductee will never know how easy it was to make, as they will be aglitter and aglow at the fact that you made them something as decadent as lobster. Yeah, lobster can do that to a person.
