"And on the third day, SHE rose again, in fufillment of the Scriptures..."

Sorry, was that sacrilegious? OH WELL. Yes, I was dead and I've risen again...um, sort of. I've been flat out with the flu (swine? cat? turtle? who knows! who cares!) since Monday night, for 3 whole days I barely left my bed - except on Tuesday, I scuttled out in the morning - thank god, before becoming totally weak and useless - to get some food and supplies - OJ, bread for toast, Mrs. Grass' Chicken Noodle soup, and Buckley's Cough Syrup - by the way, this stuff works and BOY does it taste awful. That's their advertising tag line: It works and it tastes awful. They aren't kidding. But most cough syrups make me really high and sick to my stomach, so this one did the job. I couldn't read, I couldn't bear to sit up or keep my eyes open much, so I just laid there, listening to movies or to NPR on my radio.

I was so bored and going stir crazy...CABIN FEVER!!!!!!!!! So despite the fact that I feel a bit shaky and woozy still, I popped into work today for awhile. I feel much better yet in an altered state sort of way, like I need to go really slow and be careful crossing the street, lest I be hit by a car.

Needless to say, I shall be returning to my bed now - and for the rest of the weekend to hopefully fully rid myself of the Demon Swine Flu.

UGH.

By the way...

I forgot that I actually had something to say when I posted before (and spent half a day redoing the template on this thing)!

To Sarah Palin: SHUT UP AND GO AWAY. You are just making a big deal out of the David Letterman jokes about you and your daughter to try and keep yourself relevant. However, you are not. So stop all of your attempts to get women all riled up and pissed off because Dave is such a woman-basher. He's not and I wish to God he hadn't tried to apologize, even in a feeble way.I'm not offended by a word he said, his jokes about you and your family were HILARIOUS.

Funniest of all? That you sport a Slutty Stewardess Look. You shouldn't be offended. Stewardesses should be for being compared to you.

Recipe of the Week: Seaweed Salad

I had a vision of me waking up the next day, my lower torso covered in teal metallic scales and my legs transformed into a lovely mermaid's tail after eating this - as I imagine sea vegetables to be mostly what mermaids and mermen eat - I don't think they would eat fish, that would be like cannibalism, like devouring your friends. I had this vision because I made way too much of it and thought it may have had some sort of alchemical transformative effect on me. You see, I liked it so much, I ate it ALL - the whole bowl and that's a lot of kelp! It made my mertummy hurt as I am a land dweller (for now) and not used to it - but if you are like me and you LOVE that bright freon green seaweed salad that you see in delis alongside sushi, make this! It's doesn't turn lime green though - makes me wonder what they do to get that color... hmmm ... anyhoo!

Simple Seaweed Salad - courtesy of Mark Bittman
Yield 4 servings Time 20 minutes

The easiest way to produce this is to buy a small package of mixed seaweeds and proceed from there. But once you get more familiar with seaweed, you can use wakame, kelp, hijiki, or others, alone or in any combination you like. (I used kelp and wakame - I liked the kelp the best)

Ingredients
1 ounce assorted dried seaweeds or wakame
1/4 cup minced shallot, scallion, or red onion
2 tablespoons soy sauce, or to taste
1 tablespoon rice wine or other light vinegar, or to taste
1 tablespoon mirin or 1 teaspoon sugar, or to taste
1/2 tablespoon dark sesame oil, or to taste
Pinch cayenne, or to taste
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds, optional

1. Rinse the seaweed once and soak it in at least 10 times its volume of water. When tender, about 5 minutes later, drain and gently squeeze the mixture to remove excess water. Pick through the seaweed to sort out any hard bits (there may be none) and chop or cut up (you may find it easier to use scissors) if the pieces are large. Put in a bowl.

2. Toss with the shallot, soy sauce, vinegar, mirin, sesame oil, cayenne, and salt. Taste and add salt or other seasonings as necessary. Serve garnished with the sesame seeds.

Oy!

That's all, just OY.

My head is killing me, partially sinus pain from the stormy weather and partially because I have this terrible habit of turning off all the lights in my apartment when I'm ready for sleepytime (and not leaving one on in my bedroom) so that when I went to bed last night, I was too lazy to switch on a light and decided to feel my way to the bathroom/bedroom and thought I was at the doorway to the bathroom and walked straight into a wall. HARD. VERY HARD. It was actually very funny and it's times like those that I'm glad I don't live with anyone because I'm sure I would have been made fun of for days if anyone had actually witnessed it. So now I have a little bruise on my forehead above my eyebrow and it's a little sore. Silly rabbit.

Then I woke with a jolt at about 3am because of some major lightning and thunder going on outside, it was all of a sudden pouring rain, cats and dogs as they say, and I was wide awake. And grumpy. ALL I WANTED WAS A GOOD NIGHTS SLEEP.

And now today is crazy crazy, I have all these Things - work and personal - percolating and moving and shaking - and I am only one person so I'm trying to do the juggling act and handle it all gracefully and unstressfully. I try to breathe and I try to laugh. A lot. That helps. Maybe one day, when I'm like 75, I'll learn how to be an adult? Does anyone get to that point? I have a feeling the answer is no.

I do have a singer/songwriter for you to check out - Emily Arin. I found her through Idiot's Delight and Vin Scelsa - who loves her too - please click here: http://www.emilyarin.com/ & listen to "Springtime" and "When You Knew Me When" and "Hidden Flame"- she's quite lovely, don't you think? And lovely lyrics to match:

From "Hidden Flame"
Sleep caught me just before the sunrise
And sent me to my dreams
I saw three mermaids being baptized
And then they sang to me
You are an otherworldly being
Unreachable with meaning
A cousin of the wind
Your body limitless and lightfilled
A golden drop of sun spilled
Into the world of man
Remember this when you're awake if you can

It was a dark and stormy day...

And night too, the past few nights I've either fallen asleep to open windows (for that lovely fresh air) and rain falling or woken up with a start at 4am to thunder and sudden downpours. And now I feel cozy, even at work, in my office, because its such a gray, chilly, foggy, stormy, raindroppy sort of day. And I love that. It's moody weather and I'm a moody girl so we go well together. And I love the fact that it's June and I'm wearing tights and a sweater.

So this is really a Recipe of the Week post because I finally made the promised cheesecake that turned out so beautiful (and I don't even really like cheesecake) and so scrumdiddlyumptious that I amazed myself. I have the Barefoot Contessa to thank, since I used her recipe, with a few alterations and it was a HIT. It was creamy and not too dense - the only change I would make next time is to increase the crust ingredients so that it's thicker and just MORE of it. It's the best part in my opinion! I freaked out slightly when I added the filling to the pan - it came all the way to the top and then it kept rising and rising in the oven like a souffle but I kept going and as it cooled, it deflated, so at least now I know how the cheesecake chemistry works.

For the Crust
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs (10 crackers)
1 tablespoon sugar
1 stick salted butter, melted

For the Filling
2 1/2 pounds cream cheese, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
5 whole extra-large eggs, at room temperature
2 extra-large egg yolks, at room temperature
1/4 cup sour cream
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest (2 lemons)
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Crust
To make the crust, combine the graham crackers, sugar, and melted butter until moistened. Pour into a 9-inch springform pan. With your hands, press the crumbs into the bottom of the pan and about 1 inch up the sides. Bake for 8 minutes. Cool to room temperature.

Filling
Raise the oven temperature to 450 degrees.

To make the filling, cream the cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Reduce the speed of the mixer to medium and add the eggs and egg yolks, 2 at a time, mixing well. Scrape down the bowl and beater, as necessary. With the mixer on low, add the sour cream, lemon zest, and vanilla. Mix thoroughly and pour into the cooled crust.

Bake for 15 minutes. Turn the oven temperature to 225 degrees and bake for another 1 hour and 15 minutes. Turn the oven off and open the door wide. The cake will not be completely set in the center. Allow the cake to sit in the oven with the door open for 30 minutes. Take the cake out of the oven and allow it to sit at room temperature for another 2 to 3 hours, until completely cooled. Wrap and refrigerate overnight.

For the topping, I took two containers of strawberries (I guess they were 16 oz each), quartered them into a bowl, added 1/4 cup of sugar and let them macerate for 20 minutes or so. Drain out some of the liquid, put about 2/3 of them into a saucepan with a little more sugar if you want it sweeter and stir in some cornstarch (or you could just use confectioner's sugar) and let it come to a boil, then stir stir stir at a medium heat until it all starts to break down. After it's cool, you can add it to the fresh berries or wait until serving so that the fresh berries don't get gloopy. I kept the topping in a separate container so that people could spoon it on top of their slices as they so desired - more or less, however much they wanted or if they wanted a plain slice.

Recipes of the Week...

That do not bear repeating, but I want to mention them here so that I still look like I'm on track with my effort to try a new thing each week... so the last two recipes were Potato Leek soup in a mushroom broth - totally HUMDRUM and I would have rather just eaten all the components separately. The second recipe was a fava bean salad with mint and goat cheese. Again - whatever! All the bits apart were good, I love fava beans and the pairing with the mint is perfect, but fava beans are blah if you don't do anything to them, so I think I'd do this again, but instead of just blanching the beans, I'd follow it with some sauteing with garlic and balsamic vinegar to give them some oomph. The goat cheese is always good but it's creamy and the fava beans are creamy so you are left with creamy minty mush.

This week? I'm attempting to make my first cheesecake from scratch, graham cracker crust and all, for a co-workers birthday - I need to go buy the spring pan first though! I'll report back on how that goes!

Hidee Ho, Mes Amies! I know I know, I've been a bad bad girl blogger type person. I have all the excuses prepared, but you know the drill - I get caught up with workstuff, mestuff, reallifestuff, I had the May Megrims and didn't feel like sharing. It's quite catchy, right up there with swine flu - honest! You can get bad vibes just by inhaling the same air as someone surrounded by dirty PigPen Aura.

It's on to June we go and let's see what we can do differently this month. I think I was suffering that let down you get when summer vacation is over - only this time, it was the Texan Adventure. I had looked forward to it for so long, and then it happened and it ROCKED and was over too quickly and I realized there how much I miss my Little Buddy and having the daily fit of giggles and then I came back here and was quickly pulled down into a funk, wondering "what now?" I remember when Snow White and I were little and we all went to Kauai and we drove back to Las Vegas from California, knowing we had to go back to school the next day. As soon as we crossed the stateline into Nevada and saw that sign, we both started sobbing and were inconsolable. My mother took pity on us and so she let us stay home the next day and most likely did something fun with us like build a fort in the living room and watch a movie in it but I'm an adult now so I guess I have to build my own fort, don't I? Unless - Mommy, do you want to fly here and help with the sheets and two chairs? I'll Netflix something for us...

Time to pull oneself up by the bootstraps as they say and stop being such a miserable old cow. Plaster on a fake smile and plow through it until it feels right - fake it til you make it sort of thing. I've had a nice couple of days now and some plans percolating so all of that helps and allows the good thoughts to simmer and take hold. Saw Angels and Demons this Sunday, followed by pulled pork, coleslaw and some bourbon drink (or two) called Backyard Brew at Blue Smoke...yummmm pulled pork, sweet savory tender piggy... sorry, piggy, but you do taste good. Then last night I met the newly crowned "Mrs." Bushwick Bird after work to see Wolverine for a midweek movie night - it was fun and you get to see Hugh Jackman naked and I have a mini crush on Liev Schreiber and we had candy for dinner so all in all - a fantastic Tuesday.

And work has been going super well - I've had a lot to do but it's all stuff I like - my boss and some of the IT dudes call me the Little Termite - I guess I dig in there and make work for them, now don't I? I've also been crowned the Met Killer - one word from me about the Mets and their awesomeness goes south so I've been forbidden by my boss and the other co-worker Met Fans to speak of them...sort of like Harry Potter and He Who Must Not Be Named - yes, it IS that serious...

And a possible Philadelphia day trip in another week or so...and then Family Reunion at the end of July..oh and there's nail polish! How could we forget my new nail polish? See, it's always the little things - bought this superdark, eggplanty nail polish that makes me feel vampy and flapperish:

Not that I'm either of those things but I love it - and I know my mother would hate it, but I don't care - it's FABULOUS. The trick is to do it to short nails - if they get long and you wear it, it looks Elvira-ish and that's not what I'm after. Cool, a bit goth but not ghoulish.

I know this is a pretty humdrum post - I feel like I'm writing a letter sometimes to some random person out there in the ethers and I'm just filling it with all my day to day stuff that isn't really interesting but you need to keep up with me to know where my head's at - I do hope I have some better things to entertain you with soon - I'm keeping my fingers crossed and you should too, if you want better reading material!