Story of the Day 9/9/2008

The older I get, the more I realize how weird I am.
I don’t mean that I am getting weirder and weirder, although that is also true, I mean that I get these brief glimpses of my behavior and I realize that it is out-of-sync with “normal” behavior. Normal being what other people do.

For example, I have to have a minimum of ten perfectly sharpened pencils to draw.
If there are less than ten and they aren’t perfectly sharpened, I am somewhat frozen.
Perfectly sharp means I carry my own pencil sharpener- heavy-duty electric, with me to all places I might draw. The Art Center, Herron, Starbucks.

Pencils that other people consider to be sharp are not sharp enough for me.
Some of the other artists tease me about this, so, obviously, it isn’t subtle.

And paper.
I only draw on Stonehenge.
I am “uncomfortable” with other paper.
Occasionally, someone gives a piece of paper that they think I will like.
Occasionally, I even buy a piece of something different because I have been lulled by it’s beauty to think I will like it.
Well, those pieces are all up in the studio in a stack.
Untouched, except to occasionally drag out and look at.

It is worse than this. About 20 years ago, I was using a different drawing paper. And they stopped making it. I was traumatized for about 4 months until I settled on Stonehenge.
And pencils. I used to use “specials”, and they don’t’ make them anymore.
That was traumatic.
To prevent such a trauma from happening, again, I, on purpose, have three almost the same drawing pencils that I use at all times, so I am not depending on just one of them feeling familiar.

But that is all just drawing.

There is cooking.

I made dinner, tonight.
Of course making dinner doesn’t’ necessarily mean cooking.
There are sandwiches.
There are salads.
But most of the time, in our house, it means cooking.

I get around this by investing heavily in frozen foods.
Of course I vary it a bit with the boxed and canned foods, also.

I thank G-d for inventing frozen food. It can almost pass for something I have made from scratch.Almost.
Not quite because it is usually better than anything I would make.

This is because most frozen food can be microwaved, which protects it from what usually happens when I am cooking.
I walk away from eth kitchen and forget about the food.
Which is one of the reasons that G-d made smoke detectors.

And then there are recipes.

I usually find my recipes when I am reading the newspaper.
Of course, many recipes don’t attract me.
Especially in Indiana, where pulled pork is considered a delicacy.
So, a lot of the recipes printed I the paper feature it, and similar gourmet versions of treyfe.

On occasion, I find a recipe in a magazine.
If this is a magazine I own, that is good, if not, a lot of things can go wrong when I copy the recipe from the magazine in eth dentist’s office onto a scrap of paper I have begged from eth receptionist. Especially since decoding my handwriting leads to some interesting permutations.

But, tonight, I cooked using a recipe I had cut from eth newspaper that featured zucchini, instead of pork. So, I was not depending on deciphering my handwriting.

Of course since I couldn’t find the recipe, it did affect the purchase of the ingredients, and the decision of exactly how much and what to throw in.
It also didn’t help that I hadn’t actually read the recipe,
I had read the name of it, and looked at the picture- so I had this memory to go one.

Anyhow, it only needs to taste like the picture, right?

Oh yes, and I don’t’ have a photographic memory, either.

Luckily, I did find the recipe about 35 minutes after I had started cooking, and about 5 minutes before I finished. And, I was pleased to see that there were several similarities between what the recipe said and what I made.

Even better, I didn’t burn anything.

So, it wasn’t just another dinnertime at the Margolis-Greenbaum house.
It was better than normal!