Easy Difficult Bake Oven

It’s kind of funny that my cooking career peaked before I was 25. Here’s hoping my future husband enjoys making dinner!

I kid...kind of.

Not that I don’t like to cook. I love making intricate, difficult, delicious meals with tons of ingredients.

But now that I live by myself - what’s the point? Part of what I enjoyed most about cooking is sharing the meal, watching other people enjoy it. Both filling and fulfilling!

Me, myself, and I really don’t really give two shits about gourmet dins.

Well maybe I would if I could - but I can’t so I don’t. You see, my rabbit hutch is rather ill equipped to handle any sort of epicurean feast. It’s not properly outfitted with real, grownup kitchen crockery and the sort (I am one of those few miserable NYC folks who went from having a dishwasher to not having one…devastation).
So because it’s just me, and because I don’t have a real stove (or any counter space whatsoever), and because I’m essentially cooking in my bedroom (it’s quite strange), I never really make much.

Boring, yes, but I eat the same thing practically every night: grilled chicken, veg, potato. Sometimes couscous. Maybe spaghetti and meatballs every now and again.

The keyword? Easy. You see, being the spoiled brat that I am, my mom still has a major hand in my dinner. She buys, trims, pounds, marinates, and grills me chicken breasts every time I see her. Which I, in turn, freeze and defrost as needed.

All I have to do is microwave a plastic wrapped potato and boil some brocc or asparagus and voilà - dinna is served.

(Wow, this all sounds quite disgusting. But hey, you’s gotta eat. And it does beat Ramen for sure.)
When I was home sick last week aaaaall I wanted was my mother’s chicken soup. Unfortunately I’m not super duper spoiled rotten - Trissi didn’t make me a pot and hand-deliver it to NYC.

She did, however, share her recipe - and I took matters into my own hands. Yessiree, I put my kitchenette to use and made my very own chicken soup.

Boy oh boy was it a pain in the ass.

I felt like a five year old making a cake in my Easy Bake Oven. Except instead of two ingredients - water and powder - I was juggling ten.

The most difficult part was the chopping. While I don’t have any counter space, I do have a little (very little) chopping block/cart type thing.
Using only paper towels and plates - I haven’t ever used a cutting board in this apartment - I impatiently chopped a sweet onion. I de-stringed, sliced, and minced five stalks of celery. But there was no where to put my chopped goods!

I had to use my bed as a surface while I diced half a bag of mini carrots and some large white mushrooms.

It was annoying. Infuriating. Troublesome. Tiresome!
As if making soup isn’t difficult enough - the all-encompassing time consuming-ness, the plethora of ingredients, the tasting and re-tasting, the stupid, insipid, never-ending simmering - I had to do all of this on a stove the size of a school desk...
...in an apartment the size of a r____t h____h. (Fill in the blanks. Though I do make fun of my apartamento mucho, I love it so and hate to talk too much smack).

Luckily there were no disasters. There was spillage and spitting from the simmering pot, and droppage of the choppage onto the floor. There were dishes and pots and silverware galore (cooking with no dishwasher is madness, I tell you, madness). There was too much soup for my small pot.

But in the end…unlike that funfetti cake I baked that poured out over the top of the pan and coated the bottom of my easy bake oven…there was, indeed, success.

Mmm mmmmm goooooood.

Close Encounters of the Awkward Kind

Now it’s really kind of crazy - insane even - that we New Yorkers manage to bump into people in a city of 8 million. Frequently, even. Goddamn run-ins with people we do not want to see!

Nuts.
What is it about this island? Seriously. Maybe Manhattan has some supernatural powers - like the island on Lost (so sad for the last season!) - and being the vindictive little shit it is, this island just can’t help itself from causing cataclysmic run-ins of an über awkward kind.
I’m sorry, dearest Big Apple, that some lowly inhabitants choose to litter and pee and spit and puke all over your glittery streets - but why take it out on the innocents?

Come on NYC Gods! I’m a good kid! Goody two-shoes even! I never ever (fine, hardly ever) do anything bad to hurt your feelings! So why you’s gotta hurt mine?

Yeah, it could be way worse. I could run into an old boss. Or a rival-sorority archenemy. Or an ex. Or an ex and his new girlfriend.
Thankfully the Manhattan Mystics have spared me from any sort of reaaaaally problematic melodramatic encounter.

But what is up with the universe, yo? Is it sending us signs? Am I supposed to be bff’s with that chick I couldn’t stand in college? Am I meant to marry that dude I went out with a few times? Should I never have quit that awful, awful job? Who knows.

Whatever the spectral spirits of NYC are trying to tell us by throwing people from our pasts into our present paths, well. I effing hate it.

It’s plain awkward!
There I am, huffing and puffing down the street, bebopping to my iPod, and suddenly someone catches my eye. Then there’s the token “Oops, I’m caught” darting glance away. Followed by the holy shit is that who I think it is oh.my.god.oh.my.god shit, shit, shit!!!!! re-glance.
It makes me want to cover myself with my bag, celeb-style. Ugh!

Perhaps my most horrific, most embarrassingly awkward run-in was with someone who I’d kissed (innocently enough) and given my number to (hey, I was tipsy).

Imagine my sober dismay the following day when this guy friended me on Facebook, called and left a message (of course I screened - he wanted to hang out - eek!), then actually had the audacity to text me. It was like Drew Barrymore’s character on He’s Just Not That Into You complaining about endless technology portal problemos - except dude was too into me).
The beauty of said technology, though, is that we can ignore. Dismiss. Delete. Defriend. Block. Screen. Sidebar.
 
However, technology does not save you (unfortunately) from face to face runs-ins. I saw aforementioned freak-of-nature-super-stalker at a party. I pretended to ignore. I played dumb.
It did not work. He approached. Red face, palpitations, and sweaty palms ensued. And I don’t mean the “Oh I like this boy!” kind. More like the “Oh dead LORD this guy is going to stalk and kill me” kind. Horrendous.

And you know, one would think that sunglasses would make you at least a little incognito on street-side run-ins - but no (if they don’t work for celebrities, they’s certainly not gonna work for us common folk). I recently ran into someone I’d had a bit of a crush on plodding along in the Village with a short, mousy brunette. Can we say complete opposites?
 
My Jackie O disguise failed. Uncomfortably unpleasant conversation ensued. N.o. D.a.n.k.e.s!
Alas, I was psyched that I’d put a tad bit of effort into my appearance that morning. Phew!

And so dearest, maniacal, nasty ass universe - all I ask is this: Please oh please oh please at least let me look super cute if I ever have to endure one of those cataclysmic run-ins of an über awkward kind.

Yikes!

Not-So-Sweet Heat

What is it up with New York City radiators? I cannot stand their noise!

Sure, they’ve probably not been switched out or updated in decades. And they do work ten times harder than the average radiator (that’s why we NYCers keep our AC on in the wintertime).

Perhaps they’re so over tenants demanding heat from them. Well, not tenants - landlords. (Seriously, why don’t property owners realize how much MONEY they would save if they knocked down the temp a few degrees in all the buildings in all the city?)

Anyway, so unfortunately I stayed home sick from work last Friday - bronchitis. Wamp wamp!
In my Ventolin-Advair-Levaquin-hydrocodone-NyQuil semi-hallucinatory state, I truly thought the heater was alive and out to get me.

Like the one that Macaulay Culkin was so petrified of in Home Alone.

Unlike Macaulay, though, when I was a youngin’ I liked the heaters in our house. Only now, in my later years do I have a troublesome relationship with them.

I find myself very much annoyed with my radiator’s raving racket. Scared, even, of its clinking and clanking (well, kinda - it was the meds I tell you!)

I get positively peeved at its splishing and splashing and steaming and hissing and roaring and rattling and clattering. Ugh.
What happened to the lovely heaters of yesteryear?

I have such fond memories of our little farmhouse furnaces. Sweet heat, indeed!

I remember taking bowls of Neapolitan ice cream and hiding in the corner near the couch in our living room. I would sit atop the floor vents, waiting for the heat to kick on, slowly eating my sugary snack.

After a seeming eternity, the furnace would get down to business, sending up hot air through the rectangular vent - the time had come for ice cream soup.


Though I never much liked how the ice cream turned brown - so boring - I would stir and stir and watch it melt. Then I would drink down the melty, messy, soup with sheer delight.

But the sweetness of the heatness didn’t end there!



The day Airheads found their way into the Parry household - what a day. We were quite taken with those tart slabs-o-taffy. Thank the lord for Costco and their big bargain boxes!
We had a little grey space heater in our kitchen and one day my mom (who has quite a sweet tooth - methinks that’s where I get it from), laid the Airhead on top of the heater.
I’m sure you can all guess what happened - the tough-to-chew Airhead became soft as putty. Boy was it delish!

So you see, heat in NYC is not so sweet. I suppose I could put a bowl of ice cream on top of my radiator (I wouldn’t dare put an airhead on that dirty behemoth) - but I don’t want to turn the rattling radiator on for all its noise, noise, noise!

Sadness.
I guess there’s nothing I can do. It’s a fight I cannot win. I could not beat the heater in a battle of wits. It’s always going to be loud and obnoxious and scary and clinky and clanky and grouchy. So I suppose I’ll just pile on another blanket.

I miss the days of ice cream soup and soft, melty Airheads. Sigh.

Now all I have to look forward to is a delirious night’s sleep under one too many quilts.