Dimes ...

This past week was nuts. JCrew and I started it by making the Detroit airport our bitch and then I got a molar yanked out of my face and then UMD won the NCAA Frozen Four and Facebook went nuts and then I was surprised to find that some people weren't watching the game.  Wha?!

Also, there was this weird thing:

I went to lunch the other day and found a dime in a parking lot.
Later that day I found two dimes in an alley.
Still later I was leaving a parking ramp and got my change from the woman in the booth -- 50 cents that she repaid me in all dimes.

This either means that dimes are my spirit animal or that dimes are the new penny.

FOOD

Chicken and Biscuits: Chuck kicked it old-school with this one, an all-you-can eat meat, cream and butter buffet just like the moms used to make. This was super awesome and retro and was exactly like as delicious as you would expect something that included chicken, cream and butter with vegetables to be.

Polenta Lasagna: Last weekend at my friend Oregon's wedding they served a small-plate buffet that was teeming with awesome. Shrimp and grits, lobster rolls, cheese and veggies and one of my favorites -- polenta lasagna. Damn it was good.

So I adapted something from Rachel Ray which was decent but messy. A layer of polenta, a layer of spinach and feta, a layer of polenta, diced tomatoes and artichokes and mozzarella. This could be fun to mess around with.

FOODS FROM FRIENDS
A few weeks ago Chuck passed off some leftover awesome pancake batter to his bestie The Great Archivist. I've thought about this transaction a lot since it happened. What did this exchange look like? How did it unfold? It's a weird thing to hand someone a buttermilk carton filled with batter. Right?

Today I got to see what this is like. Chuck and I went to breakfast with Cork1 and his girlfriend and the grand finale was the passing off of a reusable Ziplock container filled with beans, tomatillos, onions, chilis, garlic and beer and which were thrown into the crock pot or maybe a pressure cooker.

"What do I do with this?" I asked.
"Put it on toast," they suggested. "Or rice."

I went the toast route. This was a damn fine concoction. I can eat the heck out of that.

Meanwhile, in case you're wondering what I had for breakfast: Granny Apple Cinnamon French Toast from the Duluth Grill. Chuck suggested that I should wring out my pancreas after I ate it.

TV
I'm only going to say this once about Glee: The Complete First Season: ikindalikeitwhentheteacherdances. thatsall.

MOVIES
The Art of the Steal: This was a pretty great doc about how a super awesome private art collection of Albert Barnes gets a bunch of politicos into a tizzy and they do everything possible to undermine everything he says about how it should be maintained in his will. This might make you hate people.

Bill Cunningham New York: This is one of my favorite docs I've seen in awhile, second only to "Exit through the Gift Shop." It's about NYC fashion photographer, a charming charming man who has been capturing the street scene for years.

The Fighter Sometimes I think it is like Christian Bale wants to de-sexify himself as hard as possible. He's the only person in the world who makes an accent yicky. So why do I still want to see everything he touches? 

BOOKS
The Paris Wife: A Novelby Paula McLain: I’ve always been super attracted to the Ex-Pats, boozing their blurry-eyed way through Paris in the 1920s. Falling into gutters and falling into beds. Being so so serious about this art thing and passing the salt and pepper to Gertrude Stein.
While listening to, yes listening to, Paula McLain’s bit of historical fiction The Paris Wife, I had a thought that I’ve never had in a decade and a half of consuming Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and the like. It went like this: Why, these people are idiot ego-maniac twenty-somethings with no pause button on the old immediate gratification trigger.
This understanding doesn’t make this story, told mostly from the perspective of Hadley Richardson, Ernest’s first wife, any less delicious. I mean, I lap up a modern version of this bad behavior every week on “Jersey Shore.”

Full review here. 

A Widow's Story: A Memoirby Joyce Carol Oates: I think I handled the grieving process better when John Dunne died than when Raymond Smith did.
Something about Joyce Carol Oates’ memoir A Widow’s Story, chronicling the aftermath of her forever husband’s sudden death, had me weeping before appointments, at Subway, and especially in bed. I don’t remember Joan Didion’s version, which proceeded this one by about five years and included a sick daughter, making me feel like someone broke my heart in half and dropped the pieces into a garbage disposal.

Full review here.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford: This one is an all-city read here in D-town. I haven't had time to think about it yet.

Right now I'm reading Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef which was super stupid when JCrew and I were both reading it on the airplane. I'm a few pages into Crime And Punishment but haven't committed to it.