As a little girl, I loved to swim, still do. Just about any chance I got to go swimming, I would. I dreamed of having my own pool. My bigger dreams were to be an Olympic swimmer and also to swim the English Channel.
Pools and water became an obsession as well as a love. I would look into my backyard and fantasize a swimming pool. It never appeared. My dad always lived in an apartment building with a pool so there was usually a place for me to swim. When I was older and using his for exercise, I would have to share it with his elderly neighbors. They could get nasty and it was tricky navigating around their crankiness. Some of them became my new best friends in life...as long as we stayed in our own lanes.
When I saw the David Hockney series of pools, I totally understood how the swimming pool was his muse.
The first time my sister cooked for me, we were both in our 20s and
living together in my 500 square foot studio apartment on the Upper West
Side of Manhattan. It was the day I had quit my job working in book
publicity and had decided to go back to freelance film production work.
My sister, Alexandra, having just finished up her first transfer
semester at the Fashion Institute of Technology, wanted to make us a
home-cooked meal to celebrate our big life changes. She was already
cooking by the time I arrived at our apartment that evening. I smelled
pasta boiling and lots of lemon and basil. I started over towards the
blender to take a sniff, but she shooed me away. “It’s almost done. Go
and sit down.”
“I always use a combination of cumin, sweet paprika, garlic powder (not garlic salt, it’s way too synthetic tasting), kosher salt, white pepper, and a bit of sugar. OH MY GOD! And hot paprika! I recently bought some fresh hot paprika and I can’t believe how much depth of flavor it packs with the smokiness of paprika and the spiciness of cayenne!” My spice rant had gotten me so excited I almost skidded off the leather couch of the Pasadena tapas bar we were chatting in.
If a group of 10 people playing the word association game were given the word “summer”, chances are at least half would say picnic. Probably more. For me, the best summer picnic, the only summer picnic, is a beach picnic. My family wasn’t park picnickers or picnic in the woods people. We were Long Island beach lovers. And that’s where we did our picnicking.
Several years ago (about four), I threw a surprise birthday party for the Wild Boar. All I really wanted was for him to be "surprised" and he was. I ordered formal invitations and sent them out with the words, "No Gifts" on the bottom.
