Monday Night Dinner

Do you remember that feeling of disconnect you would get whenever you ran into one of your teachers somewhere that wasn’t the classroom? When you realized that they too visited cafes, bought milk, and went to the movies? I had the grown up version of that moment of cognitive dissonance a few weeks ago when I answered my cell phone and spoke to Christopher Kimball and Bridget Lancaster from America’s Test Kitchen. Read the rest of this entry ?

My grandmother kept her bread in the oven. As a child this made perfect sense to me simply on the rationale that that was where Mimi kept her bread. She also drank buttermilk, washed her dishes in water three degrees below boiling (I inherited this), watched Dallas and had atrocious handwriting (possibly I also inherited this). It wasn’t remarkable, it just was. Read the rest of this entry ?

Some people are afraid of clowns. Some people have nightmares that one day their friends will suggest them as a contestant for “What Not to Wear”. I double check that the front door is locked before I go to bed even if I’ve just watched someone else lock it. I also sometimes wake up at 2am thinking that I’ve heard the doorbell ring. I then lie there for 10 minutes wondering whether (a) I hallucinated it; (b) it’s a really polite serial killer; (c) one of our friends having a crise de foie; or (d) someone who has been attacked, made it as far as our front door and managed to ring the doorbell but can’t go any further and when I leave in the morning to catch the bus I’ll discover a dead body on the doorstep and feel really guilty about how I didn’t get up to check. Then I usually roll over and go back to sleep. Read the rest of this entry ?