Last week, because I am possibly a creep who reads too many blogs, I made a recipe from Emily Gould's "famous secret blog" Heartbreak Soup. (I'm not going to get into it, because that's weird, but Team Emily, duh.) I know that the saga is over-exposed and that she got a lot of flack for the extremely long and confessional story she wrote for The New York Times magazine, but I thought it was fascinating and well crafted. Also, I adore a good overwrought food metaphor, and girlfriend is full of them. I deeply understand the impulse to connect what you eat and what you feel in a personal and convoluted way, because it appeals to my passive aggressive desire to communicate in symbolism rather than words. I also like talking about cooking in a way that is experiential and non-technical, because that is how I operate in the kitchen.

I followed Emily's recipe for chicken soup pretty closely, whole bird and all, except I went running while the delicious ginger broth was simmering instead of doing my laundry. Also, I subbed out some vegetables and added fresh carrots and celery and noodles to the strained broth before shredding and reincorporating the chicken meat. I added so much stuff during that last step that by the end the soup was so thick that I couldn't effectively skim the frothy fat off the top, which made delicious soup, because, man, there was a lot of olive oil in there. I loved the ginger in the broth and I made the soup Tuesday night and ate the very last of it for dinner on Friday, which was noteworthy because I hardly ever like a soup recipe so much that Cody and I don't need to freeze at least a few tuppers of it for later.

Chicken soup last week seemed frivolous and wasted on the healthy by this recent Monday night, however, when I truly was deathly ill with something evil tight in my sinuses and rough in the back of my throat. I reprised the chicken base of this soup to make myself some comfort food, Avgolemeno soup. Too sick to feel like stopping at the grocery store on the way home from work, I just used frozen chicken breasts. I didn't even defrost the chicken before browning it in a little olive oil and five cloves of garlic, and then dumping in four carrots, half a bunch of wilted celery, a chopped shallot, a quarter of a red onion, and two bouillon cubes, covering everything in water and letting the mixture simmer for an hour while slumping on the couch and watching my DVRed episodes of "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" and sending Cody out for a lemon for the next step of the soup. Think about how this television show would be much cooler if they actually sang more than one Sound of Music song per episode.

After your mixture on the stove is brothy, 1-3 hours, remove the chicken and strain out the vegetables. Say thank you to the vegetables because you are sick and talking to inanimate objects, and put them in your yard waste bucket. Return the broth to your stove and turn the heat to medium high. Add 1 cup rice. While the rice is cooking, shred the chicken breasts with your hands into little bite sized pieces. Juice one lemon into a medium sized mixing bowl and use the microplane grater gifted to you by your best friend to grate a few teaspoons of zest into the lemon juice. Whisk four eggs and a teaspoon of flour into the lemon juice until everything is frothy. Return the chicken to the broth and wait for the rice to soften(approximately 15 minutes). While you are waiting for the rice to be ready, you can dramatically fling yourself onto the couch or the floor to make a point about how sickly you are feeling, because now Cody is back from the store and ready to be impressed by the severity of your discomfort. You can also adjust the seasoning of the broth with salt and pepper.

Next is the tricky part: temper the egg mixture. Scoop a cup of simmering broth out of your soup pot with a measuring cup and pour very slowly it into the egg bowl while quickly whisking with your other hand. This warms up the eggs so that they will not scramble when introduced to the hot broth. Take your whisk and the tempered eggs and pour that mixture slowly into your broth on the stove, whisking the soup in the big pot. At this point, the soup will turn from a brothy color to an opaque creamy white. Continue to stir the soup with your whisk for three to four minutes while everything gets thick and yummy. It is not necessary to bring the soup to a boil.

Once your soup is done you can serve in a big bowl with a piece of toast. I also recommend watching all those episodes of Battlestar Galactica that you've been missing because you've been out town every weekend for the past month, which is probably the reason you're exhausted and got sick in the first place. If you're lucky, when your boyfriend went to buy the lemon for the soup, he will have also bought two single serving pieces of red velvet cake, which is the perfect dessert to almost any meal, but especially Avgolememo Soup.

After all this is consumed, take a big glug of NyQuil. Be sure to put the extra soup in the fridge before the NyQuil step, because I'm pretty sure that what the apothecary gave Juliet was actually NyQuil, and you will undoubtedly pass out approximately 34 seconds after the sweet potion passes your lips.

Seeing as I wasn't present in the courtroom, I don't have much to add about the R. Kelly trial and acquittal that isn't presented more accurately and cleverly than this excellent article from Slate, except to say that sexual abuse of 13 year old girls aside, I'm mostly disappointed that we won't be getting any Trapped in the Closet updates prison-style.

Today, a little more than a month shy of our four year anniversary, Cody told Facebook that he is "in a relationship" with me.

The internet is weird.

Another thing that should reassure me that I am firmly planted in my own generation is the fact that I am less scandalized and annoyed by the infection carrying whoring sea-donkeys on A Shot At Love with Tila Tequila and Rock of Love than I am by the waxy, dead-eyed, Stepford zombies on The Bachelor. I've studiously avoided The Bachelor franchise in all its incarnations, mostly because it doesn't seem very interesting. Cheesy rose ceremonies and prom dresses pale in comparison to giant novelty clocks, challenges involving roller derby, complete whack-job sociopaths and the careful dance that is maintaining the illusion that Bret Michaels is not going bald. For the last week or so, however, Vh1 has been running various iterations of the Bachelor pretty much non-stop, so while running on the elliptical at the gym yesterday I subjected myself to exactly 45 minutes plus cooldown of NFL quarterback bachelor Jesse and his quest to find true love on major network television.

I guess what offended me so much about the entire production was the sickening earnestness of it. The fact that a doe-eyed boy from Florida really thought that ABC would present him with his heart's truest soulmate, and he just had to be smart enough to correctly pick her out of a lineup of 25 identically manicured women. I would rather watch Flavor Flav, who I know for a fact has an existing long term girlfriend, pretend to seek a relationship with one or several insane skanks, because at least it is an honest sham. And the very worst thing, on this particular bachelor show, was it was the episode where the bachelor's "best friend from home" (a woman who looked exactly like every other contestant) revealed her identity to the remaining bachelorettes, and, dude, that was so annoying. The "best friend from home" spent a full ten minutes in the beginning of the episode crying about how sorry she was that she had lied to the other women on the show, and that she wanted to be forgiven, and that "there is no peace in deception." And while I might agree with her, come on, did you really not think about this scenario before it happened? Quit crying about it now. Holy crap. It's just tv, it's not like a real life relationship will result from this. Effing idiots.

I generally don't worry about the cashiers in the checkout stand at grocery store judging me by my purchases, but that is probably because I usually buy sensible and non-remarkable assortments of groceries. Fruits and vegetables and 10 kinds of yogurt and sundry dry goods that do not become magical and fabulous until I take them home to my little cubby of a kitchen and squirrel them away in my pantry to eventually be turned into soups and casseroles and baked items. I'm getting to a cranky point in my 20s where I'm tired of most of the restaurants I used to love and nothing will please me like my own cooking does. I sometimes worry that that means I am slowing turning into my yiayia, which is obviously a terrifying concept.

So, the majority of the time my grocery basket looks like the shopping list of an old lady, albeit one who really likes seasonal beer, and I don't think that is anything to cause me considerable shame. However, last night, I must admit I was a little sheepish as I went through the checkout line with a little under a pound of asparagus, three tomatoes, a can of chocolate slim-fast powder and a box of red wine. I wanted to stop and reassure the cashier that I wasn't going to make a slim-fast shake for dinner to wash down my asparagus and wine, but of course that would have called even more attention to the combination. I guess all that means is that I am still firmly planted in my twenties and not in any danger of premature octogenarian status.

Close call, that one.

OMG, I absolutely need for these people to be living in the White House right now.

My office's kitchen boasts one of those space-station lookalike single serving coffee machines that create mediocre, nondescript, brown water fresh for you in less than a minute! Usually I avoid the Keurig machine like a a girl who sucks down triple shot Americanos and lusciously sludgy french press coffee with a gleam in her eye and a twitch in her leg, because, well, I am that girl. Other times, however, my credit card bill exceeds my monthly income and I start to contemplate different ways to save money. It is probably pretty bourgey of me that one of the first things that comes to mind when I try and tally up extraneous expenses in my lifestyle is espresso coffee drinks. I was pleased to see last week at Tully's (which was, as my grandmother likes to remind me, founded by a Greek here in Seattle) that they produce little coffee pods for the Keurig machine for a very reasonable price. Suspending disbelief for a moment, and hoping against hope that the sub-par quality of previous coffee made from this machine was due to the cheap pods and not the intrinsic abilites of an electronic thing that claims to be able to make tasty beverages from mysterious-plastic-pod-cups, I decided to give the Tully's brand pods a shot.

Verdict? Still totally gross. Sigh.

Happy 71st Birthday to the Golden Gate Bridge!!

In the third grade, this landmark and personal savior to me was the subject of my ever research project, and thusly here is a short list of the few things I remember from that project, which was written in double-spaced-erasable-ink-cursive on approximately 5 pages of white lined paper:

a. The official hue of the Golden Gate Bridge called "International Orange," a color used only for this bridge.

b. As a result of the natural wear and tear of the salt air and ubiquitous San Francisco fog, the Golden Gate Bridge is constantly being repainted. As soon as the painters get to one side, they must start over again.

c. Before the bridge was completed, people got from San Francisco to their weekend homes in Marin county by ferry boat.

And. . . that's about it. But I'm sure the paper I wrote was as well reasoned and riveting as an eight year old could muster.

In high school I drove the Golden Gate Bridge daily to get to school and extracurricular activities in the city, which is, in retrospect, kind of the most amazing commute ever. Past the Marin Headlands, over the bridge, and through Golden Gate Park to arrive at campus within eyesight of Ocean Beach is something that a person can't truly appreciate until they are completely beyond the snotty teenager phase. The Golden Gate Bridge is also the site of my very first car accident, occuring in the fall of 1999, the first day my mother entrusted with taking the blue Ford Aerostar to and from school on a Friday. About 1/3 of the way across the bridge I dropped a cassette tape on the floor, and leaned to pick it up, smacking cleanly into the grey Jetta in front of me. Luckily the Jetta emerged unscathed. The bumper of the poor Aerostar, however, was shattered and I was in tears for half the day.

The best thing thing of all about the bridge, hands down, is flying into San Francisco sometime around dusk on a clear evening, and seeing the orange spans against the grey ocean, sunlight glittering on the water. I miss home.

Two Springtime CakesMegan called me at 4pm yesterday inviting me to a six o'clock barbecue at Seth's house, giving me my choice of salads, drinks or desserts to bring and share. I thought about throwing together strawberry shortcake, but had used all the rest of my strawberries on Cheerios eaten on the sun dappled patio that morning. Pie was also briefly entertained, but would have required a trip to the grocery store. My pantry already had all the ingredients for this Velvet Spice Cake from The Joy of Cooking, even the cup of plain yogurt and cream cheese for the frosting. I recommend this recipe. It is very moist and fluffy, though I might double up on the spices next time. It was quite mild and with thick cream cheese frosting (my own improvised recipe) so mellow that you could barely discern hints of the cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg.

I decorated the cake with icing tips #67 for the ruffled leaves and #107 for the cranberry colored drop flowers. I brought the big cake to the barbecue with me, barely two hours later, and delivered the smaller bundt to my grandmother on the way home. I made one extra little bundt cake for my lunch today which was not frosted so prettily, but tasted delicious when I ate it out of tupperware just an hour ago.

I was already getting ready to write my post about how The Midnight Organ Fight is my favorite album of the first half of 2008 and a strong contender for the entire year before I did some clicking around on the internets and realized that the band is made up of Scottish brothers Scott and Grant. It is well documented that there are few things I love more than sibling bands. (A short list of the precious few things I hold above sibling bands are fresh lilacs, seasonal beer, cute flats and chocolate cake.)

After at least a year of admiring it in bookstores, Cody purchased the America's Test Kitchen Cookbook a few weeks ago. I think it illustrates some important differences in us that Cody's idea of the perfect cookbook is one that provides scientifically tested "best of breed" recipes, whereas I am mostly seeking the cookbook that has the recipes that taste just like the food my mother and grandmothers cook. Nevertheless, Cody's purchase inspired him to resolve to cook one new meal every week. He got off to a great start this week by cooking delicious dinners two nights in a row. Which leads me to. . .

Meals my boyfriend cooked for me this week:

1. Parmesan Encrusted Chicken Breasts - America's Test Kitchen Cookbook
This recipe required Cody to pound chicken breasts to 1/2 thick and coat them in flour, egg whites and thickly grated Parmesan cheese before pan frying them briefly and finishing the baking in the oven. The chicken turned out moist and tender, with a crunchy savory coating. The reheated extra breast I ate for lunch the next day was less crispy, but equally delicious. In the future, I would reheat the chicken in the oven rather than the microwave, if given the option.

2. Boeuf Bourgondien - The Joy of Cooking
Cody swore he saw a recipe with photos of this dish in the America's Test Kitchen cookbook, but when it came time to find the recipe to write up his shopping list, it was definitely not in there. I wonder if he dreamed of it. Sometimes I make up recipes in my dreams, like last week when I dreamt of creating a lasagna with lots of spinach and shredded chicken. Luckily, The Joy of Cooking had a detailed and delicious looking Beef Burgundy recipe. We ate this over egg noodles, which was perfect. We both agreed that the next time we make this recipe we will use way more carrots and other vegetables.

Sometimes My Coworkers are Magical People

Exhibit A: Toni Rose showed up to work wearing a pink shirt with a large red "A" on the chest. Toni explained by saying that her husband bought her the shirt and that the "A" stands for Andy. Toni claims to be fully cognizant of the existence of Hester Prynne and the associations her shirt might lead to, but I am suspicious. Toni suspects that Andy bought her the shirt to retaliate for the time when she bought him a pink button up shirt a while back, but the whole thing makes me pretty happy that my boyfriend is named Cody.

Exhibit B: I have a love-hate relationship with the canned music in the locker room at the gym. For the most part it is terrible, but at the same time I don't know where else I would ever hear LL Cool J and J Lo dueting on "All I Have," and sometimes I like to be reminded that that song actually happened. Today, in the locker room, I was getting changed and "Jungle Boogie" was being piped in over the speakers. As we are tying her shoes, Maren turns to me and says: "What is this song? It makes no sense. People don't dance in the jungle." And no, she was giving voice to a long-held (and perhaps just) contention with the lyrics of the song, girlfriend had literally never heard that song before. Maren is 23 years old, doesn't live under a rock, and I don't care what kind of music you seek out in your personal life, I absolutely do not understand how you can exist in the universe for that long without being subjected to all of the bigger hits in Kool & The Gang's catalogue. I mean, last summer, Kool & The Gang played in the street outside our office building for some stupid promotion or another! I bet they probably played "Jungle Boogie" three times. Maren should get an award or something.

Obviously, my team rules.

3 Things About Otter Pops:

1. I bought a box of 200 Otter Pops at Costco last week! Hello, summer! Come to my house for Otter Pop Party!

1. I prefer the old packaging (above) with big pictures of all the Otter Pop personalities. When I was little, I always liked Alexander the Grape the best. Fruit Punch was my favorite flavor, but I never wanted to admit it because I thought Poncho Punch was a creep.

3. The shower gel I am using this week at the gym smells like Sir Isaac Lime.

Hey, Khia, you know what sucks? Having only one breakout hit and having it be so disgusting and full of degenerate sexual acts that I am scared to even paraphrase the lyrics here because I know my mom reads this blog. Oh, wait, you know what is also terrible? Appearing on a bottom of the barrel Vh1 reality show about female rappers. Crap, it gets worse. Despite the fact that you are semi-famous for rapping about your personal proclivities, you are considered less of an authority on rap music than the dorky fat white judge, and you are a contestant on this show. Aw, Khia, what happens next? You get kicked off the show for cheating and not writing original lyrics?! Really? That is so tragic is is almost not funny. Almost. I still laughed pretty hard.

Also? This show, Miss Rap Supreme, is totally bizarre. I consider myself to quite experienced in deciphering the interpersonal relations and issues between reality television stars, but man, I have no idea what these women are always fighting about. I think that maybe they are just yelling because it feels cathartic. That's really the only reason I can imagine that two grown women would go from kissing each other to screaming loudly about which one is more of a "devil." Further, the premise of this show is that it is a rapping talent competition, and I don't want to sound like an old lady here, but I can't even tell if they're rapping well or not because they swear so much that it is all bleeped out. The presumptive front runner in the competition, a woman who goes by the name "Nicky2States," is repeatedly told by the judges what a good rapper she is, but I literally have no idea, because I haven't heard her speak a whole sentence that wasn't stripped of all meaning by the rampant bleeping. And while I am a connoisseur of the well placed expletive, Vh1, you are basic cable, not HBO. . . understand your limitations.

Greek Easter

This weekend, due to discrepancies between the Julian and Gregorian calendars and the date of Passover, the Eastern Orthodox churches celebrated Easter. I also celebrated in this holiday. Saturday afternoon my friends came over to my house and I cooked Greek food. I woke up at 6 am to clean my kitchen and grocery shop. I made moussaka, spanakopita, fassolakia, and a huge horiatiki salata, all served with yummy crusty bread. Serendipitously, this weekend also marked Nitsan's brief return to Seattle, so between him and many of the regulars, we passed the afternoon happily. The day was warm and and sunny, and I sat on my patio with several ladies, sipping ouzo and gossiping.

I had spent the entire previous week trying to conceive of a not-gross cocktail using ouzo, so that I could name it something disgusting like "Greek Passion" or "The Freaky Greeky." Alas, inspiration would not come to me. Kevin succeeded where I failed, however, by combining ouzo with Dr. Pepper to create the "Dr. Papanicolaou," named after the inventor of the Pap Smear who is also from the same village in Greece as my ancestors. The drink was surprisingly delicious.

Sunday afternoon, my yiayia and I went to her friend Clara's house for lamb Easter dinner, which was mostly pleasant. Clara is a fantastic ninety-four year old woman who is sassy and independent and I deeply believe that she is one of the few sensible forces in my yiayia's life. Clara's grandson just had twin daughters last fall, so two 6 month old babies were also a point in the awesome column. Slightly less good was the dinner table conversation which started with someone soliloquizing about how "Religion is a pyramid and there are lots of different ways to get to heaven", and an old Greek lady from Walla Walla said "What?! You mean the Muslims too?!"

Uh, yeah. Happy Greek Easter to me!