The work is easy, recipes that are second nature, the slicing and dicing and chopping. I’ve got this kitchen set up just the way I love it, everything in easy reach, plenty of prep bowls and containers and sheet pans for keeping it all organized. The night before, I make my time and action plan, what to do in what order to keep me working as efficiently as possible. While it all requires a certain amount of attention, it does allow for my brain to wander more than a little. Usually, it would be thinking of new recipes or techniques, wondering about how to take a dish that often requires a lot of last-minute attention and convert it to something that can be done in advance. But these past few weeks, since reconnecting with Lynne and Teresa, since the bet? My head is swirling with ideas that make me at once anxious and excited.
I’ve always deep down wanted to do a cookbook, as it seems that most of my free time is spent developing recipes and imagining how the photographs would look, how people at home might cook my dishes for people they love. So the butterflies about having to actually pull a real proposal together are welcome and sort of joyous. To kill two birds with one stone, I’ve signed up for a drawing class, as my potential new nonfood hobby, thinking that maybe I could do some cool line drawings to incorporate into the cookbook, to elucidate the more complicated recipes. I loved to doodle and draw when I was a kid, and still fill any handy piece of paper with intricate scribbles when I am on the phone or bored. Marcy got me one of those adult coloring books—it has very elegant detailed graphics of profanities—and I like to work on them while I watch TV. I’m even glad about the new exercise program, since that will be good for me in the long run, even if I’m a little nervous to see how much I’ve really let myself go physically.
But the dating. That is when those butterflies turn into pterodactyls, and those bitches have a temper. Sharing my Bernard story, or as much of it as I felt up to in the moment, with Lynne and Teresa, got my head in a bit of a swirl. My mom doesn’t know; it felt too unfair to dump it on her when I came back, with everything she had to manage with my dad’s illness. It would have only made her feel worse. Marcy knows, but we don’t ever speak of it. Even my conversations with her about it have always been mostly on the surface. She doesn’t know that he was the only man I’ve ever been in love with. She doesn’t know how badly he broke me. That deep down, where I don’t ever like to look, I don’t know if I even have it in me to ever let another man in, not that deep, not for real.
Which is why I am so grateful for the quiet today. Because tonight?
I have a goddamned date. And thinking about food, about feeding my Farbers, that is the only thing keeping me from total panic.
I pull the chocolate chunk cookies out of the oven and slide them on a rack to cool, and I turn off the blackberry balsamic sauce I’ve made to top ice cream, to let it cool. I load the second dishwasher with the gear from this last round of cooking. The first one is already well through its cycle. I check my watch. It’s 1:45, so with the two-hour dishwasher cycle, I will be able to finish up here in plenty of time to get out the door before the hordes arrive. And to get home and figure out what on earth to wear. Thank God Marcy has the night off, so she can help me get ready. And since her cable is on the fritz for the umpteenth time, she’ll hang out with Simca at my place while I’m on my date, and be ready for a good debrief when I get home.
Jack, my date, is a friend of Lawrence’s, recently divorced and an architectural photographer. He is forty-five, has two kids, and lives in Albany Park. We had a very pleasant phone call—he certainly sounds nice enough—and I agreed two days ago to meet him for drinks tonight at the Violet Hour. And promptly threw up.
I never throw up. Ever. I once legitimately picked up E. coli in Mexico, and only found out because I had a bad enough case of the runs to call my doc, and she said she could not believe I was even standing, let alone not puking my guts out with the levels in my system. My stomach? Iron. Lined in Teflon. And kryptonite. But within forty seconds of agreeing to my first date in nearly a decade, I was hunched over the toilet like I’d been eating yesterday’s bargain-bin sushi dipped in raw chicken juice. Poor Simca didn’t know what to do, so she climbed up onto my back and sat between my shoulder blades chewing my ponytail and licking the back of my neck as I retched.
I sit down to quickly write my note to the family:
Hello, Team Farber! Hope you are hungry.
For tonight, there is bacon-wrapped pork loin in the first oven. Take it out to rest at 5:30, and you can carve at 5:50. Ian, if you are feeling ambitious, reduce the pan juices, mash in the cloves of garlic, monter au beurre, and season to taste to make a pan sauce. There is a sweet potato gratin in the first warming drawer; should be ready to slice and serve. The celery fennel salad is in the white bowl in the fridge with the damp paper towels on top and the dressing is in the jar next to it. Take the bag of Parmesan shavings that are on top of the salad and sprinkle over before dressing.
Lemon cream bars are in the fridge drawer in the butler’s pantry.
Ian—tomorrow is going to be a dessert challenge, and there will be at least one or more savory ingredients in the box, so bone up on some creative nontraditional dessert ideas tonight.
Happy eating!
Big love,
Eloise
I finish wiping down all the counters just as the dishwasher pops open to indicate that it is finished. One of the many things I adore about these Miele units: they make everything easy, including knowing when your cycle is done. I pull open the door and quickly unload the dishwasher, putting everything back into its place. I gather up my stuff, shut down all the lights, and head out the back. It was a long day, and my feet and lower back can feel the time spent standing, despite the cushy gel mats they have on the floor. I should have just enough time for a hot bath before Marcy arrives, and I’m hoping it will soothe my nerves as well as my aches.
? ? ?
Help,” I say, opening the door for Marcy, my hair in a mad nest on top of my head, one fake eyelash stuck to my eyebrow.
“What the hell happened to you?” she says, dropping her bag on the floor near the door, slithering out of her black leather moto jacket, and leaning down to rub Simca’s head.
“I tried to get pretty.”
I thought it might be good to put my hair up; I have a habit of twisting strands of it when I get nervous, so I figured if it were up, I couldn’t do that. I watched a video on YouTube that made this particular updo seem so simple: a couple of hair bands, three bobby pins—and a casual, slightly messy bun should have happened. But something went awry, and now my head looks like a deranged wombat is nesting on it. My eyelashes are stumpy, the result of a flambéing incident in culinary school (they never really came back the same), and suddenly it felt important to have nice ones, but those little suckers are slippery, and the glue dries faster than you might think.
“You have failed in a spectacular way.”
“Can you please just help?”