I just ate breakfast soup, after eating breakfast. Today’s breakfast was pecked in serving order—between feeding the beans, I dug into small bites of Challah French toast Pudding, just a lick of syrup, packed lunches, just a handful of Pirate Booty, three rings of pineapple. Then I returned home to devour the best soup I’ve ever made. Breakfast soup is not a milky porridge with bits of crumbled bacon and a swirl of maple spiced egg custard (though that does sound heavenly). No. It is phenomenal soup of the savory variety from which you won’t be able to keep yourself come breakfast. You’ll eat it cold, standing up, straight out of the fridge. I am crazy in love with this soup. I will share the recipe because it’s my own, and you won’t find one for it anywhere else (believe me, I tried to find it).  But first, a random of the past few days:

LUCAS LOST TWO TEETH
They go out in the same order they came in, people say of teeth. We noticed a gap in Lucas’s lower rack, only to discover that a tooth had run away. Lost, didn’t even realize it was gone. Then, another loose tooth, one he was ready to tuck under his pillow as soon as it came loose. Though yesterday, when I picked him up from school, the gap had widened. “Where’s your loose tooth, buddy?”
“Drats,” he said. “Foiled again.”

ABIGAIL LAST NIGHT
After a dinner of New York strip and my Sweet Potato Mojo Fries (Sweet potatoes cut into fries, shoved into a plastic baggie with egg whites, then spread upon a parchment-lined baking sheet, cooked at 450 degrees for 15 minutes, flip fries over, cook another 7 minutes or so, then quickly shower the hot “fries” with: salt, 1 clove minced garlic, chopped cilantro, chopped mint, zest of 1 lime, and a pinch of red pepper flakes—the egg whites act like a browned crackling coating), Abigail turned to me and without stopping for a beat said, “Mama, now we need to eat our ice cream for dessert because we have to get all these sweets out of the house!”

WHAT ARE YOU—NOOOO!
Perhaps I’ll spare you the story of Kind Sir’s transition into a Waterfowl the other day. Nervous stomach, meet the ool—notice there’s no “P” in it? Supposed to keep it that way. Oops. Poor Abigail, too, dragged out, soaking, forced to race with us into an air conditioned bathroom, with Lucas truly waddling, appropriately enough, like a Waterfowl, which is exactly the noun I’d turn into a verb to discuss the situation. It was a water-foul. Nightmare on my street. I will also spare you the scene once we entered the bathroom. There will be no discussion of the sink. Truly tasteless, I will also add, after all this poop business, my mind keeps circling corn kernels. I am so sorry.

MICHAEL’S GENUINE FOOD & WINE
Last Wednesday, Phil and I stole away to Miami for the afternoon. Phil was there for work, and I’d come along to eat. We dined at Michael’s Genuine Food & Wine (They have a cookbook, too). It’s the kind of place where I imagine patrons asking the waitstaff, “Yes, the chicken is organic, but what was it fed, where did it sleep, and what was his name?” My sustainable food associations with zealots aside, Michael’s offered us fresh, bright, inventive food—surprising. I ordered the soup, which, yes, served as inspiration for the breakfast soup I just devoured. Since I was unable to find the recipe anywhere, including a cursory search in their cookbook via Amazon, I recreated my own version at home. In love, despite the free-association.

- ∞ -

THIN COCONUT CORN SOUP (WITH OR WITHOUT COCONUT)
4 cups College Inn Chicken Broth (not stock)
4 ears of shucked fresh corn (Not sure you’ll get the same crunch and perkiness from frozen, but perhaps. Grab a bag, use ¾ of it)
1 baking potato, peeled and cut into ½-inch cubes
13.5 oz can of can of good quality coconut milk (my fav: Chaokok brand for its high coconut cream content)
½ red onion
Pinch or two of red pepper flakes (your call on how much heat)
1/3 cup fresh minced mint
1/3 cup fresh minced cilantro (unless you’re one of those people who HATES it)
2 pats of butter to swirl in at the very end
2 tablespoons of olive oil (again, optional. I added at the end, then whisked because I love to see those teeny tiny dots of flavor in my broths)
Totally optional if you like it creamier: ¼ cup Heavy Whipping Cream (or to use if you’re stuck with a crap brand of coconut milk)
1 Avocado, cubed
Zest of 1 lime (optional – I did not do this)
Salt and (white) pepper to taste

I say thin because this isn’t some chunky glue chowder. The broth is thin. Also, you can modify the recipe using low-fat or fat-free alternatives like fat-free half-and-half. I go for the fat kind of thin, personally.

1. Holding them upright in a bowl so kernels don’t fly everywhere, strip the cobs of their kernels as close as possible to the cobs. Place cubed potato and the kernels and their cobs in a large, heavy pot with the broth, making sure the broth covers all. If not, add more broth or water. Season with ½ teaspoon of salt. Bring to a boil, then cover, stirring occasionally, until the corn and potatoes are tender and the broth is flavored, about 17 minutes. Remove and discard the cobs.

2. Whisk in coconut milk (and cream). Add red onion, ½ of chopped herbs, red pepper flakes Reduce heat to moderately low and simmer, uncovered, until the flavors have a chance to meld, about 5 minutes. Add the remaining herbs, season with kosher salt and white pepper to taste. Optionally whisk in butter and/or oil. If you want more brightening power than the mint, add zest of 1 lime.

3. Add avocado cubes to the bottom of each serving bowl, and more red onion if desired, add the soup, and serve immediately, or eat for breakfast reheated in the microwave.

It’s important to daydream. To have some sense of a vision, no matter how shallow. I had one once upon a long time ago, and remarkably enough, it all came true. So, why not put it out there? Everyone should put her wish list out there. Now. Not when you get to it, but now. Give yourself the luxury of time (it takes all of ten minutes really) and dream up a wish storm. You need to put it out there, so you can see it. So you know it’s there. So you know what’s really in there. And, so you know one day when you start to get there. Go.

I wish I could go to the Museum of Art, alone wearing myPod again.

I wish I could bicycle through Paris. Though I wouldn’t want to be near motorists, so perhaps I’d prefer to bicycle through Venice. Though I’m sure there are motorists there too.

I wish I had a sculpted body, efficient and lean, strong, fit and healthy, no abnormal test results. Just good news.

I wish I had a huge floor to ceiling wall of books in my own library with a cozy chaise, a table nearby for tea and fresh flowers. A library with a ladder. Pieces of art that stir emotion.

I wish I could photograph Burma/Myanmar and Sapa, Vietnam.

I wish I could take a food photography class and learn how/ have someone help me/ set up a permanent food photography setup—I’ve been wishing for this for years.

I wish I could plan menus for a living.

I wish I could write selective food reviews again? I’m actually on the fence about this… closest to the side that says, “meh.” Yeah, I don’t wish this at all anymore.

I wish I had a line editor.

I wish I had a Montessori classroom as the playroom in my house that would automatically clear itself of toys they’d outgrown, keeping up to challenge and stimulate them at any age.

I wish I lived in a home that was cold in the summer and toasty in the winters.

I wish I could eat farina in restaurants like Balthazar every day. Nearly. Because if it was every day, I’d wish for somewhere new.

I wish I could become a regular at a bistro like Balthazar, a folded paper, listening to conversations, dipping buttered soldiers in soft-boiled eggs.

I wish I could go on safari, for a kill, and take photography classes and workshops while I’m there.

I wish I could cook and bake without becoming exhausted.

I especially wish I could create, design, choose and afford my dream kitchen, a place where I could entertain and invite people over to tell their stories and drink wine and listen to music.

I wish I had a personal stylist who found me the perfect clothes to suit my body and coloring.

I wish my book were on the New York Times Best Seller list as #1 for 19 weeks straight.

I wish I could write movies the way Nancy Myers can, like my perhaps all-time favorite: Diane Keaton and Amanda Peet are sitting at the bottom of steps on the beach and Diane Keaton’s character is absolutely heartbroken, undone, a brilliant mess, and her daughter comes to her to say, See, you need to close yourself off to this. And Diane’s character says, Do you seriously think you can outsmart getting hurt? You’re more like me than you know. And I’m telling you, I’ve had the time of my life. And her daughter says, almost in tears for herself, I’ve never had the time of my life. Diane’s character says, I know sweetie. And I say this from the deepest part of my heart: What. Are. You. Waiting. For? I love it because at her all-time low, she’s advising her own daughter to do exactly as she’s done. It’s wonderful. And that, right there, that’s what I do well in my writing. I get that part down. It’s when people want me to “be funny” that it stops being fun for me. As much as people categorize me as a “funny writer,” I don’t think that’s what connects people to my work. Not at all. There certainly doesn’t need to be a winner in the debate; plenty of creators straddle both equally. I’d just rather always feel than laugh. I’d take a new wisdom over hilarity every time. I don’t know why I feel the need to defend a side instead of aiming for both. I wish I didn’t do *this* to myself.

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I wish I had my act together enough that I could archive sand from the beaches I’ve visited, displaying them in labeled apothecary jars on a narrow shelf running beneath framed photos from each trip. I love a wall of that kind of history, a wall of memories, not a display of who. Who this is, who that is–no. Memories linked to the most random moments, to the image of a wire beater, wobbly batter, or flour rising in the air, Cheerios and milk spilled all over the floor.

In the gym where my children take gymnastics class, I sit on a ledge of cubbies, looking out beyond a short fence, much the way people observe the flamingos  at a zoo. I watch my daughter spring from a trampoline, the pole of her body, a green shoot with an edge. I watch my son, ignoring his coach’s instructions as soon as the coach turns his attention to another child. I noticed the round parachute made up of a rainbow of triangles. With small, almost unnoticeable sturdy cloth handles running along the perimeter.  I remember the joy, unbridled, when invited beneath the balloon we made of it, raising our arms, up, up up, then in a dash, sitting on the very edge of the perimeter. That moment when you sit beneath it, like being inside a fort of sheets or beneath an upturned canoe. It’s an extraordinary place that kind of cradles our idea of what childhood should be.

Why though did that particular image stand out to me above all other? Because I want so much to create that winsome world now for my own children. The cocooned world of filtered light, softened voices, safety nets, and magic. Not the kind of magic that requires potions or poorly written spells that our witch of the week will get wrong, turning herself into a Mongoose, but the magic of our everyday. It feels safe to live beneath a parachute, always there to remind you of rainbows, that you’ll continue to fall, just next time, fall better.

Cave walking, I’m told, has everyone making grunting sounds in one form or another. Ahh, can you believe people lived like this?  Oooh look over here, this must’ve been a bedroom.  Can you imagine? Where would I put my purse? Those are adults trying to pretend how a life was lived. Not adults looking for the adventure of what they could create there. They are imagining in the wrong direction. Does this resonate with anyone? I’m not sure I’m explaining it right. But I believe we come to a point where we stop looking everywhere and instead look where it’s been most practical, and most accepted as correct, so we move toward that. Flip it. How would you now live there?

Returning to the initial “why” Why did that one image in a gymnasium full of unusual rituals and equipment, stand out for me? What does that tell you about who I am, that I picked that image above all others?

My answer:Because that parachute 1) was always a time to finally get to sit… a definite #1 for Moose. 2) it provides softness and whimsy, a sense of delight, like a first snowfall. The light changes beneath a parachute, sounds travel differently. You can whisper and it will go a long way. I love that there are these small things in our lives, things we encounter daily, ordinary nothings that have the ability to be the beginning of an everything. The cardboard box. Exactly.

We should strive to find more of them, everyday objects that reconnect you to a part of who you were when the world felt enormous, and life felt safe and secure, bundled. Looking for extraordinary in ordinary is what we should all strive to do.

Adults find rides back to their childhoods by reliving them with children, but I can relive it from here, across a gymnasium, with both children in separate arenas, I can live in here for a while, imagining myself under that tent, feeling the cool air on my face as the balloon of our parachute deflates. But more than that, I can take it with me and look for more everyday magic. I want to be the mom that sets the dinner table UNDER the dinner table! Closed intimate spaces, darkly lit, a librarian with a special glass story time lamp, they’re all the warmest memories of my childhood. Making a tent in my parents bed, then picking callouses off her feet as I massaged them with Kerri lotion and Lea rubbed poppa’s head with a paper towel. “It’s too greasy otherwise.” I love that. I love those weird funky life of memories and want to make them as often as we can.

I’ve enrolled in a writing workshop because it works for me. It’s the only way I actually get writing done. I workshopped both Straight Up and Dirty and Moose. It’s just something I need. Our first class, the instructor began with a free-writing prompt. Just write for fifteen minutes, whatever comes to mind. Here’s the prompt.

WRITE ABOUT YOUR NAME
Students had questions. What about our name? It’s history, how we feel about it, who we’re named after? What? “Whatever you want, whatever it means to you.”

I invite you to share your own here, remembering it’s an exercise that opens you. So, don’t judge yourself on it or spend time editing it. I think these prompts are always surprising. Don’t think too much, just go.

♠ ————————- ♠

It was freshman year, but at Barnard we didn’t say “freshman.” The preferred term was “first year.” As we avoided words implying male assumptions, we were also to be clear on this: we were girls no longer.

“Excuse me,” I asked of a woman who resembled a high-functioning addict, or librarian, “do you see that girl over there by the benches? Do you know off hand if the building to her right is Sulz—“

“What did you say?” I was startled by the prick and wave in her voice, the words lancing at me with the teeth of a hookworm. And to look at her again, I was surprised she wasn’t cloaked in robes peering at me through her monocle, clucking her cheeks into a disapproving pout.

“Is that Sulzberger or Milbank Hall to her right?”

“To her right? Wrong, dear. Wrong altogether. If you’ve matriculated to college, then you are no longer a girl. Barnard is a place of women.” Then she turned, striding onward. I like to imagine that she tripped over her imaginary train.

Got it. First year. Woman. As in, “Yes, I’m a first year woman enrolling in Acting Pompous 101.”

It was a red auditorium with a small stage, black walls, and overhead lights. The class—maybe fifteen of us, men and women, first years and sophomores—was scrabbled across theater seats, our eyes to the professor. He was a young post-grad with two small beads strung into a thin braid, all choked into his low ponytail. Once you’ve seen him pulse through rounds of butterfly stretching in running shorts, “Professor” seems like a sub/dom role-play term. He let us call him David, though we weren’t told to do so directly.

What David required of each of us was a grand performance of our name. “One at a time, three minutes to prepare, who’s first?”

Crickets.

“It’s a mnemonic device,” he said, “Make us all remember your name”—then with a hushed voice he added, “And you. Make us remember you.”

Debra Katz got on all fours and twitched her nose, seductress like, slinking across the stage, purring Katzzzzzzz.

Jeff lit a cigarette puffing smoke rings. “Jeff,” he said from stage left as if his name were the baseline of a song. More rings, stage right, “Jeff.” Center stage, “Jeff.”

A perky Alyssa cheered her way through a hand-slapping, leg-kicking, cheer leader fit. Today, I’m quite certain, she’s the annoying as fuck girl who continually interrupts your workout to see exactly how many more minutes you have on the elliptical.

As other students performed, I sat in my chair, half entertained, half brainstorming. Make us remember you?

I could flash everyone, certainly, which would work if I had an unfortunate last name like Fallis or Milk. But I had “Stephanie,” met with “Tara” (Yes, like the Plantation, but I can’t think about that now.), rounded off with “Klein” (as in Calvin). What could I do with that? Give a performance of a top fashion designer pulling a fall collection from Tara’s finest twigs and salvaged gourds?

I had it. I’d cut myself down to my smallest denominator, offering the class my monogram.

“You know, like steak. The one you ordered well done because you’re afraid of death. No, don’t fancy dead moo? Then may I suggest your regular? Right, the one you order ground and pounded with cheese because you’re happy to slaughter a bloody mother while lapping up her milk. Cheers, it’s all Kosher to me. That is until you order me. Order me to come sit my sweet bottom right here, on your lap? Well done indeed, though if you’re set on ordering me, you’d better start with a please and a fat tip.”

Which in its own deranged forced way got the laugh, though that might’ve been to do with my impromptu decision to recite my lines with a British accent. Still, I got that laugh, which made it a memorable first year for me. It was then that I decided to pursue the stage, promising myself never to use a stage name. Stephanie Tara Klein would be someone to remember.

The comments I shared with two different friends, that I share again here, are the following:

1. I was so turned off by this series, especially by the fact that the first book has absolutely no arc, ending abruptly with “end of part 1,” which is no ending at all. I’m so frustrated that I spent any time on that shitacular book. It goes nowhere. You keep reading thinking something is going to happen, so you turn the pages, and don’t stop reading, hoping NOW I will get to the meat, here’s what I’ve been waiting for, some big twist or a tiny detail from the beginning that will reveal something big later on. Nope. Does not happen. Not even a little.

2. Ugh. I wish I had that time back. Any book that ends “ends of part one” without any plot wraps is a complete time suck waste. The sex / power struggle gets so old by the end, and there’s absolutely no surprise or twists. You have to keep reading the other books because in the first one… nothing fucking happens.

Lastly, since I was asked for discussion points, I asked only this:

In terms of a trilogy, what components need to be there in each individual book? Do you think it’s important for each book to have its own complete arc (a clear beginning, middle, and end), with a lingering of what’s to come–and how effective was E L James in satisfying those requirements? Do you believe Fifty Shades of Grey can stand alone as a satisfying read? You already know my answer.

For those who have NOT read on to the second and third books (which people can’t stop emphasizing were so much better), did you hope that something more would be revealed in terms of the plot? Some twist you didn’t see coming? For what were you hoping, aside for the author to put down the thesaurus (“I turn into my pillow and the sluice gates open.”)?

I was extremely frustrated that as information was drip-fed to the reader, it was never blown out. Chekhov’s “One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it” wasn’t just ignored by the author; it was never read by the author. For example, the part where Christian “orders up” a gynecologist for Ana, and Ana has seen that all the cars in Christian’s garage are all Audi’s, including the gynecologist. And Christian has bought Ana an Audi… come on. Isn’t that some absurdly obvious clue? I WAS REALLY HOPING the gynecologist was actually the “Mrs. Robinson Character.” A detail like this should have been wrapped up in book one OR it shouldn’t have been included because it’s misleading. Same goes for the whole “every woman he hires is a blond” then in a line, he tells Ana, a brunette, how he loves brunettes, so we HOPE it’s coming, that he’s going to turn her into a blond, just as his “unbinding” contract reads that he may do. Except it doesn’t come, not in book one, and from what I’ve heard, it never happens. And, you cannot blame the editors/ publisher on this one–it was self-published. The whole, “well, it was originally all written as one long book, and it was later sold as a trilogy” doesn’t fly. Know why? It’s sloppy. Each book should be a stand alone story, building on the full stories of the past. Each book needs to be self-contained and satisfying.

Also, looking only at Fifty Shades of Grey, what purpose did Ana’s roommate Kate serve as a character? In a film, she’d hopefully serve to highlight the differences between how she handles things and how our main girl deals, highlighting something we’d be hard-pressed to discover without that sidekick. That, and she’d serve as a way to get the internal thoughts, the judgments, the fears, out into dialogue, avoiding the lazy voice over. Your main character needs someone in whom to bear her soul and innermost thoughts. But in a book, you can have all the internal conflict you’d like. Did you care about Kate’s relationship with Christian’s brother? And did you think anything would be resolved, at all, with regard to her specific sub-plot line?

If this book came with a t-shit, it should read, “I’d rather have spent my time watching Secretary. Or cupping my own sex.”

Also, by “timesheet” I mean twat.

Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are?

We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move.

You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel?

You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.

—Pablo Casals
Spanish Cellist