Futility Now

Two recent culinary ventures: the first, chicken paprikash, is quite likely the tastiest dish I’ve prepared — certainly as far as chicken is concerned. I think what led to such success in this case was pulling out some of the sauce (wine, butter, sweet and hot paprika, dried mushrooms, onion, garlic) and running it through the blender. This resulted in an especially silky base even before the addition of the sour cream at the end. I also pulled apart the chicken (thighs and breasts) into fist-sized hunks. It was so tender it just collapsed. Served with rice, salad, and then vanilla mousse with cinnamon, amaretto, and buttery wafer cookies.

Even S. found it delicious.

This last week I’ve been off for Spring Break. jmags and S. and I headed to the coast and stayed three nights in my sort-of relative’s trailer. We had prawns and scallops and little shrimps alternately broiled or briefly sauteed. Also: candy (although my preparation here was limited to a) open bag, and b) place in mouth).

The first couple of days back home were calm. I stayed at home while jmags worked. One morning I made strata. Behold: garlic, broccoli, chevre, eggs, 1/2 & 1/2, salt, pepper, all soaked up by delicious ciabatta, with gruyere on top.

It came out of the oven bubbly and smelling delicious, but we agreed it needed a larger quantity of greens to balance out the richness and general goo of the other ingredients.

For me the process of setting up house is pretty new. There was a very short-lived attempt at it once, almost a decade ago. Even creating my own spaces has been primarily a matter trying to minimize the impact of objects so I can have a little nest to crawl into and hide.

Hazel is not really so much of this disposition. She’s definitely more of the home-making type. These things are important to her, so she’s a good influence. I guess mostly my contribution to this side of things is that I can carry so much more than she can, and when we first got here and had rank upon rank of boxes littering the floor, this was not a contribution to be sneezed at.

Thankfully the initial phase of this process came to a fairly successful close yesterday, with the acquisition of a pretty dramatic couch. Behold!

We also have a normal-person bed, if by “normal person” you understand me to mean “guy who is 6′4″.

It’s a nice contrast to my office space, which could definitely be considered midget-friendly.

(Why the fuck is there a five Pound note on the floor under my desk?)

In stark contrast to my previous apartment, there are separate sinks for the kitchen and the bathroom. I’m pretty sure that this is now how I define luxury (and probably means I need a new theme song.)

Stairs!

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Bonus image of the Polaroid wall under construction.

I think that any right-thinking person can see clearly that the aura of sleaze and degradation that a Polaroid can add to almost any image is truly beautiful. In order to make the most of this, we have decided to create a Polaroid wall, which we will populate with specimens that we (in our totally unbiased opinions, of course) find particularly charming.

Speaking of particularly charming, the backing for this is covered in Tyvek, arguably the world’s most perfect substance.

Our plan is to keep adding images until the whole thing is full, at which point new images will have to be weighed against the existing ones and found superior in order to gain a place. If the cost of Polaroid film doesn’t bankrupt us, we’ll keep you posted.

UPDATE: Replaced the obvious pop-song reference with a totally obtuse one.