Most of the time, I am lacking all the ingredients that a recipe suggests. And that's not that big of deal to me because that's how I see most recipes - as suggestions. Unless it's active yeast or sugar - something like that falls into the category of a requirement. I mean, you can't make creamy pesto without cream, right? Wrong.
Everyone else is posting recipes! I'm on it! PENNE A LA PENNY!!!!
Open the fridge. Search desperately for vegetables.
Throw away the rotted ones. They don't taste great.
Cut up the ones that still look good and don't offend with the stank. Make 'em chunky. In my case I had broccoli, red peppers and onions. Zuchinni is a great staple at our house also.
Saute those veggies in a large skillet with some olive oil, salt and pepper and 3 peeled, crushed garlic cloves.
If you are using onions, throw those in last. Otherwise they get all slimey and over-cooked.
Now heat up a medium/smallish sauce pan and dump in about 1 tablespoon of olive oil and 2 tablespoons of pre-made pesto.
Have I mentioned that you should be boiling some penne on one of the other burners? 
OK. Do you have anything creamy? Not that. Half n Half? Sour creme? Great. Get a big dollop of that and throw it in with the pesto along with some milk. I might have even added goat cheese to mine. Shhh! 
At this point, you should drain the pasta and add it to your big skillet. Then go make sure the kids are not using permanent markers on the sofa. If they look bored, give them Veggie Chips. You know they aren't going to eat anything but the penne anyway.
Mix the pesto sauce into your creation. Add more Parmesan. Put some on the plate with bagged salad and one of those salad toppers in a bag. (For you amateurs out there, RECYCLE the actual bags as they are not part of the meal.) Decorate with a sesame stick. Ta da! It looks purty goooood!
Told ya I can cook. Maybe next time I'll reveal my roast recipe.
It has always bothered me that no one has ever written a song about me. Considering how many musicians I have known over the years, one would think I could be so lucky. Possibly, just maybe, I have inspired some songs. Or at least I know I was regularly present in certain people's lives when they were writing music. There's that.
I do have one CD filled with songs that were written during a tumultuous time in my life and those songs are written by the person who was most involved in my strife. That's code for "We were sleeping together." Unfortunately, those songs are without lyric. Or as I think of them - without a damn explanation.
Perhaps I defy words.
Or perhaps I was just not all that interesting to any of these people. That thought, of course, makes me slightly sad.
Back when I was writing songs myself, I was inspired by scores of people, mostly men, that I knew. There are pages. Files. Snippets of juicy snapshots filed on my computer.
Truth be known, I long to have a visual art show one day where I pair the lyrics of about 40 songs with 40 photographs or other mixed media to create a virtual trip down memory lane for myself. I'd invite those 40 people and say nothing more than "You inspired me." Then, I sit back and watch them attempt to piece it together.
It reminds me of a lovely song, which I didn't write.
This ain't about the things I've done
Where I've been or what I won
Stand on your corner a thousand time
Lose what I got keep what I find
It's about you
It's about you
This ain't about the things you say
Or how you make me feel this way
Stand on your corner a thousand time
Lose what I got keep what I find
It's about you
It's about you
I've also thought I could title the works according to the 1st memory I have of the relationship. For example:
The 2001 the Vanderbilt University Professor Who Cheated On Me
Candy Cane Tree
Spoke My Sentences Before I Did
Smelly Wallet
Do you ever wonder who all those love songs on iTunes are about? Do you question what's going on in "Happily Married" Sting's life when he writes of loneliness? Do you put your hands on the dash of your car and pray to God you can time travel for just a moment to that place when music filled all the gaps?
I think about this sometimes because what I miss most about my old life, the life where I hung around all those tortured musicians is the conversations. When I say I miss Entertainment, what I really mean is that I miss the kinds of personalities who pondered the things that I do. The people who are unashamed of their heartache and wear it like a badge. People who take dots on a page and mold them into something that blurs all the edges of a bad day. I miss people who aren't afraid of what anyone thinks, especially people who claim to love them.
My art show would make good conversations because it would turn the tables. I could once again wave away smoke from cigarettes, holding a drink in my right hand as if it is always there, like a favorite ring. I would make sure the lights were dim, the music just loud enough provoke closeness. And all my muses could smile politely... and wonder.
I’ve learned that money means nothing to a person unless they have Time. At the end of every day Time is what people wish for. At the end of every life too. There was a line I heard once spoken by a character on ER who was dying. “Be generous with your time.” Time is what you give to people you love.
Expensive toilet paper is madness. I buy cheap toilet paper, cleaning products and towels. None of these things are important to me. But I also buy expensive groceries from a natural food store, expensive toothpaste and excellent moisturizer.
Marriage is harder than it looks. If you take everything you know about love before being married and multiply that information by 100, you are still dumb as a pet rock when it comes to love if you have not been married.
Intuition is underrated. If I could live my life over, I would follow my gut more.
I define great entertainment by the effect the flick, music, piece or performance has on me three years later. If I am thinking of it in three years, I will be thinking of it in ten years too; and I have likely incorporated it into my daily life. Ten years ago I saw a play called the Metaphor. My friend Craig had the staring role. Every time someone mentions the theater, I think of his performance and I wish I could see it again.
I believe in cause and effect. But I do not believe life is fair on any individual scale. When I do good, I create a ripple, but it would be silly to believe my ripple will come back to me, or that if it does, I will recognize it.
America is not a melting pot. It is a lovely stew. Every person adds flavor. But when you bite into a tomato, you know it’s a tomato. When you meet an Italian, you know he’s Italian. Why people would want to shed their culture is beyond me.
My best assets in business have always been three things:
honesty, subtlety, and the knowledge that great success usually involves great risk.
The best places to have conversations are tents on summer nights with crickets in the background, small coffee shops on Sunday mornings and the floor of a stage between sound-check and dinner.
Out of every quality to expect, search for and hope for in a friend, lover or family member, Integrity should always be at the top of the list.
Alcohol is a stupid man’s hobby.
You can tell a lot about a person by the way they drink their coffee.
I cannot even believe I am going through with this but I figure it's not going to get any better. If you are absolutely bored out of your mind - or if you just want to make yourself feel better about whatever videos YOU might be featured in - (Not naming names, SHELLEY...KELLIE) you may watch this.
I never missed that job after I left but I think about the parking garage often, especially these days when peace and true silence are nowhere to be found. Even today when we are said to be "snowed in" outside my window is the constant scream of snowblowers and revving cars.
Because, well, it's that time of year again. It's that time when all the things I don't like about NJ come together to form days that seem longer and harder for me to complete. It's time for me to daydream about warmer climate, cheaper groceries and a lower mortgage. It's time for missing family and friends, familiarity and ease. It's time for NJ people to be personally insulted for my wishing for something else. Time for religious friends to say they will pray for me and that God will not give me more than I can handle. Time for suggestions of a vacation which I cannot afford or a good book which I do not have time to read. It's tradition, or habit, I'm not sure. But I do know it will pass, at least in intensity, by May.
Until then I want to take this opportunity to say that
1. Moving to NJ was the worst financial decision I have ever made.
2. Just because I am not content in my present situation doesn't mean I'm an ungrateful chump.
3. To my old boss who said I could totally be like Tom Hanks character in Castaway - You were right. But apparently I can't last as long as he did.
This is me this morning holding part of a scrap-booking kit my sister sent me. It's called 365 and the idea is - you guessed it - to take a photo a day for the entire year of 2010. The designer kit is supposed to take the guesswork out of the process. But, me, I like to take simple things and make them complicated. So, there I was Sunday making Mike use his professional designer eyes to put the cards in their slots. 
