Antoinette Perry Awards...

Better known as the Tony's. They're happening this weekend, which is always fun, but even more fun is the new tradition that Mr. MP and I have developed over the past couple years. Step one, go up the hill to Hola and drink one or two of their large (and delicious) margaritas. Step two, get home safely and then proceed to watch the highlights of the award ceremony. Brilliant!

The show to look out for this year is Passing Strange. I'm wildly jealous that MP saw it while in NYC this year. He was my plus one when I got free tickets to see it in Berkeley, where it started two years ago. We drove up to Berkeley and had delicious momos at Cafe Tibet on University, then walked around the block to Berkeley Rep and found we were the first to arrive. It was a Yelp Elite event and they were just getting going, so we got the first set of free tickets. Then we spent a little time at the wine reception they had set up just for us Yelpers and got to hear a little bit about the production. Basically they were concerned that the Berkeley Rep audience was well, a little old for this show. They wanted the younger crowd so they plied us with free tickets so we'd go home and talk about the show to all our friends.

Turns out getting there first paid off, best I could tell we got this random set of amazing second row practically center seats while most of the Yelp crowd sat off to the side and towards the back. We had Stew, the writer, star and narrator of the show, right in our faces. We rocked out for the next couple hours. It was a great show but we agreed the second act was a bit long and needed a little more point. So I was pleased to hear it did well Off-Broadway last year, and I was so curious how the show might have changed. It opened on Broadway this year and while it's been well reviewed, I have heard mixed things about how well it's selling. Though Mr. P says it was full when he was there. He also reported the show was tightened up and his non-theater going friend who went with him loved it as well. Hooray!

It just might be Best New Musical... which would put MP and I on a good track record considering we saw Spring Awakening before it really hit big last year.


(Sorry this wasn't here when this post first went up!) Here's a medley from The View... hopefully there will be some better footage soon.

By the way, MP was spending the night at our house in Belmont after the show since we had driven together and it would chop his commute down the next morning. In the toll plaza on the Bay Bridge at almost exactly midnight we had a bizarre encounter. The booth attendant asked if we were married and of course we said no. I can't remember if I was wearing a ring at the time, there was a point where I just went without because they didn't fit due to the weight loss. But I also didn't want to proclaim that I was married just not to him... it suddenly seemed scandalous to be passing into the city at midnight with a man who wasn't my husband. The attendant protested and implored for a proposal... and even promised us a son if we'd get married within the year. We laughed our way home and found "our boy" CF at home waiting for us.

Anyways... here's some great clips from past Tony Awards. Selecting the right number must be really hard. I hate when they try to do a medley of half the songs in the show. It just never works!


Here's Kristin Chenoweth doing My New Philosophy, I believe this was the first time I saw her in anything. It should be noted that just after this number she claimed her Tony in an evening gown and long blond hair, she announced, "I've never gotten changed so fast in my life!"


Here's the first part of Rent I ever saw.


Julie Taymore brilliance from The Lion King


*SIGH* The Spring Awakening kids get totally censored. Please note, after Totally Fucked, MP said to me, "Well, that'll be a good one for the Tony's!" Or did I say it to him? I don't know. This isn't my favorite footage from the show but it fits my Tony theme.


I couldn't delete the Tony's from my Tivo for months because of this.


Check out Sara Ramirez hot off her Tony win earlier in the evening.

OK... I'm cutting myself off. There's so many good ones!

Flickr watchers...

You might notice a change in how I'm displaying photos. I've organized most of my "sets" into Collections: Friends, Family, Travel, Food, etc...

I'm wondering how well it will work when I post a new event (like M&J's upcoming wedding).

Let me know if you hate it.

By the way, there's new scans from the archives.

My own worst enemy...

Am I the only one who immediately thought of scrumptious sweets from Paris when seeing this book cover? Please tell me I'm not the only one!

Recently while struggling through one of my assignments for writing class (Who knew I would struggle for content? I though I had such great stories to tell!) I found myself reading through posts from earlier in the year and saw my New Year's resolution: "Be good to yourself." How are we doing on this?

Things were going great until recently. I made it through the two month running program, managed to get brave enough to quit my job and was then rewarded with the opportunity of a lifetime: a year living in Europe. Then the appendicitis got me and I went through a rough patch.

I joked recently when talking at work about quitting and going to Europe for a year that I don't deal with change very well so I like to get it all over with at once. Kind of like the year that I quit my steady job, moved out of my hometown, traveled internationally for the first time and got married (I went to the doctor and told them everything that happened said I was worried that I was depressed, they replied, "I'm impressed you're still standing after doing all that!"). I guess I needed to get a little bit more in this round so, like I said, appendicitis struck and I found myself suddenly unable to do the two things I'd been spending most of my time on: working and working out. I went from an extremely social work setting, I interacted with probably hundreds of people a day, to being stuck at home not wanting to move for a good chunk of a week. At first I was a little bit outraged, I was robbed of my closure! But I'm looking for lessons and signs in life right now. What can I take from the way things played out? The message I hear is, "Get over yourself and move on." I had decided to work a full month after giving notice only to have my body cut it down to the standard two-weeks. It was time to go. I had these grand ideas of somehow passing on some sort of wisdom in the store, but the truth was it probably wasn't going to make a big difference, get over yourself and move on. So my ego had some healing to do along with my body.

At first the plan to go to Europe was exhilarating. Then I was distracted for a while by the quick changes in my present situation. By the time my attention came back around to what the year has in store for us the month of May was pretty much over. After a fantastic camping trip (yes, that's right, I had a good time but hey, it included martini glasses filled with pink cocktails and I got to shower in the middle of it), Ms. D departed for her summer in Alaska. I was sad to see her go, I won't see her again in person until November. The day she actually left I was struck down with thoughts of what it's going to be like to have to say goodbye and leave three months from now. I freaked out, I cried, it was all finally sinking in. I'm scared out of my mind. I still know it's the opportunity of a lifetime. Moving five years ago broke me down for a while, but I came out of it stronger and better. This will likely to do the same and could crush me harder than ever, but will the rewards be that much greater?

I wallowed it in for a few days and then somehow woke up last Saturday knowing that it was time to pick myself up and dust myself off. CF was on the same page with me. We have been tightening down on the diet habits, each of us determined to head to Europe as fit as possible. Some women would be horrified if they got within 15 pounds of their husband's weight, but they'd probably still be lighter. I am the heavier of the two, but I have never in the long fifteen years been so close to his weight. Of course the moment he started paying attention to what he was eating the pounds started falling off of him right and left (men!), I've got my work cut out for me trying to keep up. I eased back into exercise with an hour walk up our hill and then managed to get a little running done at the gym. Tomorrow I have my first appointment with LT since the morning she basically diagnosed my appendicitis and told me to call the doctor. I expect to her to kick my butt back into shape in no time.

Congratulations, if you've made it to this point in the post then you get to help answer an embarrassing, tough question I was asked recently. The life coaching sessions, which I originally purchased to help me find career goals, have become more about being an authentic, complete individual. I agreed to a semi-cheesy visualization exercise that involved visiting myself twenty years from now and led to some surprisingly clear revelations. It was just before Memorial Day so I had friendships on the brain, but before she even asked who else was around when I visited my twenty-years-from-now self I knew certain friends were there. It felt really nice. But then I hit a snag, "What do they call her? If there was a nickname you can hear if she walks back into the room?" "Ugh, knowing my friends it's something about Fabulous." Why ugh? I don't know. I put the word in my own darn subtitle and yet it makes me cringe. I try to laugh it off. I start to wonder what it means... am I superficial, vain, prissy, delusional, shallow? I think it's mostly said as a compliment but I often feel somehow scoffed at or chided and it leaves me wanting to yell, "There's more to me than just that!" But I know there's good stuff behind the label as well. Funny thing is, this is something that's really come out of the last several years. No one called me Fabulous when I was pushing 300 pounds. I know it's related to my self-confidence increasing, and yet it's ahead of where I am now. I don't have the confidence to carry this label with pride yet. So I need help in figuring out what it all means, can I let go of the silly side of it and embrace the truly fabulous? Any advice would be much appreciated. No rush though, I've got twenty years to learn how to "own" it.

Salty Sweet Gal

Those of you who also keep an eye on my Flickr photostream probably saw this coming...

I believe I discovered the deliciousness of sweet and salty combined in a large bag of kettle korn at the Davis Farmers Market, many years ago. The next big step was the olive oil gelato at Otto in NYC. Drizzled with a little more olive oil and sprinkled with just a touch of sea salt, it was so good that it led me to the awful habit of doing the same with almost any flavor of ice cream at home. But I think the ultimate sweet and salty dessert is the classic French decadence, salted butter caramel. I can't quite remember when I first tried it, but it's a favorite of mine to order at specialty chocolate shops like CocoaBella at the San Francisco Shopping Center, and I tried a number of things with this flavor while in France last fall. I'm not sure if I could pick a favorite between the macaroon at Pierre Hermé and the ice cream Berthillon.

Much like the scones, I've had it in the back of my mind for a while to try to make some caramels of my own. So when I went out for scone ingredients I also picked up caramel supplies, including a candy thermometer. It was actually while searching for caramel recipes that I discovered smittenkitchen.com, my new favorite food blog that also inspired me to take photos while cooking. I decided to try Deb's chocolate salted caramels recipe from her "salty and sublime" post, as well as epicurious.com's more classic fleur de sel caramels. So one night when CF was out late with a friend, I decided to make some candy.

The process was easy enough. Basically you prep the cream in one way or another, either melting and mixing the chocolate into it or just butter and sea salt. Then you get sugar, light corn syrup and a tiny bit of water boiling. The sugar starts to caramelize and turn a deep golden color, and then you add the cream. The reaction of bringing the two together is quite impressive, it bubbles and steams wildly! Then you keep it on the heat until it reaches a certain temperature. Aha, there's the problem. Getting the temp right was very tricky. The tip of the thermometer has to be in the mixture far enough, but not too close to the bottom of the pot. And then you want to be stirring it but the thermometer is in the way. And if you stir too much, the temp will never climb to where you need it to be. Add to this the fact that I had my burner on much lower than I would eventually realize works best, well, the first batch didn't come out so good. I think I was overcompensating for the warnings from Deb at smittenkitchen.com. Her first batch came out too soft because she didn't heat it to high enough a temp. I made sure mine hit the right temperature, but uh oh, was it actually still climbing? Once I got it poured into a pan I figured out pretty quickly that it was solidifying, I managed to cut it up into little pieces, but I ended up with candy that reminded me of those Sees Candy chocolate pops. Boo!

I also burnt my hand on the tip of the candy thermometer when I put it down, oddly enough, metal objects that were in boiling liquids end up very hot! And my response to the burn splashed a little of the hot stick chocolate on my hand as well Ouch! I wasn't quite sure how I felt about candy making at that point. I had wasted the chocolate, but I had supplies to try the other recipe. I reread the recipes and figured out that I had cooked the first batch way too long, and decided to try it at a higher temperature than suggested. This batch went much better! It still went a little on the solid side, but I was feeling all right about my abilities at that point.

CF still wasn't home, and thanks to the wonders of his wireless internet card (it's like a cellphone connection for your laptop) I had a little chat with him while he rode home on BART. I decided with the remaining cream I had I would try one more batch of the plain caramels. I turned up the heat even higher, cooked it all even faster... and they came out just right. Yes!

After a trip to the store to replenish supplies I was able to try the chocolate caramel recipe once again (a day or two later). It's a little trickier than the other recipe still, but I put what I had learned to use and things went rather smoothly. In this recipe the butter and sea salt are added at the last minute. The first time I tried it my hard candies ended up sort of greasy, I thought the butter didn't get incorporated because I had solidified the mixture too much already. But it turns out it's just hard to get it stirred in no matter what. So I stirred that pot with all my might and managed to get it to come together. I think I was a little overanxious on the temp though, I didn't get these quite hot enough, so they're a little soft. The chocolate recipe is extremely decadent. It's sugar, cream, chocolate, butter and salt... so what did I expect? I did heed another one of Deb's warning and did not put the salt on the outside of the caramel. The salt getting added right as the end led to flakes of salt crunching as you eat the caramels. Salt lovers will enjoy it, for some people it might just be too much of a good thing.

Cutting my 8"x8" pans of caramels down into bite sized pieces and wrapping each one individually (otherwise they tried to reattach themselves to one another) took a good amount of time as well. One of the most annoying things was trying to get nice squares of waxed paper off the roll, I'm guessing there are pre-cut wrappers out there somewhere, I'll track those down before I try this again. I ended up taking three batches of salted caramels on our annual camping trip. Thank goodness I had twenty friends or so to help eat all these candies! Thanks guinea pigs!