I just received a call from the coordinator of the pie contest I entered last month.
She asked the person handling the sign in for my information.
She wanted to know if I could share my recipe with her. She had a slice of my pie dirty and would like to make it for Thanksgiving dessert.
Ok, it's not like Food Network called me and asked me for the recipe but heck, I'm honored she went out of her way to find my info and call me for my recipe, a month after the fact.
I've been asked for recipes before but this really got my engines running, especially as I near my prep work for Turkey Day.
You know, I'd love to have a job in a taste kitchen. Seriously, I wouldn't mind being a test cook for Reynold's Wrap or the like. Being paid to create recipes and to cook would be my cup of tea.
I'd have to put my foot down on which kitchen it would be though. I couldn't be the test cook for French's Fried Onions or Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. You can only do so much with one packaged product.
What does it take to get a job at Cook's Illustrated? I wouldn't mind being the tester of pans and bakeware. Oh, what I would do to be given moola and told to go out and buy groceries and come up with something.
I’ve lived in NYC all my life and I’ve only been to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day once and that was because I was marching in it. You know how they say that New Yorker’s don’t appreciate what they have? Well, I do appreciate it and I can appreciate it at the comforts of a warm apartment/house where I get front row seats to inflated balloons and crazy volunteer wranglers struggling to get Snoopy’s nose past the Columbus Circle fountain. Instead of standing the freezing cold, guessing whether or not my nose is actually running or just feels like it’s running, I can casually enjoy the festivities with a warm cup of hot cocoa. I can bypass the cheesy lip syncing. I can fast forward the tenth band to play ‘Seven Nation Army’.
Ever since Lrudlrick called me at Chelsea Market to listen to a Tuba player blow his heart out to ‘Seven Nation Army’, I can’t listen to it without picturing this husky kid turning red faced as the cymbalists clang.
See, I froze my tail the year I played in the parade. That’s when I knew band and baton twirling were not for me. I marched in parades throughout the city in either band or baton for years. For some reason, it never struck me that I really didn’t want to be parading around in frigid temperatures until that year. I suppose that was the year I realized I had a choice.
I didn’t play any cool instruments either. It wasn’t like I got to use the cymbals or the drums. I was the girl who played the glockenspiel. A glockenspiel is an upright xylophone. It was heavy and metal so your finger tips were cold.
I began to play the glockenspiel after I realized band members got to wear pants. When I twirled baton, I was always in shimmery tights freezing my tuckus, shaking my pom-pom laden shoes. Since my only experience in a musical instrument was a piano, the band leader gave me the glockenspiel. You memorized the notes and did a little choreography and you were in.
We weren’t high caliber band material but we were a band and whenever there was a parade, we were obligated to march.
I don’t regret marching. It was an experience I suppose most kids should do. Years from now, when I’m wiping snot off my kid’s face as he/she is watching the balloons inflate, I can tell them I marched in the parade and it was fun. Then I can perpetuate the cycle and let him/her freeze their buns just so they can tell their kids they marched.
