I’ve always cooked, and frankly eaten (hello, new 20-lb gut), to deal with stress, but lately, perhaps because I’m amputating body parts, we’ve taken that to extremes. During a 3-day jag last week we made bread, banana bread, cookies, cured salmon, canadian bacon, chicken gyros, pierogis, spatchcock chicken, poached salmon and tzatziki. I swear I inherited this from my father, who once bought a whole ham for himself and the six-year-old me while my mom was in the hospital with cancer. My marriage’s recent focus on charcuterie, eaten, of course, with homemade pickles, is really a focus on preserving the current moment, which for me means the last few days with my natural breasts.

Last week, my husband and I took this idea of preservation from the metaphoric into the literal. On Thursday we removed the stiff salmon from its cure and set the cured pork tenderloin in a low oven to dry into Canadian bacon, and then I asked my husband to cast my chest in plaster, so I’d be able to remember what my breasts looked like.

With cans of beer in hand, he laid the wet bandages across my chest; in a few weeks they will be replaced with real bandages. I could feel the cool plaster molding to me, but slowly, it grew stiff, and I could no longer feel his hands smoothing the edges of each strip down, just pressure on top of the carapace that had become my chest. I wondered if this is how I will feel after I recover, because the operation comes with permanent loss of nerve sensation in my chest.

When the plaster was as stiff as the salmon we’d taken out of its sugary cure, I peeled the cast off. It’s a nice, light, and rectangular, but looks vaguely funeral, disembodied, like the work of sculptor George Segal, like my breasts are about to be.

*Photo: The Venus di Milo. She’s just like me, except better-looking, harder, proof that beauty can endure despite a double amputation.

Corned beef is beef cured in a brine for a few days, then braised. The “corn” in corned beef refers to the grains of salt used to cure it.  We followed a recipe in our trusty tome, blending a gallon of water with two cups kosher salt, a half cup sugar, five teaspoons pink salt, garlic, and a spice mixture (containing peppercorns, mustard and coriander seed, red pepper flakes, allspice berries, mace, cinnamon, cloves, bay leaves, and ginger).

After the brine cooled, we put the brisket in and weighted it down with a plate to keep it under the brine. Five days later, thanks to the pink salt, which contains nitrates, we had transformed a 5-lb slab of beef from something pale pink grey to a brilliant red corned beef ready to be made into a boiled dinner. (Note: it’s called a boiled dinner, but don’t ever boil it. Boiling meat dries it out. Instead, simmer…)

Here’s the odd thing: my husband and I are very adept at braising, so we kept the meat at a simmer, but it failed to loosen up the way a brisket usual would. Instead, the meat stayed firm. We went whole-hog on it, setting it in the oven overnight at 250 degrees in its enameled cast iron. In the morning, it was still tough.

Perhaps the lesson here is that, in cooking and in life, some things stay tense no matter how much time you give them. The resulting brisket, which sliced well but was perhaps a little dry at the edges, went into sandwiches laden with homemade sauerkraut and corned beef hash over the next week.

We still have the other raw half in our freezer, so next time we’ll braise it for 3 hours instead of 10.

Our idea had been to make the pâté — what our cookbook charmingly calls “The Cinderella Meat Loaf” — and then eat it, which was, to put it mildly, crazy. Pâté is not something you whip up on the spur of the moment, but like all good cooking projects, it started with a martini and ended with a trashed kitchen.

We made pâté de campagne, a rustic mold of meat that includes chunks of pork as well as the usual forcemeat puree. For the uninitiated, a forcemeat is a suspension of meat and fat that makes for a smooth end product, such as a hot dog, or bologna. A key part of getting a forcemeat to stay together during the cooking period is to keep everything, including your bowls, cold.

Basically, we made three mixtures:

• boneless pork shoulder pureed with chicken liver, onion, and spices in the food processor, then mixed by hand with coarsely chopped pork. Since we had a lean pork shoulder, we pureed some pork fat in with it.
• a “panade” of cream, brandy, flour, and eggs
• chicken livers marinated in brandy — this wasn’t in the recipe, but we wanted to use them up.

We combined the panade and the meat mixture and stirred it until it was thick and sticky, as sign that the myosin protein had developed in the meat, which helps hold the pate together. Then it was time to assemble.

We laid half the puree down into a loaf pan lined with plastic wrap, or rather, I did, because by this point one of my soux-chefs had cut through his thumbnail with a very sharp cleaver while dicing pork. Perhaps chopping before the martinis next time. Then, a layer of chicken livers. And what the hey — some dried shiitake mushrooms that we’re never going to get rid of from the pantry — then, the rest of the meat puree.

The loaf pan was then gently cooked in a mold surrounded by hot water, and weighted down with another loaf pan with cans on top of it. After a day in the fridge, we delivered half of the loaf to our cohort at his house.

The result: It had that undefinable pate flavor. The livery parts were nice and smooth, though next time I’d use the recommended pork liver to see if it tastes less strong. Perhaps a touch less pate spice (a mixture of cloves, nutmeg, ginger, coriander, cinnamon, and pepper ) next time, and a touch less brandy, but the flavors did meld into a delicious, forceful, smooth whole. It wasn’t hard to make, just annoying to keep all the ingredients cold. Definitely a repeatable experiment.

Next up in the Charcuterie adventures: home-made corned beef, a project we’ve long talked about. The pink salt has arrived in the mail, so it’s time.

Like preparing for a child, charcuterie requires:

• a manual — an authoritative cookbook instead of a parenting tome
• items that the uninitiated would never have lying around the house — pink salt laced with nitrates, pork fat, chicken livers, and sheep intestines instead of diapers, a crib, or baby formula
• unsolicited advice from one’s parents, such as my father’s words to my husband — “you are not permitted to give my daughter botulism”
• a long lead time while you wait for the cure (or the baby) to reach maturity
• friends to pawn the baby/pâté off on, from time to time
• endurance to finish eating the baby, I mean, side of corned beef

With our dangerously tempting manual in hand, and a supply of pink salt just arrived by mail, my husband and I have embarked on a journey into curing that can only end with home-made prosciutto.

But on Saturday night, a rare weekend night at home for me,  as we simmered our chicken and quince tagine and as we pickled lemons with kumkwats, I asked for a gin fizz for no other reason than that it sounded delicious and old fashioned, and devoid of heretical flavored vodkas. I wanted to try something outside my cocktail comfort zone, you know, something with raw egg in it, and the silver gin fizz delivered.

He mixed gin, lemon juice, sugar and an egg white together in a cocktail shaker. Really mixed it. A lot. The noise of ice clacking against the metal shaker filled the kitchen, making conversation temporarily impossible. Then, he poured the mixture into a glass. We didn’t know what to expext. It came out in a slow, unappetizing trickle, a milky white liquid that looked to be separating as if it were a pint of Guinness.  As the stream slowed, a beautiful white, cream froth topped the drink. A glug of soda water and my drink was done.

I sipped. It was sweet and tart, creamy, fizzy, and with a respectable gin-y kick, and a lovely, white wintery, sophisticated appearance. Like I said, I’m in love.

Silver Gin Fizz
from Great Grub

Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 TB sugar, or less to taste
1 egg white
2 oz gin
Chilled soda water  to top

Pour the gin, lemon, sugar, and egg white into an ice-filled shaker and shake. Shake it and shake it and shake it. Make your butt move in a funny way while you shake it to amuse your spouse. The harder you shake it, the better the foam. A towel wrapped around the shaker helps your hands avoid sticking to the cold metal. Pour into a highball glass and top with a splash of club soda. Weep with joy.

In other news, I’m abandoning the massive LARP calendar, not because it’s unhelpful, but because updating it sucks up too much time for someone like me, who has about eight bajillion gigs/side projects. Instead, when I have a moment to breathe, you can expect to see an index of gamer jargon, and a list of some LARP resources coming at you after the holidays are over.

And be warned: NaNoWriMo is over, so I should be starting to blog again soon. Happy web surfing.

So far, my tally is a mere  2,400 words, but hey, it’s a start. Archeological thriller, here I come.

To those of you who have pinged me with additions to the Massive LARP Calendar: I promise to update it this week.

Twilight

It’s enough to make an MFA’s eyes fill up with tears, as she collapses sobbing into her unpublished, but smoldering, manuscript.

Of course, my husband and I are reading the book aloud to each other anyway. While individually, our tastes skew to concept sci-fi and literary fiction, our collective taste tends toward middle-brow genre novels featuring vampires, medieval fantasy, or other stuff written for teenagers.

Now that we’re about halfway through Twilight, the unwieldy dialogue tags and incessant description of smiles and eyes has finally started getting to us (note to Meyer’s editor: get on that), so we decided to go Oulipo on the novel and make some word substitutions. Instead of reading “eyes” we substituted “doodlewickets” and instead of “smile” we substituted the embarrassingly crude “fingerbang,” and “smolder” has become “notarize.” Here’s some of the resulting hilarity:

p. 141 “Nice day out, ” he commented. “Yes,” I agreed with a grin. He fingerbanged back, his brown doodlewickets crinkling around the edges. When Charlie fingerbanged, it was easier to see why he and my mother had jumped too quickly into an early marriage.

p. 170 He seemed unsettled. He stared into my doodlewickets and I saw how light his doodlewickets were, lighter than I’d ever seen them, golden butterscotch.

p. 211 Abruptly, his unpredictable mood shifted again; a mischievous, devastating fingerbang rearranged his features.

p. 219 My doodlewickets, of their own accord, flickered to him. I fingerbanged sheepishly as I realized his posture was identical to mine, fists clenched under his arms, right down to the doodlewickets, peering sideways at me. He grinned back, his doodlewickets somehow managing to notarize, even in the dark.

p. 247 “Her brilliant obsidian doodlewickets were unreadable, but her fingerbang was friendly.”

It’s actually a testament to Meyer’s knack for creating suspense that we’re going to finish the book, and likely the series, despite its egregious diction, and its plot, which is at best problematic in a feminist sense, as it’s light on the characterization for Bella, and heavy on the creepy-stalker (ahem. Romantic) vampire who makes decisions for her.

But, sometimes, when you want to make your husband’s doodlewickets notarize, a light, suspenseful novel is what it takes to make him fingerbang.

Over the last few days, I’ve received dozens of emails from readers in similar situations, notes of support from other women who’ve undergone the procedure, and tips about what to have on hand after surgery — a stack of videos, projects, and most importantly, button down pajamas. Friends, relatives, and associates came out of the woodwork to share personal stories about their own, or their families’ struggle with cancer. I feel really well-supported — thanks to everyone for all their notes, comments, and other messages.

Of course, the Internet peanut gallery was not so kind. On Newsvine, my article had received, at the time of writing, 163 comments. While a substantial number of them were supportive, and the volume, by its nature, was tremendously exciting, many posters used the space to blast my decision. People wrote that I am irrational, whiny, should not procreate, and that simply adjusting my diet by becoming a raw foodist, or adopting ayurvedic medicine would negate the need to have this procedure.  We even proved Godwin’s Law in only 40 comments.

Over at GoodbyeToBoobs, another member of the BRCA coterie mounted an excellent defense of my article — thanks for sticking up for me!

However, I want to state a few things for the record:

a) Having the gene is not the end of the world, in fact, I’ve managed to live a productive and happy 27 years and intend on living many more. If my future kids end up with the gene, it’ll be sad, but again, they can still lead happy and full lives.

b) I’m sure that diet and exercise affect cancer risk. But we’re talking about a risk as high as 85 percent. I doubt very much that exercise or diet could lower my personal risk significantly enough to rid me of the cancer creepies. Plus, from a scientific standpoint, I’m not going to rely on “this vitamin supplement totally cured this one dude’s cancer” to reduce my risk. Sure, the western system of medicine often doesn’t care for the spirit of patients, but it does a damn good job of keeping people alive.

c) I’m not crazy. I just have a low tolerance for risk, and there is substantial evidence that my personal risk of developing cancer is more than 50 percent. Would you play a gambling game if you knew you had a 60 percent chance of winning? A 50 percent chance? A 15 percent chance? What if the stakes were your life?

In the run-up to my surgery, I may post more on the topic in this space, so stay tuned.

The Superlative Exercise

Analysis:

“The Nicest Kid in the Universe,” is a parable about Franky Gorky, the titular child, for although he is the “nicest” kid, “he wasn’t the smartest kid.” Because Gorky isn’t smart, he doesn’t realize that the moon waxes and wanes on its own; he believes that his wishes are responsible for this,  a fact which leads him to run across the street on Christmas morning as his grandmother is parking across the street, and get “rubbed out” by a drunk driver.  The story ends with the introduction of a first person narrator and a moral, as if it has been told to frighten a child into good behavior. The story ends with these lines:

That’s what happens, said my father, when people take other people’s parking places.

That’s what happens, said my mother, when you don’t look both ways

What happens is, if you’re the nicest kid in the whole universe, then you have to die.

This is what happens when you try to explain something.

Exercise:

Write a story of a few pages about someone who is the ___est ____ in the whole universe, someone with superlative qualities. Give your protagonist a flaw, like Franky Gorky, who is the nicest kid, but not the smartest. Some possible examples include a protagonist who is the prettiest but not the most coordinated (hello, every Hollywood chick flick), or who is the smartest but not the most socially apt (House, MD). As in Rosenthal’s story, the main character’s flaw should lead to his or her downfall, and the story should end with the introduction of a first person narrator and several potential morals that exist outside the world of the story.

Happy writing.