Okay, never mind that first sentence. I was thinking that I might write an entire post as a series of Ruth Reichl-inspired tweets, for shits and giggles, but then I started to annoy myself.

Thanks to the Oxycontin – which does, thankfully, help with the pain a LOT – I am unable to sleep more than two or three hours at a stretch. It’s been a little over a week, and the cumulative effects of so little sleep have rendered me a complete shell of a woman.

*Let it be known that my in-laws’ living room ceiling is NOT webbed with cracks; I do not wish to impinge on their hospitality by besmirching their home upkeep on the internet.

I realize that every parent is now rolling their eyes at me, irritated that I would dare to complain about a scant week of sleep deprivation.

To them I say: I understand your irritation! I don’t know how anyone manages to raise children! I think we should re-organize society so that all babies go to community play centers on Sundays to allow their mothers 10 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Also, the mothers should get foot rubs. If they don’t have partners to rub their feet, we’ll send in federal employees. Honoring mothers AND job creation: it’s a win-win!

I realize that this will be a controversial proposal, and will lead to partisan bickering over the potential privatization of the foot rubbing industry, whether we can trust the government to provide quality masseurs and what will happen when a religious masseur refuses to touch the feet of a gay parent (you know, because they’re scared to catch teh gay).

I’ll think about this a little more, and hopefully at that point I’ll realize that this is a RIDICULOUS idea and it would be much easier to just give each new parent their own foot bath with massaging jets. (The infant community play center, I’m totally firm on. I don’t see any potential problems with that one.)

Somehow, dinner still managed to get made tonight although I’m fairly certain I had almost nothing to do with it.

Stuck in my head was the idea of doing a root vegetable “risotto,” with finely diced carrots and parsnips standing in for the traditional arborio rice. Needless to say, this involves chopping. A lot of chopping. A lot of chopping that has to be done with care, so all your little veg bits are sized consistently. A lot of chopping that’s really hard to do when (1) it hurts to stand for long periods of time and (2) one’s hands are shaking from exhaustion. Thus, dinner only made it to the table thanks to my trusty sous.

The basics: saute minced shallot in a bit of butter. Add the veg and a sploosh of white wine; let the wine reduce. Add enough hot stock to barely cover the veg and cook, stirring frequently until the stock is mostly absorbed/evaporated and the veg are cooked but still toothsome. Fortify with a little mascarpone. Eat.

Carrots and parsnips do not a complete dinner make, even when you add another little dollop of mascarpone and some hazelnuts, so Brian roasted off some chicken thighs glazed with orange and honey.

Holy shit, unholy amount of knifework aside this was a great dinner. The carrots and parsnips still had some bite, and some orange zest and nutmeg punched up their natural earthy sweetness. Hazelnut was right in their flavor wheelhouse, a needed textural element, and I’ve never met a manifestation of mascarpone that I didn’t love. Paired with juicy, crisp, salty-sweet chicken: dinner perfection.

It’s now almost 1:30AM and I probably have another three hours before I fall asleep, so I look forward to another evening of immersion in Cindy Crawford’s Meaningful Beauty.

Root Veg “Risotto”
serves 4 as a side

I medium shallot, peeled and minced
2 tbsp. unsalted butter
2 large carrots, peeled and cut into a 1/4-inch dice
2 large parsnips, peeled and cut into a 1/4-inch dice
1/2 c. white wine of your choice
1-2 c. stock of your choice
zest of 1 orange
1/4 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 tsp. ground white pepper
1/3 c. mascarpone
1/4 c. chopped, toasted hazelnuts
salt

Pour the stock into a small saucepan and warm it over medium heat; when it comes to a simmer, turn the heat down to low.

Melt the butter in a medium pot over medium heat. Add the shallot and saute until translucent, about five minutes. Add the carrots and parsnips and toss to combine.

Pour in the wine and stir until wine is almost totally evaporated.

Pour in enough stock to just cover the vegetables (depending on your pot, this should take between one and two cups); add the zest, nutmeg and pepper. Bring to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until most of the liquid is absorbed or evaporated and the veg is cooked through, about 10 minutes. Stir in the mascarpone.

Taste, and adjust the seasoning (this will vary depending on how salty your stock is).

Serve immediately, sprinkling the hazelnuts over the top.

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Man, going back to work tomorrow is gonna be HARD.

On to the shit I want. I don’t know about you, but even in my normal state I inevitably make a huge mess with honey bottles. Especially when it’s getting to the end of the bottle and I store it upside down.

Sadly, I’m pretty sure I would still manage to make a mess with this lovely model from Merchant No. 4, but at least it would be a stylish mess.

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Obviously that urge will go unfulfilled because (1) I’m in too much pain to be gallivanting around climbing mountains and (2) I’m pretty sure the nearest high point around here is a landfill anyway.

Why am I in pain? BECAUSE MY L5 AND S1 DISCS ARE PRESSING AGAINST THE NERVE SAC IN MY SPINAL COLUMN, MOTHERFUCKERS. Interested parties will note that the pain is NOT caused by a urinary tract infection, a kidney infection, a kidney stone or an errant muscle spasm, as various physicians have espoused and I have never totally believed. My friend the Chief of Neurology – who I am officially elevating to Bestie – advises that I just need to manage the pain for a little while and the problem should resolve itself. BOO-YAH.

Moving on: you’d think that will all my down time this week I would’ve been able to store up quite a cache of interesting links to share today, but I’ve been in thrall to Pinterest. It’s like Awesome Shit I Want Monday gone wild up in there. If you’re there, I invite you to join me. If you feel like the internet isn’t already sucking enough of your life away and want an invite, leave a comment.

Thanks for all the good wishes and crossed fingers!

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Aside from doing all the cooking he also decided he wanted to take all the pictures, which means, um, that there aren’t a ton of usable ones. This is a man who once came back from a two-week trip to Germany, and the most recognizable photo was one he accidentally took of his shoe. But A+ for effort!

Before we get started, can I make a general request to the internet? It is this: Please stop the “This is what my mother thinks I do… This is what I really do” meme. Because here’s the thing; if you work in an office you spend your day sitting in front of a computer trying to figure out how much more time you can spend on Pinterest* before it starts seriously eating into your productivity, so all office-based people can just use the same graphic. And everyone else is doing their assigned task – pumping gas, building skyscrapers, assembling widgets – and bitching about their bosses to their coworkers, so there’s one graphic for them.

As you can plainly see, we therefore only need two graphics. Maybe three; full-time parents should get one. Someone make those, and we can all go about our business. You only need your own graphic if you’re, like, an astronaut or  a wizard or the president. And ten bucks says even the president is dicking around on Pinterest.

Thanks for listening, internet.

*In my convalescent state, I’ve become  a hopeless pinner.

Dinner tonight came from Fiesta at Rick’s, a great book by my secret boyfriend and pot dealer Rick Bayless. (You know he’s growing that shit in his rooftop garden. No chef is that zen.) I would tell you the dish’s Spanish name but the book is in the kitchen and navigating the stairs hurts, so you’re stuck with the less-festive English translation, roasted vegetable enchiladas with creamy tomatillo sauce and cheese.

For the sauce, Brian charred some tomatillos, onion and jalapeño and chucked them into the FoPro. The resulting puree got seared off in hot oil, concentrating the flavors, before being fortified with stock and Mexican crema (see above). While it simmered, he roasted off parsnips, carrots, butternut squash and mushrooms for the filling and grated up some Mexican melting cheese, which I’m pretty sure is just re-packaged Monterey Jack.

Unfortunately, there aren’t really any photos of these parts of the process. Here, have a picture of my dogs instead.

That’s Chester, behind Felix’s hindquarters. Look at those jowls! Don’t you just want to pinch them? Don’t worry, I did it for you.

The filling got rolled into some warm, pliable flour tortillas and tucked into a cast iron pan over a bed of the sauce.

Note to my gentle readers: If you decide to re-create this, you want to chop your veg pretty small, like a half-inch dice. That’ll make it a lot easier to stuff the enchiladas.

More sauce, a heap of cheese, and the pan went into the oven for ten minutes or so. Since everything’s already cooked, you’re just heating everything through and melting the cheese.

I’d like to take a moment here to pat myself on the back. The whole time Brian was cooking, I sat on the couch quietly and did not offer any advice unless specifically asked. No, “Why are you doing it that way?” or “What if you tried this?” or, most likely, “Why don’t you let me do this part?”

If you’ve ever seen me in the kitchen with Brian, you know that this is a BIG HONKING DEAL. So, you know, +1 for me.

Not that this is surprising in any way, because we are talking about Rick Bayless, but we loved these. Pretty simple to assemble, and great on a chilly night. The tomatillo sauce was incredibly well-balanced, with the crema smoothing out the blunt edges of the tomatillo and jalapeño (which wasn’t de-seeded). The root veg were caramelized and gently sweet, and a final topping of raw onion and cilantro kept things fresh and biting.

If handing the Smackdown over the Brian garners these kinds of results, I may have to severely injure myself more often.

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A few questions that perhaps the Magical Elves can answer:

• Why Canada?

• Why did they have to cook in 22 minutes AND use a mystery ingredient halfway through AND be in gondolas?

• Since when are Canadian winter sportspersons qualified to judge the finals of a fine dining competition? Quoth one sportsperson: “The first thing I noticed was flavor.” A searing insight!

• I am still correct in thinking that this is Top Chef, not Top Ice Carver, yes?

• Is there anyone remaining for whom Sarah is sufferable? Didn’t think so.

And now, a health report.

After a visit to my primary care physician, another trip to the hospital and no less than four different attempts at managing the pain via ever-stronger prescription narcotics, I received the less-than-encouraging news from my doctor that I’m probably just experiencing a muscle spasm and should go to a physical therapist. I’m assuming that physical therapy is less effective when any movement causes level 10 pain, so I was a little doubtful.

So I called in the big guns: I happen to be friends with the Chief of Neurology at NYU who was happy to examine me and then persuade my doctor to at least get me an MRI and increase the dosages of my drugs before shuffling me off to PT.

That’s why I’ll be heading to Hoboken Medical Imaging tomorrow at the ungodly hour of 6:45AM. If there’s a rebellious disc in my spine, it will be swiftly pinpointed and subdued. I’m also a little worried that I may be Linsane in the Membrane, but I’m not sure if that shows up on an MRI. One step at a time.

And in the meantime, the latest cocktail of painkillers is definitely taking the edge off, although it does make typing and thinking a little difficult (so I apologize for any gaffes in this post, especially as Brian has gone to bed already and can’t proof it).

Thank you thank you for the good wishes in your comments and emails. I know you’ve been crossing your fingers for a few days already, but could you keep it up for one more?

Photo by Olivander.

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Concurrent with my physical distress is the emotional distress of featuring this lovely nested baking dish set from Napastyle, which is, as we all know, the brainchild of douchebag par excellence Michael Chiarello. I love the colors, the shapes and the distressed edges. Thankfully, I just saw that these particular models are no longer available on the website, so I am saved from supporting Chiarello in any way.

Not that I could afford them anyway, what with all my medical copays these days. For those playing along at home, the current status is:

• One trip to my primary care physician.
• Two trips to the Emergency Room.
• Five different pain management medications attempted.
• 1,000 stars that I see every time I move my body at all.

Currently, I’m on Flexeril and Percocet, which reduce the number of stars I see by about 100. My current mission is to persuade someone, anyone, to give me an MRI, but no one will.

So a new request for you: do you know any black-market radiologists who operate in the NYC area? I can pay in cupcakes. Thanks in advance.

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-  Now you can huff your Red Bull. This stuff is available in Massachusetts, New York and France, so you know it’s some kind of commie bullshit.

- In photo #8, hundreds of Taiwanese release enormous glowing hot cross buns into the night sky.

-  I posit: which of these products makes you more depressed to live in the modern age? It’s Justin Bieber Oralcare vs. the Snuggie’s Redheaded Stepchild.

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I’ll be calling the doctor again in the morning to petition for yet another prescription for pain meds. I’ll expect a visit from the cops shortly thereafter, when my insurance company informs them that someone at this address is hording prescription drugs with intent to distribute. And I live within a couple hundred feet of an elementary school, so I gotta watch out.

Needless to say, I biffed on the Smackdown. I figure I deserve the night off from standing in front of the stove. Instead, I sat on the couch, watched Project Runway and tried not to feel too sorry for myself.

Fingers crossed for a definitive diagnosis and better pain management SOON. If you could all cross your fingers too, that would be great.

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Between that and watching “Dance Moms,” I’m in quite the tizzy.* I therefore apologize in advance if I am incoherent, babble or use made-up words.

Brian is similarly discomfited because our Old English Sheepdog, who ate a 16-pack of potato rolls last night, jumped onto the bed this morning to curl up on Brian’s chest as per usual and promptly threw up a mound of partially-digested rolls. On Brian. So he’s self-medicating with scotch, while I use prescription painkillers and Television for Women. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

*If anyone is wondering, there’s nothing wrong with my back at all, and I actually have a horrible and bizarre urinary tract infection with awful kidney pain. Who knew? Not me.

A couple weeks ago I posted this lentil salad to the TNS Facebook page. The photo killed me, with the chunks of garlic and the parsley. I wanted this salad. I needed this salad.

Unfortunately the salad, while nominally simple, involved things I usually can’t be bothered to do on a weeknight, like braise pork belly; you know, because I’m usually all doped up on painkillers or searching the house to discern what is missing from its appointed place and, therefore, will likely be thrown up next by one of the dogs.*

*If you have money riding on this, a good bet is usually “used feminine products dug out of the garbage can.” Thankfully, he has never thrown these up on either of our persons, and we now padlock the bathroom door.

So I thought about ways to weeknightify this dinner, and decided to do canned cannellini beans mixed with a warm garlicky bacon vinaigrette and bacon lardons and tossed with some baby spinach. That is: a salad that has very little to do with the inspiration recipe other than the fact that both meals contain garlic and parsley.

I cooked up a couple strips of thick cut bacon. I’d planned to mince shallots and garlic while the bacon rendered down but standing and chopping was seriously aggravating my pain level, no thanks to the crap-ass hospital that gave me a lame prescription for Naproxen Sodium – aka Aleve – AFTER I told them that I’d already taken Aleve and found it useless. I’ve been in pain for A WEEK. WHERE ARE MY NARCOTICS? Don’t make me go from hospital to hospital until someone gives me Percocet, because I will totally do it.

The upshot: I made Brian mince the garlic.

I cooked the shallots for a few minutes but the garlic for only a moment, since I wanted it to keep most of its bite. To finish off the vinaigrette, I estimated the amount of bacon fat in the pan and whisked together enough sherry vinegar and dijon mustard to create a nice dressing, mixing it in followed by the beans, lardons and parsley.

I dumped the hot mixture over some baby spinach, tossed it around a little and let it sit for a few minutes so the heat would start to wilt the greens.

In addition to mincing all the garlic, I made Brian run to the neighbors’ to borrow wooden salad bowls and servers that would be cuter in pictures. Being the good man that he is, he knows that one must humor one’s significant other after s/he has been betrayed by his or her own urinary tract, and he went gladly,* bringing back a selection of bowls in varied sizes. Thanks neighbors! Sorry we didn’t give you any food in return!

*At least, he appeared to go gladly. But then, he is very good at sublimating his silent rage.

Four slices of bacon, a can of beans and a package of baby spinach ended up being the perfect amount of food for two hungry people, although you could also use it as a first course for four.

I typically don’t find salad to be that memorable, but this salad will be making a return appearance. There was a play of textures (crunchy, creamy) and flavors (salty, pungent, bright) that really helped it to feel like a meal rather than “just” a salad. It was warm and filling without being overly healthy, and came together quickly.

It’s also a pretty cheap-ass meal. A can of beans is a buck, you don’t need much or fancy-pants bacon, and you could totally just toss the beans and bacon with some frozen chopped spinach and sub the sherry vinegar for the more commonly-found apple cider vinegar.

Also, it can be easily assembled by the drug-addled.

Fingers crossed for a pain and vomit-free day tomorrow!

White Beans and Spinach with Warm Bacon Vinaigrette
serves 2 as a main, 4 as a first course

4 strips thick-cut bacon
1 large shallot, minced
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp. sherry vinegar
1 tsp. dijon mustard
1 15oz. can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1/3 c. chopped flat-leaf parsley
1/4 tsp. fresh ground black pepper
6 oz. baby spinach

Dice the bacon into lardons. Put the bacon pieces into a saute pan over medium heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the fat has rendered out and the bacon is crisp. Remove the bacon from the pan to a plate lined with paper towels, keeping the fat in the pan, and turn the heat down to medium-low.

Add the shallots to the pan of bacon fat and saute for 3-4 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds more.

Whisk the mustard into the vinegar, then pour the vinegar into the pan of fat; stir to combine. Mix in the beans and pepper and cook for a few minutes to heat through. Toss in the parsley.

Put the spinach in a large bowl; dump the beans and vinaigrette and reserved bacon over the top. Toss everything together, then let it sit for a few minutes.

Serve immediately.

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Empty, they’re just flowy, colorful, textured bowls. Fill them with something, and the form creates a recognizable shape.

So, okay, it might be a little hard to scrape the last bits of oatmeal out of the nooks and crannies. And yes, they cost 240€ a piece, if you can even figure out how to obtain them.

Still: one day, I will be a wealthy, eccentric old lady, and I will have a cat named Mr. Masterson who will drink out of this cat bowl.

Because you gotta have goals.

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