Last summer, I discovered that I like small-batch bourbon. But I also don’t have the tolerance to sit around sipping it, which I suppose is probably a good thing. The solution? To cook with it, of course. This is a super simple flank steak recipe that my husband and I made on a weeknight. It took less than 5 minutes to throw the marinade together, then just a few minutes on the grill after we’d given the marinade some time to soak in.

Flank Steak with Bourbon Marinade

(adapted from a recipe from Fountain Prairie Inn and Farm)

• 1 flank steak (1 ½ pounds)
• 4-6 cloves crushed garlic
• 1/2 ounce bourbon (I used Bookers. I only use a wee bit because, really, who wants to waste small-batch bourbon?)
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• 1 tablespoon honey
• ¼ cup olive oil

 Put marinade ingredients in a ziplock bag.  Add flank steak, seal bag and refrigerate at least one hour.  Prepare barbeque (medium heat).  Remove flank steak from marinade; discard marinade.  Grill flank steak until instant read thermometer registers 120 degrees for medium rare.  Remove steak from grill, cover and let rest for 5 minutes. Slice steak across the grain at a 45 degree angle.  Serves 4-6.

Central Waters Belgian Blonde. Okay, so this beer (which I tried at the always awesome Star Liquor) wasn’t far from my comfort zone, but a great ale nonetheless. Full bodied and just slightly fruity, with a nice sour note.  Central Waters is a fantastic little brewery out of Amherst, Wisconsin. Many of their beers have a heavier feel to them, in my opinion, but this blonde accomplishes big taste without heaviness. Yum.

KBS from Founders Brewing Company out of Michigan. This was on tap at Alchemy on Atwood. KBS is a dark, smooth imperial “breakfast” stout that has all the richness and bitterness of dark chocolate. I almost never drink stout, but this one blew me away. It’s not something I would drink with food, though, because I can’t imagine what I’d possibly pair with a flavor this big. Best enjoyed on its own, sipped and savored slowly.

And even though it’s not a beer, I very much enjoyed Br’er Rabbit, a limited release from Cripsin, which I also tried at Star. It’s an apple cider with rhubarb & elderberry, aged in Merlot wine barrels. I didn’t expect to like it, as I often find domestic ciders too sweet for my taste, but this was clean, tart, and not at all too sweet.  Perfect for sipping ice-cold on a summer evening.

Clockwise from top left: 80s heels from Etsy sellers SkinnyandBernie, TigerlillyFrocks, CleverlyCurated, StarletsVintage, OldSchoolSwank.

I’d like to think the answer is yes. I have dozens of poetry books on my shelves that have not been opened in years. But it does not matter. I can go about my days, and the verses still sit there, poised inside those pages, ready to spring goosebumps to my skin if I only take time to remember, and read.

Today, April 26, is “Poem in Your Pocket Day,” first created by the City of New York in 2002 and expanded to a national movement in 2009. We are encouraged to print out or write down a beloved poem, written by us or someone else, and carry it around all day to share with others. The one I have chosen is a poem by one of my favorite poets, Wallace Stevens (1879-1955).

Here’s why I love Stevens: the guy was a lawyer, toiling away most of his life in the executive offices of the Hartford insurance company. And yet on his way to and from work each day, and maybe on his coffee breaks, he wrote what he called “the supreme fiction”– poetry. And not just sentimental little verses for friends and family, but ambitious, architectural webs of words. He published his first collection, Harmonium (1923), at the age of forty-four. It sold only 100 copies. But Stevens kept writing, and he went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1955, just a few months before he died. And he left us with the poem shown below–one of my all-time favorites.

 The Well Dressed Man With A Beard

After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
No was the night. Yes is this present sun.
If the rejected things, the things denied,
Slid over the western cataract, yet one,
One only, one thing that was firm, even
No greater than a cricket’s horn, no more
Than a thought to be rehearsed all day, a speech
Of the self that must sustain itself on speech,
One thing remaining, infallible, would be
Enough. Ah! douce campagna of that thing!
Ah! douce campagna, honey in the heart,
Green in the body, out of a petty phrase,
Out of a thing believed, a thing affirmed:
The form on the pillow humming while one sleeps,
The aureole above the humming house…
It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.

By: Wallace Stevens

First published in: Parts of a World (1942), in Collected Poetry and Prose of Wallace Stevens (Library of America ed.), p. 224.

The name of the recipe implies something tasty, like Curried Chicken with Couscous or Lemon Fusilli with Spinach & Asiago.  The accompanying photo holds the promise of everything you long to be. That is, someone who doesn’t dump a bag of Trader Joe’s potstickers into a microwave-safe bowl in response to the question, “What should we do for dinner?” Someone who doesn’t treat her utensil like a dump truck and her food like a pile of debris that must be cleared while the baby is ripping up napkins.

You sigh. The succulent vegetables and fluffy rice in the photos seem about as attainable as your pre-pregnancy pants.

But wait… what’s that? The recipe promises to be a “Family Dinner in Four Simple Steps!” or a “Quick and Easy Weeknight Solution!” With determination, you tie on your vintage apron, because everyone knows that feeling cute is half the battle. You can do this.

Ginger Lemongrass Stir Fry with Tofu and Self-Delusion

• 2 cloves garlic and 1 onion, chopped. Wipe tears from eyes to notice the dog licking the baby’s mouth. Chastise dog, then confuse her by giving her a rawhide treat. You’ll deal with dog discipline later.
• 1 carrot, julienned. And by julienned, I mean cut one perfect little matchstick-sized piece off a carrot and eat the rest of the carrot raw while proceeding with the next steps.
• Tofu, cubed. Why is it falling apart? It looks like feta cheese. Mmm, cheese. Go to refrigerator and eat 2 pieces of string cheese.
• 2 tablespoons red curry paste. Oops. Is this red curry sauce? Oh, well. I’ll just use more.
• 1 stick lemongrass. Except you couldn’t find lemongrass at the condescending co-op market down the street because, according to the blonde girl with the dreadlocks and the questionable choice of rubber footwear, it was “out of season,” so you bought a lemon instead. You consider pointing out that lemons aren’t in season, either, and that they never are because you live in Wisconsin, but you’ve got a simple, healthy meal to cook.
• 5 basil leaves, torn. Uh-oh. Make that four. Baby is chewing on one. Gimme that.

Add 2 TB of oil to skillet. Sautee onions and garlic until fragrant. In a separate pot, commence making white basmati rice according to package instructions.

Remove baby’s hands from dog bowl.

Shit. It smells like burning garlic. Deglaze burned garlic and onion chunks from bottom of pan with juice from one of the lemons. Take that, dreadlock co-op girl.

Add the rest of the ingredients and begin to stir fry, then pause to answer phone. Turn off stove, take off apron, and load thrashing baby into car seat so you can go pick up your husband from work.

Return to the house to find the dog tap dancing to go outside. Walk dog while husband puts baby to bed.

Turn stove back on forty-five minutes later. Open pot of rice to find that it has turned to mush with similar consistency to Gerber whole grain cereal you give to your eight-month-old son every morning. He has three teeth.

Return to skillet to resume stir-frying. Why does the stir fry look like soup? Pour off excess liquid. Splatter liquid on shirt. You should have remembered to put the apron back on. Nah, nevermind. The apron is cuter than your shirt, anyway, which is a college t-shirt you actually bought in college.

Douse the whole thing in salt.  Put some frozen potstickers in the microwave, just in case.

Serve over mushy rice. Pour glass of wine.

Total cooking time: 2 hours, forty-nine minutes.

It’s no secret that I’m obsessed with Mad Men. My thirty-first birthday fell on the premiere night of the fourth season, and I somehow convinced my husband and friends to come dressed in costume.

The start of the fifth season on Sunday doesn’t fall on my birthday, but that’s okay. I’m not sure I could wait any longer, anyhow. It’s already been a year and a half! In the meantime, I’ve been feeding my addiction for all things mod on Etsy and Pinterest. A peek at some of my favorite Mad Men-inspired items:

Each row, left to right (all images from Etsy): 60s rocks glasses from RustBeltThreads, vintage gold gown from LaChicVintageCloset, handmade fedora from katarinacouture, vintage Scripto lighter from manstuff, 60s beads from tomatored,  Mad Men inspired triptych from WebModernRetro.

[Image from theberry.com]

Oscar Wilde had a lot of great, pithy quotes, like this one. Do you agree? I agree with the overeducated part. Just ask my grandmother, who is working her way through the Great Books in her eighties.  As for being overdressed, I have to say that it is possible, and I’ve been guilty of it once or twice. Being overdressed isn’t so much a question of what you’re wearing, though. It’s a question of whether you can pull it off.

Milla Jovovich wore a sequined white gown that some media outlets are calling “vintage,” but that’s not really accurate.  The gown was from Elie Saab’s fall 2009 collection. Maybe that’s considered vintage in Hollywood, where trends fade faster than a spray-on tan, but not in my book.

On the weekends, though, my husband and I usually try to make at least one big meal that we can eat as leftovers during the week. Actually, to say that “we” make the meal is kind of misleading. I always intend to make the meal, or at least help, but the reality is that my husband ends up doing it. I get sidetracked trying to keep our suddenly mobile 7-month-old from taking all the books off our bookshelves and crushing himself with the Norton Anthology of Poetry.

This week, our big weekend meal was Spanish lentil soup, a hearty favorite from the days when I studied abroad in Spain my junior year in college. I was lucky enough to live with a family whose matriarch was a great cook. Some of my classmates weren’t so lucky. A girlfriend of mine once got served a dinner of five hot dogs on a plate with no buns. Meanwhile, I enjoyed hearty, from-scratch meals like this one, which is surprisingly easy to make (or so my husband says) and only requires getting one pot dirty.

Sopa de Lentejas (Spanish Lentil Soup)

• 1 bag lentils
• 1 sliced chorizo sausage (if you can find Spanish chorizo, lucky you! Otherwise you can use Mexican; that’s what we did)
• 1 onion cut into wedges
• 3-4 carrots sliced
• 2 celery ribs sliced
• 1 red bell pepper diced
• 3 cloves garlic diced
• 3 potatoes peeled and diced
• 2 bay leafs
• 2 cans tomato sauce
• salt and pepper to taste
• half teaspoon roasted red pepper flakes
• red wine vinegar

1. Soak the lentils in water for an hour before cooking. Rinse them and pick through them to remove any pebbles or debris that sometimes lurk in lentils.

2. Put the soaked lentils, sliced sausage, onion wedges, sliced carrots, sliced celery, bay leaves, bell pepper, and garlic into your biggest pot and cover with water. DO NOT ADD SALT AT THIS POINT. It will make the lentils tough, and you want them to get soft as they cook.

3. Turn stove to high to bring mixture to a boil, then turn it down to a simmer. Keep the lid on so that the water doesn’t boil off. It needs to cook for an hour or more until the lentils are soft and the veggies are tender.

4. After everything is tender you can add the roasted red pepper flakes, salt and pepper to your personal taste. Also add the 2 cans of tomato sauce. Continue to let the soup simmer another 20 minutes or more.

5. Finish the soup by topping it off with a heavy pour of red wine vinegar (a couple of tablespoons or so). Remove bay leaves and serve with crusty bread and red wine. Buen provecho.

Say what you will about bad wardrobe choices on the red carpet and too-skinny models on the runway.  There’s plenty to criticize about the fashion industry if you take it too seriously. But I subscribe to the school that thinks fashion is fun, both to wear and to watch. Kate Spade said it best: “Playing dress up begins at age five and never truly ends.”

Some favorite looks from fashion week so far (all photos from mbfashionweek.com):

Short, sparkly, & futuristic at Jenny Packham

South American glam cowgirl look at Carlos Miele

Jaw-dropping scarlet stunner at Monique Lhuillier

Sleek, statuesque golden girl at Carolina Herrera