At the risk of flattering myself, I like to think I’m an enthusiastic cook, educated shopper, and informed eater with reasonably good, organic, local, seasonal, sustainable, minimally-processed intentions. Yet a mere mortal am I, and in the dark recesses of my soul there lies weakness.

For junk food.

Roll your eyes or cast aspersion if you must, but I know you know what I mean. We all have occasional—or maybe persistent, nagging, all-consuming—cravings for things filled with empty calories, be they sugary or salty, tender or crunchy. I’m talking Ring Dings. Hostess fruit pies. Chips of every stripe. Bugles. My own personal junk food paramour, my frailty, the chink in my gastronomic armor, is the Cheez Doodle.

(My definition of the Doodle is egalitarian. To me, the term covers all manner of crisp, orange, “cheese”-flavored sins against nutrition, whether puffed or crunchy, baked or fried, full- or low-fat, retina-searing or pallid, official Doodle or any manner of look-alike, whether Jax, Cheeto, or Utz. They’re all Cheez Doodles to me, and I hunger for each equally.)

My very first encounter with the Doodle is lost to the mists of time, although I’ll go out on a limb and say it was likely a glorious moment. My early life was spent in a house of dieters, where sugary cereals were verboten and snacks pretty much consisted of carrots, celery sticks, and fruit, which hold terribly limited allure for a six-year-old. Whenever I got my hands on the forbidden nectar, it was as if I’d won the lottery.

Fast forward through more than three decades of midnight runs to all-night convenience stores, clumsy attempts at removing greasy orange stains from off-white upholstery, and furtive glances in reflective surfaces after indulging at inappropriate hours and locations to see if I’d swiped all incriminating Doodle crumbs clinging to my lip. At an age when I ought to have been thinking more responsibly about my retirement, I took a leave from my job, rented my apartment, and liquidated my emergency fund to embrace a year of eating, shopping, and writing in Paris. Naturally, I had several practical to-do’s before relocating to France for a year — including learning a little of the language, navigating the twisty administrative path to a carte de sejour (a flimsy but priceless card that allows for temporary residence), and making heads or tails of the apartment lease in which I understood roughly every seventh word. Yet my mind kept reverting back to the one really important thing — my Doodle habit.

I know, I know.

Don’t get me wrong. The prospect of spending a year sampling French cheeses — Bonjour, Beaufort! Enchanté, Epoisses! Salut, Saint-Nectaire! — was spectacular beyond belief. But I couldn’t help wondering if the country had applied its considerable engineering ingenuity to the transformation of some of that fromage into anything puffy and crunchy and snack-like. I had high hopes.

I also had a Plan B. Midway through my sojourn in Paris, I was scheduled to return to Boston for a week of consulting work. If by that time I hadn’t found suitable Gallic Doodles, I’d buy a case or two stateside and ship them to my apartment overseas.

Day two in Paris, giddy but disoriented, I made my way to my local Monoprix supermarché on the Rue du Poteau, about four blocks from my apartment, which was situated on the back side of Montmarte along the hairy northern edge of the 18th arrondisement. This store would provide staples and whatever else couldn’t be bought at the outdoor markets. To say that I was eager to scope out the offerings is an understatement — and by “offerings,” I think we all know what I had in mind.

As I entered the store I almost stumbled into an enormous bin filled with girolles (chanterelles). Yogurt, to the left, filled a string of refrigerator cases as long as an American soda aisle. Pâté at the deli counter—nine different styles?!—and fromage de tête. Wine galore. And chocolate. Oh my, the chocolate. This was looking good.

Good enough, in fact, to distract me momentarily from my pilgrimage. After what felt like hours of ricocheting in different directions, lured by new and exotic riches, I refocused. I slowly, methodically worked my way up and down every aisle, combing the shelves centimeter by centimeter. It wasn’t until after I’d rounded the corner in the dark, shadowy recesses of the store, not far from the dish soaps and a mind-boggling assortment of bottled mineral water, that I finally happened upon le junque food. And there, stationed unassumingly, were the bags that gave my heart a joyful jolt: Belin brand Mais Souffle Croustilles au Fromage. (Rough translation: Cheez Doodles!)

In a flash I scooped up three different flavors—plain, Emmental, and fromage de chevre (goat cheese Doodles!)—paid the cashier, and trotted home. After huffing up six flights of stairs two by two, I barely made it through the apartment door before ripping open all three bags. The Croustilles—from croustillant (pronounced kroo-steey-AHN), which is French for “crust”—were of regulation length, with the standard knobby, extruded form factor, though they seemed understated in color, almost natural looking, with their creamy, cheesy beige hues that were nothing like their screaming neon American cousins.

I took a bite. And then another. And another. The Doodles with the Gallic accent were a bit lighter, not quite so crisp, and somewhat less greasy than my beloved, though they still delivered that hallmark crackle-in-your-mouth, dissolve-on-your-tongue, textural tour de force that I love so. Of the three, far and away my favorite was Emmental. As Doodles go, it had gravitas, with an umami undercurrent and a creamy, nutty top note that imparted an uncommon depth and complexity. This was a stand-up Doodle.

I wish I could say that mastering the language and obtaining the carte de sejour fell into place as gracefully as the snacking. At least I had croustilles to help see me through those lesser pursuits. Even now, years later and firmly back in the bosom of the American Doodle bonanza that has sustained me for most of my life, I pine for those beguiling French Doodles. And while my friends head straight to stand in line at Ladurée or for some Mont d’Or each time they visit Paris—and, to be honest, I do, too—at least I can grab a bag of my pedestrian pleasures before so much as stepping out of the airport terminal.

A hangover is an opportunity.

I’ll let that sink in for a moment.

You may not be thinking this now, but a hangover is an opportunity to see and taste the world in a new way. It’s a chance for spontaneity and whimsy, for an experience to be enjoyed rather than simply endured.

What follows is a therapeutic collection of recipes, a gastronomic comedy, a burlesque homage to the possibility of snatching hope from failure, triumph from despair, laughter from tragedy. If you really can’t be bothered—an attitude, by the way, that I entirely understand—just gobble some painkillers, drink some water, and head straight back to bed. But if you’ve got an appetite, then read on.

Come. Let us boldly step into this brave new world.

***

Before it’s going to be possible to even think about tackling your hangover, you need to work out what type of hangover you have, as each as its own specific characteristics.

The Sewing Machine Hangover

It’s long and it’s very sharp. It hurts. And it’s jabbing you with military precision at various points in your head, sometimes right between your eyes, sometimes in your temples, and sometimes in the top of your skull, which today feels as thin and as delicate as an eggshell. You need something to eat that is soothing and comforting. Like the Elvis Presley  Peanut Butter, Banana, and Bacon Sandwich. [Editor's Note: Or the next closest thing--frozen bananas coated in chocolate, crumbled bacon, and chopped peanuts].  Scrambled eggs. Croissants. Nutella. Hot chocolate. Boiled eggs.

The Broken Compass Hangover

This a distinctly psychological type of hangover, one that Kingsley Amis might have described as being profoundly metaphysical. In his authoritative and masterly tome on the subject of alcohol, On Drink, Amis wrote that a metaphysical hangover of this sort combines “that ineffable compound of depression, sadness anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure, and fear for the future. “ Hence your lack of direction and certainty, and your general air of desperate confusion, restlessness, fear, and loathing. You also feel utterly directionless and indecisive. Life does have meaning, you just need some spice to make things nice. Respite comes in the form of Mexican or ranch-style eggs (huevos rancheros), hot sauce, or a highly charged, pepped-up variety of Bloody Mary.

The Comet Hangover

If, dear space cadet, you have The Comet, you’re enveloped in a fuzzy atmosphere of ice, rock, and gases, swirling through star dust, and are generally away with the fairies. In many ways you feel fine. But you also feel indistinct and occasionally, though not horribly so, a little hysterical. You sense that you’ve somehow lost a direct connection with the world. A line from any song or even just a single thought may seem to be stuck in your brain, like “Who the hell invented Tuesdays?” To be frank, you need something to cut through this type of cosmic crap–try recipes with fizz, crunch, or bite, such as lime soda, Greek yogurt with granola, or Stilton and pears on toast [Editor's Note: Or Stilton and pears on a tart.]

The Atomic Hangover

If you’re blown away by The Atomic, you have the feeling of a nuclear explosion having detonated inside your skull. I suspect that if you look in the mirror you might still see a mushroom cloud above your head, evidence of the explosion that has taken place inside you. The blast has left an enormous crater. As a consequence, your head hurts and it feels as though your insides have been stripped out. You have no nausea, but an enormous appetite. The best thing you can do, other than to replace the fluids you have lost, is to eat. A lot. Tuck into hearty recipes, which will repair some of the devastation that the booze has wrought, such as a chorizo omelette, potato hash with bacon, breakfast porridge, even tagliatelle alla carbonara,

The Cement Mixer Hangover

If you have the deeply nauseating Cement Mixer, you feel as though someone has ripped your head off and thrown a cement mixer inside you before sealing you up again. You need to turn that cement mixer off. Immediately. But how? Well, to start with, I suggest that you eat something to soothe your stomach and make the world stand still again. Try something from a gentle menu of comforting things. The perfect tea and toast. French toast. A sweet lassi. Rosti and poached eggs. A banana smoothie.

The Gremlin Boogie Hangover

This hangover is greatly feared, as it represents the very nadir of the hungover state, the dark immobile sludge at the bottom of a vast sewer. It combines both acute physical and psychological symptoms. It is a living nightmare. Indeed, it could also be called “Apocalypse Now,” as its intensity is such that you feel you could be a doomed figure in an Hieronymus Bosch painting or, indeed, the living embodiment of one of Francis Bacon’s distorted portraits. If, poor little lamb, you have the hugely distressed Gremlin Boogie, you may have any number of the following: nausea; a swimming, aching head; cold sweats; trembling hands; shivering; coughing; prickly eyes; and stabbing pain across your body. In between the pain and the fever, there are nightmarish visions of what might have happened last night, things that you’re not quite aware are true or not. You have terrible pangs of guilt. Moments of existential clarity and a sense of really getting to the bottom of your “self” are mixed with a general sense of doom and futility. These, you might feel, are the end times for you: either the world is about to end or your own continued participation in it seems at best tenuous. I’d recommend having breakfast. You may not feel like it. You may doubt that it is even possible for you to eat. However, exceptionally clean, healthy food should help to banish the nausea, restore your pulse, and ease the cold sweats. Try a melon, feta, and ham salad. [Editor's Note: Or a prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich and cantaloupe soup.] Or smoked salmon eggs Benedict smothered with hollandaise sauce. Carrot, orange, apple, and ginger juice. And if you really can’t face breakfast, then perhaps lots of rest and plenty of water is the only cure for you.

Author’s and Publisher’s Note: The author and the publisher wish to point out that it is you who has gotten yourself drunk. We will not accept any responsibility for either your drunken condition, your hungover state, or any implications for your health arising thereof. That being the case, it is also not our responsibility to cure you of your condition. Any accidents or misadventures you may have while attempting to do so yourself are made entirely at your own risk. Good luck!

Editor’s Note: The editors at Leite’s Culinaria wish to point out that the author of The Hungoevr Cookbook, (and no, that’s not a typo, it’s how they spelled it–clearly, they did their research for the book!) from which the above notions and whims are excerpted, has conjured what he deems “a very short series of fun visual tests and a brief questionnaire designed to provide you with a definitive diagnosis.” That is, a definitive diagnosis in terms of how severe your hangover, whether you’re dizzy from the Cement Mixer or blown away by the Atomic. It may sound a little gimmicky, sort of like Ralphie in A Christmas Story sending away for the Secret Society decoder. Except this little tome really is worth sending away for or traipsing down to your local bookseller. Really. Trust us.

Dinner parties and I are acquaintances, not friends. We pass in the hallway, each offering the other a silent nod, maybe a half-smile. There’s no chitchat, no hugging, no high-fiving, no asking after the health of the other’s grandma. It’s a decidedly cordial, platonic relationship, but nothing more.

Why? Maybe it’s the stress of coordinating not only an entrée and some sides, but pre-dinner nibbles and smartly paired wines–not to mention after-dinner entertainment. That moment post-dessert when phase two of the evening begins? I never know what to do. Do I bring out more food? Brew espresso in my non-existent espresso-maker? Break out board games? And, most important, can I please change into my slippers?

This is not to say that I don’t throw dinner parties. I do. But they’re infrequent affairs, the kind that happen spontaneously on summer Saturdays when the nights are long, we can laze outside, and I don’t have to clear the kids’ games and half-finished art projects from the dining room table. These forays into playing evening hostess are few, far between, and pale in comparison to how I prefer to entertain.

I’m a brunch girl.

Once a year I throw a no-holds-barred, return-all-favors, bake-till-I-drop party. My brunch bash commences late morning on New Year’s Day and allows me to smush all the pomp and circumstance of roughly a dozen or more avoided dinner parties into one grand coffee-and-mimosa-fueled shindig during which my friends are too hungover  to notice that I’m not wearing shoes and the glassware doesn’t match. In one fell swoop, I fill my karmic cup to overflowing, happily settling both retroactive and prospective entertaining debts without having to pour a single after-dinner scotch.

It also serves another purpose. It indulges my favorite pastime: pretending I own a small bakeshop on the edge of town. In my fantasy, I awake at a comfortable hour, bake until noon, enjoy a rustic lunch, and then go home, a pale dusting of flour clinging to my sleeves. This is folly, as fantasies tend to be, since the reality of bakeshop life couldn’t be more different. (As someone who’s spent a few months in a professional bakery, I can tell you straight up, I’m not at all suited to the physical demands required by a non-fantasy bakeshop — the long hours, the lugging of sugar sacks six times my weight, the shuffling in and out of frigid walk-ins.) But each December, for a limited engagement, I want to return to that place in my heart where I exhaust all my pent-up energy and bake until I keel over. I want to be The Giving Tree of brunches on New Year’s Day. And then come January 2nd, I want my life to return to normal.

Even though the affair requires a sizeable effort, it’s gotten quite a bit easier with time and practice, mostly because I’ve learned to take pleasure in the lead-up and to lose myself in the production, from the menu planning — frittatas! quiches! pastries! — to the prep. Come mid-December, I pull out my tattered notes from brunches past, smooth their creases, and remind myself of what worked especially well in prior years (made-from-scratch croissants, my espresso chip scones, a giant platter of sliced kiwi) and what needs to be fixed (I always, always seem to brew too much decaf). One year I made waffles to order. Another year I turned out crepe after crepe after crepe. Then I make a mother of a shopping list, jot down which friends can loan me their baking sheets, update my invite list, and stock the fridge with orange juice and Champagne.

And then, a few days before the party, it starts. The mussed aprons, the flying butter, the blaring music, the frenetic but not unpleasant chaos. I fold puff pastry. I pleat pastry crusts. I tuck scones in the freezer. By late afternoon the day before, it’s all done. It has to be, because we spend New Year’s Eve at the home of my dear friend Lisa, who can always tell by my hair and my darting, crazy eyes that my day has been long and that I’m tired, but that I’m good.

When the morning comes, somehow, it all works. People are happy. They eat. They drink. They laugh. The kids run around like maniacs, the adults settle deep in their chairs. And I’ve lived a little corner of my dream. The New Year begins in earnest.

May 2012 be wonderful to you and your loved ones. And may all your dinner parties be thrown by someone else.

I began drinking coffee at age seventeen. I’ve been caffeinated every day since, save for two during a brief fling with abstinence back in the spring of 2006 that gave me a headache. Otherwise, I’ve been a coffee enthusiast—a layperson in the coffee world, yes, but an aficionado, too, one who dreams about espresso machines the way some guys fantasize about sports cars.

I think destiny may have played a role in all of this. I came by my addiction at home, perhaps inherited it. The day I was born in 1977, my mother was quoted on the front page of the Wall Street Journal in a story about the global coffee shortage. That year, there was greater demand than supply for coffee beans, and my mother, interviewed in a Chicago supermarket, defiantly said that even if prices skyrocketed, she wouldn’t be discouraged — she needed her fix. Back then, my parents were big coffee drinkers, four to six cups each throughout the day. They’ve since cut down. But when I look back on memories of family trips, from coastal Maine to lakeside Canada, the motif that stands out is my mother unpacking her portable coffee machine, a tiny multi-part contraption with screw-top canisters for sugar and cream. Frequently the first thing we’d do after arriving somewhere was go out and find her some half-and-half.

My parents aren’t coffee elitists. For decades, they drank Chock full o’Nuts. But I wanted more for myself. During a teaching job in Italy after college, I discovered espresso, and I bought a stovetop maker as soon as I got home. The results were bad. Brewing espresso, great espresso, is difficult and complicated. I tinkered for years with a range of setups, grinds, and makers. I fantasized about spending seven hundred dollars on a coffeemaker, and even more on a grinder, and I didn’t see anything wrong with that. These fantasies included me developing a daily ritual that, after twenty-five minutes of labor, extracted a teacupful of extraordinary pleasure — and, after each morning’s toil, allowed me to begin my life’s most fulfilling day.

Then I got a job in France. Paris may be a wonderful place to savor the experience of drinking coffee, but the actual coffee served in cafés is pretty bad. It’s been ten years since Corby Kummer, the food critic for the Atlantic, told the world why the espresso in Paris is so awful, but his assessment stands. One of the first things I heard from Parisians was how the Starbucks invasion hadn’t been all that bad. My new coworkers told me they initially flocked to the chain not just for the air quality — at the time, Starbucks was among the few cafés in Paris to be cigarette-free — but also for the espresso.

It was those same Parisians, among others, who introduced me to Nespresso.

A Nespresso machine is an appliance mass-produced for lazy caffeine addicts. It’s the coffee world’s equivalent of C3PO. The company sells espresso machines and vacuum-sealed bullets of coffee. Purchase a machine, drop in a capsule, press a button and thirty seconds later, your coffee’s done. The snag is that one doesn’t work without the other — Nespresso machines require Nespresso pods, and vice-versa. The Nespresso experience is therefore something of a system, or rather, a scheme to slurp money from your bank account. A very, very popular scheme. According to Fast Company, Nespresso now sells more servings of coffee per year than Starbucks. It even outsells Lavazza in Italy.

Back when I was working in Italy, I drank an espresso at a truck stop outside Florence that stopped my heart, metaphorically speaking. Nespresso is not that coffee. The only thing astonishing about it is how little it requires from you to create. But pit it against the espresso served in most coffee shops, even the establishments that cater to coffee-fetishists, and I would bet on Nespresso to place. Perhaps not win, but run a good race.

In exchange for your Euro or your dollar, you receive consistently delicious espresso, gained from an experience so easy, so uniform, you may as well have installed a coffee faucet next to the sink. Nespresso machines start around $150. The cheapest pod costs fifty-seven cents, only available from Nespresso stores, or via mail-order for those who, like me, don’t live in big cities. I drink three espressos before lunch, and one or two before bed, which, at about three dollars per day, I can stomach. There’s even the thrill of magic, the vision of something produced from nothing: you never see the coffee grounds themselves, and you do nothing with regard to production except push a button.

Like my initial interest in coffee, my enslavement to Nespresso was bequeathed. My red machine, the size of a small television, was nearly as big as the oven in our cramped Paris kitchen, and took up a great deal of precious counterspace. When we moved back to the U.S., we sold it to a friend (it was too bulky to pack), and promptly bought its replacement (the same model) once we landed stateside.

The selling point isn’t the coffee; it’s the ease of use. It’s no fuss, no muss every time, and because the user isn’t given anything to screw up, the coffee is delicious — not precious, but coffee as coffee, and now let’s get to work. And that’s perhaps the worst part for any wannabe coffee nerd like me. There’s no tamping or scooping. No waiting for hot water. No timing with a stopwatch or stirring with a bamboo wand. No grinding — and that last part is the most upsetting. Since the coffee in the pod is never exposed to air, there’s no aroma to the experience — which changes the experience completely, in my opinion, for the worse. As if my espresso is coming from a fax machine.

A year into my Nespresso patronage, I flew from Paris to San Francisco on a business trip and had dinner at the home of a colleague’s friend. After a meal of homemade pizza, he brewed us espresso from beans that he’d roasted that weekend. The coffee was very good, but I knew when I tasted it: I’m not that guy. To me, coffee is caffeine. It’s that rare food that smells better than it tastes, and feels — cognitively, post-consumption — even better than it smells. So when boutique coffee roasters complain that pods will kill great coffee in America, the argument falls on deaf ears. I don’t care. Then again, I also love Diet Coke and Coke Zero, which smell like they taste and taste like liquefied non-precious metals.

Still, there’s a special chamber in my heart for coffee purists, like my local barista who won’t sell me an iced espresso in the summer because it “bruises” the coffee’s flavor. With a Nespresso machine, the only craft performed is by a hidden system of fabricated parts. The labor has been done elsewhere by other hands, in a factory, in fields, all so that I can press a button each morning, hold my cup below the nozzle and milk my robot.

I’ll take convenience over craftsmanship any day. That’s the coffee world I’ve selected for myself. Beyond the woods behind my house, I hear the drum beat of coffee purists, the rebel forces who wear ripped leggings and grind their beans with stone pestles. I can see them, hear them — they’re brewing espresso right now over campfires, hatching plans in Italian slang. Whereas I live in passage JJ-12, Tier IV of the Subsistence Dome, where I drink my pod-coffee iced and polish a silver nipple protruding from the wall. In the great coffee wars, I hope they win. But don’t expect me to die sleepy.

Most of us have experienced a Missed Connection. Right this second, two guys in suits are eyeing each other as they step around the garbage on Market Street in San Francisco. A delivery man in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, is wishing he had paused to hold the door for a dark-skinned woman with a pink scarf. In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a man and a woman pull up at a crossroads. They are inexplicably drawn to each other. They stare through their windshields, and imagine rolling down the window to say hello. They imagine going to a diner up the road for coffee, their first kiss, whether the other prefers the left or right side of the bed. The lights change and they drive on in different directions.

Untold people a day kick themselves for not being bolder, braver, more spontaneous. Before the day is over, one of those two instant lovers and thousands more will write Missed Connections and post them online. These notices have about as much chance of reaching their intended recipient as a message in a bottle or a note written on a paper plane launched from the Empire State Building. But slightly more chance than leaving a trail of bread crumbs.

Being an illustrator (did I mention I’m an illustrator?) is a mostly wonderful thing. You get to draw wild boars and rocket ships and petticoats and harpoons. You get to choose your hours (which is often all hours, but still, you’re the one choosing them . . . at least that’s what you tell yourself), you can wear whatever you like (today I am wearing a peacock-feather cloak), listen to songs that include a whistling coda (might not be to everyone’s taste), and talk back to Ira Glass as though he’s in the room. You can spend most of the day on the Internet and call it research.

All this isolation can be good for productivity. It can also lead to an atrophied palette, compulsive blogging, and thinking of Ira as your friend. Once a week I make sure I leave my windowless cell in Brooklyn and go into Manhattan, either to see an editor or buy feathers, or to look at the stupendous armor at the Met or at tattoo catalogs on the Lower East Side. One day I squeezed into a subway car with a bushel of peacock feathers and a pound of sea scallops, and a handsome chap squeezed in next to me. We apologized in rounds, and when he stepped off he appeared in the window and mouthed two words. I turned to the girl next to me.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“Missed Connections,” she said.

I had no idea what she was talking about, but I didn’t want to seem uncool, so I made a mental note. I got home, dropped my scallops and feathers, went to the computer, and looked up Missed Connections.

Here is the first one I read:

You had a guitar, I had a blue hat
—m4w – 28
We exchanged glances and smiles on the subway platform.
I pretended to read my New Yorker but I couldn’t concentrate.
You got on the Q and I stayed on to wait for the B. You were lovely.

 

In the space of eight seconds I had experienced love, loss, and regret.

I held my breath and clicked on the next post.

And the next.

And the next.

I’m a gleaner, always on the lookout for material. I pick up anything handwritten and crumpled. I eavesdrop shamelessly on buses. I collect old photographs and sift through faded telegrams at flea markets. I liked reading Missed Connections. I would make paintings of them.

For regular readers of Missed Connections, and there are many of us, I think there exists, deep down, a small desire to maybe, possibly stumble upon ourselves described. It’s not that we’re really looking for someone. (I’m in a happy relationship, blah, blah.) But who doesn’t want to be found attractive by strangers?

It’s also nice to know people are paying attention to one another, noticing tiny details (“the cute gap between your teeth,” “you had a bruise on your cheek,” “your shoelace was untied,” “you were using a paper plane as a bookmark”). The enormous amount of tenderness in these messages makes me all swoony about my fellow human beings.

People miss each other on street corners and in cafés, walking their dogs and getting their hair cut, at the gym and at the grocery store, on rooftops and in elevators, even in the emergency room. And each individual collision is a fragment of a story containing great big familiar themes of love, loss, and regret and, ultimately, and most importantly, hope. It’s a hopeless sort of hope, but it’s very compelling. We want to know if the guy gets the girl, don’t we?

I have a confession to make. I don’t really want to know. I like a happy ending as well as the next person, but I love the mystery and the uncertainty and the electric current of possibility.

There’s a reason the best love stories end at the first kiss. Jane Austen had this down; it’s all about the chase. We’re not really interested in Elizabeth and Darcy after the wedding bells fade, or in Cinderella and her prince after the slipper is returned. Love at first sight is almost entirely visual. In most cases we don’t even hear the other’s voice. I think there’s a lot to be said for this. We can fill in the blanks and create our own particular rosy ideal. As you glimpse your angel across a crowded room you have no need to accommodate her overbearing mother; noticing your dreamboat on the morning ferry you have no reason to suspect his tendency to forget your birthday. The less you know, the more creative you can be.

Moments of intimacy with strangers are minor detours we rarely explore, but those moments make us feel alive, and human, and part of something greater than ourselves. They connect us to each other. Maybe one of them will post a message and maybe, just maybe, the other person will happen to go online the next day and read it, recognize the encounter, and respond to the message and arrange to meet and fall in love.

Probably not. Maybe the one who writes the message doesn’t really expect an audience. But I am there, reading and taking notice. I am the audience, and so are you.

Excerpted from Patrick O’Connell’s Refined American Cuisine | Bulfinch Press, 2004

As a kid growing up in a large, Irish-Catholic family in the era of Ozzie and Harriet, I always assumed that the only reason people entertained was to have an incentive to clean the house.

My mother would begin scrubbing weeks before guests were scheduled to arrive, working room by room—sealing off each room after it passed the white-glove test. A path of newspapers would be laid down throughout the house, and no one was allowed to step off it. The kitchen cabinets were emptied and scoured. All the canned goods and McCormick spices were washed, dried, and arranged alphabetically. On the last day of the countdown, all the windows were washed inside and out, and on the day of the party, the bathroom was given a sterilizing makeover, after which boys were instructed to use the woods until the company had left.

Monogrammed linen hand towels that no one ever used were hung on the towel racks. Everybody, including the guests, understood that those towels were never supposed to be touched. They were there to establish our rank in the social order of things. No one was ever surprised when they were returned to the linen closet unused after every party. My brother explained to me that men were supposed to use their socks to dry their hands, but I was never quite sure what the women did. They were always so clever; I suspected they carried a little towel in their purse for such occasions.

By the time all the children were either dressed and scrubbed or hidden and my mother had done her makeup, we were all wiped out—but that was one clean house. The arrival of the guests was totally anticlimactic. We couldn’t wait for them to leave. We were always exhausted.

One day while a friend and I were bragging about how weird our families were, he confessed that his mother took bathroom cleaning a step further and did it the same way Tina Turner recorded “What’s Love Got to Do With It“—buck naked. Naturally, we thought he was putting us on, until he invited us over to watch through the keyhole. Sure enough, she was locked in there with nothing on but her Bab-o cleanser, singing and dancing around. We thought she actually gave Tina Turner a pretty good run for her money. It was comforting to know there were mothers who were even more passionate about cleanliness than my own.

In my mother’s circle, ladies would respond with a kind of coded message whenever they were invited over. They’d always say, “Now don’t go to any fuss, dear.” I learned to interpret that to mean that it wouldn’t be necessary to repaint the house.

After attending an event at somebody else’s place, guests always critiqued the party on the way home, and its success was judged on how much the hostess had fussed. I came to understand that homemaking was a competitive art. At about this time, I began to realize that almost everything in our culture was backward and that it would probably make a lot more sense to clean the house after you had a party. At least you’d have more energy to put into the food.

It’s always a good exercise to ask yourself what will be remembered most by your guests long after the party is over. More often than not, it’s the tiniest personal touches that reflect who you are. Entertaining is simply about sharing your world with others. What could be more fascinating than a glimpse into another person’s reality or fantasy or “fantality,” as we often refer to our world as halfway between fantasy and reality. A party, like a great film or work of art, elevates the spirit, makes people feel life is worth living, and enhances a guest’s self-esteem. We should entertain more often! How else are we ever going to get the house clean?

It was our first Thanksgiving in the country, having given up our rent-controlled apartment in New York City. We’d planned a quiet celebration alone—until good friends called that Wednesday. They, too, wanted a country Thanksgiving. With their teenagers. Suddenly, a twosome with a turkey breast morphed into a sixsome with a whole bird. We ran to the store, fought the crowds, and stocked up on everything—including one of the last frozen turkeys. Not surprisingly, it still wasn’t thawed by the next morning.

Did we panic? Not on your life. Because we knew that a frozen turkey—whether partially or even fully—can’t stop Thanksgiving dinner. Delay it a little, yes, but not deter it.

There are two solutions to this disaster. Which you choose depends on how much effort you want to muster and how much time you have to sit around and sip some wine while you wait.

More Effort, Less Time. Peel off the wrapper and place the bird in a bowl big enough so you can submerge the entire thing in cold tap water. Do so. Set your birdish aquarium on the counter. Swap out the stagnant turkey water for fresh cold water every 30 minutes or so until the turkey is thawed, about two hours for a 10-pounder, up to six hours for a 20-pound mutant. (Don’t worry. The cold water will keep your turkey-in-a-bowl from turning into a petri dish.) Dig out the giblets and neck. Stuff, slather, and roast as your recipe directs.

Less Effort, Even Less Time. Unwrap the bird-cicle, plop it in a roasting pan, shove it in a preheated oven, and don’t look back. Surprised? Don’t be. Even fully frozen turkeys can be roasted without thawing them. That much meat, that much insulating bone, that much skin—it’s not like it’s a gimpy little game hen.

We went with the latter, if only because we wanted to put the effort into making a second pie. (Two teenagers.) But when doing the freezer-to-oven trick, bear in mind these caveats:

• Add up to 50% additional roasting time. Dinner may be a little late. Deal. Just don’t be tempted to crank up the oven’s temperature past 350°F (176°C). Fully frozen birds roast best at 325°F (163°C), in part because the slow, low roasting approach means the breast meat doesn’t dry out before the thighs are done.
• Tent the bird loosely with foil should the skin start to look less like Jennifer Lopez and more like George Hamilton.
• Don’t forget to dig out the frozen giblets. After thirty minutes, use long-handled tongs to try to pull them out of both openings. If unsuccessful, try again at the one-hour mark. Still unsuccessful? If the giblets roam free or are in a paper bag, you really needn’t remove them at all. They’ll leave a reddish sludge in the roasting pan, although you can toss them—and said sludge, as well as the pan juices—before you carve the turkey. But if the giblets are in a plastic bag, they must be removed before the bag starts to melt. Should you discover this too late, default to an all-sides dinner—or takeout Chinese.

Of course, you can avoid any Thanksgiving day shenanigans by allowing the turkey ample time to thaw. A 12-pound bird takes about three days in the fridge; a 16-pound bird, about four days; a 20-pound bird, about five days. In all cases, set the turkey on a large rimmed plate or a roasting pan to catch those inevitable drips.

One last note: prestuffed frozen birds should only be roasted right from their frozen state. Unwrap them and follow the package directions. Not, of course, that LC readers would ever buy a prestuffed frozen turkey.

Click here for Thanksgiving Disaster 2: The Bird’s Too Big for the Oven

Or do you?

Let’s do a cost-benefit analysis on that monster fowl.

Pros

•  You’ll have drama—the quintessential Norman Rockwell moment with the groaning platter.

Cons

• You’ll need a big roasting pan. A really big one. Probably bigger than anything you own. And forget those flimsy throw-away aluminum pans. They’ll never support a bird that big. You may need to tap into your IRA for this little investment.
• You’ll need a big oven. Really big. Plan on using the rest of that IRA to remodel your kitchen.
• You’ll need to start early—and not just on Thanksgiving day. A 22-pound bird can take five and a half days to thaw in the fridge, give or take a few hours, and up to eight hours to roast.
• You’ll only have two legs and one wishbone. And don’t forget, much of that will be sacrificed because Aunt Jezzie must do her Henry VIII impersonation—year after year after year.
• You’ll need a back brace because big birds are notoriously difficult to lift. With the IRA gone, you’ll need to take out a loan not just for the brace, but for a bigger serving platter.
• You’ll need condiments besides the gravy. Lots of them. Because big birds dry out faster than small ones as they cook. (A 20-pounder doesn’t have double the interstitial fat and lovely collagen as a 10-pounder.)

Given such overwhelming cons, what should you do?

Easy. Skip the behemoth and buy two 10- to 12-pounders. They’ll roast more evenly, offer you twice as many legs and wings, and turn out significantly more succulent. You might even consider slathering each with different concoctions: make one a Frenchified, tarragon-chives-and-butter fandango, the other an Italian, oregano-rosemary-and-olive oil epiphany.

But before you do, be sure to measure your range as well as your roasting pans to make sure you can accommodate two birds side by side in your oven. If you’re out of luck—this probably means you live in a small apartment with a half-size stove—simply roast one turkey the day before, stick it in the fridge, then reheat it under foil on Thanksgiving day while the second bird rests and you serve the first course. If it’s still not hot, the hot-from-the-oven bird will take care of the first go-round; save the second for, well, seconds. Or you do the unthinkable and divvy up the bird, roasting part of it and braising the rest.

No matter what, make sure you have the right equipment before you start: roasting pans, racks, carving knives, cutting boards, fat separator. After all, would you go to war without a gun?

Click here for Thanksgiving Disaster 3: The Bird’s Roasted—But Still Raw

The pop-up timer popped. The majestic Thanksgiving turkey is burnished brown. The drumstick jiggles. Brandishing a carving knife, you smugly take the first slice from the thigh—and then you see a trickle of pink. You rub your eyes, thinking surely it must be your imagination, and then look again.

No, it’s real.

Can you play dumb and pretend the darn thing isn’t slightly underdone?

Count your guests. Count your bathrooms. There’s your answer.

Here’s what went wrong:

• You relied on the plastic pop-up thermometer. This pathetic little device is ridiculously unreliable. As has been made abundantly clear by now, there’s no such thing as better living through plastics.
• You went by appearances, which can be deceiving. Didn’t dating teach you anything?

So. What to do?

Calmly put the bird back in the oven. Tent it with foil to insulate the sliced portion. Open another bottle of wine. Wait. And next time you check for doneness, use a meat thermometer, so you know for sure rather than guessing. We prefer the instant-read variety, rather than the kind with the long, dangly cord that stays in the oven and purportedly beeps when your bird is done. With the instant-read, there’s no cord to stick out of the door and allow even a smidgen of heat to escape. You’re looking for that moment when the thermometer reads 165°F (74°C). And be sure to check the bird in two, maybe three, places. Here’s where to poke:

The thigh. This tends to be the thickest, juiciest part of the turkey. If this is done, chances are the rest of the bird is done, too. Set the bird in its roasting rack on top of the stove so that the drumsticks are pointing away from you. On each side of the bird, note the large pillow of meat just under the drumsticks. Those are the thighs. Hold the probe end of the thermometer parallel to the drumstick and insert it into the center of the thigh meat, parallel to the drumstick. Push it in deeply—though not so deeply as to touch bone. If you strike bone (you’ll know if you do, as there’ll be unmistakable resistance), pull the probe out and try, try again. Hold the probe there until the temperature stabilizes, 5 to 10 seconds. Even if you read 165°F (74°C), take the temperature in the thigh on the other side, too, just for safety’s sake, before you breathe a sigh of relief.

The breast. If the turkey’s over 15 pounds, one of those bulked-up wonders we warned you about, you should check the breast as well as the thigh. The thickest part of the breast. This is far easier to find than the innermost thigh. It’s right in front of you, found up top, back from the legs. Insert the probe about halfway between the center breastbone and the drumstick, right into the juicy hump of meat. Push the probe in without forcing it. Again, avoid the bone.

The stuffing. The stuff you cram in the cavity isn’t necessarily done when the bird is; it most often takes longer. For one thing, it’s bathed in raw bird juice—which also needs to get to a safe temperature. For another, it may have eggs in it—which need to be cooked enough to get rid of any nasty pathogens. So it, too, needs to register 165°F (74°C). Insert the probe into the thickest part of the stuffing, far into the large opening of the bird. If the stuffing is still under temperature and the bird is browning too much, tent the bird loosely with foil until the stuffing is safe, too. (Don’t let us catch you trying to scoop out the stuffing into a baking dish and shove it back in the oven while you let the bird rest. It’s way too much hassle to try to get the stuffing out while the bird’s beastly hot without tearing the skin or otherwise damaging the bird. This also lets you bring the big, stuffed bird to the table for your own personal Rockwellian moment. Or just consider making the dressing outside the bird, not stuffing inside, yielding so many crunchy corners in the pan to be picked and pecked at in the kitchen while no one’s looking.)

And don’t worry about poking the bird more than once. It’s a myth to say “all the juices will run out.” Some will. About a half teaspoon per hole. If that’s all the juices in your big bird, you’ve got more problems than mere temperature. And don’t mind all the puncture marks. If they really bother you, carve the thing before you get it to the table.

Finally, refrigerate any leftovers fairly quickly. Within an hour of dinner, the bird should be back in the fridge. Otherwise, you’re back to counting bathrooms and guests.

Click here for Thanksgiving Disaster 4: Transferring the Bird to…Oops!

The table is set. The guests are gathered. You’ve planned for every possible contingency. But you forgot one thing. Your sleek, chic, trim Tom Cruise of a Thanksgiving turkey will eventually morph into a sweaty, bulky, out of balance, downright gawky John Goodman of a hen by the time it comes of the oven. And you somehow have to get it from the roasting pan to the carving board while decked out in your holiday finery.

Before you commence with the heavy lifting, a few things to cross off your checklist:

• Let the bird rest for 20 minutes in the roasting pan—mostly so the juices slip back between the protein fibers, but also so the thing’s not quite so scalding hot.
• Place the roasting pan as close to the carving board as possible. Don’t even think about attempting a pas-de-deux-de-turkey trot across the kitchen floor.
• Shoo the children out of the kitchen. Likewise, any pets. A dog on meat patrol? A recipe for disaster.
• Get a helper. One whose sole job is to steady the carving board. And who knows how to shut up. Don’t choose your cousin who’s just finishing his Master’s thesis on George Eliot.
• Think back to high-school physics. (See, it did come in handy.) One point under a mass creates a fulcrum. In this instance, that equates to a turkey teeter-totter. Two points beneath a mass afford far better stability. Got it?

Next, take measure of your bird. Is it stuffed or not?

Unstuffed
We’re not in favor of turkey lifters, hooks, or other contraptions for toting birds. They tend to be flimsy or afford only a single point of contact.

And we’ve seen a bird trussed with butcher’s twine in such a fancy, convoluted way that it included a looped handle for picking the thing up. We’ve also seen that bird on the floor.

Complicating matters is the fact that open-cavity birds collect a pool of scalding hot juices while roasting, which tend to spew at inopportune moments. You’ll need to tip out the juices carefully into the roasting pan after you hoist the bird but before you can safely transport it. Okay, now that you’re armed with that warning, you can proceed. Our preferred methods of transport? Any of these:

• Put on silicon oven mitts. (Silicon is heat-resistant. Cloth isn’t.) Grasp the bird with both hands—that is, two points of contact. Tip it slightly to empty the hot juices into the roasting pan. Both ways, as there are two openings. Then lift it over the edge of the pan while your helper holds the board in place.

• Use clean kitchen towels as you would oven mitts. Fold them double for more protection. Grasp, tip both ways, and transfer. Keep the towels away from the openings, as the cloth will absorb the hot juices.

• Insert a small rolling pin or the handle of a sturdy wooden spoon into the large opening. Insert the handle of another wooden spoon into the small opening. With these two points of contact, lift the bird. Tip both ways, then transfer the thing to the board.

Stuffed
Things are a little more complicated with a stuffed bird. You could first spoon the mushy goodness into a serving dish while the bird is still in the roasting pan, thereby allowing you to rely on any of the above turkey transport options.

Or you could leave the stuffing inside and intact, provided you’ve first checked to make sure it’s not a bath of juicy, eggy pathogens. Use silicon mitts or clean towels to grasp the whole dang bird and get the centerpiece of the meal to the carving board. But you’ll risk some of the stuffing plopping into the pan and getting coated in gunk. So, in our opinion, spoon it or lose it.

Oh, and if your board doesn’t have a channel around the edge, roll up paper towels and place them around its perimeter, right up against all four sides. They may not be good for the environment, but they’ll absorb the turkey-juice tsunami that may ensue, making clean-up a snap. Chances are you were in the kitchen all day. You don’t want to be there all night, too.

Click here for Thanksgiving Disaster 5: One Oven, 4 Burners, 124 Recipes