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.

I come from stirring stock. That is to say, my people are stirrers. It’s how my grandmother, avó Costa, cooked. She stood facing the stove for hours in her pink housecoat and pink slippers, her tiny pink hand planted on her hip, singing in her thin, reedy voice. She stirred all kind of Portuguese comestibles: spicy stuffing with chunks of homemade chouriço sausage; her famous pink (of course) chicken, rice, and potato soup; and vats and vats of kale soup.

When she grew too old to stir her soups and stews for long, I’d do it for her. By then age had stolen a few inches from her, but she still managed to peer over the tops of the pots and instruct, “Mais devagar, queirdo, mais devagar.” Slower, sweetheart, slower.

I think it’s genetic. When the temperature nosedives, all I want to do is hover over a simmering pot and stir. And what I’ve been craving lately is a long-simmered, deeply flavored Bolognese sauce recipe. The kind that takes no prisoners. The kind that makes your guests plead for the secret. (Are you reading this, Kate Jackson?) The kind that leaves you on the couch unable to move because you didn’t have enough sense to stop after your second helping of seconds.

I’m certain if vovó had discovered ragù Bolognese in her lifetime, she would’ve petitioned the Pope to make us Italian. It’s her kind of dish.

So my hunt was on for a Portuguese-grandmother-approved Bolognese sauce–rich, meaty, slow-cooked, constantly stirred–to quench that nagging craving. This narrowed the field exponentially. Anything from a 30-minute-meal proselytizer was clearly out of contention, as were recipes from ADD TV chefs and hosts. I found–and promptly rejected–a recipe in Cook’s Illustrated that got the job done in a two hours. (Two hours? I can’t find my way out of our pantry in two hours.) Then, while sitting in front of my cookbook collection, I was reminded of another short, sturdy woman who also comes from stirring stock: L’Imperatrice–The Empress–Marcella Hazan.

I immediately downloaded The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. (Why I didn’t already have a copy is a question for another day.) Flipping through the book revealed a woman who spoke her mind, knew right from wrong, and, if you disagreed with what she had to say, well, that was your problem. (Not unlike Momma Leite, if you ask me.) I knew The Empress wouldn’t let me down. And she didn’t. Her Bolognese sauce clocks in at a whopping six hours. That’s longer than some relationship I’ve seen.

As I leaned against the stove with my iPad in its kitchen condom, a gorgeous sauce burbling down to sweet goodness in the pot, I was connecting to my past–to my stirrers. And to a craving even deeper, to be with my avó just one more time.

Ragù Bolognese to Appease the Grandmother Within

Adapted from The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking | Knopf, 1992 | Makes 4 cups

Marcella, in her inimitable fashion, offers the home cook plenty of suggestions to create an authentic Bolognese sauce recipe, the kind my grandmother would approve of. First, the more marbled the meat, the sweeter the ragù. The most desirable cut of beef is the neck portion of the chuck. You may have to call up and order it from your butcher. It’s also important to salt the meat as soon as it hits the pan; it extracts the juices and flavors the sauce. Last, use a heavy pot that retains heat. (I use my Le Creuset 5-quart Dutch oven.) Avoid a cast-iron pot, as the acid can interact with the metal and turn the sauce an unpleasant blech color.–David Leite

LC Time is Not of the Essence Note: Rush this recipe, and you’ll miss its most important ingredient. Time. Time to ponder. Time to make lists. Time to sing the entire soundtrack of “Evita.”

Special Equipment: Patience

Active time: 20 minutes | Total time: 6 hours, most of it unattended, except for making lazy eights with a wooden spoon

Bolognese Sauce Recipe

Directions

Want it? Click it.

I was abandoned on New Year’s Day by The One.

Yes, I was left to kick off 2012 by my lonesome. Just me and the kids. He was on his way to a five-day respite at Kripalu, a center for yoga and health in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Far be it from me to stop him from twisting himself into a human pretzel every morning at 6:30 and eating Tofu Surprise three times a day. We each have our own path to enlightenment. Mine just happens to be slicked with butter and duck fat.

His hope was to get centered, cleanse both body and mind, and sort through some things that have been weighing on him. Being the immensely insecure–and let’s just say it: self-centered–person that I am, I immediately thought it was all about me. So at the front door, I flipped up his collar, tugged him close to me, and warned, Don Corleone-style, “Don’t talk to anyone thinner, richer, or cuter than me.” He simply smiled, long ago inured to my threats, protestations, and tantrums. ”I mean it!” I added.

And I did. This idea of giving someone you love so much undisturbed time to think can be dangerous. Thinking turns into analyzing. Analyzing turns into realizing. Realizing turns into acting. Acting turns into divorce. Or something like that.

And yet at the same time I was doing a private happy dance, looking forward to being on my own. When The One’s away for a spell, I instantaneously revel in living like a bachelor. Think my Oscar Madison to his Felix Unger. Plates stack up, clothes hang from everything, almost-empty milk cartons sour on the coffee table. Sometimes I don’t even shower and shave for days. It’s only when I’m pulled away from my computer by the doorbell announcing that Sarah, our UPS driver with the gunslinger walk, is waiting that I realize with horror how hideous I must look.

This time, though, I wanted things to be different. In honor of The One, I intended to wake up early, do Rodney Yee yoga (that is, if I could find the damn DVD that I have a tendency to use as a bookmark), meditate, and eat well.

Waking early screeched to a halt the first morning when I stumbled out of bed, scratching my ass and squinting to see the clock. 9:30 a.m.

Yoga never happened. (I couldn’t find that DVD.)

Meditation lasted two days, then ended abruptly when I went from gently quieting my mind to falling asleep for the afternoon.

All I had left from my half-hearted attempt at spiritual enlightenment was eating well.

Ah, my old nemesis. Healthy eating. By now you know my philosophy about food: I worship, my double-chinned head bowed, at the altar of fatty fat fat dishes. I didn’t earn the moniker Fatty Daddy for nothing. But to commune with The One, and to do a little bit of detoxing from, shall we say, an abundant holiday season, I would embrace clean eating. Never one to rush into anything good for me, I decided I’d kick off my cleanse on the night of his return with a cozy Zen dinner for The One.

Looking for inspiration, I browsed through the hundreds of recipes on this website. Renee, ever a mindful and healthful eater, even sent me a list of Zen-ish dishes. Nothing was striking the right Kripalu chord. Then one of our regular readers raved to us about the Quick Navy Bean Stew recipe from Everyday Food that we featured early last year. I decided that would be my humble way of welcoming The One back into the world of the anxious and harried. I was certain it would be perfectly Zen-like because: a) it’s simple, and b) there wouldn’t be a drop of butter, cheese, crème frâiche, or foie gras to clog his chakras.

But I was equally certain that The One, despite his pronouncements of a near-vegetarian leaf being turned, would want something a little more substantial. (Isn’t he still the man who eats two, sometimes three, helpings at dinner? Isn’t he the same man who caves every time there’s chocolate in the house?) Oh, how terribly thin the line between sabotage and hearty cooking. I considered tossing in ham hocks or glugging in lots and lots of cream. (Hey, it’s my nature.) In the end, I added lean chicken breast, more potatoes, garlic, more herbs, and what has now become my new stealth bomber of an ingredient: demi-glace. A tablespoon or two stirred in at the end adds enough flavor to make you weep–or, at the very least, lick your bowl.

Happy to have him home that Friday, I coddled and pampered and fussed. When I placed the stew in front of him, he did a bit of a double take (after all it was I who made it). It was–I can’t believe I’m saying this–excellent. I sat through the rest of dinner attentive, although completely disinterested, as he flipped through the Kripalu cookbook he’d bought, listing all the dishes he enjoyed there and was determined to make for us: peanut butter energy bars topped with vegan (VEGAN?!) ganache; a spinach salad with blue cheese, dried blueberries, and candied hazelnuts; winter ratatouille; and greens, greens, and more fresh greens. I agreed to eat real food, but I drew the line at anything with soy milk. The last time I checked, soy beans don’t have teats.

During our second bowls of soup I grew suspicious of how fervently he was thumping the metaphorical Birkenstock Lifestyle Bible. This from the man who, when driving by the Black Angus cattle at Grey Ledge Farms on our street, waves and shouts, “Hellooooo, roast beef!” After some prodding he let slip that he lost all sense of decorum and, although downward-dogging, breathing, and journaling all week, he pigged out at mealtimes. As a result, he came home the heaviest he has ever been.

“The food was…fabulous,” he said, looking wounded and confused. ”I thought all that vegetarian and vegan stuff was supposed to be horrible and low cal.”

Determined not to gloat, at least not until the incandescence of his experience wore off, I said nothing. I still haven’t. We’ve simply gone back to eating as we always have–roast chicken, pork chops, leg of lamb, mashed potatoes, ice cream–and he’s losing weight.

In 2012, ignorance is the new enlightenment.

Loosely adapted from Fresh Food Fast | Clarkson Potter, 2010 | Serves 4

The most important part of the recipe is the seasoning. Make sure you salt it throughout the cooking process. And taste, taste, taste. Something so simple needs salt to make all the ingredients play well together.–David Leite

LC Salt of the Earth Note: For God’s sake, don’t put salt and pepper on the table. It discourages those guests who like to jiggle the shakers while chatting–before they even take a bite. Sacrilege.

Active time: 45 minutes | Total time: 60 minutes

Chicken, Navy Bean, and Spinach Stew Recipe Recipe

Directions

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.

I don’t bother making New Year’s resolutions anymore. What’s the sense of setting myself up for failure when January is but a few hours old? Guaranteed, two weeks into the new year I’ll feel like a loser. Instead I try to quiet my mind (a hard thing to do, what with all this ADD rattling around inside) and contemplate what I learned in the dearly departed year. From that furrowed-brow cogitation I cobble together a list of personal goals. Which, as I write this, probably sounds a lot like resolutions. But to me, resolutions feel rigid. Like my second-grade  teacher, Mrs. Firs, slapping her ruler–thwack, thwack, thwack–in time to some internal clock, just waiting to whap one of us in the back of the head for misbehaving. A goal is all shiny and bright–a bauble of hope. It doesn’t have the word not in it, as in, “I will not overeat” and “I will not curse like a sailor on shore leave” and “I will not look at some twentysomething with his whole life ahead of him and who already knows as much as I do at more than twice his age and find fault with his fashion choices.” Uh, not that any of these have ever applied to me.

This year, more than ever, a great many of the lessons I learned came from fellow bloggers. As a nod of gratitude to them, and as a way of getting my dolls and dishes packed up for next year, I thought I’d share some of the more inspiring lessons. 

From Michael Procopio, I learned it takes talent to toss off Dorothy Parker-worthy bon mots. I am Grasshopper to his Master.

From Ree Drummond, I learned quiet strength. And a wicked mashed potato recipe.

From Dorie Greenspan,  l learned everyone feels inadequate no matter how accomplished he may be.

From Heidi Swanson, I learned the importance of self.

From Faith Durand, I learned joy, and the pleasures of creamy limoncello.

From Monica Bhide, I learned how to be grateful when there’s not always a lot to be grateful for.

From Sean Timberlake, I learned what it means to be committed. In the interpersonal sense, that is.

From Hank Shaw, I learned what persistence looks like.

From Dianne Jacob, I learned about reinvention. (Madonna, you have nothing on her.)

From Beth Kujawski, I learned what support feels like.

From Gail Dosik, I learned perfectionism can be a good thing–especially if you don’t obsess about it.

From Jaden Hair, I learned ambition isn’t a four-letter word.

From Katherine O’Hara, I learned how to take responsibility for your actions with class.

From Jeff Miller, I learned about generosity of spirit…and ridiculously mind-bending algorithms.

From Kate Jackson, I learned it’s good to trust your gut. Its intuition as well as its hunger pangs.

From Ethan Adeland, I learned humility is alive and well and living in Canada.

From Elise Bauer, I learned what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a river of generosity.

From Garrett McCord, I learned you’re never too old to flirt.

From Jennifer McLagan, I learned how to stand firm in your beliefs while chewing the fat (literally).

And closer to home, and office:

From Renee Schettler Rossi, I learned gentleness can lead better than fear.

From Allison Parker, I learned courage. A lot of courage.

From Julie Dreyfoos, I learned the delight of loyalty.

From Beth Price, I learned what “chop wood, carry water” means.

From Jenna Rose Levy, I learned competence.

From Dan Kraan, I learned you can rethink the unthinkable, all while grilling venison.

From Leanne Hammond, I learned that a learning curve doesn’t have to be a mountain.

From Lindsay Myers, I learned how to jump on a very fast-moving bandwagon and not fall off.

From Rachel Kaufman, I learned it’s always the quiet ones you have to watch.

From Erin Carlman Weber, I learned you can never forget your first Twitter love.

From Jared Atchison, I learned there really is a Santa Claus.

From the The One, I learned the steadfastness and resiliency of love.

And from Chloe, Rory, and Raja, I learned once again that you can’t get a cat to do your bidding. (And I have the scars from Rory to prove it.)

I hope you can take a minute from all the tippling, dipping, and dunking of the season to think about what you learned this year. In the meantime, I wish you all a Happy New Year and a prosperous, incandescent, and delicious 2012.

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.

“Puh-lease,” I replied, even though the only experience I had cooking fowl was microwaving Swanson turkey dinners. “Plenty of times.”

“What size do you want?” he asked, obviously trying to entrap me. But I outwitted him.

“Oh, the usual.”

When I returned several days later to collect my bird, Luigi instructed me in the ways of goose cookery. While he babbled on about something to do with pricking the skin and draining the fat, I imagined myself parading into the dining room with a bird so splendiferous, my guests couldn’t help but break into a chorus of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.”

On Christmas day, I awoke early to prepare the goose. To ensure a moist bird, I tucked pats of butter under its skin, then slid it into the oven. After several hours, I checked to see if the magic thermometer had popped up, signaling the goose was done. But I couldn’t find one—anywhere. I yanked the goose out of the oven, sloshing a tsunami of fat on the floor, and turned the bird over and over looking for that confounded popper. Just then the doorbell rang, so I returned the goose to the oven and hoped for the best.

Now, back then I wasn’t the intrepid cook that I am today (minus the kitchen fire, that is), so I proudly offered my five guests Diet Coke and an artfully arranged platter of Doritos and Lipton Onion Soup Dip. I then excused myself and took the phone into the bedroom closet.

“Ma,” I whispered, “how do you know when a goose is cooked?”

“Is this a joke?” she asked.

“No, I’m serious.”

“How do I know? I never made one.”

“What do you mean? You make capons all the time. Aren’t they emasculated geese?” With that, she put my father on the line.

I returned ten minutes later, fully educated in the sex life of fowl, but alas, none the wiser about how to cook one. I steeled myself and asked my guests to be seated. I placed the goose on the table and began carving, but every time I sliced, I hit bone. No matter what angle I tried, the knife simply slid off.

“So much for ‘Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat,’” I tried to joke, as I strip-mined the bird for meat with a fork. With each slice, more and more of the mutilated carcass was exposed. In the end, the hatchet job on the platter could easily have passed as a stunt double for one of Jason’s victims in Friday the 13th. Embarrassed, I gave up and divided the two legs among six plates. My guests looked down at their pitifully small portions.

“We could always order pizza,” one guest offered. I glared at him until he withered back into his chair.

After they all left, I railed against God, Tiny Tim, and Luigi as I cleaned up. Furious, I grabbed the platter and flipped the goose into the trash. And there, staring up at me, were two perfectly plump breasts. In my frantic search for the magic thermometer, I had ended up turning the goose upside down and carving from its scrawny, meatless back.

Haunted by the memory of that bird’s mutilation and my humiliation, I chained myself to my stove, Thor, until I became a whiz at roasting fowl. Indeed, at my country home in Connecticut, I’ve cooked a barnyardful of chickens, turkeys, poussins, even guinea hens. But never, ever goose.

Then during a proper afternoon tea spent sipping Earl Grey and nibbling biscuits with Danny, a Connecticut neighbor, I told her about my debacle. “AND YOU HAVEN’T MADE A CHRISTMAS GOOSE SINCE?” she bellowed. An expat from England who’s blessed with an alto’s lungs and cursed with a hearing problem, Danny clocks in at a decibel level just below that of a Boeing 747.

“Nope.”

“WELL, NEXT WEEKEND WE’RE MARCHING INTO YOUR KITCHEN, AND I’M GOING TO SHOW YOU HOW IT’S DONE PROPERLY,” she announced.

She thrummed her fingers on the table as she dictated a shopping list. Then suddenly she thundered: “OH MY, WE’LL HAVE A THUMPINGLY GOOD TIME!” I had my doubts.

The day of our lesson, Danny burst into my kitchen with her arms filled with herbs, bottles, scraps of paper, and two roasting pans. “LOOK, ” she said, waving a carving fork that would do the Marquis de Sade proud. “FOR INFLICTING THE JABS. YOU HAVE TO PRICK THE GOOSE ALL OVER TO DRAIN THE FAT.” Drain the fat? Where had I heard that before? Suddenly, I remembered Luigi’s lecture. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad butcher after all.

I took the bird from the refrigerator, and Danny cooed, “MY, THAT IS A PROPER CHRISTMAS GOOSE, DAVID!” She took it from me, rinsed it, and lightly seasoned it with salt and pepper. Then she stood as if in a trance.

“Danny? Is something wrong?” I asked.

She put her finger to her lips, lowered her head, then said softly (well, softly for Danny), “NOW’S THE TIME TO THINK OF ALL THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE EVER BORNE A GRUDGE AGAINST YOU, AND YOU—GO FOR IT!” With that, she descended upon the bird with her carving fork. To judge from the ferocity of her stabs and the contentment on her face, my guess was she was fantasizing about Tony Blair. When the bird was sufficiently pincushioned, she leaned again the counter and trumpeted, “BOY, WAS THAT CATHARTIC!” She looked like a boxer who had just won a prize fight.

“So what’s next?” I asked, enjoying being a private to her Patton.

She slipped the bird in the oven. “WELL, YOU SIT HERE AND MIND GOOSEY, AND I’LL BE BACK IN A COUPLE OF HOURS.”

“What? Why?”

She looked at me as if I were daft. “I’M KNACKERED,” she said. And with that, she tramped out the back door. “THE DIRECTIONS ARE ON THE TABLE,” she barked from her car.

Without Danny there to guide me, I was immediately haunted by the goose of Christmas Past. I riffled through her scraps of paper, which in Danny’s world constitutes a recipe. One read that the bird needed to be turned three times. “Turned?” I said aloud. Another: “Drain the fat.” But when? Visions of snickering guests danced in my head.

Still, I knew that if I didn’t face this bête noire head on, I’d develop a severe tic every time I saw a goose or break out in hives when served foie gras. So I made some calculations and estimated when to turn the goose, poured off the fat several times lest there be another flood, and brushed on Danny’s secret mustard-and-garlic coating.

When I removed the goose, it was nothing like the catastrophe I had wrought in my youth. It was a beautiful mahogany color, and the mustard coating had formed a crackly, crisp crust. One last hurdle, though, before I could be free of my demons. I poked the top of the bird. Yes! Just as I thought: It was a lovely, juicy breast.

Twenty minutes later Danny muscled through the door. When she saw the goose, her face clouded over. She leaned in close, inspecting. She tilted the bird one way, then the other. Oh, no, I thought. I did it again. Finally, she said, “BRILLIANT, DAVID.” I beamed.

She transferred the bird to a platter and held it aloft. “BEHOLD THE GOOSE,” she crowed. Then she thrust her chin toward the dining room. “NOW, GOOD GOD LET’S EAT!”

Tiny Tim himself couldn’t have said it better.

Recipe
Danny’s Mustard and Garlic Roast Goose

Illustration © 2003 Steve Brodner. All rights reserved.

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.

Now that the turkey leftovers are gone, the tryptophan torpor has receded, and we’ve physically and emotionally pushed away from the Thanksgiving table, I need to get something off my chest. A kitchen confessional, if you will: On the Holiest of Holy Days for culinistas all over the country, I failed miserably at the stove. Twice.

It was far and away the worst hatchet job I’ve ever committed–and it was at baking, my bailiwick. In the 20-something years that I’ve been cooking Thanksgiving dinner, yes, I’ve forgotten to take the giblets packet out of the bird; yes, I’ve both under- and overcooked the turkey; and, yes, I’ve neglected to heat the stuffing to the ideal (read: salmonella-free) temperature. But I’ve never, ever failed to whip up gasp-inducing desserts. But I can’t take full responsibility for my fumble: I mostly blame Twitter and Instagram, because if it weren’t for me snapping pictures of my marvelosity in the kitchen for public consumption, I would’ve had a relaxing holiday, and the members of the Roxbury volunteer fire department would’ve been able to finish their meal undisturbed.

Let me backtrack. Please.

The Tuesday night before Thanksgiving I was planning to make my pumpkin cake with maple-cream cheese frosting and Melissa Clark’s spiced maple pecan pie for dessert. The One is a pumpkin freak and demands the cake every year. The pie was a concession, a peace offering to those poor friends of ours who’ve been politely eating the same dessert for nearly a decade. I thought they might want need a change.

Knowing that some of my blogging brethren, among them Ree Drummond, Shauna James Ahern, David Lebovitz, Gail Dosik, Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan, are quite adept at snapping cell phone pics of their kitchen hijinks and tweeting them while cooking, I decided I could, too. So with iPhone in hand, and iPad in its kitchen condom, I began clicking away. But instead of waiting until the cake was safely in the oven to upload the shots and check Twitter for the inevitable onslaught of kudos from you all, I decided to reply to every single response while baking.

Basking in your immediate adulation and unconditional love with one hand while meticulously dividing, weighing, and smoothing the batter with the other, I noticed something odd. As in the batter spreading as thick as spackle. I had to work it into the edges of the pan, where the sides meet the bottom. No big deal, I thought. I’ve made this a million times, and it always comes out perfectly. Must be the dry weather. With that, I slid all three pans into the oven and returned to my 4G iNeedConstantLoveMachine.

Forty minutes later, I pulled the cake layers from the oven to discover they hadn’t risen much. No big deal, I told myself again. I’m using three nine-inch pans instead of the usual two eight-inchers. They’re bound to be a little thinner.

I tipped the cakes out of the pans, and instead of steaming circles of spicy pumpkin loveliness, I was affronted by what can only be described as mutants. Each layer was riddled with worm holes. Entire sections were curdled and dry, with huge gaps in them. No big deal, that’s why God made frosting. It was while reaching for my iPhone, to see who else liked my photos on Instagram, that I spotted them sitting on the counter, mocking me: a chorus line of three cans of unopened solid-packed pumpkin. I’D FORGOTTEN TO ADD PUMPKIN TO THE PUMPKIN CAKE.

For a brief, dark moment, I contemplated passing off this castrato of a cake as the real thing. Chances are my guests wouldn’t know, and, most important, neither would you. I imagined millions of you sitting at your computers or holding your cellphones while watching “Body of Proof” just waiting for the final shot of my towering creation. Guilt, my constant sniggering companion, won out. I dumped the damn thing into a plastic trash bag like so many dead bodies on TV.

The next morning, refreshed but hours behind, I turned out what The One later called the best pumpkin cake ever. Below is its headshot, which is what I, of course, tweeted.

The cake redo slapped me all the way into the middle of Wednesday afternoon. If I worked quickly and efficiently, I could knock out the spiced maple pecan pie and prep my three side dishes: Virginia Willis’s bourbon sweet potatoes, roasted carrots with an agresto sauce (a to-die-for mix of chopped nuts, lemon juice, vinegar, wine, parsley and spices), and homemade green-bean salad. (Revel below.)

Melissa’s recipe calls for maple syrup and demerara sugar to be simmered until reduced by about a third. Being in a hurry, I calculated I could save almost 20 minutes if I let it boil down–and who the hell has demerara sugar in the middle of rural Connecticut? So I used granulated sugar instead. It was then that I walked out of the kitchen into the family room to get a recipe. I’m talking all of 60 feet, people. I was flipping through a cookbook when what sounded liked a nuclear-disaster siren went off.

I ran to the kitchen and from the pot billowed the blackest, foulest-smelling smoke I ever had the misfortune to encounter. Now, I’m good in emergencies. The One and I were like hopped-up Eagle Scouts on 9/11, filling bathtubs and sinks with water; withdrawing huge sums of cash from all of our accounts; and shopping for food, flashlights, batteries, and the current issue of People magazine. But on this day, as I ping-ponged between four fire alarms and three French doors, shooing out the smoke with my apron and a spatula (spatula?), what’s the one thing I forgot to do? Turn off the stove. So as soon as I got the air raid under control, it started again. And again. And again. Finally, I tossed the pan in the sink then thought better of it and flung it out into the yard.

With the bleating now over, the phone rang. Holy go to war, the alarm company. I smoothed my sooty apron and cleared my throat. “Hello?” I said, as if I were the top earner at a phone sex company.

“Sir, we have a report of an alarm trigger at this residence. Who am I speaking with?”

“David Leite.” My voice was all warm caramel and Cognac.

“Who else is on this account?”

“_______________,” I replied, using The One’s real name.

“What’s the passcode, sir?” Passcode? What passcode?

And as if reading a roll call, I listed every single password I could remember. (Note: None of these are real. What do you think? I’m crazy?) “Ginger, Gilligan, Miss Piggy, Marcia Brady, Julia Child, Tom and Jerry, Mr. Spock.”

“Sir…”

“Murphy Brown…”

“Sir!”

“I DON’T KNOW THE FREAKING PASSCODE, ALL RIGHT? BUT IT’S ME, DAVID LE–”

Dial tone. He’d hung up on me. Then the most sickening sound pierced the air: the wail of the town’s fire alarm. ”Noooooooooooo!” The One is going to kill me. I could see the headlines in the Litchfield County Times: “Lauded Food Writer Almost Burns Down the House.” Frantic, I called 411 and asked for the Roxbury Fire Department.

“Sir,” said the operator, “you don’t need to call the fire department. You just need to dial 911.”

“No, I don’t need to report a fire–”

“Then why are you calling the fire department?”

“Because…”

“Sir, I’m required to connect you to 911–”

I pressed “End Call” and dropped my iPhone on the couch as if I were letting go of a putrid piece of pork. Lying there, it chimed an alert: “Instagram: Talon245 liked your photo.” Oh, how sweet of him. I instinctively reached out to see what he’d written. “No!,” I shouted, shaking my head trying to gain perspective.

After a few minutes, The One and our friend Caroline, who was spending the holiday with us, came home. He looked around the kitchen and out into the backyard at the tar-colored pot, slack jawed. “Don’t ask,” I said before he could say anything. “Please, don’t ask.” As we stared at each other the whine of another siren grew louder.

“Don’t tell me…,” he said pointing over his shoulder to the sound, realizing it had my name on it. I nodded my head. “Oh, David” was all he could get out before flashing red lights splashed across the family room walls. I rose to go to the door. “Sit,” he said. “SIT!” I obeyed.

“Think this will end up in the newspaper’s police blotter?” I asked Caroline, looking for some sympathy.

Ever immune to subtle interpersonal cues, she said flatly, “Probably.”

I ran through the kitchen cutting off The One before he got to the door and opened it. A man in a flannel jacket and a bruised fire helmet poked his head in. “Um, is there a fire here?” he asked, unsure he got the right address.

Suddenly self-conscious about what I looked like–after all I was in my Warner Bros. pajamas and a sooty apron–I smoothed my hair. 

“Hi, officer,” I said, smiling. Behind him was a fire truck and several men putting on gear. “Um, is it officer,” I continued trying to sound nonchalant, “or fire marshall?”

“John. It’s John.”

“John,” I replied, emphasizing his name, “this is rather embarrassing, but I kind of messed up my Thanksgiving dessert. Just a bunch of smoke and drama, but no fire.” He looked at The One who was behind me for some kind of assurance. The One nodded.

“I hope I didn’t pull you all away from anything important.”

“Well, some of the guys were just having an early Thanksgiving at the firehouse.” It’s amazing how small a 295-pound man can feel.

“Stay away from the stove, will ya?” he said as he jumped back on the truck. “And happy Thanksgiving.”

“You, too.” I waved off my own personal fire brigade parade.

Exhausted, I curled up on the couch and fell asleep for the rest of the afternoon. I awoke after dark, shivering. The windows were still open; the kitchen still smelled acrid. I avoided The One’s gaze as I quietly made my fallback chocolate pecan pie. When I pulled it from the oven, it was a picture of baking mastery. Forgetting myself, I held it out for him. “Look!” He just nodded. Realizing that the coolness in the room wasn’t coming from just the windows, I slid the pie on a rack, and then I couldn’t help myself.

I took a picture and posted it. (See it in all is glory above.)

I attend a small college in Portland where some of my peers have more tattoos than articles of clothing. (Hey, don’t ask me how I know this.) Even some of our professors have ink swirling beneath their button-down shirts, amusing and esoteric nods to their studies — or so the rumors go. While I’m all for dedication — and utterly captivated by tattoos — I’ve always been too much of a commitment-phobe to consider assigning perpetual pictures to my own body.

That changed when I met a vegan chef who sports a tattoo of a single, perfect radish. Suddenly getting a tattoo — a kitchen-centric one — made perfect sense. From then on, I’ve peered more curiously than ever at highly decorated baristas and ogled glossy magazine pages with swarthy young chefs flaunting sexy tats of gleaming Cuisinart mixers  or butcher’s meat cut diagrams.

I was obsessed.

What creative culinary tattoo could I get? A bundle of verdant herbs? A few tangerine segments peeking shyly out of the peel? A piece of buttered toast, my idea of quintessential comfort food? (Uh, something told me I might regret that last one in a couple of years.)

Fortunately for me — and indecisive tattoo connoisseurs the world over — artist Julia Rothman  has designed whimsical temporary decals in the form of simple kitchen utensils, available at the eminently chic Tattly Designy Temporary Tattoos. The Brooklyn-based artist has, by her own admission, been too afraid to get any body art herself—just like me—though she’s welcomed any chance she could get to pretend with artsy temporary designs. She enjoys drawing everyday objects, images that represent the things that people love to do. Naturally, she thought utilitarian kitchen utensils — a chef’s knife, whisk, grater, and wine opener — would make particularly compelling tattoos. As she explains, they’re icons that, when worn, express an interest or personality and hint at all manner of culinary hijinks. Don’t see your favorite tool? She’s promised us that there are more diminutive decals on the way, including a baking-themed set and designs for coffee and wine devotees.

Tattly Designy Temporary Tattoosare a far cry from the familiar Cracker Jack tattoos of childhood, which were made with cheap dye and prone to smudging shortly after application. By contrast, Tattly’s tattoos are non-toxic, simple and quick to apply, and last for days without fading or cracking. They even hold up fairly well to being doused with water —something that’s sort of inevitable for anyone who spends time in the kitchen — though the tats are easily scrubbed off, so even commitment-phobes like me can feel no qualms about sticking ‘em anywhere. As Tattly.com wisely professes, who said forever is better?

Kitchen Utensils by Julia Rothman are available at Tattly. The nifty little expressions of body art will set you back just $5 for two complete sets of four utensils each, including shipping (add $2 for international orders).