Weekend Update, February 16, 2014

Gravity catches up with all of us.

Marilyn Monroe

Fight it as we may, gravity eventually shows up at most parties- usually with an uncomfortable reminder of how dangerous it is 

to leave important powers off of the guest list. 

It showed up at the worldwide party in Sochi this week with a bag of naughty tricks-

keeping some things from going down,

and other things

from staying up.

Which made me wonder, what if the laws of gravity were written like other laws? What if they were proposed and passed by some cosmic congress of physicists; the smartest gravity-defying brains on earth- 

 "The motion passes.
Things may fall down, without  falling  apart.
Things may let loose without letting go,
and gravity will not be permitted to wrinkle a face
until the forces of zit have finished with it."

There's the enforcement problem of course- gravity police making sure that every one was literally and metaphorically grounded- there'd have to be anti-gravity courts, and anti-gravity jails, where all the inmates could become

quite dangerously light-hearted.

No it's probably better to leave things as they are. Let the laws of gravity stay on the books, keep giving prizes to those who find the most creative ways to get around them and make sure that those who break them with too much impunity

are made as comfortable as possible
in gravity jail.

Ice skaters and snowboarders weren't the only gravity defyers falling flat this week- there was this souffle....

Well, there was more than one souffle, and that was the problem.

We started with this broccoli and goat cheese souffle recipe, which actually uses the word easy to describe itself. And it is easy- just like this is easy,

when you compare it to climbing Everest in a snowstorm.

The thing is, souffles rise best in pans with straight sides, and over the course of many kitchen adventures, all but two of ours have broken. (An earnest cook is not the same as an unclumsy cook-

as I have proved on more than one occasion.)

There was, however, a relatively straight sided loaf pan...here's the difference that following the rules makes:

in a pretty little straight sided souffle dish

and....

a loaf pan. And the souffle didn't taste that great either.

And if a recipe for oven baked chicken tells you to brown the bread crumbs before using them to coat the chicken, obey that as if it were a law. Really. If you don't, the chicken will be done in 13 minutes, but the coating will not yet be brown. Which means you will have a choice to make: whether to serve for dinner an anemic looking plank of pale chicken that's still juicy inside, or a nicely browned piece of overcooked dried out chicken....

I opted for anemia- and though it didn't look very well,
it tasted great.

Lastly, if anyone tells you that it's possible to make an eggplant Parmesan that is not too hard, and not heavy greasy,

believe them.

This no-frying pan,  oven-all-the-way eggplant parmesan takes some prep time, but not hard prep time- about 40 minutes to put it together, and another 40 minutes in the oven. That's too much time an trouble to make it easy on a weeknight, but if you're having a crew of vegetarians over, or if you're trying for one or two meatless meals a week, this is a great recipe that won't weigh you down.  Bonus: it makes a full 9x13 pan. Around here, that means 40 minutes of work for dinner and three lunches.

And floating through four meals on 40 minutes of work is an acceptable rate of exchange.

And this week, that's what I hope for you 

I hope it's a week of having fun, of

learning which rules to break 

and which rules to abide by.

And if gravity catches up to you,

and you find things falling flat,

I hope that the energetic  love 

with which you've filled your life

bounces back to you

and gives you all the lift you need

to keep your soul aloft.