DEAR MF BUMFACES DIARY,

Since you didn’t ask, I’d like to, you know, be having sex regularly. I sort of feel like Ariel at the bottom of her little treasure hoard, looking up, except instead of combing my hair with a fork, it’s a vibrator. What do hoomans use these mysterious things for? It doesn’t grow shut, does it? Please say no. But if sex happens, I get too distracted to write. For some of us the top of Maslow’s pyramid is very, very VERY far off and minuscule.

Today I printed out all the things I am going to do and make in October. Thirty-nine recipes, ranging from Fricandeau of Beef (whatever that is, right?) to a cherry sauce for pudding. This does not include “normal” workaday meals that have more of a footing in this century, like tacos or Some Stuff I Found. I keep this month’s calendar on the fridge where it acts as an aid to memory and a whip.

Last month and August went well–two calendars all scratched off. I like cooking in this house. I kind of keep to myself, as you do in Seattle, but this street is encroaching on me.

My neighbor called yesterday, not the Recycling Bin Hermit.

“Hey, SJ,” he said. “I would come over and knock but I am still in my pajama pants.” He works from home, too. If he knocked, he would probably get me in my pajama pants too, or possibly in my new latex lederhosen that I just got off layaway. (Don’t ask.)

He invited me to his birthday party, and then later when I was digging up my yard came out in his pajamas anyway. They were blue and fuzzy and covered in moons. While we were talking a little brown dog came over to us and then meandered on.

“That dog sticks its head into my door when I am roasting chickens,” I said.

“Oh, yeah, he belongs across the street. The lady there told me that he’s some kind of breed that’s irretrievable, he can’t be called and he only comes home when he feels like it.”

“Sounds like my first husband,” I said.

His owner crossed the street and came over to me.

“Hello,” she said. “I should have introduced myself to you the other day when you told me my headlamps were on.”

“It’s fine,” I said, and it was.

I’d like to have old Moon Pants and his son over for supper, but they’re vegetarians, and it’s hard for me to find a night when I am not reducing adorable baby animal faces &tc into a nice glaze.

Tonight I make Fowl a la Marengo! The story goes that Napoleon whooped some ass in Italy and then snapped his fingers for a post-battle repast. What could be scrounged up was tomatoes, crawdads, white wine, mushrooms, eggs, and some chicken. Sounds like dinner to me. HOWEVER. Beeton tells us this story in her usual breezy “let’s have a little historical grounding shall we” fashion:

The following is the origin of the well-known dish Poulet la Marengo:—On the evening of the battle the first consul was very hungry after the agitation of the day, and a fowl was ordered with all expedition. The fowl was procured, but there was no butter at hand, and unluckily none could be found in the neighbourhood. There was oil in abundance, however; and the cook having poured a certain quantity into his skillet, put in the fowl, with a clove of garlic and other seasoning, with a little white wine, the best the country afforded; he then garnished it with mushrooms, and served it up hot. This dish proved the second conquest of the day, as the first consul found it most agreeable to his palate, and expressed his satisfaction. Ever since, a fowl la Marengo is a favourite dish with all lovers of good cheer.

Isabella, I am on to you. You explain all this, which sounds like a very nice meal indeed, and then your recipe OMITS the white wine. Really, can you imagine a French dish prepared in Italy without white wine and with only a “very small piece of garlic”? TSK. Even Frances Crawford’s recipe in French Cookery Adapted for English Families [1853] calls for wine in. FRANCES. FUCKING. CRAWFORD. I see. You took this recipe from Alexis Soyer. Well, I will do it your way and omit the tomatoes, eggs, and crawdads, but I will not omit the white wine. I am also suspicious of the need for sugar. It is challenging to rejigger dishes like this one. Presumably Victorians did prepare it this way, because the recipe appears in some of the most popular books of the time. I will find a way to keep it true without being dire.

FOWL A LA MARENGO.

949. INGREDIENTS – 1 large fowl, 4 tablespoonfuls of salad oil, 1 tablespoonful of flour, 1 pint of stock No. 105, or water, about 20 mushroom-buttons, salt and pepper to taste, 1 teaspoonful of powdered sugar, a very small piece of garlic.

Mode.—Cut the fowl into 8 or 10 pieces; put them with the oil into a stewpan, and brown them over a moderate fire; dredge in the above proportion of flour; when that is browned, pour in the stock or water; let it simmer very slowly for rather more than 1/2 hour, and skim off the fat as it rises to the top; add the mushrooms; season with salt, pepper, garlic, and sugar; take out the fowl, which arrange pyramidically on the dish, with the inferior joints at the bottom. Reduce the sauce by boiling it quickly over the fire, keeping it stirred until sufficiently thick to adhere to the back of a spoon; pour over the fowl, and serve.

I should probably crosspost this to The Queen’s Scullery but without the sad sex TMI. DIGNITY. ALWAYS DIGNITY.