Sundry beat me to it! Sunday I went to her house and went shopping and made dinner and did crafts and had a lovely time. She, however, took pictures to document all our fun. You’re just going to have to trust me. (By the way, I just started watching 24 on DVD…you know, that show that all the kids were so excited about like three years ago…and I just laugh and laugh whenever The Kiefer says in his heavy, Jedi-mind-trick whisper: “You’re just going to have to trust me.” Laughter, every single time. )
We went out immediately to the local mall and headed to Bed Bath And Beyond, also known as The Ill-Made Tschotches Store. This was perfect because I was on a quest for, um, a sweater shaver. Now that I write that it looks sort of dirty. It’s not dirty though. It’s just that I have this black wool sweater that has all these little pills all over it and it takes forever to pick them off and one time I tried shaving them off with my razor but that was dumb because all it did was guck up my blade and I’ve tried ignoring it but I wear this sweater a lot and ALSO my mom sent me these very nice high thread count sheets a couple of months ago and they were lovely for about a week because after only one washing (not counting the pre-wash, of course) they got all pilled up and I didn’t understand what I’d done wrong and sleeping on them was like sleeping on a loofah or something. Clearly I needed an ill-made tschotche, you know?
I explained my plight to the sales staff and was pointed in what turned out to be the completely wrong direction. Some other sales guy came over and was all, “Yeah, are you the freak that wanted the” (snicker) sweater shaver?” and I was like, “Yes, I’m that freak” and then he was like, “Well, here you go” and he handed me one and it was like five dollars and I thought it was a pretty good purchase. I’ve since used it on my sweater and the aforementioned sheets with good results.
We got Sundry some new sparkly towels and then we went to JoAnn Fabrics where we noticed just how expensive fabric can be, and then we went to Michael’s where we wandered up and down every single aisle touching everything and going “Oooh! Fake flowers!” and “Hey, seashells! Stamps! Stencils!” and I got some stuff to glue onto some cheap IKEA pictures frames, which was my first craft of the day. I don’t have a picture but I think it came out all right. A little cutesy for my taste, as I am not generally a person who decorates with fake flowers for non-Burning Man purposes, but Sundry assured me that it was an accent piece and as such a little extra cuteness would not be out of place. So that was all right but when I saw the fabulousness of the little marble magnets she was making I threw my cutesy peony-covered picture frame aside (although I am thinking of making one with beach glass) and jumped wholeheartedly onto the Magnetic Wagon. It’s been a crazy ride, let me tell you.
If you’ve never made these before, oh man. I highly recommend them (again, about three years after everyone else has been making them) as the most fun and instant-gratification craft ever. Way better than knitting where you have to count and frown and make twitchy little movements with your hands. It involves cutting things with a great circular cutter and then pasting things and then letting things dry and then putting things on your refrigerator very shortly thereafter. I’ll try to post a picture, because seriously, I made some very good magnets. It was extremely satisfying.
I also, while I was at Sundry’s, managed to set off her fire alarm while I was inadvertenly burning the (unnecessary, as it turned out) caramelized onions for this little appetizer I’ve been making and eating for the past couple of days and eat a lot of dulce de leche ice cream with SKOR bars crumbled on top, which I have to say, was a wondrous stroke of genius on the part of the lovely and talented JB. I also learned about reality TV. I have heard about this crazy Simple Life show where the skinny socialites learn about WalMart or something, but of course never seen it, into which breach Sundry and JB stepped mighty graciously. I had also never seen TiVo in action and I was pretty impressed by that too, although I suspect I made a nuisance of myself by obsessively going “booo-boop!” every time TiVo did. They were very nice and understanding about my lack of TV-viewing manners. And then as usual I left something at their house, which in this case was the fig part of the appetizers I made. I am not completely certain Sundry isn’t reading this right now, eating it with a spoon, as a matter of fact. I would be currently eating it with a spoon, now that I think about it, had I not left it on the other side of the lake in her refrigerator. See, that’s how Sundry works. She lulls you into happy crafty complacency, with her delicious pasta sauce and her marble magnets and her entertaining animals. You get comfortable and start talking about boys or Pirates of the Caribbean or something and the next thing you know you’re home without your gorgonzola.
And hey, while I’m thinking of it, here’s the recipe for that thing I made. It’s from October 2003 Cooking Light, I think. Ready?
Take a bunch of very very caramelized onions, like they should be totally limp and brown.
Take, also, a bunch of dried Black Mission figs and cut them up, either with your knife if you are like me and have no mini food processor, or with your mini food processor if you are smart like Sundry. Throw in some lemon juice too, and then put the figs in a pot with almost enough water to cover and bring to a boil and let simmer until it’s thick and jammy.
Okay. Once everything’s cooled down, slice up a baguette and then put on the onions, followed by the fig stuff, followed by the gorgonzola, which you have let soften a little and crumbled with a fork. Put all the crostini on a baking sheet and put them in a 350 F degree oven for ten or so minutes, until the cheese is melted. Make sure the stove burners are off when you take the sheet out of the oven and put it on the stove top because you will char the baking sheet and ruin several of the crostini, not understanding that heat, in fact, makes things hot. Your host’s fire alarm will go off and you will feel like a tool. As long as you avoid that you should be good to go and you will have some extremely nice little appetizers that you can make for Book Club and then have again the next day AND the next day, depending on your bread, cheese, and onion reserves and how many you eat at one sitting.
There are some days that your sort of feel like you should be doing something with but you can’t quite figure out what. There are some friends you can just call up and say “Hey, girl, I’m going to come over on Sunday, okay? I’m bringing my glue gun.” When that kind of day and that kind of friend mesh into a seamless whole? And there are magnets involved? It’s a wonderful day, I have to tell you.