December's First Saturday: Grand Army Plaza and The New York Times

Last week's profusion of pies and sweet potatoes and other Thanksgiving-side-dish-bound ingredients were all shrunk back to more customary proportions, at Saturday's greenmarket, and instead all things Christmas-y were on full blast.

I arrived with the drizzle of freezing rain that the forecasters had been promising. Combined with never having been an early-December decorator — not wanting the holiday to feel diluted by the time it finally comes around — the sight of freshly cut trees and holly branches and pine boughs did nothing to warm or sway me. I was cold and increasingly damp, and had exactly four thoughts keeping me busy: To secure two Bread Alone almond-apple danishes before they sold out. To make the $30 in my jacket pocket (why didn't I wear a coat!) also cover milk, cheese, fruit and vegetables for the first half of the week. And to get home and back into my pajama bottoms as quickly as possible.

And then there was The New York Times' review of "The Gastronomy of Marriage" in the Book Review.














































I was told a few weeks ago that it might make it in, and I'd been hoping for maybe a thumbnail and a sentence.

And still, over the last week I'd started bleating out a little prayer: Please don't let them be mean to me. Shampooing my hair, brushing my teeth, making the bed, I'd sent this silent mantra to the heavens: Please don't let them be mean to me. Please don't them be mean. It terrified me to think that all the effort of the last five years could be undone — dismissed — with a few words.

In the end "Gastronomy" shared a full page with Julie Powell's "Cleaved," and Christine Muhlke, the food editor of the NYT Magazine, called me "Doris Day" and made fun of me for using canned corn — in February. (An aside: I told this to my non-NYT-reading mother today, who replied, "There really is such a taste difference between canned corn and frozen...")

There were a few comments and snarky asides I'm still thinking through, but in all: A girl could do far worse than canned corn and Doris Day. Relief.

I picked the smallest Brussels sprouts from a pile, traded in two empty glass milk bottles for a full one, and bought apples, pears, onions, curly lettuce, and a quarter-pound of Cato Corners' stinky Hooligan cheese, and headed home with a single dollar in my pocket.

R. took my bags as I came through the door and ground the last of the Stumptown beans, and back in pajama bottoms I plated the danish and sliced up one of the apples. Then together we sat and ate and talked, and enjoyed the crema on our coffees and the sizzle of sleet on the windows.

Which, of course, is the real measure of my days.