Even the Delusional Get the Blues

so here it is, autumn. colder days, rain, earlier nightfall and with all those again come my blues.
don't ask me why i get it. its also a puzzle to me. don't worry - i'm not about to slit my wrists, bash my head in or jump into the river thames which is across the street. all three forms of suicide result in horrifyingly ugly cadavers and i'd rather live than have people's last memories of me when they view my body 'goddamn...she probably didn't take the three hours she usually takes in the morning before she decided to kill herself because man.....she's ugly'.

i want to die when i am 70 years old, having exhausted my plastic surgery fund, my vital organs deciding to stop on their own after i celebrate my 70th birthday having drunk more than my fair share of pink champagne, eaten foie gras and hunks of apple crumble and madagascan vanilla clotted cream ice cream. i'm going to be 70 and i will look as fantastic as that woman called tina turner who is really 80 but looks like she's 40 and has a boyfriend who's 20. dang......THAT is a woman. madonna - have you heard of her?

when i get the blues, i don't know what the hell to do other than crawl under the covers in my bed, lie there waiting til the cows come home, looking like a drowned rat and giving in to the crying spells that come. i used to castigate myself when i would get the blues - because i was demanding to know why they were happening. now, i just let it happen. there is a song that pink wrote. i love pink. her song goes 'nobody knows, nobody knows but me that i sometimes cry...'it occurs to me that sometimes, your body and your brain is telling you it needs to crawl under the sheets, lie in bed for two days and let the tears fall freely without burdening yourself with why this is happening.

i feel a little better now. so this week i ended up cooking a storm. i made apple crumble because apples are now in season. i can make this in my sleep.

APPLE CRUMBLE - pick the kind of apple you like. it can be granny smith if you like tart ones but i prefer red delicious or pink galas because they are sweet. whatever you do, do NOT pick the british bramley apples because they turn to mush when they are cooked. bramley apples are fantastic for apple sauce. apple crumble however needs chunks of cooked apple. core, peel, deseed and slice the apples to the size you prefer. i like them in biggish chunks. and you need to focus and work quick when you do this or the apples will turn brown if you leave them alone unpeeled for too long. you can sprinkle them with a bit of lemon juice but this makes them tart and i like my apple crumble sweet. then sprinkle over the apples some cinnammon, ground cloves, grate a bit of nutmeg over it, muscovado sugar, a bit of flour, half a scraped vanilla bean, a pinch of salt then toss, toss, toss and pour into your baking tin! then mix some fine ground digestive biscuits, rough chopped almonds or walnuts, oats and brown sugar. work in some melted butter until the mixture kind of looks like peas. sprinkle this over the apples. you want to have a decent amount of this covering the apples. bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour in your oven.

i don't have measurements. i just learned this by reading a recipe and experimenting. now i have my own version which i can churn out in my sleep because i've done it a few hundred times. if you love cooking like i do, you can experiment so you can eventually come out with your own. that's how i perfected my adobo. i make the BEST adobo. lilit reyes, my former creative director, who is utterly a brilliant writer and lyricist, who utterly hates my guts for his own personal reasons actually told me when he came over to my house in bangkok for lunch that i actually beat his mother's adobo. and she's from batangas. THAT is high praise. if someone who utterly hates your guts can say you trump their mother's adobo. i'll take it lilit. peace.

if anyone is interested in an apple crumble or adobo tutorial, let me know.

this week i also did my version of potatoes dauphinoise. or simply, potatoes sliced thin, baked in cream with garlic, seasoned with salt and pepper. i do the whole thing but i also use some fine mince onion with the garlic, lashings of salt and pepper then seriously strong, mature grated cheddar cheese. my version will horrify the true blue frenchman but my brothers, my nephew and my niece, when they eat it with roast beef or roast chicken, their eyes roll in their heads like the child possessed in the exorcist but in a good way. so even if i horrify frenchmen with my americana take on dauphinoise, my family loves it and that's all that matters. je suis plebeian d'accord?

i went to the supermarket today to do our regular shopping. i had nothing to do and i was tired of sleeping and i was feeling better too.

so i prepared the ground beef for meatballs for spaghetti with meatballs what else? you simply mix ground beef with salt, pepper, eggs, breadcrumbs, minced onion, garlic, oregano, parmesan cheese and fine chopped rosemary. roll into balls on a baking sheet and when frozen dump them in a bag. when it's time to cook, saute some garlic and anchovies in olive oil, dump in some canned tomatoes then add your frozen meatballs. simmer over slow heat for an hour. stir occassionally to make sure it doesn't catch the pan bottom. then serve over spaghetti.

that's the quick way to make it. i however, make my own tomato sauce from scratch. and i tell no one how to do it. i make my tomato sauce at three in the morning - bobby caught me once when he walked into the flat, drunk and happy at 3am and there i was cooking on the stove. he literally screamed at me 'WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING COOKING AT 3 IN THE MORNING?!!!'

that's what i do. that's what some delusional people do. specially the ones who every now and then get the blues.