What a nice little dinner party we had last night! Old publishing pal Beth Fleisher came over with husband Chris Claremont (and we only talked a little about Wolverine - not hard, as Delia & I haven't seen it yet). Delia made Avocado Soup from our beloved Paris in a Basket cookbook, and Roasted Sea Bass with Lemon & Fennel. (One of the lovely things about NYC is the corner fish market!) And the Wild Rice that 1crowdedhour brought us from MN. What's more, we trotted out the bone-handled silver forks & knives from one of Delia's mother's collection of Edwardian fish sets, which we have been keeping under the cupboard because they were too pretty to get rid of (and no one seemed willing to buy) - it hadn't occurred to us we could simply use them when eating fish, which we do all the time! But friends had theirs out last week, and the penny drops. Nothing bones a whole striped bass like one'a them serving babies.

We being publishing people, business, of course, was discussed. I am preening, because I introduced Beth to agent Barry "bgliterary" Goldblatt . . . and now she's joined his Literary Agency! Beth was Emma Bull's editor at Berkeley for years, and a bunch of other peoples' I'm sure she'd be glad to tell you about her experience. I asked her what sort of clients she was looking for, and she made my day by saying she liked original, unclassifiable, daring stuff like the stories in Interfictions! -- but for middle-grade and YA. She loves historicals, fantasy, hard SF, and non-fiction. And also, because of her experience working with Chris, graphic novels. There's more about her up on BGLiterary's "About" page. Just sayin'.

Just to waste time, I googled "Theron" to see how many pages it would be before the entries stopped being about that actress, Charlize, and whether anything about The Fall of the Kings would turn up. On p. 15 (I skipped ahead) my first non-Charlize hit was Domaine du Theron, a French winery in the Lot valley, near Cahors.

The weird thing is, I've been there. In 2001 we celebrated Delia's birthday by renting a sprawling old farm called Cubertou*, and filling it with all our friends. Of course we explored the local wineries, and when we saw a sign for Domaine du Theron, we tore off in that direction. I think we had just recently finished Kings.

The wine was good. I still have the T-shirt.

* The Cubertou site tells me that the great guitarist John Renbourn (Pentangle et alia) is teaching guitar workshops there this summer with Remy Froissart!

The New York Times offers a recipe for Red Hot Ale made with a hot poker. God, I miss my wood stove (and associated tools!). It caramelizes the sugar in the ale. Burnt Caramel is my favorite flavor (well, top 3, anyway). (If you don't want to sign up for the NYTimes, it's also here.)

Remember the 23-yr-old recent Bryn Mawr grad who mysteriously disappeared from her apt in NYC on August 28th? She was found drifting in New York Harbor on Sept. 16th, and just gave a fascinating interview to the NYTimes: she was suffering from dissociative fugue, a rare form of amnesia that causes people to forget their identity, suddenly and without warning, and can last from a few hours to years. “It’s weird,” Ms. Upp said. . . .“How do you feel guilty for something you didn’t even know you did? It’s not your fault, but it’s still somehow you. So it’s definitely made me reconsider everything. Who was I before? Who was I then — is that part of me? Who am I now?”

Our Boston friend, artist Tabitha Vevers, has a show up at the DeCordova (Lincoln, MA) right now. It just got a great review in the Boston Globe. The mermaid picture in the first paragraph is in fact owned by us; we lent it for the show. Very cool; someone from an art shipping firm came to our house to crate it up. There are 7 more images of her work up online here.

The Upper West Side is honeycombed with great food of all prices & descriptions; it would take pages just to list everywhere within 5 blocks of the theatre (Broadway between W. 76th-77th).

The 2 that have become my post-show Hangouts are:

SAVANN (on Amsterdam between 79th/80th)
Relaxed yet elegant, and never noisy, with pleasant, friendly staff - seems to be a family-run place, with Turkish-inflected food of great deliciousness, a good wine list, and excellent brunch menu. It's become my Comfort Place after shows.

Metropolitan Diner (on the NE corner of Broadway & 77th)
A classic. One of the last of the great family-run diners, where the Greek guy behind the counter sings out incantations about how many orders of fries he's got with what burgers. Kid friendly; went there last night after the show with Barry & Libba & their little one (who was too tired to get his promised milkshake, so I owe him one) and my 2 cousins. Portions are enormous. Soup is good. And the waitress returned to put her hand on my shoulder and said, "I'm sorry, my lady, we are out of chicken pot pie."

I would go there again just for that. (My chicken souvlaki was delicious, though.)

ADDED: Forgot to say: my choices are based on "I'm suddenly turning up with a largish (5-8) group of people; who can gracefully accommodate us?"

Have your own favorite nearby? (Planet Sushi? The Cottage [Chinese]? . . . ? Let's hear!

Well, really; what did I think would happen if I carried a heart-shaped cake inscribed: "Happy Birthday, Ellen" down 87th St.?
- Are you Ellen?
- Is it your birthday?
- Happy birthday!
- What a gorgeous cake . . . . .

What I didn't expect, when I got to the bus stop on B'way and set it down on a bench, was for a gang of 60-ish tourists from Maryland to warmly enquire, and then start singing Happy Birthday to You (Dear Ellllllen), joined by various passers-by, shoppers and dog-walkers . . . . "We're not drunk!" they hastened to assure me. "We're here to see a show. We're going to see South Pacific!" Well, of course they weren't drunk. They were just high on the City; on the possibility that anything can happen, any time - that beautiful cakes will be sitting at bus stops , that total strangers will come up to you and wish you well and begin to sing. . . .

Here is the cake that caused it all, sitting at home on the new sideboard (next to a Rosh Hashanah card from Eve Sweetser, a photo she took on her trip to Japan). Chalk another triumph up to cake- (and film-)maker extraordinaire, conteurlisa! Yum.



Oh, and it isn't my birthday 'til Monday (10/6) - we just decided to start celebrating early.

On Monday night we are planning to go see beloved Red Bull Theater's reading of A Horse's Ass, "loosely adapted from Pietro Aretino’s Renaissance comedy Il Marescalco: 1526. Mantua. A homosexual man will be forced at knifepoint to marry a woman. He's tearing his hair out."

I bought farmed deer liver at the Madison Farmer's Market, and tonight I cooked it, using a recipe from this delightful article from Field & Stream on how to cook all the other organs, as well.

Hey, it's research!

And, as someone else at the table just said, "How often do you get to hear the phrase, 'I think I ate too much deer liver'?"