Bistro Bijou

[unpredictablebijou]

You're like some sort of weird talent scout, except that I don't particularly have much talent in anything marketable =P

I dunno. If I had money, I'd pay you.

A boast?
I can prepare a wonderful medium-rare standing rib roast, using a NAMP 109 16-and-down choice 7 rib bone-in hunk of dead cow. Using the dripping, properly prepared, I can offer a light and lovely Yorkshire Pudding to sop up every drop of au jus.


A roast?
Aside from the one offered about I must applaud the taste our hostess has in panties - the three pair I delight in wearing around my place and the thought of her falling off the bathroom sink trying to photograph herself wearing the pair I sent her - panties about, not so much skill with a camera


A toast!
“May all your ups and downs be in bed”

*laughing* indeed, a good roast. Two, even. One standing rib, one excellent ribbing.

I've been looking at the dedication thread too, and am thinking hard about all my dedications. Happily, though, the shop is busy so I'll have to wait to get in there until I have more time to focus on it.

 

[Homburg]

I dunno. If I had money, I'd pay you.

bj

That is because you want me to take you by the wrists, hold you down, and do bad things to you. All while you try your level best to kill me.

The thought makes you squirm, and give me money. I can deal with that.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

A toast to all Knights Templars pervayors of fine mead from Lindisfarne

A boast? I am 58 and tiiiiiiiiiiiight and my curlies are straighties! Tut it's you lot leading me astray!

 

[UnderYourSpell]

That is because you want me to take you by the wrists, hold you down, and do bad things to you. All while you try your level best to kill me.

The thought makes you squirm, and give me money. I can deal with that.

Ohhhhhhhh I can go with that too

 

[unpredictablebijou]

That is because you want me to take you by the wrists, hold you down, and do bad things to you. All while you try your level best to kill me.

The thought makes you squirm, and give me money. I can deal with that.

shut up. just shut up.
*squirming uncontrollably, rummaging for checkbook*

how am I supposed to focus on customer service with you in here talking like that, you demon?

A toast to all Knights Templars pervayors of fine mead from Lindisfarne

A boast? I am 58 and tiiiiiiiiiiiight and my curlies are straighties! Tut it's you lot leading me astray!

How ironic that the Vikings, who had such an embarrasing initial stop in Lindisfarne (hey, the monks weren't armed. What were they thinking? They could have at least defended themselves. And yeah, we took all their stuff, but we needed it... okay. Not much of a defense, really) are now in there making lovely mead and being generally much more peaceable and constructive. Except of course that UYS may believe in the mead as a somewhat destructive force, at least this morning.

Witchling, are you sure you didn't just straighten your curlies with that recent toy blowout?

bj

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Methinks the Vikings raped n pillaged much further down the coast and left a few blondies amongst the dark haired Norfolk folk hey we could be related! As for the mead I'm still suffering from info going in but getting no further than the back of the eyeballs but I assure you that allllll my hair is blonde and straight but you will have to take my word for that!

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Methinks the Vikings raped n pillaged much further down the coast and left a few blondies amongst the dark haired Norfolk folk hey we could be related! As for the mead I'm still suffering from info going in but getting no further than the back of the eyeballs but I assure you that allllll my hair is blonde and straight but you will have to take my word for that!

oh yeah, we definitely got around.

Some might say we still do.

I'm still trying to figure out how to rape and pillage without getting sunburned. I pretty much have to do all my viking after dark.

bj

 

[Sara Crewe]

Sara my dear, I wish to share some of your red velvet cake. It is truly one of my weaknesses. Please share your recipe with me, and I will post it at Chefzillas Kitchen, give you all the credit, and I'll be in pig heaven at the same time. Red Velvet cake. OMG, I think I'm in love (again).


]

I have two piece left over. Two bad cake doesn't mail well.

Recipe is easy and makes an "Ooo- Ahhh" product.

Sara’s Red Velvet Cake

‘Gredients

1 cup of butter
2 ½ cups of sugar
6 eggs
3 cups of flour
3 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa
¼ tsp vanilla
2 oz. red food colouring
8 oz. sour cream

1. Heat oven to 350. Beat butter and gradually add sugar. Add eggs one at a time. Beat just until blended.
2. Combine the flour, cocoa and baking soda. Add to butter mixture alternating with sour cream and ending with flour mixture. Stir in vanilla and food colouring. Spoon into three greased and floured 8 –inch round pans.
3. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes.
4. Frost with vanilla buttercream frosting or cream cheese frosting.

 

[Sara Crewe]

SC, i don't know you, but a poet that bakes and giggles while doing so is worth getting to know. welcome back to the madness of the asylum. hop over to the " this is dedicated thread". there's a dedication to you on behalf of the bistro.

So nice to meet you Sassy! And your song choice made me giggle again..thank you!

 

[sassynyc]

My toasts:

To my dad's memory, on the anniversary of his passing. For his wisdom, even when I couldn't see it for what it was.

To music, cuz it just makes everything so much better

To everyone that had anything to do with Sex and the City coming to the big screen, because I was a junkie suffering withdrawal.

To all the lovely citizens of Rhymeville who inspire me to improve my writing.
To the bistro hostess for creating this little sanctuary in cyberspace.

My boasts:

~I make a lemon pound cake that tastes like poetry;

sunshine melting on your tongue
wears a cascading fountain
of crystalline shimmer
singing a melting glacier's song

Just pulled one from the oven about an hour ago. It's all dressed up and awful puuurty.

~My apple cobbler is as good as my mother's. Learned from the best.

As a food related side bar, I discovered that hummus works well as a thickening agent in sauces and stews when I don't want to use a roux. Shaves a little fat off of a recipe without compromising flavor. So I guess the boast in that would be that I'm innovative.

~I strut a pair of heels like nobody's business, and when I put on a dress, it wears me.

No roasts at present. I'll see how the weekend goes. Hopefully, I won't need to make that edit.

Nite y'all

 

[Homburg]

shut up. just shut up.
*squirming uncontrollably, rummaging for checkbook*

how am I supposed to focus on customer service with you in here talking like that, you demon?

bj

I had a short video of me, just my mouth, and I am sort of purring in a smug way, and ended it by licking my lips. It was entirely gratuitous, but if I find it, I'll send it to you.



Oh, one of the gals like to engage in impromptu resistance play on occassion. I have special rope cuffs that I use for those moments. Really slick units that will tighten like a slip knot, yet won't come out unless it is pulled just right. I keep one or two tied and handy just in case, and more than once there has been a surprised "Oh you motherfucker!"* uttered in my boudoir as a result

(If you are a particularly good girl, I might put together a tutorial on how to tie one. They're damned handy.)

* - Or something close. I'm not taking notes during those moments.

oh yeah, we definitely got around.

Some might say we still do.

I'm still trying to figure out how to rape and pillage without getting sunburned. I pretty much have to do all my viking after dark.

bj

The sunburn just made em more aggressive.

BTW - can't recall if I've said it or not, but I dig the new av. The hat hides the horns nicely

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Sara and Sassy you are making me drool and this diet is going nowhere fast

 

[Homburg]

Atheists cannot pray
to god. Not because
they don't believe she
exists, but because
they feel too silly.
When emotion hits you
hard enough, you'll pray,
because there are
foxholes outside of battlefields.

But atheists, see, feel
silly, and nothing is more
painful than feeling silly
by yourself.

But sometimes you still
have to do something.
The walls come crashing in
and you sit by yourself
trapped in your own skin
and nothing exists but this
desire to cry out. Mom can't
help, and dad can't either,
so you cry to a Providence
that has deserted, or a Fate
that does not care. Mankind
does not glean solace from
an absent Architect, and God
is invented. But the atheist
cannot make this step,
cannot bridge this gap.

Today I worship at the altar
of the Warlord of Punk, and
pray that Joe can soul my
sad away. For I have sinned
against my world in selfishness.
I need sight, I need prescience,
I need patience, and they hide
from me. They sulk in the
corners of my soul, dredged in
bitters and angry hurt,
cursing the calendar and
pissed to the gills.

You work so hard at being hard,
and somedays have to remember
how to be soft.

 

[sassynyc]

Atheists cannot pray
to god. Not because
they don't believe she
exists, but because
they feel too silly.
When emotion hits you
hard enough, you'll pray,
because there are
foxholes outside of battlefields.

But atheists, see, feel
silly, and nothing is more
painful than feeling silly
by yourself.

But sometimes you still
have to do something.
The walls come crashing in
and you sit by yourself
trapped in your own skin
and nothing exists but this
desire to cry out. Mom can't
help, and dad can't either,
so you cry to a Providence
that has deserted, or a Fate
that does not care. Mankind
does not glean solace from
an absent Architect, and God
is invented. But the atheist
cannot make this step,
cannot bridge this gap.

Today I worship at the altar
of the Warlord of Punk, and
pray that Joe can soul my
sad away. For I have sinned
against my world in selfishness.
I need sight, I need prescience,
I need patience, and they hide
from me. They sulk in the
corners of my soul, dredged in
bitters and angry hurt,
cursing the calendar and
pissed to the gills.

You work so hard at being hard,
and somedays have to remember
how to be soft.

i've admired your poetry from afar, but this jumped off the page at me today.
preaching to the choir, so to speak. i'm glad you shared this.

 

[Homburg]

i've admired your poetry from afar, but this jumped off the page at me today.
preaching to the choir, so to speak. i'm glad you shared this.

The really important stuff never feels like poetry to me. It's my fingers saying the things I have to say, saying what... I don't know. It's me. Me. Talking. Speaking. Saying what I would hope I would say if someone handed me a microphone and asked me to be meaningful for once in my life.

I didn't even intend the line breaks. I just typed it, and added the breaks later. I blame chef, and all the others that keep poking me for line breaks. And, the text was monolithic. I wanted to to be more... fragile. It expresses better that way.

But it's not meant to be read, I'm sorry. It is meant to be spoken. Today's voice is low, and rough, and rattles and hums with the traffic of emotions driving through me.

--

By the way, thank god/providence/fate and all the rest of that shit that I can't bring myself to believe in for Joe Strummer, and good music everywhere. And thank whatever made my heart connect to my ears. And pleasepleaseplease don't let me lose more of my hearing. Suicide is better than a world without the music in the voices of the people I love.

I'm listening to X-Ray Style, but in my heart I hear viv singing to my kids at night and MIS singing her prayers to her god and my youngest daughter singing along to a jazz tune from the Hairspray soundtrack. I would wither and die without that.

If I'm going to feel silly for praying to nothing, I might as well do it in public.

--

to you all, and apologies if I'm bringing you down. If this helps, this book is sitting on my desk, a present from MIS:

http://www.thewholechild.us/integrative_/zen%20shorts.jpg

The cover makes me smile whenever I see it, as does the book itself. Do yourself a favour and pick it up, even if you just read it in the bookstore. I don't care if you have no kids, or your kids are too old to enjoy a story about a zen panda bear that speaks with a slight panda accent. This book, and the illustrations within, will make you smile from your toes to your soul.

 

[Anschul]

The really important stuff never feels like poetry to me. It's my fingers saying the things I have to say, saying what... I don't know. It's me. Me. Talking. Speaking. Saying what I would hope I would say if someone handed me a microphone and asked me to be meaningful for once in my life.

I didn't even intend the line breaks. I just typed it, and added the breaks later. I blame chef, and all the others that keep poking me for line breaks. And, the text was monolithic. I wanted to to be more... fragile. It expresses better that way.

But it's not meant to be read, I'm sorry. It is meant to be spoken. Today's voice is low, and rough, and rattles and hums with the traffic of emotions driving through me.

--

By the way, thank god/providence/fate and all the rest of that shit that I can't bring myself to believe in for Joe Strummer, and good music everywhere. And thank whatever made my heart connect to my ears. And pleasepleaseplease don't let me lose more of my hearing. Suicide is better than a world without the music in the voices of the people I love.

I'm listening to X-Ray Style, but in my heart I hear viv singing to my kids at night and MIS singing her prayers to her god and my youngest daughter singing along to a jazz tune from the Hairspray soundtrack. I would wither and die without that.

If I'm going to feel silly for praying to nothing, I might as well do it in public.

--

to you all, and apologies if I'm bringing you down. If this helps, this book is sitting on my desk, a present from MIS:

http://www.thewholechild.us/integrative_/zen%20shorts.jpg

The cover makes me smile whenever I see it, as does the book itself. Do yourself a favour and pick it up, even if you just read it in the bookstore. I don't care if you have no kids, or your kids are too old to enjoy a story about a zen panda bear that speaks with a slight panda accent. This book, and the illustrations within, will make you smile from your toes to your soul.

THIS IS THE BEST CHILDREN'S BOOK EVER. IT'S SO GOOD IT'S NOT A KIDS BOOK. READ IT. BELIEVE IT. LIVE IT.
Thanks, Hommie, you make me smile!!

 

[Anschul]

Two wonderful cold salads new in The Kitchen. Read 'em. Make 'em. Eat 'em. Great!!

 

[Homburg]

THIS IS THE BEST CHILDREN'S BOOK EVER. IT'S SO GOOD IT'S NOT A KIDS BOOK. READ IT. BELIEVE IT. LIVE IT.
Thanks, Hommie, you make me smile!!

Very, very much so, chefzilla. You are welcome, my friend.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

I will head out and grab that book soon. Funny how many "children's books" are so much wiser and deeper when we read them as adults. The Little Prince comes to mind. John Bellairs' The Pedant and the Shuffly. Alice in Wonderland. A Wrinkle in Time. Kipling's Just So Stories. Fairy tales in general.

I find I'm drawn to continuing the Thing throughout the weekend. So for the moment:

My toast: to MEN. Impossible, beautiful, unruly, incomprehensible, brave, simultaneously brilliant and moronic, fierce, agonized, gorgeous and ridiculous, heroic and irreplaceable. god love 'em.

*drinks. And drinks. and drinks*

My Boast: for at least the past 2 weeks, I have managed to behave very well, even in difficult contexts, to the extent that I can honestly say I would not change anything I did, in retrospect.

And my Roast: A flyting and vilification be upon whichever petty deity decided that this week at the shop would be Stupid, High-Maintenance Brain Eater customer week. I use the term customer loosely here, to refer to "someone who is pretending they might spend some money in order to get lots of free information and attention."

Cheffamour, is there anything made of chocolate around here anywhere? Dark is good, but there's no bad chocolate.

bj

 

[Angeline]

I will head out and grab that book soon. Funny how many "children's books" are so much wiser and deeper when we read them as adults. The Little Prince comes to mind. John Bellairs' The Pedant and the Shuffly. Alice in Wonderland. A Wrinkle in Time. Kipling's Just So Stories. Fairy tales in general.

I find I'm drawn to continuing the Thing throughout the weekend. So for the moment:

My toast: to MEN. Impossible, beautiful, unruly, incomprehensible, brave, simultaneously brilliant and moronic, fierce, agonized, gorgeous and ridiculous, heroic and irreplaceable. god love 'em.

*drinks. And drinks. and drinks*

My Boast: for at least the past 2 weeks, I have managed to behave very well, even in difficult contexts, to the extent that I can honestly say I would not change anything I did, in retrospect.

And my Roast: A flyting and vilification be upon whichever petty deity decided that this week at the shop would be Stupid, High-Maintenance Brain Eater customer week. I use the term customer loosely here, to refer to "someone who is pretending they might spend some money in order to get lots of free information and attention."

Cheffamour, is there anything made of chocolate around here anywhere? Dark is good, but there's no bad chocolate.

bj

Here darling. Dark chocolate brownies. I make them with grated dark Callebut chocolate, cocoa powder and a little expresso powder.

I have to contemplate my t, b, and r.

 

[Angeline]

Drink: Campari and Soda because I'm really a New Yawker and because like life it is bitter and sweet.

Toast:
Two Toasts. First a total rip off of Bijou's but to Life. You can repeat her adjectives

Impossible, beautiful, unruly, incomprehensible, brave, simultaneously brilliant and moronic, fierce, agonized, gorgeous and ridiculous, heroic and irreplaceable.

or just say L'Chaim. (but try to get the gutteral right lol)

Second Toast: to the poets who brought me here and all of you to me. To Yeats, Langston Hughes, Adrienne Rich, Alan Ginsberg, Walt Whitman, to William Blake and Sappho, Neruda, Billy Collins, Gertrude Stein, O'Hara and Shakespeare, Garcia Lorca, Farrouk Farokhzad, Ted Berrigan, Bukowski, Sandra Cisneros, Gary Snyder, Robert Browning, Kenneth Koch, Gwendolyn Brooks. And to Rybka. And to smithpeter.

L'Chaim.

Add any other poets as you see fit.

Boast: In spite of her old man's best efforts, my daughter and I are closer than we've ever been. And in spite of everything, she is stupendous.

Roast: May the spirits that bedevil Mr. Ex burn to ash and drift away and may a soft cotton vine grow around him to support him gently and protect him from their return.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

mmmm. brownies.... mmmm.

*gets chocolate all over her face, doesn't care.*

Nice toasts, etc. baby, and that was a particularly compassionate roast, of which you should be very proud.

Why, I wonder idly, is it both easiest and most difficult to be compassionate to those we love, or have loved, most? Is it because we have the most hope for them, so when they fall it's nearly impossible not to take it personally? Is it because we understand their damage so well, so simply and intimately, and don't understand why they don't just go ahead and fix it?

i dunno. just noodling.

bj

 

[Angeline]

mmmm. brownies.... mmmm.

*gets chocolate all over her face, doesn't care.*

Nice toasts, etc. baby, and that was a particularly compassionate roast, of which you should be very proud.

Why, I wonder idly, is it both easiest and most difficult to be compassionate to those we love, or have loved, most? Is it because we have the most hope for them, so when they fall it's nearly impossible not to take it personally? Is it because we understand their damage so well, so simply and intimately, and don't understand why they don't just go ahead and fix it?

i dunno. just noodling.

bj

The reason is easy. My children love him.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Burning hate is a self defeating distructive erosion if you can find it indifference is better

 

[unpredictablebijou]

The reason is easy. My children love him.

Damn kids always making things all complicated and shit.

heh heh. I bet those with children might use that same string of adjectives for that toast too.

Burning hate is a self defeating distructive erosion if you can find it indifference is better

True enough. I've heard it said that one cannot truly hate unless one has loved to the same degree.

At those rare times when I've been angry enough to "hate" someone, it's always been personal, and always someone who was once very important and precious to me, if not someone who continues to be. Once I realized the wiring underneath that board, it was easier to walk in gratitude, even when someone was purposefully poking me with sticks.

But the best thing, I find, to do to those who seem to want to deliberately torture us is to laugh. Not mean laughter, but rather gentle, amused hilarity. When you can see underneath their motives, it becomes clear that they are still, in a sense, motivated by love, by the value you have had to them. 'Each time you try to injure me, I notice only that I continue to be terribly important to you, poor thing.' That sort of sentiment. Compassion becomes natural then.

Besides, giggling tends to drive torturers crazy.

Just ask Homburg.

bj