Recipes

DIARY

Back In The Day

Back in the day, I wrote a whole bunch of movies and TV show pilots. It's a byproduct of being an actor; you spend your days reading script after script after script, and at some point you start thinking to yourself: "Dude. I could TOTALLY do this." And so you pick up a copy of Final Draft and start tapping away on your keyboard, and sometimes what comes out is an extremely unfortunate (but not autobiographical at all, oh no no) tale of a girl who moves to Los Angeles to be an actress and ends up wildly disillusioned (oh yes; it was as bad as it sounds). And then sometimes you end up with is something that's actually sort of...okay.

I've written a lot of stuff over the years, but I still think that one of my favorite things that I've ever written is a script that I wrote for a college course I took on the 1950s, and that was read by exactly two people: my professor and Kendrick (the latter only because he found a copy of it at some point and asked to read it). It's a coming-of-age story (because that tends to be what people who are still coming of age themselves write), but it's - shockingly, I know - not about me, which is a bit of an achievement in and of itself.

Something you learn very early on in Hollywood is that every script has to have a "log line" - a punchy, easily-digestible, 1-2 sentence explanation of what, exactly, the film is about (or what, exactly, you think will make people want to pay money for said film). So Armageddon, for example, could be "Die Hard meets Independence Day, with asteroids." Pirahna 3D would be...well, actually in that case the title pretty much does the trick. My script, Meridian Planet, was The Wonder Years, but with a girl.

Eat

So Apparently I Grill Now

ribs gas grill cook

Is this photo creepy? I totally think it's creepy. And also cool.

(Please ignore my nails thanks.)

Alright, first: I made ribs. This is extremely exciting, because I've always been intimidated by the idea of making ribs (all that MEAT, you know?), and Google did me proud, because what I ended up with was all sorts of delicious. (If you're curious, I cooked it over indirect heat - we have a propane grill, so I just put the rack on the unlit side - for about an hour and a half, basting with a red wine vinegar/apple juice mixture and finishing with Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce.)

Eat

All-American Berries

Oh, these are so cute. And so easy. And so festive I can hardly even stand it. Full disclosure: I don't love them with the vehemence that I love my Chocolate Salted Strawberries, but the adorableness factor compensates for the fact that they include milk chocolate's sad cousin, white chocolate.

We had a little pool party for some friends on Saturday, and I used it as an opportunity to play around with some summery recipe ideas I've been meaning to try, and let me tell you: these were quite the hit. More easy, party-friendly dishes coming up, so if you're planning a Fourth of July get-together stay tuned - totally got you covered. But you can go ahead and start with these, because they are Oh So American.

Recipes

Pea And Pesto Crostini

sandwich crostini pesto pea mozzarella

OK, confession: I LOVE Sandra Lee. I'm basing said love on the only two facts that I know about her, which are as follows:

1. Girlfriend does not cook without a glass of wine in hand;

2. Girlfriend also does not cook when cooking is not necessary.

Eat

First BBQ (Sort Of)

For our first dinner in our new home, we thought we'd do a BBQ by the pool. Or, rather, in the pool, because those kids are ob. sessed. (As an aside, because the safety issues surrounding kids and pools clearly deserve mention - our approach this weekend was to have a serious talk with our son about pool safety, confirm that the gate around the pool was secure, and install a home security system that also chimes whenever the doors to the backyard open.)

The BBQ plan was slightly confounded by the fact that we don't actually own a grill yet (although we will as of 4PM today, when it gets delivered, so if you have any fun recipes pleeeeeease pass them on; I plan to cook outdoors every single night, all summer long and my grilling repertoire is pathetic), but I dug our old stovetop grill from our NYC apartment out of a box, and that did the job. Also I could totally have served my family old taco shells and they would have been perfectly happy, because: pool.

The Menu: Since first meals in new homes should be 1) simple to make (because most of our utensils are still MIA) and 2) WONDERFUL, I went with my all-time favorite summer menu; it's fast and easy and inexpensive and so, so (so) delicious.


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