Valentine's Day Pasta

Dan Savage says don't eat before sexy time.  Valentine's Day dinners are usually full of intense heavy food and cake.  Ooh the cake!  But when you eat heavy hearty food your body has a hard time digesting it, and the body likes to be inert and asleep for difficult digestion.  Dan Savage says you should have sexy sexy time, and then eat.  But some people like to go to sleep after sexy sexy time.  So this year we had Valentine's Day Lunch.  

When considering what food to choose for Valentine's Day Lunch I like to think about food I might have when I have an athletic event that night.  As we all know, good sexy sexy sexy time is an athletic event.  When engaged in exciting athletic adventures, a person needs a couple things.  Carbohydrates and Protein.  Actually, I have no idea if that's what you need.  I'm a playwright.  Nonetheless, this is what I decided upon.  So I thought, peanuts and pasta.  When I think peanuts and pasta I am immediately reminded of my mother's Peanut Thai Pasta.  An age-old family recipe that was passed down to her from an internet page or a magazine or something.  Such is the way of the world.  The recipe below is slightly different from the one I made today as I did not have any Bow-Tie Pasta and instead used Rotini.  But it's so much cuter if you use Bow-Tie because Bow-Ties are cool!

Peanut "Tie" Pasta.

Serves 4-6 persons

INGREDIENTS
1 box of Bow-Tie Pasta (Farfalle)
1 Red Bell Pepper
1/2 Cup of Roasted Peanuts (No salt)
Head of Brocoli

SAUCE
2 Cloves of Garlic
1tbsp Olive Oil
1/4 Cup of Coconut Milk (not the light stuff)
1 Cup Vegetable Broth
1-2 tbsp of Soy Sauce
3 heaping scoops of Peanut Butter
1tbsp of Curry Powder
2 tsp of Ginger Powder
Basil (Optional)

This is a quick recipe.
1. Start boiling water to boil the pasta in.
2. Mince Garlic and saute in the Olive Oil.  I like to use as little Olive Oil as possible and sometimes add even more than two cloves of Garlic.
3.  Once garlic is sauteed add Coconut Milk, Vegetable Broth, Peanut Butter, and Soy Sauce.  Stir until the Peanut Butter is dissolved in the sauce.
4. Sometime around now, or whenever the water is at a rolling boil, add the pasta.
5. Add the Spices to the Sauce.
6. Let the sauce simmer for a bit while cutting the Red Bell Pepper into strips.
7. Add the Red Bell Pepper to the sauce and coat it well.  Simmer for about 5 minutes.  (you can saute the Red Bell  Pepper separately then add it to the sauce, but I like the fresh green taste of them so I don't)
8. Cut the broccoli into florets, then add them to the sauce.
9. Drain the Pasta, put it in a bowl, add the sauce, and toss.

Tasty, easy, and makes the best leftovers.
It's good for Valentines day also because as long as you don't over eat, it won't weigh you down for...
stuff.  You know, stuff.

Today

Today for lunch we're making a Carrot Bisque. The recipe comes from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Vegan with a Vengeance.  I'm very excited to have it but there is one problem...
We're making it with about 2/3rds of the carrots the recipe calls for.  Mostly I think the soup will be on the sweet side and a little bit thinner.  

 Walking in a sea of Carrot Bisque?  Thanks to Olafur Eliasson it's now possible.  If you ever can see his work, it is a must. 

If I had been smarter I would've started making Tempeh Reubens about a half an hour ago. 
I'll still probably use rye bread for the sandwiches but I'll probably just throw a bunch of stuff on them for the heck of it.  Maybe use the Veganaise we just bought.  Maybe just have some nice crusty bread on the side and dip it in...

Eat well and see good art, it's important dammit. 

A Manifesto to Forget

Playwriting for me is...

MOVEMENT

I want to inspire movement.

I would like my words to make people move.  I want well trained actors to feel my words in their bodies.  I want my music to make people who are completely normal dance.

I want people to dance.  I find there to be no truer from of expression.  I may be autistic but movement is something relatively objective.

Ugly phrasing.

I want movement  because despite being autistic I know what it is.  When I was  a child I saw Amahl and the Night visitors performed by the James Sewell ballet company.  When I  saw it I thought wow…  I’m watching a bunch of people fucking on stage and nobody minds

back tracking earlier in my youth I would look at the

marble art

Marble statues of PEOPLE

I’ve seen them.

If you ever have the chance see any of the various “Veiled Ladies”

that exist in the world. they are spectacular.

anyways.

I saw these marble statues of nude women and men and they were immaculate.

please if anyone ever sees THE DAVID forget your damned sexuality and see

see

the most beautiful man in marble.

it is absolutely sexual

so concretely that it cannot be ignored by people who are not attracted to men.

the same is true of beautiful beautiful ROMEO

and even more so of Juliet

it is not about male or female.  gender is irrelevant to art of that caliber

but it is about beauty and things which are more true to this “human condition” than I could ever dream of reaching. 

Why is Juliet better than Romeo?

because Romeo’s death is the fatal flaw, so to speak,

and Juliet’s death.

Juliet’s death is pure because Romeo is truly dead when Juliet dies

truly

but

it isn’t to say that her death is better

just to say it is purer.  She knows

he does not.

poor poor pure Romeo

who could not wait even a moment in this world without his pure Juliet that he needed to end it all

as I’m sure it must be

before she could even awake.

Should we therefore

wait for happiness to find us

or end it in a fit of emotion

the reason the play works is that is subverts this question

it says

COWARDS NEVER KILL THEMSELVES ONLY THE BRAVE CAN ACTUALLY PUSH THEMSELVES FORWARD.

Let us then no longer think of the silly constructed objective man/woman/person/people thing

and dwell instead on the most objective thing the subjective mind can find

the experience

That thing that we feel every moment of our lives.

I digress

return to myself in context.

There is a thing, which is that I call myself.

When I think me

 I try to feel myself clearly because I hope that my subjective experience can connect to others.  And so I peel away at myself until nothing is left and I’ve seen it all.  When I’ve done this completely I don’t know where I’ll go from there but maybe there is something completely universal about human existence that if I pull away and pull away I’ll find

anyways

yes any ways

any ways

, implying multiply infinities

, which mathematically is real.

to be that thing that is so far beyond comprehension. 

Music

surely you’ve heard it.

I’m certain you’ve seen Van Gogh’s work

Yes?

Well then You’ve Seen It.

In England I once saw Picasso’s “BLUE FRIEND”

At that point I knew suffering was OK because people can appreciate it externally. 

Even in that clear isolated uninterpretable sadness one can feel connected to everyone that ever lived and that will ever lived.

Do I miss you like you miss me

Do you miss me like I miss you

Never but

I’ve missed people as you’ve missed me

and You’ve missed people as I’ve missed you

Ahh, alcohol.

click click cringe

anyways.  This is what I want to do with playwrighting.  Maybe it’s Theater of Cruelty?

but make people feel the sadness of thinking that all you can do is kill the one thing you love.  That maybe that is the greatest happiness available to you.  Maybe everything is falling apart and disintegrating in your hands and in your eyes and all around you.

Maybe not only the greatest happiness to you, maybe that is too shallow maybe your only chance at completeness.  Some other person’s happiness.  Maybe they are so completely surrounded by a certain complete darkness that the only proper escape is death. 

I’ve never been that far but I know it exists.

The escape is, of course, not your own escape but theirs.  The idea is not that you, personally or otherwise, would feel any better or worse but that you would finally be able to, for the other person, that person that you really love, as in to

put their happiness above your own

to truly

put their happiness above your own.

to find strength in their joy

more than you find strength in your own

but to believe in them beyond yourself. 

That is what I desire to do as a playwright.

That is what I must build.

a thing to create

In lieu of that I've created this blog...

Good attempt, eh?