Math

Yesterday I started doing some wedding-related math. Specifically, food math. One of the reasons I'll be cooking the vast majority of the food is because, well, it's me, and I can't NOT cook. But the other reason is to save money. It's far cheaper to cook my own food than to pay a caterer to do it for me, and I daresay my food will taste better, anyway. I don't have a choice at this point--we're eating beans every night, spending no money, and I've slashed all household expenditures to the bone, saving every penny for the wedding. I quit feeding quarters into the laundromat dryers and I'm drying clothes on racks in the living room, for God's sake, and I still fear we'll come up short.

So, food math. I started with dessert. An assortment of homemade cookies, brownies and fudge, supplemented by ice cream and sundae fixings at the wedding, and several pounds of bacon chocolate. Let's assume 75 people at the wedding, 75 people at the rehearsal dinner (although probably less), plus 15 people staying in the house for a week. Let's also assume 3 cookies (or whatever) per person, per day. That's a total of 600 cookies and brownies, leaving the bacon chocolate out of the equation.

Now let's assume 15 cookies (or whatever) per batch. That comes to a grand total of 47 sticks of butter and 5 dozen eggs. Plus flour, sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, chocolate chips, etc., etc., etc.

Then I moved on to the bread. (Yes, I'm baking all the bread. I can make a loaf of bread for less than a quarter. Even at Sam's Club, the bread isn't that cheap.) 3 loaves of white sandwich bread for the kids, 4 loaves of bread for croutons, and baguettes for everything else. 15 people in the house for a week--toast, sandwiches, French toast--plus bread for 75 on Friday with the gumbo. I came to an estimate of 30 baguettes for the week. Flour, whole wheat flour, salt and yeast.

However, bought in bulk, the ingredients for 600 cookies and 30 baguettes come to about $150. It's entirely possible we'll end up spending more on booze than on food.

(Alcohol math: 75 people on Saturday, 75 people on Friday, undetermined number for Sunday brunch, plus 15 people in the house for a week: three cases of wine, one case of champagne, two cases of assorted beer--my brother-in-law-to-be is bringing nine gallons of homebrewed oatmeal stout, but we'll still need a little extra--plus giant bottles of gin, rum, bourbon, scotch, tequila and several giant bottles of vodka. Plus mixers--OJ, cranberry juice, tonic water, soda water, bitters, Coke, Diet Coke, triple sec, lemons, limes, blah blah blah--plus my own personal stash of the good stuff. Even if I spend only $10 per bottle on the wine and bubbly, factoring in 15% case discount, that's close to $1000 on booze.)

Isn't math fun?

Theatre review: In A Garden

When I was a theatre critic in New York, I saw a lot of plays. A lot. Many of them were good, but many more of them were bad. I mean baaaaaaad. One of the things I learned by seeing all those bad plays was that you should never, ever, under any circumstances, see a play which features the words "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" in the press release. Last night I saw In A Garden by Howard Korder at South Coast Rep, and I can honestly say this is the first play I've ever seen that's even vaguely about the Middle East that didn't make me want to stab myself in the eye with a fork.

I know it doesn't sound like high praise, but writing about the Middle East is tricky. You run the risk of alienating part of the audience and boring another part to tears. It's very difficult to write about objectively--everyone has an opinion on this topic--and so it's very difficult to end up with a play that's not delivered from the top of a soapbox. Plus, who keeps up with the news these days? Even in New York, audiences aren't really on top of either current events, or the intricate and tortured histories that led up to current Middle Eastern events.

So In A Garden was surprisingly...adept, for lack of a better word. An American architect is summoned to a fictional Middle East country by the Minister of Culture, who wants to commission a small private summer house. The Minister is worldly, sophisticated, diplomatic, and seems to have his country's best interests at heart. In true political fashion, he seems unable (or unwilling) to answer a question directly, and so their conversations, which begin in 1989 and range up to 2004, are fascinatingly oblique. As they both dance around the design for the summer house, current events, the history of the country, and the country's current leader, the architect is gradually exposed to a wealth of secrets. The last scene of the play, as one might expect given the subject matter, is conducted between the architect and an American soldier in 2004, in the bombed-out former Ministry of Culture.

Perhaps because the two main characters never address "The Middle East and Its Issues" directly, the play never descends into pedantry. The audience is presented with the same tantalizing bits of information as the architect, and so we are free to draw our own conclusions. It's a great way to back into the subject matter, and because the play's country is fictional (although an obvious amalgamation of real countries), it doesn't run the risk of offending anyone or becoming immediately outdated.

The scene transistions were a little long for my taste, but whatever. I really enjoyed getting out of the house and getting some culture. Who would have thought I had to move to California to finally see a good play about the Middle East?

It Is Marvelous by Elizabeth Bishop

It is marvelous to wake up together
At the same minute; marvelous to hear
The rain begin suddenly all over the roof,
To feel the air clear
As if electricity had passed through it
From a black mesh of wires in the sky.
All over the roof the rain hisses,
And below, the light falling of kisses.

An electrical storm is coming or moving away;
It is the prickling air that wakes us up.
If lightning struck the house now, it would run
From the four blue china balls on top
Down the roof and down the rods all around us,
And we imagine dreamily
How the whole house caught in a birdcage of lightning
Would be quite delightful rather than frightening.

And from the same simplified point of view
Of night and lying flat on one’s back
All things might change equally easily,
Since always to warn us there must be these black
Electrical wires dangling. Without surprise
The world might change to something quite different,
As the air changes or the lightning comes without our blinking,
Change as our kisses are changing without our thinking.

Quietly by Kenneth Rexroth

Lying here quietly beside you,
My cheek against your firm, quiet thighs,
The calm music of Boccherini
Washing over us in the quiet,
As the sun leaves the housetops and goes
Out over the Pacific, quiet—
So quiet the sun moves beyond us,
So quiet as the sun always goes,
So quiet, our bodies, worn with the
Times and the penances of love, our
Brains curled, quiet in their shells, dormant,
Our hearts slow, quiet, reliable
In their interlocked rhythms, the pulse
In your thigh caressing my cheek. Quiet.

We got our first wedding present today!

I feel all official and stuff. :-)

Scientists prove that high-fructose corn syrup is really, really bad for you

(Well, duh.) You can read the entire post at The Kitchn here.

I especially like the part where they point out that eating a candy bar does more damage to your waistline than eating an entire tray of homebaked cookies right out of the oven.

A weekend at the beach

My man and I spent most of Saturday afternoon lounging around at La Jolla Beach. I know, I know, life is so hard in sunny SoCal. I know you're jealous. ;-) Otherwise it was an entirely uneventful weekend, as spending the afternoon in the sun doesn't exactly lead to productivity.

I'm hoping to start reading scripts for one of the local theatres soon. And today marks exactly two months until the wedding!