Dog Painting We Love

We love this dog painting is by Earl Swanigan, an outsider artist in Hudson, New York.

Happy 1st Birthday Grandpups!

Lola whooping it up!

My girl Roxie's pups are one-year-old today.  Happy birthday to Lola and her four bros- Henry and Bodey and Gibbs and Puter.

Every Teenager Should Have a Summer of ’65

A vintage postcard of Lake Switzerland, near the Catskills town of Fleischmanns, N.Y.

We liked this piece by Joyce Wadler in the New York Times today so we thought we'd share it.  Joyce Wadler is the author of “Cured: My Ovarian Cancer Story. Follow Joyce Wadler on Facebook: facebook.com/joyce.wadler and on Twitter: @joyce_wadler.  Previous “I Was Misinformed” columns can be found here.

Every Teenager Should Have a Summer of ’65

There are people who make fun of teenage romances, but I never do and that is because of Rob. He strolled up the street in the tiny Catskills town of Pine Hill one day in the summer of 1965 carrying "The Catcher in the Rye," the badge of a kindred spirit, wearing a canary yellow cable knit sweater. You did not see that shade of yellow on an American guy, but, of course, Rob had not yet become an American guy. He was a Hungarian, working as a busboy at a small hotel owned by another Hungarian. The Catskills were like that then. I was 17; Rob was two years older.

“Do you remember a conversation we had one night near the lake about God,” I was saying to him this weekend on the phone. “I told you I had been thinking there was nobody out there and I thought that was pretty bold of me.” 

He did not, but he remembered something I had forgotten entirely. 

“I was telling somebody the other day you were the person who introduced me to Bob Dylan,” he said. “It’s kind of funny because 50 years later, I’m still listening to Bob Dylan.” 

Rob lives in Budapest. A few years ago doctors found a nonmalignant tumor in his head, which the doctors zapped, and now, because of medication, he no longer drives. A year and a half ago, pre-cancerous cells were found in the breast where I’d had cancer 22 years ago, and I had to have surgery, and there were complications healing. Did I tell Rob about the complications? I can’t remember. We sometimes go for months without talking, but when we do it is as if we talked yesterday so I always have the feeling of being caught up. 

“What was my father like when you met him?” one of Rob’s two daughters, then in her late teens, asked me once. 

“He was funny,” I say, which sounds wrong to both of us the moment it is out because Rob was never a guy who always had to be on. 

He was dry and smart and observant. He spoke at least four languages. He had history in his bones: His mother and older brother had been rounded up by the Nazis in Budapest during World War II and escaped by melting into the crowd, though I do not think I knew that then. He had lived at the Y when he first came to New York and always seemed calm and perpetually amused. It would be a long time before I knew that coming to the United States speaking very little English was so stressful that he would have stomach trouble for years. The self-absorption of 17-year-olds is staggering. 

“You must have been making out like crazy in these woods when you were a teenager,” a friend I was showing around the Catskills said recently. 

“No need,” I said. “We had all these deserted hotels. Sometimes with beds.” 

Not very good beds, it’s true. The mattresses were so skinny they could be rolled up, and they smelled heavily of mold. But the deserted grand hotels that might or might not be torched at the end of each season were still an answer to a teenager’s dream. It’s too bad no one wrote songs about them — we were probably too limited a demographic: Kids in the Catskills making out in abandoned hotels. And what fine little love nests they were: Force open a window of the Takanassee Hotel in Fleischmanns, slip inside, wonder about the detritus left behind — a cook’s big white apron, a few pots. But you don’t think about it long. Busboys don’t get a lot of time off. 

Most teenage girls have to leave their boyfriends when they go off to college, but I do not. When I go to N.Y.U., Rob returns home to Queens to work in his parent’s candy store. At the Weinstein dorm on University Place in the Village the other girls are impressed: College boys are scruffy, starting to move from chinos to jeans and longer hair, unreliable, stoned. Rob, in his narrow-cut jackets and jeans that look pressed, is a cool European guy out of one those French movies we were so proud of watching, "Shoot the Piano Player" maybe. 

But I don’t want a European guy. I want a funny, fast-talking New York City boy. I don’t want a guy who has to be back at the candy store by 11 on Saturday night, to put together The New York Times. My values stink. I break up with Rob for a fast-talking guy in freshman sociology who has a girlfriend at Boston University and a red TR-3, starting a bad pattern of lusting after the unattainable, human and automotive. 

Rob, fundamentally saner, gets a scholarship to N.Y.U., where he meets a smart, pretty American girl who grew up in Paris and whose name is Lucy. It is probably between junior and senior year, when I hear they have married and spent the summer knocking about Europe, that I feel the deep, unequivocal, “Oops.” And it is not until I am 32, visiting Rob and Lucy in Budapest with my boyfriend, Donal, that I really realize how much I had in common with Rob after all.

But here is the upside of being an adult: It is O.K. You do not have to be in a romantic relationship to keep the love. I have known since I met Lucy that she is the better match for Rob, and I like her. If Lucy comes alone to New York we hang out, which, as you move into your 40s, means something different than when you were in your teens: me being treated for one kind of cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering on one floor, Lucy’s mother dying of cancer a few floors down, Lucy, shuttling from one floor to another. With the boyfriends who matter you get a new friend, the wife. And later, when their children grow up and come to New York and need a place to stay, you get to fuss over them and see how great they turned out and wonder, just for a moment, how they might have looked if you hadn’t have gone for the guy with the sports car. 

Next thing you know it is another day in summer, the summer of ’98. My friend Herb and I have just finished a bike trip in France’s chateau country and we are waiting for Rob and Lucy. When they drive up, we are all talking at once. We drive to Provence. Around three in the afternoon we pull up to a little guesthouse and the owner says it is too late for lunch but maybe she can scare us up something. Forty minutes later we are sitting at the table, having the freshest salad I have had in my life. 

“This lettuce was in the ground 20 minutes ago,” Rob says. 

Why, with the billions and billions of sentences I have heard, do I remember a sentence about lettuce? But I do. It is great lettuce and my first boyfriend and his wife and my best friend and I are all together. I have pictures. We four in the house in Provence, grinning. 

Somewhere out there a 17-year-old girl is sitting outside on a muggy day and a teenage boy is about to walk up to her. 

Don’t knock it.

Happy Birthday GamGam!

Dad, Suddie, and GamGam

It's GamGam's 78th birthday today (we can't believe it either)!  Happy Birthday GamGam!!

Pluto

This exhibit of Pluto figurines was on display near our gate at the Vancouver airport.   We fell in love.

Here's what it said on the info card that accompanied the exhibit.

Pluto
Figurines from 1930 -2012

Pluto is the bright orange or yellow short-haired dog of Mickey Mouse.  Pluto was his pet.  He was a favorite of mine.  It was a lot of fun collecting Disney figures over the years and discovering them in the most unlikely places.

From the collection of Ken Stephens
British Columbia

Thank you Ken!   We think they're great!

Carol Channing?

I said hello, Sadie,....well, hello Sadie!

Now, we said to GamGam, "Don't you think Sadie looks a bit like Carol Channing with her new 'do?"  We haven't heard a word from GamGam since!

All we can say is,

You're lookin' swell, Sadie....I can tell, Sadie

You're still glowin' ... you're still crowin' ...you're still goin' strong!

Suddie's Fantabulous Coconut Cupcakes

They're Fantabulous

We're expecting guests to arrive.   They say they will arrive at 9:30 PM.  Just in time to tuck them into bed.  We suspect it's far more likely they will roll in around midnight!  They're coming from San Francisco via Boulder and driving.  It's very difficult to stick to a schedule on such a long haul.

We have Suddie's Fantabulous Coconut Cupcakes in the oven in case they arrive famished (in addition to very, very late).

I think we first got hooked on cupcakes when we experienced them in all their glory at Society Bakery in Dallas.   They are so good.  Later we found their coconut cupcake recipe in People magazine, of all places.  We tried it out and this recipe WAS NOT their coconut cupcake recipe at all.  We were more than sure of that.  And the accompanying 7-minute frosting recipe produced something just dreadful.

So I emailed Roshi, the owner of Society Bakery.

Hi Roshi,
Whenever I was in Dallas, my dad would walk us over to Society Bakery so he could have your amazing cupcakes.
We don't get to Dallas as often as we would like and I know my dad pines for your cupcakes.  He misses them so much that I tried to make some for him using the Society Bakery coconut cupcake recipe that was published in People magazine.  I have to say they didn't taste nearly as good as your cupcakes and the frosting recipe didn't come anywhere close.   It didn't seem to be the right recipe.  Was this recipe correct or do you use a different one? Would you be willing to share?
Thanks so much for baking such great cupcakes.
Suddie

Roshi replied:

Hi Suddie
We can always ship you some whoopie pies!  The frosting recipe we gave to People was a seven minute frosting recipe that we only do for custom orders.  We do not give out our traditional cream cheese icing recipe.  Another thing we do differently with our coconut cupcakes now is hollow them out and fill them with pastry cream.   We have experimented with several versions of our Flavors - so another thing you might want to try is making a traditional white cake and add coconut to the batter.  I hope this helps.  Let us know if you would like us to ship you anything.
Take care,
Roshi Muns

So, I had to take matters into my own paws and create a superior coconut cupcake recipe.  My dad says they are the best coconut cupcakes in all the land, far and wide.  And we have no problem sharing the recipe!

Suddie's Fantabulous Coconut Cupcake Recipe

Cake Ingredients:
1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
scant 1 tsp salt
1/2 cup sweetened shredded coconut
1 1/2 sticks butter, room temperature
1 1/3 cup sugar
2 large eggs
2 large egg whites
1/4 cup 0% Greek yougurt
3 tsp vanilla extract
1 /2 tsp coconut extract (we got ours from Amazon)
3/4 cup milk

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Combine flour with next 3 ingredients; set aside.
2.  Beat sugar and butter at medium speed until fluffy, about 5 mins.  Add eggs, egg whites, vanilla and coconut extracts and Greek yogurt, beating until blended.
3. Add coconut mixture to the butter mixture alternating with milk, beginning and ending with coconut mixture.  Beat at low speed just until blended after each addition.
4.  Scoop (we used a small ice cream scoop)into lined muffin pans, filling 2/3 full.  Bake from 22 -25 minutes.  But start checking them at 20 minutes.  When finished baking a wooden pick inserted into the center will come out clean.  Cool completely before frosting.

Frosting Ingredients:
2 8 oz cream cheese, cold
4 tbsp butter, room temperature
1 tbsp 0% Greek yogurt
4 tsp meringue powder (or dried egg whites)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup sweetened shredded coconut

Beat the cream cheese and butter until creamy.  Be careful not to over beat.  Beat in the Greek yogurt and meringue powder (if using, you don't have to but we think it helps the frosting keep it's shape).  Add the vanilla.  Add the powdered sugar 1/2 cup at a time.  Mix until combined and fluffy.  Fold in coconut.  Sprinkle with remaining coconut.